See(d)

Blurry moringa flowers

What if the dogs smell my seeds and come around to alert the authorities? Have we bred them to become that disconnected from the one Jack London used to make a jacket? How long before each one of us plug into a machine and instead of seeing green we instead discuss this in a forum where people differentiate between shades and make critical judgements based upon this?

Pretty deep thoughts for five thirty in the morning. I have stood, filled with fear, returning from Cuba, from Nepal, seeds in the pockets of jeans, seeds that I collected and dried. It’s magic to me, to know that that the bright flower at the entrance to the birthplace of Buddha now grows in my yard next to a longan seedling from fruit I ate with Nasim, next to a quince tree from seeds that lay dormant in plug trays for over a year, seeds I’d given up on.

All of this land once connected. How many millions or billions of years ago I’m not sure. This is the great gift. Not being sure. This is the precious secret. To go without knowing how things should be. And so…in another airport, headed to another country, without seeds, I leave the land I know behind.

Love is the witness I carry with me. Love is what I have to deliver. Love is what we will feel and see in Toronto. And maybe, for the next week, there will be stories of growth, of interacting with what is, of the great gifts I might receive from a land where I’ve never been. Surely there is more than golpar, more plants from Iran, more for Nasim to teach me.

I remember years ago, eating in the CBD of New Orleans. Dylan was my waiter. He owns juice bars and health food stores now, but this was back then. There was molokhia on the menu, a dish of which I did not know. And so, I went online. I ordered seeds. I watched molokhia spread in the heat of New Orleans. The color of the seeds deserve their own designation, much as the color chartreuse is named after a liquor made by Carthusian monks, and these seeds are square and the prettiest green. Thousands come from each plant. Entire cultures have survived on this. It was said to heal a king. King Molokhia, I believe.

I will create a list. I will manifest my destiny as Octavia Butler did, as Thomas Jefferson pretended to do. I will continue to find what grows without care. I’ve watched some of what I’ve learned spread, where these days people speak of moringa and pigeon pea, where longevity spinach is no longer unknown. There is so much more. So much more that can be shared.

Love will lift you up. Love is like helium on a child’s birthday. And when I hug her, in Toronto, I will know how a seed can become anything, how belief stretches further than anybody thinks, and how each of us deserve to carry our own seed, to share, to receive, to know the moment before the plane ascends exactly what love is.