“True happiness only comes from within, so we should stop looking to other things to make us happy or scared or full of fear, and if we just realize for a second that everything we want in life is infinite and within us, we could spread love and tell everyone that everything is okay.”
“Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.”
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I woke up in a cloud this morning; it was the color of snow, but I saw none falling. Now outside breathing in the new day, the river still flowing jade and light beginning to wrap around a nearby snowy mountain peak. No need for script now, my thoughts are calm and slow, with space to giggle inwardly at the clock above the kitchen table alerting me to each second — each tick the first, the only. Ding! Now it’s been an hour.
A little over a week in Austria and I’ve completely landed; my ideas of what it means to be in Austria surrounded by mountains and castles and clouds have dissipated, faded — now I can see them. The formerly ethereal now reality; heaven is here.
So here I sit trying to stop trying to understand how I’m living along a river flowing milky green glacier water clean enough to drink in a small Austrian mountain village surrounded by The Alps in a house made cozy by 25 years of memories, new friends, a wood oven, earth-toned mosaics around doorways and in corners, and books paintings kitchen appliances candles houseplants jars of herbs, teas, spices, extra blankets and old legos,where clouds drift or hover at eye level, everything is closed on Sundays, and tap water comes from a mountaintop spring.
My reality is encroaching upon the always moving threshold of unbelievable — I feel like a solved Rubiks Cube still swiveling. Slower and slower with each breath.
(photos inside).
As I engrossed myself in view and thought, I found that the poor creature had died of thirst beside a stream of water, and of hunger in the midst of a rich field, cradle of life; like a rich man locked inside his iron safe, perishing from hunger amid heaps of gold.
“A lot of people enjoy being dead, but they’re not dead, really, they’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt, even. Play as well as ya can. Go team, Go! Gimme an L, gimme an I, gimme a V, gimme an E… L-I-V-E live!”
A day later I’m standing in The Valley Of The Moon with sister, Lana, surrounded by towering granite and new international friends — Austrian brothers, Paul and Simon, Brazilian Juliana, and Diego from Mexico. Craned necks belaying cheering guiding watching. I’m awestruck to see humans so high up and on such a small rope — what are they holding onto? How are they sticking to that wall? Shivers not just from the bluster. Diego falls 10 or so feet; my heart jumps and I turn away. Simon tells of once falling 90ft from a tree, Paul shares a story about a splinter to the eye, Diego says that his fall was no big deal — he’d fallen 40ft in Yosemite. A whole new kind of rugged.
Also, Paul, 20, just returned from a 2 month solo expedition covering 700 miles down a river in the Yukon — living entirely off of the land. Also, he and Simon are ski instructors, and Simon is a mountain guide and he and Diego are climbing instructors. Also, Juliana scales the granite with ease and speaks four languages. Also, they all look as though they’ve jumped out of a magazine.
Who are these people?
I got to sing with The Ruby Pines!
The Ruby Pines – “Make You Mine” from Micah Fischer on Vimeo.