Just Enough

Abby Minor

Aaronsburg, Pennsylvania

January 2016

Just Enough

I drove up to the Rensing Center last Saturday night, Orion shining clear in the eastern sky.  It was cool but not cold, and I thought I could hear someone nearby ringing bells.

Now that I’ve been here a week, I know that the bells aren’t some hill magic.  Still, the white goats who graze in the meadow across from the Guest House make a kind of irregular church-music as they go, and there is some magic, for me, in hearing bells that don’t mark hours.

In trying to name the qualities of this place, I keep thinking: solitude without loneliness, intensity without haste.  There’s also a waterfall without a name, and a cat—Bob—without a tail.  Down the hill there’s So Hee working on her installation.  Up the hill there’s Monika working on her play, and beyond where she works there are the Appalachian foothills, the blue wall—at evening truly dark blue, backlit orange.

Yesterday I overheard Ellen say about an art project she’d made from shredded letters, strips with only bits and half-phrases still legible, “The tiniest amount of something is all you need.”

Looking around here—solitude without loneliness, waterfall without a name—I think, “There’s just enough.”   

 

-Abby Minor