Nahal
Dwarf tamarillo popped up in a rusty can.
Can too much exist in the world of abundance? I consider this in the space of dwarf tamarillo in the space of a rusty can in the space of my memory of five years ago, taking tiny seeds from an envelope. I consider this in how all of the seedlings died the first year. I did not give up. The next year I tried again.
Some of those seedlings survived and they produced orange berries and these orange berries dropped to the ground. I ate them. Birds ate them. Each berry held hundreds of seeds and of these hundreds of seeds the strongest survived and became their own trees and these trees spread.
There is a man named Mark Shephard who has a farm in Wisconsin. He plants thousands of seedlings and seeds rather than a tree every allotted feet. He believes in STUN. Sheer and total utter neglect. There are two brothers on Orcas Island who believe that there should always be two plants in every hole. Let the strongest survive.
I have a chestnut tree back there. I don’t expect much of anything, but I planted four, two together in each hole, little seedlings from a guy really loved apples. I have a starfruit tree that I bought in the East from a lady who sat next to ducks and only spoke Vietnamese.
Sometimes I wonder what will become of all of these seeds I have started. Sometimes I wonder whether I have enough time to harvest green cotton seeds and curry berry for seed and to take the tithonia and carob tree to a different spot and to set down mulch. This must come from somewhere other than abundance, for I believe that though not synonyms, abundance and enough co exist.
If there was not joy I would do none of this. I would learn nothing. I wouldn’t know of a fish called gambusia who thrives on mosquito larvae. I would not know the black bee of this morning who so slowly slipped into the clitoria ternatea in a manner that would make a renaissance painter blush.
All of this is here for anybody. This ability to stop and look down, to know the glory of a honeybee in the pistil of bidens alba, to know what will fill fields if left unattended, to know the glory of how i believed in those tiny seeds, some of which blew off my palm, how i could not have known of cardinal red or cardinal grey and how they would love the orange berries.
Seeing provides interest and interest provides desire, but not the kind of desire from which dukka is born, the desire that comes with excitement for more combined with a satisfaction for what I have.
To know crows, come sit at my window at nine of a Saturday morning. Come wonder why these birds who usually travel in pairs are one today. Know from what you have read that crows understand the theory of displacement. Know that we have Archimede’s wife to thank for our understanding. When he frantically tried to figure out how to account for weight, she told him, “lay off it, man! Take a bath.” This dialogue, at least the latter, is a matter of historical record.
Who told the crows? How did they know? They just knew. And somehow scientists knew and these scientists gave them a test.
And did you know about the crow with a broken foot whose partner has flown with her for ten years, who watches and feeds her, who speaks to the glory of love in in that all do not believe to be sentient.
Would any of this be here were I not to write? Would I receive the glory of the cardinal had I not believed?
Do you know the name of the bug who enters the brown turkey fig so that when you squeeze this almost ripe fruit a gush of bubbly alcohol-smelling water comes out.
Bask at the clouds before the rain. Know the glory of putting down your best. Know that just like crows and bugs and figs and seeds, all of humanity is working together in a perfect order meant to dissolve all that tears me away from my soul. At least that’s what I believe, right now, in this moment, with kiwi vines blowing and the slow roll of piano, and a sky divided in half, just the way she does before a hurricane, half blue and white, and half dark gray.
And this…it is everything. It is abundance.
