Green Magic

Plants I am growing this year:

• Peas
• Tomato
• Basil
• Cilantro/coriander
• Parsley (monster parsley, actually)
• Oregano
• Dill

I just used some of the cilantro for mango salsa last night. Yummers. Do you ever feel like there is this "Force of Real," and you'll occasionally do something - almost on accident - only to find it resonating tremendously, like when you're singing in the shower and you hit that one note that fills the whole room with a ringing, echoing tone? There's some inherent property of the room and then you stumble upon it and it SINGS.

I think the universe has spiritual properties like that, when you stumble upon them, it SINGS. Growing something that you will eat yourself (or even better yet, share with others) seems to be one of those, or perhaps it is the symbolic meaning behind it: some of the time it parallels life in strange and striking ways, painful almost. I just feel connected to the universe with my knees in the dirt and my hands arranging and placing these materials which will soon transform into something else entirely, something better. Not even of my doing, really. But I like to watch. And make small adjustments when needed. I'd possibly feel differently if I were doing it as a full-time thing, but I'm not, so I can sip it like maple syrup.

There was this song we sang in grade school choir that I've remembered all these years. I just love these touchy-feely lyrics:

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
Till the rain comes tumbling down

and this part:

Man is made from dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own

and this part:

Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
To my body and my brain
To the music from the land

and this:

Plant your rows straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care

Some people don't believe in magic, but gardening is magic of the best kind. Ooops I was going to wash my hair this morning but I wrote a blog post instead... hahaha story of my life.

Spazzity Spaz Spaz

Just after lunch, my coworker called and I picked up because the person who normally answers the phone had stepped out. "Katie? I need your help. We're in the car and we've got three people following us."

Holy crap! I thought as intense chase scenes flashed through my mind. They are in danger! How will I know what to do? Then that rational voice came in, Pull yourself together, woman.

"Okay," I replied calmly. "What do you need?"

"We're in Burlington and we need directions to this restaurant. Are you at your computer?"

hahaha... can we say overactive imagination?

Best Day of My Life

The elevator was out of commission today.

Some workers had come to repair it, but I needed to get out of the building for a semi-urgent errand. The one man offered me to ride down ON TOP OF the service elevator. I was a little hesitant at first, because it was dark and unfamiliar in there, but he had a work light and he said it was safe, that he did it every day. I thought to myself "when will such an opportunity ever present itself to me again?"

So I climbed on, stepping carefully between cables, pulleys, tools, and other elevator appendages. I glanced up, into the vertical chamber which tapered off to the eleventh floor as we slowly descended, shadows stretching and bending in the falling light as we glided down through this quiet catacomb.

Two humans on the back of the quietly rumbling beast.

When we reached the bottom he pried the doors open and the transition was instantaneous: sunlight, street and people outside, taxicabs, fortune tellers and nail salons. I just stepped out of there as though it were the most natural thing to pass between worlds like that. What a strange, strange life it must be for an elevator repairman...

Life

is like walking around in a pale swirling mist.

Inside your stomach is a partially-completed puzzle. All different pieces float by lightly on the breeze, gently bumping into you. Though you cannot see them, you can feel them where they make contact with your body, and you try to grab at them as they go by. Suddenly one is in your hand and it is somehow strangely familiar. You hold it up and can make out a vague outline in the haze. You trace the shape with your fingertips. It feels like it would fit one of the gaps. You move your hand towards your stomach, blindly groping to see if it fits as the whiteness drifts around your eyes. You rotate it and move it around, feeling your way with your other hand. And then it clicks into place. A part of you that you knew at the dawn of time has been returned to where it belongs, and your entire body, mind, and soul rejoices!

And you continue along. Looking for those other missing pieces. Sometimes you hunt for one specifically. Other times you just grab at whatever seems useful and just try it out.

Some days you stumble upon one that fits perfectly and you swear you already found that piece last year. You actually remember placing it in there, right next to your small intestine. That is another secret to life: learning to keep track of your pieces, developing strong abdominal muscles to hold them in place.

One day you find a piece that you know won't fit into any of your spaces and you go to discard it back into the wind when you see a friend of yours through the fog. You walk over without knowing why and offer the piece to them not realizing that this is the exact one they had been looking for for months, years even. And they say "how can I ever repay you?" You try to explain that it's just something you had on hand and weren't using.

Yes that is life. And so we go filling in the blank spaces in our stomach puzzles with pieces that float by on the breeze.

I am glad for all of this rain

...because as long as it keeps up my pea plants are probably NOT going to die. And because it renews EVERYTHING and makes the trees dark dark brown damp and carries life back into the world.

Here's the song I like to listen to over and over. You probably also love it, and if you don't, you should. Not sure how, but it manages to be both sad and happy at the same time. It is a song of tiny hopes springing forth amidst the ashes. I particularly love that part almost at the end where it gets slow and you think it is over because all of the birds are saying tweet tweet and then the guitar comes back with this tiny powerful flutter of breath. I don't even know the musical term for that sound but it moves something deep inside of me every time.

Dante's Rump

Sometimes in the bathroom at work you can hear somebody flushing the toilet from one of the floors above or below us and you can hear it trickling in OUR toilet. It reminds me of that part in Dante's Peak when the two young lovers are in those hot springs and the lava bubbles up slowly at first but then it engulfs them and they sort of burn up and evaporate to their deaths. Such vulnerable little humans, and really there's no stopping the universe like that. So then I freak out a little bit about lava coming up out of the toilet and searing my bum. Then I have to ask myself, honestly, why worry about such things? If something like that is going to happen, it's going to happen.

And also, probably it won't... right?