Italian Accordion
Thunderstorm
She called to say a tree fell. Good news is that my lot is bigger than what I thought. Bad news that this tree that hit her house is my responsibility. She told me she was somewhere else and I guessed that she lived somewhere else and rented this house on Needle Street for an investment. With this, my lizard brain concocted the notion to tell her we could sort this out in September when she returns. After all, the hurricane happened months ago.
Strange the way we as individual humans would not be here were it not for our worrying. Worry might have saved those who knew how to hide and keep quiet or, alternatively, strike out against a tiger. And when I witness this I can retract my statement that we will sort this out in September. Maybe she didn't know, but I do. I know my message was a sideways way of saying your worries do not concern me.
She said she could have somebody meet me sooner, and I said that would be great. I know that I can rent a chainsaw for seventy dollars, and I know that i just thought about looking into building three eco-friendly houses on that lot, two-story jobs surrounded by fruit trees and muscadine vines.
The thunder is loud now. There is no need to escape now, to face what comes and decide what will come next. To use this mind of mine to manifest what i have seen, a place where art and plants and dinners can be offered, a place where people will pay for food what they can afford, a place where health can be offered.
What is to be said about attraction rather than promotion, about an unknown road, about people not yet met who might offer ideas and assistance. If life were a prediction, how boring this would be. Yet there is a way to stop the old doubts, to see that this rain is a gift I could not have predicted this morning.
What if I were to eat one betel leaf daily? Chase this with an anamu leaf. Cut what blocks clear vision. Find spots to sit, places shaded during the day. What if beauty is a part of sustainability? Meaning there can be flowers and order and places through which to travel, places to sit, places to sip tea. And what if I remember the smell of butterfly ginger, the way of brushing past lemongrass, the sweet scent of jasmine blowing over Needle and Irk Street?
There is a way to take worry and use this to serve. So I offer the woman whose house was struck by my tree the service of subtropical trees. If I am to spread what I believe, there has to be a way to take care of the beginning, to teach what is easy, to learn more as I go along.
When I offered her this from a place of love and abundance, she said that she needed a landscaper for two other projects right now and would love to hear my thoughts. The thing about the i-don’t-know-mind is that I always get to be surprised. There is no good or bad or the way things should or should not be. All becomes a journey.
All becomes a gift, like who could have predicted I would be listening to Italian accordion and typing with a backdrop of green and gray and lightning flashing through the sky?
Everyday is like this, what we get to make when there is delight in not knowing, when trust and love replace fear and worry. Fear and worry are not demons to be fought, but rather friends to be invited to dance, to spin, to listen to the sounds of this Italian accordion.
And maybe, maybe, baby, the way of love leads to the opening of the sky. Maybe the way of love leads to a sunset and a sleep, and the appreciation that is another sunrise.
