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TO THE NORTH
If I, like others in their burrowings,
Could find some acre of the past to praise,
There might be substitutes for noise and blurs:
The comforts of asylum, strict, assured,
That nourish when the light dies in the glass.
But the mind must crouch, suspicious, veer away,
And focus into idiot light the days
Of other whippings, exiles, sicknesses
Where the horror of history from cave
To camp to the coffins of yesterday
Burns to a single ash.
Where is the grave
Of Time? What would you picture for decay?
A horse's hoof, white bones, a lifeless tree,
Cold hemispheres, dried moss, and a blue wave
Breaking at noon on shores you will not see.
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So melancholic. It doesn't fit my mood right now. But one of the most fascinating aspects of human memory, for me, is how we remember best the moments that align with the state in which we currently find ourselves. When I was in it deep with PTSD, or whatever you want to call it, all I could remember were terrible things. I knew, rationally, that my life had not really been a plodding circus train consisting of car after connected car, all peeling paint and full of shit and straw and artifice and broken animals. But it was hard to see much more than that. Sometimes impossible.
I am remembering so many sweet, happy things nowadays. :-)
Oh, and if (like me) you were thinking "That guy totally bit it, didn't he?" ...yes, he apparently did. Disappeared near the Golden Gate at 41.
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Because I am moving, my garden will be someone else's soon. I don't really care much about anything there that hasn't already been harvested. I don't even care if the new residents care for the plants and eat them, or just let it all rot on the vines; I am done with it all and ready to be out of here. This house is haunted to me and to him, because our lives over the past three years have been so unhappy here. Not desperately unhappy, most of the time. Just leaning subtly toward stagnation and ruin.
A couple months ago I thought I'd have to learn to grow in place here, even though it felt stifling and I wanted to run. I didn't like the idea of growing in place... for some reason it's so much easier to change yourself when your surroundings change, too. And it's just a stupid impulse, too, a wordless protective strategy on some level. Like fleeing. Not always the guaranteed best choice in the end, but still something you might sometimes do in the face of challenge because you've got to do something. I am, after all, still the girl who ran from death all the way to another country, where I got smacked in the face with an even bigger serving of it. But I was ready to subdue my instincts and make this place work for me. Or change me to fit this place. Then--happily--circumstances beyond my control swung unexpectedly in a favorable direction and there was a way out after all.
Here We Go Magic - Alone But Moving
I planted miner's lettuce (also called purslane) this spring because it charmed me to think of my douchebag great-great-whatever-grandfather, who left his wife and nine kids to go to the Gold Rush and there died after many years idling about and cavorting with whores and perhaps munching on wild purslane to prevent scurvy, as so many miners did.
(His last letter home, paraphrased: "Lucinda, I do not remember the name of our youngest boy. So, if you please, rename him Edward after me. And send me some money. XOXO")
Anyhow, that was my favorite plant this year. It tastes lemony.
I also planted ground cherries (not the hallucinogenic kind!). They're such a mystical looking little fruit. I guess that's why there are so many legends about them. Mine were a yellow and green edible variety native to the US, not the ornamental variety above... but I think the orange ones (also called Chinese lanterns) are better looking. Some legends say they are a fertility symbol, others that they are lamps to guide the deceased. Myself, I planted them in part because I had a strange dream about a strange girl hatching out of one. I don't believe in the spiritual aspects of it, but it's still a pretty symbol to me.
That was the plant that meant the most to me to be able to harvest. I didn't think we'd get to have those, as they didn't look ready to turn even a couple days ago... but just in time the plant dropped off four little husk-wrapped bundles today, one for each of us. Not bad!
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