Life
I consider force and control as compared to aid and observation. Even the way I take each tiny seed and put this into an individual cell. Yes, the seedling then has a better chance of getting strong enough to stand on her own, but at what cost? What about those seeds that were not supposed to make it?
The natural world is perfect. Each fruit has multiple seeds or each tree has multiple fruits so that everything might fall and then rise again.
I had forgotten that I had some zinnia seeds left over from last year and so spread these along the Pauline side of the project that does not yet have a name. These seeds have already risen. Each one of them, in the pink of the morning sunrise, look back at me to say thank you, to say that you have given us a chance, to say that we were not meant to be cooped up in that glass on your shelf on Lesseps Street where this space is my space is the space of books is the space around that space and the space between my house and Pauline.
Then there is the space between the school kitty cornered from these already risen zinnias. And it hit me this morning, how every garden has had children nearby, from the kids who came around when I lived on Amelia, to right outside my classroom door in Marrero, to the old Mystery Garden, now clear cut, now no longer Mystery.
A high school boy passed around eight this morning, getting ready for school with some expensive smelling weed.
I said, “I used to get ready for school the same way.”
He nodded his head.
I didn’t really get ready for school that way. I guess that I wanted him to feel that I did not stand before the rotted wood chips with judgment. I, too, threw stones when I was younger. I threw up on myself. I passed out in laundry rooms at parties. I woke with only one eyebrow.
I am learning about how many cubic yards of wood chips are needed for how much space. Wesley told me that he might be able to get me a trailer to haul more chips and maybe even a trailer loaded with logs.
I see the outlines of my own design. I am an artist. I laugh at my own farts. Like Nasim’s parents say. I laugh at what sometimes happens inside my head. I laugh at the way I see signs of CRISP scattered in different spots, a different sort of way to help somebody create what they see everyday, a way to bring life for all who pass by.
I imagine those zinnia growing up strong. I can see the border of the spot on Pauline marked off with long logs and the limbs of black locust and cassia feeding the soil, building the soil, taking what was once nothing and bringing this alive. This was what so fascinated Mary Shelly. This was what led to Frankenstein.
There must be a way to tame the beast inside of each one of us and I have found that for me this comes through helping soil to come alive. First and foremost. To watch. To observe. To know that what works in one spot may not necessarily work in another. To know that the word “works” is one that I have created and may have a million definitions depending upon whom you ask.
Wesley told me that in the center of those big wood chip piles there is fire. I told him that is life breaking down death to become life once again.
“I mean there’s real fire,” he said. “I find ashes.”
“It looks like ashes. Those are billions upon billions of life forms. Mycorrhizae that spread throughout. It’s amazing how much life is in just one teaspoon. More than the city of New Orleans multiplied.”
“It’s hot,” he said. “You can’t even touch it.”
“I know.”
“That stuff gets going right in the truck. If we get a load at the beginning of the day it’s hot by the afternoon.”
“It’s amazing.”
To the untrained eye there may be a giant pile way out along a levee on the West Bank of New Orleans. And this eye may see a black truck driving back over the Mississippi River filled with wood chips and a sweaty redhead popping these into a wheelbarrow.
In my heart I know that I am transporting precious cargo. I know that with each trip I am delivering a mystery from one spot to another.
And all eyes might agree that this greatest of all mysteries we call Life.
