Though I play at the edges of knowing, 
I know my part is not knowing, 
but looking, seeking
and touching, 
and loving.
                                --- Mary Oliver

The Beyond

My early years were spent on our large and productive family farm in Southern New Jersey.  Our spacious red brick farmhouse held a wonderful mix of generations: my grandfather, Ernesto Trionfo, my unmarried aunts and uncles, my parents, my brother and me.  Also housed on our property were migrant farm workers my grandfather flew in to work the fields.  After the growing season, he would fly them back to their island to return the following year.  At night, I would hear their guitars and voices lilting all the way up to the stars. **  

The Trionfo Farm was a bustling hive of activities: tractors turning over the soil for the next crop, pickers in the fields, still others carefully inspecting the produce that would go to market.  My mother and my aunts would use the bruised or misshapen produce for canning. There was a wholesome sense of belonging to God's good earth and to the people who cultivated it. 

It was the 1950s. I felt free and untethered to roam and explore the land at will. It was inevitable that I would unearth a place that was beyond everything I knew.

Unexpected Road: The Edge of Knowing 

It was an obscure country lane, aptly named Unexpected Road that drew me away from the everyday farm doings. Weeds on Unexpected Road sprouted undisturbed on this seldom used trail.  My eyes followed its path as it longingly stretched and turned, swallowed up by the dark woods.
 
Everything and everyone in my life had a purpose, but Unexpected Road didn't do much.  It just traveled alone, a portal transporting me from everything I had known to a place that was beyond my knowing.  

Decades upon decades later and miles away, I still peel away from the hub of life, and peer down that road . . .. perhaps a bit farther . . .to the dynamic edge where the known and the unknown meet.
         ----G. Hill

Every door is another passage, another boundary we have to go beyond.
What you are seeking is also seeking you.
In the unexpected.
-----Rumi

Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of the road, and sometimes, unpredictably, in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.
----Anonymous

The spirit reaches but the soul knows.
-----G. Hill

It is strange, but true, that the most important turning-points of life come at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways.
                                         -----Napoleon Hill

The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. . ..
       1 Corinthians 2:10

Everything is Motion. 
Everything is Flowing, 
Beating, Vibrating
Waiting for you,
 In the Unexpected.
         ---Will Hazlitt

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*When my grandfather passed away in the late 1950s, many of our migrant “family” returned to NJ to attend his funeral. It was a testament to our interconnectedness.

*The Trionfo farm is still thriving, growing cilantro and leeks thanks to Farmer Ed, my cousin.

If you are a seeker, see also: The Edges of Time, Colliding, and I am Always Finding You

Edges of Time, Colliding

I Am Always Finding You

GH