Sometimes I write like grace is right there. Grace, magic, and our souls. It’s there, there, and there. As if we can access it, if we just reach out, and look to the stars scattered among the tops of the trees.
Silly me. Grace isn’t that easy, is it? It’s elusive. It’s the imploring anguish. ‘Please’, and ‘please’, and the most exhausted, begging, pleading words in the world, ‘please’. That’s where the grace lies. It’s a sad, painful place that spills out from the very bottom of our souls. It’s a moment when we walk along the beach, surrounded only by honest desperation. The ebb and flow of infinity, and all we have to offer is truth and a desperate plea. When you don’t know if you need more wine, xanex, or whatever can carry you to the next step.
Weary. Wasn’t sleeping last night, My soul wandering, It wandered about time, And it scared me a trifle. [It scared me exceedingly.] Couldn’t figure how to place things. What’s real? What belongs with my dreams. Pink chiffon and music, Footsteps … And angel wings.
Just ahead. Around the bend. September leftovers give up the spirit one night, as quick as one crisp, frosty overnight, and in a breath, a collective surrender to the inevitable passage of time. Jackets, blankets, and cozy nights. Green gives way to seasoned leaves and the October transition bends to its given destination.
Spring planting was something I did for my parents in their latter years, something I enjoyed immensely. They had great soil, great dark soil, and it was a pleasure to garden with such good dirt. As reality goes, weeds grew happily in that soil too, but after weeding, the rest was easy. You could handily hollow out the required small crater and drop a tiny plant into the soft dark soil, press the dirt granules to surround the plant, and that was the extent of the process.
I knew what my mom liked, and I knew what I liked, and there’s this thing about planting. You have to buy plants with something like a vague game plan, but other than that, you dig a hole and insert the plant, and that’s 95% of flower gardening. Dig a hole, insert a plant, cover it over with some dirt, and give it a watering. It’s called the process. The process is initiated. The precious process.
My parents could handle watering once in a while, and I could fertilize when I visited, and that’s all it takes in good dirt. It was a process I loved. I came in May and started the process. When I came back in July, things were well on their way. A little fertilizer, a little water. And my mom had pretty flowers growing at the corner of her yard. She was pleased. It’s called the process.
My dad wasn’t as accepting or agreeable. He still had a few tomato plants growing along the side of their house that came from nothing more than re-seeding. Again…the process. He’d nurtured those plants for years and years, and the plants did their part.
I think of plants in a personal way, and I imagine the plants and seeds respond with something like gratitude. An acknowledgement and appreciation of everyone’s role, and a recognition of the relationship that exists with plants and the earth and humans. My dad didn’t really accept that someone other than him would plant his tomatoes for him. From his chair in the living room, he said something like, if I can’t do this, and if I can’t do that, what’s the point? Nevertheless, we planted the tomatoes, and without much in the way of staking or other attention, they produced more tomatoes than the ones I tend to on a regular basis. Good dirt. And the process. It just works.
It was the image out the windshield that framed my state of mind. A car-lined street. And trees up and down both sides. The first time in many months I looked out and saw trees that looked like winter. They all looked like winter. A clear November sky, and it was the trees that made the statement.
Time marches forward. We’re practically at the beginning of December, yet I still feel I’m wandering, lost in time somehow. How long has it been with this feeling? Months for sure. Like I need to wake up one morning soon and feel grounded. Is this an end-of-summer thing? It’s been going on since then. I don’t think it’s that, but it’s a longing for the cold. I find myself looking forward, in hope, to colder days. I long to be reassured, comforted, free of fear and worries. Don’t we all? And I expect winter to deliver that comfort and freedom? Maybe I should read my book, and hope for the best.
I want to get caught in the spirit of some idea or words and write something that feels like the ocean, like lightning in the distance, like something glorious. Like the lights that shimmer off ordinary plants after a rain.
Just past the familiar, and the strange parameters of where you are. It’s a memory you can’t quite remember, a feeling you can’t figure out, and frightening abstract waters rush the subconscious.
The pasty smell of drywall and paint…tell-tale leftovers from the morning’s work.
Sheer curtains scarcely move at the open window, not enough to call it a flutter. And the afternoon sun floats columns of dark and light about the architecture of the panes and the surface of a half-drawn shade. Plaids, squares, rectangles.
The air works a gentle song from the chimes outside. A soft musical chant. I hear children down the street, and a distant car engine. Repetitious drumming, the tap, tap, tap, of a small animal.
There’s covid and war and the contradiction of what should feel normal in spring. Reactions feel confused and hollow. Optimistic/pessimistic/oppressive. Unworthy of a sunny beginning-of-spring afternoon.
etikser 