Life is awfully good. I guess I can’t really compare it to anything…except maybe pre-life (can you remember what it was like before you were born? Me either.)

I have a couple of housemates. Tony lives in the basement. Jon is in the spare bedroom.

I connected with Tony by posting a little ad on Craigslist (something like “Room in exchange for your carpentry skills”). Anyhow, he showed up with a trailer of tools and a dream. He has helped with the home improvements a ton. He’s also a great cook and we’ve become good friends.

Jon has been a friend for about a year. We first met over a conversation at the local coffee house (shared our challenges of unemployment - is it true the new norm is plenty of middle aged folks who are struggling to survive?). Anyhow, we’re great friends. He contacted me a month ago saying he needed a place (as he’s navigating through a divorce).  While I’m at work as a teacher, he’s been helping Tony with the home repairs.

Anyhow, the house is really coming together! I’d not truly understood what kind of project I was undertaking. It is amazing through all we can accomplish with the help of friends (old and new). The big plan this week is to begin painting the exterior.

I’m sipping my first cup of morning java. Soon we will be dipping the brush in the bucket. I have a feeling it’ll be a landmark day. I am already having visions of big parties under the full moon…enjoying this big space I call home.

Be not weak my friends. Life is good. I am a writer. I am a painter. The writing is done. Now I paint. 

Sometimes it is important to just experience life. I’d gone for my morning jog. I panted at my doorsteps and decided the front yard could be watered. I turned on the sprinkler and experienced some wonderful layers- the sunrise beyond the playground beyond the sprinkler.

Life is in layers. Some are thick. Some are thin. Some have deep rooted fossils and some are fresh flooded mud.

I study layers of the earth, the rock, myself and others.

In my youth, favorite layers included the rainbow of jello in a family picnic, the discarded clothes on my bedroom floor, and the steaming mass of fermented organics deep in the compost pile. The calendar always felt like an unending ripple of predicted tides- a new school year, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter and summer vacation.  I remember the layers of my childhood as better than they ever were—there were many layers of complete crap.

My favorite layers as an adult seem more permanent. The layers between Heaven and Hell. The layers between love and fear. The layers between separation and connectedness. I guess these aren’t actually my favorite layers, they’re just the ones I think about the most.

Today I look at the sunrise beyond the playground beyond the sprinkler and think, This is how it is- life is layers- birth, death and the meaning we put in between. The lesson- live life and worry not.