June is Pry Month
Celebrate with a Dispatch from the Real
Well come, stragglers and wanderers. Some of you may be pilgrims out of something treacherous and now you’ve strayed long from conventional wisdom.
Conventional Wisdom teaches us to go along to get along. It’s the Way of the Future. It’s the Sensible Path.
But stragglers and wanderers often wonder too much to be bound too tightly by convention. For as much as we rail against the Machine, we at least might credit it with this: It has helped to drive many of us away from Conventional Wisdom.
It has been long since I touched down here in the stacks. I often think on my duty to you, fair readers, but I must confess Life has gotten all too Real lately for me to spend my waking hours pounding the keys. I’ve stolen a few minutes away from sleep tonight to bring you an update.
It is June, and as we know, June is Pry Month. We pry ourselves away from the false and compulsory conventions of the Internet to be re-baptized in the Real. Turn on any online device this month and you’ll be reminded in short order what we’re supposed to care about. Be it a platform once devoted to the imagination of children, or an app for enjoying all the music of the world, you’ll have no choice but to be reminded.
This is why we must choose to pry ourselves away from that which we have become all too dependent upon anyway, since we know what it gives us this month can only warp the natural mind, and choose instead to open our eyes to that which is hiding in our midst: flesh and bone, blade of grass or birdsong, forest path, creek bed, the sweat of labor and leisure in and out of doors.
It may be a difficult path, but you simply must come back to the country of your birth.
As mentioned above, these past months have been heavy on the Real. In late February, we sold our house and we were obliged to wait very patiently to close on our new home, a lovely patch of earth that measures nine acres of beauty and 30 minutes from town.
Before we managed to close, however, our beloved dam Zo welped a second litter of puppies. Believe me, we were not so insane to plan for this on the brink of a move, but our sire Fred was far too feisty a chap to be dissuaded from Nature’s beckoning, and he managed to get Zo very pregnant. Pregnant with 11 puppies, to be exact. So once we closed on the sale of our old house, we had to move ourselves and all 13 dogs onto a friend’s property, since the purchase of our new house was full of all sorts of snags.
Eventually, however, we did get moved. And while we got quite a deal on the land, the house we bought promised to be a serious project. Immediately we began ripping up old, stained and smelly carpet and scheduling mold treatments. I found a wide patch of wood rot in the sub-floor after taking up the carpet and had to replace a few panels that seemed too moldy to mess with any longer. Then began the re-flooring process.
In the move, we left our favorite metropolis and took up residence in a new, more rural county. The town we live near now is quaint and friendly, and we have been trying to adjust our driving and shopping patterns. As fun as it has been, the adjustment is significant and ongoing. But the beauty we wake to and enjoy each day is a wonder to behold.
Dear reader, be encouraged! Why not use this year’s Pry Month to stay offline as much as possible and to renew paradise in your own patch of earth? I believe you will rejoice.
A good reminder, Derek, especially for those of us still surrounded by traffic and concrete. Thank you!