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The Lotus
On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying,
and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my
dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.
That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to
me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this
perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Today’s offering in celebration of Earth Day: Precious moments aboard this beautiful planet with a reading of my favorite poem by e.e. Cummings, #26
“Like the crocus that pushes into spring willy-nilly, the artist also pushes forward into growth. The crocus lies beneath the snow waiting for the slightest touch of warmth to spring forth. Like the crocus, the artist does not pause to ask if his work is timely or welcome. Critical reception will perhaps be chilly like an unseasonal snow, but like the crocus, the artist survives.”
–Julia Cameron, Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance
May you be safe and healthy and continue pushing forward into growth.
A bluebird couple caught my attention yesterday with their noisy fighting and flapping above the birdhouse. The male flew off to perch on the trellis several feet away. He lodged his complaints to the raspberry vine in a grumpy sequence of whistling, squeaky chirps. The budding vine listened patiently. Bluebird arguments are adorable.
Um…hello lettuce, you little renegade. That is not where I put you to bed. That sneaky wind put you up to this, I bet. You are thriving in the rocks and sand, of all things! I didn’t even know that was possible. And yet here we are.
I’m pretty sure that yellow-flowered plant is spinach. At least it tasted sweetish and spinach-like even after it bolted and bloomed. It looked like it could be broccoli when it started bolting. On my garden map I wrote “beans” in that location. It’s definitely not beans.
The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grab at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life.
–Robert Louis Stevenson
What are ya’ll making out there?
The earth flower and sky flower unite.
Once upon a long time ago (a couple hundred million years ago according to evolutionary biologists), there were no flowers. And darkness was upon the face of the deep (according to other authors of ancient history).
Then suddenly flowers came into being.
Thank goodness.
“Flowers changed everything.”
–Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
Indeed.
Fast forwarding to the present: I found these beauties suffocating in a cheap cellophane cocoon and stuffed in the discount bin at the grocery store. They cleaned up quite nicely.
You reach out with any little part of yourself and rise from the dirt to be what you are. How you make my heart ache with your sense of belonging.
Vanity of vanities! We all have the same breath.
(Solomon was right.)
roses & arugula intermingle
cucumbers bloom
blackberries ripen
The last two weeks of December are deliciously mine, mine, mine. (Well, mostly). To celebrate I decided I wanted to do something crazy and luxurious. I wanted to watch TV. Not Youtube or something on the Internet, but actual TV.
Sounds easy enough…
Here’s the thing: we don’t have cable and our antiquated television is one of those big, bulky contraptions that requires a converter box to receive a signal. It’s not at all user-friendly even though El-D acts like it’s incredibly easy to operate. Despite the many “How to Turn on the TV” tutorials he’s provided over the years, I remain mystified. All I can tell you is that poking the “ON” button on anything on or around the device never works. From my lessons, I have learned that there are least three steps required to get the thing going, yet there are four different remotes with an outrageous array of buttons, none of which do what they claim. Believe me, I have pushed them all to no effect.
Why does one need this many buttons and switches to operate the TV set? I am not trying to fly an airplane here; I just want to watch…well, anything at this point – a rerun of Gilligan’s Island maybe? Or even a good old fashioned hemorrhoid cream commercial. I have a Ph.D., surely I can figure this out? Instead, like a chicken playing the video game Portal, I go flapping around, pecking at things and squawking…and the Portal never opens.
So I sit on the couch staring at the blank screen, longing for the good old days when the world was made of tangible, sensible things…back in the days when there was just one “on” button and it meant business – you had to physically get up and turn a knob to watch Johnny Carson…back when you were part of the reception process and that process involved things like antenna, aluminum foil, and perhaps an old pie tin.
Finally, El-D appears and by the wonders of his modern wizardry, the Miss Universe Pageant lights up the screen. Who even knew this sort of thing (i.e., televised beauty pageants) still happened in the world? I am instantly transported back to those “good old days” when we – Kiki, Roy, mom and I – sat in the old rockers in the den as we judged beautiful women parading around in swimsuits.
And that is how, against incredible odds, I wound up watching the epic mistake Steve Harvey made in crowning the (wrong) winner.
My Little Spacebook 