Give me this day my daily veg...

I use the word Abundance a lot

I suppose that's a good thing. It describes things like our yearly fig harvest, which, although it arrived two months later than last year, was definitely no less abundant...

 

And there was certainly an abundance of family around, on the weekend we decided to make a day of it and finally get to canning and jamming. That's a good thing too, I suppose.

 
 

The thing with abundance is the overflow. The 'I have so much my cup is runneth-ing over and now it's puddling somewhere and drip drip dripping onto the nice carpet'. And heaven forbid you appear ungrateful for having so much. But that's the catch with abundance. The whole point of something being abundant is that it is more than you need. I always want more than I need. I think I can have it all and maybe even a bit more, with no consequences. But Birnam Wood marches forth on my Dunsinane, and I find myself wishing back that I only had just enough to be content, instead of the responsibility of abundance.

The Bible says (here comes the horrific paraphrasing) that to those who have a lot, so much more will be asked of them. I always thought that just referred to taxes, or specifically church tithes. Thankfully I was poor enough the last time I went to church, that I could just pass the little red velvet bag along like a dieter refusing the birthday cake. "Not today thanks, so poor! I'm watching my bank balance. You go ahead though. Enjoy!"

Then the figs came. And abundance. And I realized how much I had. And how much was going to be asked of me. And I would never be able to keep up. No matter how many times I went out to fill the bowl,  there were still more waiting to be harvested, and if I didn't get to them all they would drop to the ground and spoil. The bowls lined up on the countertop, and even after I thought I had emptied every single bowl, I opened the fridge to find one hiding in the crisper drawer. An entire shelf in our kitchen is now stocked with jars of fig jam. It is overwhelming and a ripe, purple metaphor of my whole life. I was given much. I asked for a bit more. Abundantly my cup spilled over, and yet all I could do was complain that my teacup was too dinky. I became obsessed with the spillage and the mess, and then I wallowed in guilt over the wastage. Somewhere along the way, my blessing became my curse and then my burden. So much...so much...I couldn't possibly make use of it all. Make good of it all.

 

But look, it's just figs. Trying to eat every last one of them would be like trying to count raindrops. Do I ruin the experience of eating one perfectly sun ripened fig, because I am too busy thinking of the fifty that fell to the ground? I could...but then I just lost fifty-one.

I have an abundant life. And my cup runneth over. I just need to get better at sipping from the saucer. I'm sure there's an uplifting saying too about how when life gives you figs, make jam or something. But I'll just work on the saucer part now, 'cause I already made the jam. Hee hee.

 

The Fat Lady Has Yet To Sing

I've started seeing a therapist. There, I said it.

It's part of my 'Keep it simple, Stupid' program that I signed myself up for. I've been wandering around pondering all of life's mysteries and generally getting myself in a complete mess, all the while believing that if I just thought about it long enough and hard enough, I'd figure it all out. Wake up call number one: You can't see the forest if you are actually one of the trees. I'm not giving up, I'm just giving myself a break. I feel a bit like one of those hoarders on that crazy reality tv show, only I'm letting the intervention expert into my brain instead of my house..."This is just shocking!" goes the narrative, "How can someone live like this? Just look at all that crap!". Yep. It's rubber glove time.

I've been having ominous dreams too. Of endless staircases and elevators that go nowhere. Doors with brick walls or a sheer drop behind them. Last night I actually dreamt that I jumped off the top of a building. Although, I think that's a good one. I was wearing a fabulous red coat anyway, and I am a firm believer that anything you do in a red coat cannot be bad. Maybe I just jumped because the therapist did keep asking me yesterday if I was suicidal. I'd say no, but then she'd somehow manage to slip the question back in again to try and trick me. So maybe I just jumped to be sure.

All of this to say, I went out to the garden this morning clutching a handful of end-of-summer sighs. There are some plants out there that make me sad. The Yard Long Beans for one, are so withered and dilapidated as to be almost invisible. Just a dry, empty bed gathering fallen leaves. I would have pulled them out last week if only I knew what I was going to put in their place. So, it was a shocker of phenomenal proportions when I walked past them and saw THIS!

 

It's hard to photograph the magnitude of this two foot long green bean, just happily dangling off of a dead plant. Go figure. There's life in her yet. The Eggplants have joined the rally and are refusing to go quietly too...

 

And those darned Pumpkins I planted out of season are acting quite brazen, sprawling around like it's the middle of June or something.

 

Ok Garden. We are onto something, you and I.

It's not over. Not even close. 

A Simple Birthday

About me: Vegetables make me really, really happy.

I tucked Fall into beds of soft dirt. Sweet Dreams Cabbage! Broccoli! Cauliflower!

 

And then I ate up the end of Summer; tomatoes dressed to the nines in decadent olive oil and white balsalmic.

 

The End. Go away now please, Birthday, and don't bother me again until next year. 

Of Two Minds

I woke up this morning thinking of how big the pumpkin plants are getting, the ones I put in the ground in July, in defiance of the rules. I wanted to go outside and water my second round of peas and count all the baby winter squash that are making up for the lack of summer ones. I wanted to dig into the fresh beds I have turned and filled up with compost, and plant row upon row of cabbages and carrots.

But. I am not in my own bed, with the garden just outside my window. I am in another state, in a sterile hotel room wondering if it's even worth brewing the coffee when it tastes so bad. I feel the pull of that other me, that other life and suddenly the concept of simplicity seems so impossible. How do I distill what is already fundamentally complicated into something simple? How do all the pieces of my life fit together in cohesion, without their sharp edges knocking together and creating an unsettling friction? How do I find the peace in who I am, when I am a big bundle of contradictions?

 

This was one of the sunflowers from the garden this year. I'd never seen anything like it; two completely formed heads, pointing in opposite directions. It doesn't make sense for a sunflower, because part of their make-up is that they always turn their heads towards the sun and follow it across the sky all day. For this flower, clearly only one head could face the sun at a time, leaving the other in shadow. I never figured out how it survived and grew so tall. Perhaps it rotated who got the sun from day to day. Or maybe the one side getting all the energy supported the other. Maybe they compromised and changed the rules, so that neither followed the sun, but both got a fair share of the light. Who knows.

Which direction to orient myself is my challenge this year, as I turn the page on another birthday. Perhaps for me, simplicity will be less about paring down and living without, as it will be about accepting my uncoordinated pieces and letting go of the need to constantly deny them. Maybe being dipped into oblivion means not that I cease to matter or exist, but that the ideals and expectations of who I think I could and should be cease to matter. I am who I am, right now. And that is everything and it is nothing. The paradox of a two headed sunflower.

The Bare Minimum

Or should it be, Can I Bear the Minimum?

The garden is making me sad right now. It is still producing vegetables, but each plant seems to only have enough energy and motivation to squeeze out one lone piece of produce at a time. I know I should be grateful that half of them are even still alive after being ignored for over three weeks now. That I have the space to grow and the freedom to choose how I want to do it. I sit in the garden and rub my forehead and sigh those long, deep complicated sighs. I 'should' be 'grateful' for so many things.

In my emotionally befuddled state this week, one thing has been repeatedly placed under my nose. I ignored it the first time. The second time it popped up I thought it was odd but still, just coincidence. At the third appearance, from a completely different and random source, I sat up and took notice. Things that happen in threes are not coincidence. The trouble is, I don't like this idea. And I don't like the suggestion from who, God? The Universe? My Gut? that I'm supposed to start doing it. 

- Simplicity -

YUK.

Even more specifically, the messages being personally handed to me were about paring down, giving away, living without. The concept that the less I had, the more I would be. The garden sits out there with the bare minimum hanging from its branches and I feel sick. I can't do this. I'm scared to pare down, to strip away. Afraid that once I take off all the outer layers that make me feel safe and give me purpose, I will find I am not some enlightened, glowing orb of the human spirit at all, but a boring sad girl. Broken, lonely and empty.

The last thing I read that spoke directly to this concept had a quote from D.H. Lawrence, (really? yes.)

"Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing? Dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change."

WHY WHY WHY! would anyone want to be dipped into oblivion? Doesn't that go against our entire existence, the point of our struggle to survive and to better ourselves? I know the Bible goes on and on about giving away everything you own, and laying down your life and losing yourself to find yourself...but, come on, who really has the balls to do that? Maybe I'm just not fully understanding the process. Perhaps, all of this has been put before me not to drive me forward into immediate change, but to show me where my weaknesses lie.

The conversations that go on between my brain and my heart these days mostly begin with "I need..." It has been a long time since I feel like I've said things that began with "I have..." or "I am..." And the problem with my language and my world view, is that the more I need the less I always seem to have. The less I seem to have, the more unhappy with myself I am.

I get it, theoretically anyway. But I still don't want to do it. I don't even know where or how I am supposed to begin. Do I clean out my physical closets or my metaphysical ones? Do I stop painting my nails? Can I still spend all that time on Facebook? What do I replace the space with?

I wish Bob the Gnome would just sit me down with a cup of tea and explain the whole damn thing to me.

Suggestions and hairshirts greatly appreciated.

Bliss and The Orinoco Flow

David had knee surgery today. It was my job to be the grown up. I got up early and made sure he didn't have any fluids, and for some reason I forgot that it was ok for me to have a glass of water, a cup of coffee or a piece of toast. I drove him to the surgical center and sat in the waiting room, starving like an idiot. I held his hand and didn't laugh when he put on his blue hairnet. He tried not to laugh at me when I almost passed out listening to the nurse explaining how the IV gets inserted into a vein.

When they wheeled him away, I went to the store. I bought ramen noodles and chocolate and I'm sure I had "If I'm not stoned right now, I will be later" tattooed across my forehead. I went back to the waiting room and listened to some old lady talking incessantly about her gout. The doctor came to shake my hand and told me It's a boy! With a new knee! I read my book for another 57 minutes while David woke up. When I finally got to go in and see him, he asked for more drugs and promptly fell asleep again. I watched the drippity drip of his happy bag and pouted.

At home, I fluffed pillows and fetched ice packs. I fed the dogs and the patient. While he dozed in a smiley-glazey haze, I made soup. I helped him to bed and he took more pills. I cleaned the kitchen and did some paperwork. I made a big round glistening chocolate cake.

He got up for that and said it was really good. Although, of course, he was a bit stoned. I wanted to be stoned. I did the dishes and put away all the day's junk. I gave him a bath. I fed the dogs and bit my tongue when one of them had an accident on the couch. On the nice couch. I gave the couch a bath. Finally, when everyone was ready for bed, when she was no longer required to be the grown up in charge, mama said Fuck It and had one of her husband's pills. Now, I'm not proud of my weakness for things that rattle in little orange bottles, and I do not recommend you try it at home (if you can smoke pot or get high on life instead). The truth is, pain management is pain management. I don't care if it's in your knee or your heart. I believe in being well-rounded and balanced and practicing moderation and self awareness, in talking to my inner six year old and getting plenty of physical exercise. I also believe in the power of a good narcotic every now and again.

It has worn off now, but I won't lie, it was sheer bliss. I won't have another. Finding the chocolate cake in the fridge at midnight was plenty more joy. The only downside, and let this be a warning to all of you, is that for some infuriating reason I cannot get Enya's 'Orinoco Flow' out of my head. Shudder.

Sail Away...Sail Away...

Wheelbarrow full of Crap

This is what one looks like. I filled it up today, wearing sweatpants rolled up past my knees and dirt back underneath my fingernails. I had spent the last few weeks pacing (we already covered 'pacing' right?) around the vegetable garden, muttering goodbyes under my breath. The beans were done, the tomatoes looked sickly, the squash were on life support and the morning glory was threatening to take over the world. But. It was too much work. Too much time required to devote to destruction. Too much to remove and dig up, too many empty spaces waiting to be exposed. I decided I would rather look at a mess, than risk fixing it.

Today, circumstances conspired against me and made digging in the garden the only thing I possibly wanted to do. Empty spaces be damned. I'd already spent the last two days driving home from work in tears, missing my Grandfather so badly I had wanted to reach into my chest, pull my heart out and fling it across the divide into oncoming traffic. What power did a barren bed of compost hold over me now?

As I tugged and pulled, the vines untangled and the ground turned over. My fierce aching heart slowed down its frantic cry and my breathing caught the soft rhythm of the breeze. This garden is a learning tool for me, and I am an endless student. I keep waiting for that moment of enlightenment, when life will say to me 'You have arrived. And can sit in this meadow of wildflowers eating chocolate cake forever' - but it seems no matter how successful a season I may pass through, the wheelbarrow of crap is a natural part of the cycle. The good thing is, once you learn to separate out the crap, you can haul it away in that wheelbarrow and get back to tilling your land. Move yourself onto the next big, scary, exhilarating adventure and it's own wheelbarrow of crap.

:o)

Morning's Glory

Going Home and Coming Home are not the same thing.

I went home and it was a place full of love and pain. Where every turn took all my effort, draining me down, emptying me out. I carried the familiar in a heavy sack laid flat across my shoulders and stepped out along the new, the unknown, like a balance beam that wobbled out of sight as I tried to hold myself steady. I held warmth and life for the last time, and then my days fanned out in death. I went home to be who I was, but who I am could not survive there in the darkness.

So I came home.

To three dogs and two cats. To a hot bath and a soft bed. To a coffee pot and a kitchen table piled high with bills. To the sunrise on a garden. To a morning glory vine gone mad in my absence.

I overgrew myself while I was away. Tangled myself in too many vines, until I choked out the sun and dried up the ground. Lost myself and gave in, until I was covered over and unrecognizable.

Now, I wander the halls of my house and trace my fingers along the edges of who it is that lives here. Searching for her, and finding her everywhere. The person who draws pictures on the chalkboard in her kitchen, the one who lights candles when she drinks wine. The girl who dresses up at parties and sticks the photographs on her fridge. The person who brings flowers in from the garden and raises spinach seeds on her dining room table. The girl who works hard, and laughs and is not afraid to love. She is here where I left her, welcoming me home. Telling me everything will be ok.