Can’t Call It

Some days gifts come. And some days losses. And some days gifts and losses and lessons in the same morning, when you learn that something more than an envelope is needed to send bracelets through the US Mail. Of the three reports of envelopes received, each envelope was empty except for the note that you included with the bracelet, and so you learn to do differently, to send these padded envelopes the lady at the post office said they don’t have but that you can get at the Wal Mart. 

The beauty is that your craft has improved, so those folks who ordered Job’s tear bracelets early will get better craftsmanship the second time around. There is always the learning. 

For example, did you know that you can order oatmeal in bulk from the internet, in 25 pound sacks. The good stuff. Bob’s shit, man.

And did you know that sometimes in New Orleans there are people who work for the city who come and strip away the concrete from a road. One would think after a month, they would have come back to put some kind of something over the beat down earth, but instead there are puddles, big brown splashes of mud each time a truck passes, and cars–they get afraid. They go slow cause there is never telling how deep that puddle might be. 

You walk past the puddles to get to Lowpoint where Mikayla gives you a coffee in exchange for taking away the grounds, and you put some of those grounds around a baby guava and around a jamun, and you wonder about building up the soil between CRISP and Lowpoint and you think what all is new. 

All that did not exist on that same walk ten years ago. A fig tree on each corner. Mulberries and guava and citrus. Loquat and satsuma. A struggling starfruit. A pomegranate. An avocado.

The third bucket of grounds you spread around a variegated lemon.

You don’t know yet that later you will consider making a postcard with your logo and going from door to door, stopping where it looks as if people are growing and want to grow more. You can see those people caring for what you sell them, and if you are able to explain what you have learned, so much the better.

Sometimes you don’t know what you know until you pull up a Cajun Hibiscus from the shade and realize by examining the roots that you can split this beauty into three. And you wonder what else you can split and how much vervain one man needs and how quickly anamu will take root. You know that you are sitting on possibility when your eyes are open.

You return the empty buckets, a little live earth in each one so as to welcome the coffee grounds with open arms and new friends. And you, like Newton, are nearly hit in the head with a muscadine. Unlike Newton, you don’t believe that all is cause and effect, and you aren’t even sure that Newton believes that, but in what you’ve read lately, Newton has gotten a bad wrap for the lack of plasticity he felt was possible in the different parts of the brain. You know that behind every cause is another cause and beside those causes Larry and his two brothers Cause and Cause.

You pop the tannin-rich skin between your teeth and suck the juicy inside before chewing.

“Delicious.”

And like God, a voice from above calls down, “You want some?”

“Of course.”

“You got something to hold them?”

You get a paper sack from Lowpoint and Skillet lets you grab muscadines he’s collecting in a five-gallon bucket.

You don’t think there will be anything in the outdoor refrigerator next to the variegated lemon. Apples and oranges and potatoes and carrots and more prove you wrong. You take two apples and two satsumas, some hummus, and an avocado. 

The rain starts right after you finish planting Early Irk Guava seeds. You’re naming varieties now.

The glass people can’t come because of the rain so you get an interesting drive with only a fifth the viewing space because the rest of the windshield is covered with a black plastic trash bag. You go slow. Don’t take the interstate. You have never seen the road like this before. 

And maybe, had you not sat way back on L and A Road, back where you now buy dirt and where you’ve bought oysters, you might have never googled Cajun Hibiscus and you might have never read the interesting story about Bobby DuPont and a priest and how their fascination grew into them naming varieties and selling 200,000 plants a year. And you surely never would have considered reaching out to his son and telling him about your dreams.

All this said, was it the rain that led to the drive or the muscadine that led to presence or the hummus with avocado, even the kindness of the people could be considered to be the cause of why you sat and read with interest. And do you remember who the guy was used to always say, “I can’t call it.”?