Say Thanks
The beginning of the pergola and how I lost eight pounds of sweat.
My friend said she cried last night after reading what I had written about the way minds become corroded by falling into separation and division. Let me add certainty to this. Let me consider the way two twelve-foot boards have sat on my back driveway for months, the way four eight-foot 6x6 posts have known they were supposed to be connected to the boards and yet waited patiently on me, plants stacked atop them.
Reinaldo Arenas wrote a short story where his characters lurched against glass windows while he sat with caviar and fancy writing people receiving awards. The characters shouted, they moaned, they told him, “Finish me.”
And sometimes I look around the yard and I feel like this. And sometimes I look around the yard and I see a hen and eight baby chicks and I know that days before she had eleven and days before that thirteen, and I know that days from now there will not be eight.
So take this. What you witness is all a gift. When I sweat until I’m dizzy in 95 degree heat, I thank the man who made lag bolts unnecessary. I thank my muscles and mind for what I got done. I thank myself of days ago for having hung sweaty shirts out to dry.
And I switch into dry clothes and I squeeze the sweat of my shirt onto clitoria ternatea and I watch a drip hit the blue flower and feel a bit like a pervert, like some sort of servant, like if someone were to ask all I could say was, nature made me do it.
My old friend, he’s 87, sent me something this morning. It said to thank God for all the good you see, all that you receive. And so today, I thanked God for everything.
And so, to my crying friend, I might ask you how to go about each day and see the way all of this works together, see the way every moment in your life has led to right now, and for the lady heard the screaming of the trees, thank you for listening. And to the lizard feeding the soil, there are millions of billions of interactions taking place to celebrate your sacrifice.
These are the gifts life gives us when we pause, know the way emotions feel inside our bodies, know the way they leave eventually, and bear witness to what is living, right there before our eyes.
