Nutritive Connection (The Cowboy in the Tire Shop)

Today I spent the morning taking care of things that have been piling up. We had a big snow storm last week and with it came a big winter and hibernation mode activation. Sean and I both got sick.  Our nanny wasn’t able to come a few days last week. We rescheduled and canceled things.We stopped cleaning up as much as normal and just let stuff lie where it landed for a few days. Sometimes the bare minimum is just true. And the bare minimum with two toddlers is very, very little. Basically, just keep them and yourself alive. But, today, the sun is back out. The temperature is up a little bit.I’m coughing less and less and my body feels less worn out. Our nanny is here watching the girls and taking care of the house and I was able to run into town to pick up our mail that has been undeliverable (because of the snow) and to fix a flat tire on our main car. Our small town has one tire shop. I rolled in feeling relaxed and open. I felt the annoyance of Tony (the tire shop owner) as he told me it was going to be two hours until he could get to my flat. I said I’d call Sean to come get me (yes, we are all on first name basis) and settled down in a black plastic chair in the dusty and cold waiting room that smelled of oil, gasoline, and automotive lubricant. I took out my phone and started answering emails. The door to the tire shop swung open with a whoosh of icy air as an old cowboy walked in. I live in rural Western Montana and this is one of the only places in the world where there are real life cowboys still. He had on a brown cowboy hat, a carhart insulated vest, jean jacket, wrangler jeans, and cowboy boots. His hands were in deer skin gloves. He looked at me and smiled, his weathered skin folding and crinkling in all the right places. His skin that reddish brown of someone who spends a lot of time outside in winter. His eyes had the twinkling of a soul that is alive and well.He was probably around 70 and I’m sure in his day he had broken some hearts. I could feel the way my normal reaction would be to smile quickly back and then to look right back at my phone and pretend to be oh so busy and slightly miffed at having to be there at all. But the truth was, today, I wasn’t busy. I wasn’t really miffed.I was actually enjoying myself. The rare alone time. The spaciousness of no where to go, no where to be. I was just taking care of things that needed to be taken care of. Simple and satisfying, but there was no urgency here. So I put my phone face down on the seat next to me and smiled and made eye contact with him a little longer than I was completely comfortable with. And, with that little invitation he struck up a conversation. What we talked about was nothing earth shattering. It wasn’t deep or philosophical. There wasn’t anything profound shared or imparted. And yet, the amount of nutrition I received from this exchange was massive. This man was such a representation of the place I live. The heartiness. The salt of the Earth. The no gimmicks, no tricks, no flashiness. The expansive openness of the grasses and sky, held by the steadiness of the mountains. My soul feels held here. I belong here; fully. My first mentor, Coly Vulpiani, used to talk about the feelings you have when you watch a beautiful sunset. You might get a sense of awe, beauty, connection, peace, etc, but it isn’t the sunset that actually gives you those feelings.The sunset is the sufficient condition for these feelings to arise within you, but they are always there. That’s how this interaction with the cowboy felt. It felt like he was the sufficient condition for me to feel this connection to my place in the world.He was the sufficient condition to allow in the nutrition of my place, the land, my community, and the nutrients of the day in, fully. But.. these nutrients are always available for me and are ultimately within me. It’s just; will I allow them to arise? I am feeling all of this as we lead up to the community call I’m holding for all of you reading/listening to this, this Sunday, November 20th at 1pm PST. This is a wide open invitation to come to my current students, my loved ones, my readers, my followers, anyone who would like to come and join me for an hour to connect, hear about my journey the last couple years, and ask me questions. This is my request to you, my community, to come and feel me in a new way. To be completely honest, I feel a little exposed and vulnerable, but also very excited for this call as I hope it will be the sufficient condition to connect you and I to some much needed nutritive connection. Sign up for the Community Call here.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe