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I almost made three months of writing everyday. I’m not doing this with the intention that each day will offer something grand. I am doing this to remember, to consider, to commit.
I turned forty eight today. It’s hard for me to believe this, swimming back and forth in the pool, eating frozen fruit with Nasim, driving to the West bank to get bones and beans and whatever vegetables they let go for cheap.
I wonder whether the rest of life is an invitation to grow, to get better, to rid myself of everything that blocks me from Love. I wonder if pieces are easier than a whole, if breaking my yard into segments will slowly produce a space where walking is easy, where what I have grown can be differentiated from what tries to take over.
There is a battle that takes place in my mind, that tells me that this jungle is necessary for all that lives, but all that lives did not exist before this jungle.
From above, standing on the attic balcony, I see through the eyes of a bird, a mystery, for a first time flyer in this neighborhood does not know what exists down below the canopy of leaves, and maybe life is like this, a field of green, a source somewhere that cannot be touched until we get there.
Trust. The feeling. The idea. The knowledge that something courses through. Trust the guava the size of baseballs. Clear away what does not serve. Create a comfortable space for people to walk and sit and engage, and if you hear the words, “i don’t know” it’s okay to say that’s my old self because you do know, and the possibilities are endless.
This week starts with a map. With hour one maybe. Perhaps the scheduling of free time and necessities like meals and sleep. And then cleaning, taking away. Burning. A cleanse. A purging of what is not needed.
The map on Pauline of what survived. Unloading of the last of the wood chips before a trip out to the Westbank for more. And repeat. And continue to build and build and build these wood chips up, for you want to deal in trees and bushes that produce fruit, to have something to pick every month of the year.
And once this map and wood chips are done, let the first day become one where the space behind the house become a place to sit, where a swing might hang and a bench placed outside the backdoor. The wood against the shed will turn into tables that can hold the plants sitting on the picnic tables. To remember the old saying of a place for everything, and everything in its place.
And each day forward, another spot will be covered. So that Tuesday becomes the front of the house and a clear space to see around the persimmon and by the kumquat and new guava. Use these wood chips. Perhaps a bike rim canopy above the front bench.
Wednesday, the entrance on Urquhart so that the fig and guava might be seen and to clear goji berry away from the surinam cherry and pot this goji berry up. And at some point, a fence from the Dr. Weiner’s lot and across my driveway.
Thursday I will take to Needle Street so that everything but the edges can be mowed, and I will take to putting down plants in pots, more surinam cherry on that side.
Friday I will clear the space from the back concrete over to the side fence so that we might see. That’s all that I really want, to have the space to clear what represents my head, to let my yard become a place of order and understanding so that my thinking might follow.
Nasim said that when space becomes clearer this allows for new thoughts to occupy the earlier crowded space. I have to agree. I know of limitless possibilities. And I know that I can react to this with both wonder and fear. I know that I will react to this with both at times. And I know that I can sit in that quiet space of peace, on a porch swing, hanging from a four by four between a mulberry and jujube tree.
