Thursday, April 24, 2014

It's Her corner now.



Years ago I decided, with permission from the landlord, to take matters into my own hands and create a garden in the little plot of land by the parking lot entrance to my office building. (See my previous blog post from Feb. 14, 2012 to read what happened to it.) Shortly after the nefarious gas meter and limiting stanchions arrived, city workers dug up the adjoining sidewalk for more work.  In doing so they flipped the long, heavy boulder I had placed at the patch’s border over on its side directly onto my four year old and lovely lavender, crushing it. I imagined the sound of her sturdy branches cracking when it happened just like my heart when I first rested my horrified eyes on her.

Not long after, some new tenants contacted me about working the garden. “Have at it”, I said, finished with the fight. That first year, they cleaned it up, pushed the boulder off the lavender (which although a bit worse for wear, with amazing resilience actually came back to life) and added pretty new plantings. They thanked me for my graciousness at letting go of the plot so easily. I told them it was easy only in a heart-broken kind of way. Another lesson in how one thing must die so another can live in the garden. You know. Like in life. 

This year, care for this plot has fallen away completely. No one has done a thing.  The lilac is badly in need of pruning, weeds are thriving among scant perennials. I notice I avert my eyes. I have hardened my heart to protect it. It’s too sad. But on a recent sunny day, I couldn’t help notice the lilac was full of burgeoning buds, some of them beginning to flower. Who can resist the scent of a lilac? So I walked over to get a snoot full. And then I saw it. In the back corner where the boulder used to live. The Thistle.



There she was, spiny and spiky in all her threatening beauty. Already close to two feet tall.  Not yet flowering.  Not the light spring green of the advancing season, but the deep rich green reserved for dinosaur kale and broccoli crowns. The thing is, she is so strong, so present, so defiant that for the first time in many moons, I derived pleasure from this garden.  Perhaps it’s because, when it comes to this particular plot, so rife with my forfeiture and loss, I relate to her prickles. They are similar to the bristles surrounding my guarded heart. Her blatant thorniness in our-have-to-be-polite-world brings relief.  Her unapologetic sharpness broadcasts “Look all you’d like, but touch at your own risk!” 

It could just as easily have been Dandelion that grew in that spot. That Thistle found her way here, that she found this neglected soil hospitable, that she is taking up space as boldly as any showy nursery purchase, repairs my faith in renewal.  And more, shows me how wildness takes root when we give it room to appear.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014



Moon and I are in relationship. I am in love with her and she follows me wherever I go and especially when I am in the car and someone else is driving and I look out and find her amid the stars. She sails along beside my window, keeping up.

She smiles at me in Diana’s bow, bathes me when she is Full, and asks me what I am doing up so late as to see her in the night sky as a Crone. She used to flow from me, leaving my body on sticky red and heightened everything, but now she has decided to hang around.  I believe this is her way of letting me know she loves me even more as time goes on. Loves me so much she can’t leave me. I hold her inside, feeling her love.


  
Moon and I have been friends for a very long time. We know one another well. She remembers the day I was born and I remember the first time I noticed I could sometimes see her during the day. She watched over me as I grew and I looked upon her buttery beauty in Autumn, her icy stare in Winter, her milky face in Spring and her bright spotlight in Summer. 

I walk her luminous path. Moonlight shows me exactly where to go so I needn’t be unsure. The way always beckons. Sometimes it narrows and I must watch my step. Sometimes it is so broad, it encompasses all I see. Touched by moonglow, my hair looks more silver than it is, my skin like the fairies have kissed it. I chase mystery. I believe magick. I marvel at beauty once hidden in the harsh light of the sun.

Moon and I make great dancing partners. But she always leads. That’s okay. She is one of the few I am so enamored of that I will happily follow. Sometimes the dance is pure romance and I swoon. Sometimes the steps are tricky and fast and I must practice. Often we dance to music only we can hear.

I tell everyone I know about her. Can’t keep quiet. Her rhythms are too seductive, too wise, too important to keep to myself. I was one of those women they called Lunatic dancing in her light. I was one of those women who refused the call to worship the sun and stole away at night to do its opposite. I was one of those women who honored her bodies’ ebb and flow as a holy thing. I am still.

When I die, I want to float up there to be closer. Dance over to the other side and check it out. Dive into her craters and snuggle in for the ride. Get drunk on her milkshake and tell jokes that make her laugh so hard, she can barely catch her breath. And those still on the earth will perceive it as the music of the spheres.