Absence

I write to find out what I know, to slow down, to connect, to go within, to tell the story. And there is always a story. A story of a month waiting for rain, and now these days rain that will not stop, rain that waters in what I have planted, so that when I finally break the ceylon gooseberry free from the ground there is a big suction sound, like a plunger knows its way around a toilet and then the spot where the tree was becomes a puddle, becomes mud and clay, becomes absence.

So what might be said about absence? About how we create this? Perhaps absence sometimes becomes a fantasy we believe allows clear sight when considering what to grow and what to cut back. Perhaps absence becomes the path of a hand armed with a machete like the man from Mandeville who spoke yesterday of wild grape vines trailing through Chinese privet and elderberry. Perhaps absence is the canopy that he and his wife said are a wonderland to walk under.

There are two brothers who live on Orcas Island, just off the coast of Washington, I believe. I read somewhere about how they would recommend to put two plants in one hole. I remember how I once tried to do a sort of New Orleans three sisters with okra, squash, and I don't quite remember what kind of bean, maybe even cowpea. 

Today I pulled guava, moringa, and citrus from the school garden. Three of the guava had grown together in a pot given to me by a friend I have not seen for a long time. He must have thrown dozens of seeds in there, for what became three started as ten or fifteen and only the strongest ones survived. And only the strongest will survive, and adapt, and work together.

I dug holes in the rain this morning. Not literally. A better way of saying this is that I dug holes while it rained, but perhaps that would draw too much attention to the writer. God forbid. 

I then dug holes on Needle Street, along Mr. Jackson’s fence, far enough away that I might clip any overhanging branches if he wished. I would have taken video were it not for the rain. I will report back.

Speaking of absence, I wonder how to mix the topsoil that I have built with the sand that exists eight inches beneath the ground. I can only think to plant more, to watch what happens, for this is what most motivates me, finding surprises, not knowing what will happen. The way I took ten-foot tall stalks of tithonia and laid these out along the edges, I believe these ten feet will send up new shoots which I can then chop and drop around my three-hole system.

You should see the amaranth that Buddha gave me in Nepal. You should see the way I moved this to the front entrance of Needle Street, not so many feet from piles of dog shit that I covered in wood chips and pink zinnias. 

I want to burn what I do not want in the rectangle that is my responsibility, the dodder and cayratia japonica, even the bidens alba that takes over, maybe saving a small section for the bees. I want to offer these ashes back to the earth in thanks for what she gives and in an attempt to form a truce, in an attempt to let her know that I will take care of her, that I will help to bring more life, to offer a variety.

Maybe that’s what three plants in one holes are all about. Maybe the observation of how life works together, how three are better than one, how there is something sacred in moving life through the rain, from one place to another, with one towel. And you should have seen my hands after that gooseberry, after that puddle, pure dripping mud, just like when I was a kid, playing in the fields, climbing trees all day, finding blackberries and mulberries and the skeletons of birds and squirrels.

Have I ever told you about the dog in the back of the garden on Needle Street, how whoever she was, whoever once had loved her may have never known that one day she crawled into the corner, between elderberry and cinder block wall and snuggled in deep to take her last breaths before offering herself to the land.

By the time we met, bugs had gotten the flesh. The chickens got the bugs. And I got this dog’s bones to honor her.  And the absence that comes with this is the space in my heart that is able to touch the space in yours. A space I would never know were I not to sit down and write.