Rising at dawn reminds me of Kosovo and the same wild roosters that racket our own country. Sometimes I expect to look up at the quilted curtains, a reminder that the Mediterranean is only a stone's throw away. A reminder that the air, though thick with remorse, is fresh and focused, always cool enough to lull to sleep.
Here, we harvest vegetables and cook elaborate meals from fresh produce, zucchini bread, salads, roasts, the earth still fresh at our forks. One of my favorite parts of harvesting is the fact that I can just take a bite out of vegetables, sit gnawing on a cucumber only seconds ago pulled from the ground. This can be relaxing, the physicality mixed with the satisfaction of production, the startling beauty of purple potatoes and brandywine tomatoes an added sensation of warmth. Here I do not notice the smell of garlic on my hands or the dirt caked under my fingernails. I notice, instead, the soft red fur of a calf, the cry of a goat, the way the sun burns my temples even in the morning.
The music at the barn dance was wonderful and made me want to dance and dance. The taste of our ice-cream startling, the caramel dripped into small, frozen veins.
When I think about England, exiting the here and now for a moment, imagining the months to come, I panic. I panic, not because I don't want to go but because of what I am leaving behind. I panic because my heart hurts even here and while it can be calmed by a cup of coffee, laying down chicken feed, writing of other lives, running in the woods, it is restless and riddled. I am looking forward to my new place, space, where I will be focused on much that matters to me. Yet I am incredibly afraid of abandoning my own aftermath here.
