∴

i spent four hours outside yesterday-

watering
pruning
sowing
pulling
feeding
staring
planning
thinking

–

and i had this flash of fear
and inevitability
that crossed my mind
when i admired a nasturtium
that is growing quite nicely;

round,
a mini globed hedge
with sand dollar leaves
and star white centers.

it’s so perfect, now.

but it’s spring,
and that’s the way we all start out.

summer comes
and things get dry
and we brown
and gangle
and stretch ourselves too thin
and the bloom wants
for thirst of the branch.

i was thinking these things,
in a pre-season defeat
for this small and bright
and hydrated being,
so i started strategizing
the come back.

and all of this i said to the plant:

“i grew you from the seed.
and when you get too gaunt
and tired from the heat
of many days lived
under the sun,
and too weak
from the storms that bent you low,
i will cut you back,
but not down.

and you will grow again
with deeper roots
and a better memory
of the sun and rain.”

when the shadows
grew long on the ground,
i went inside,
and felt less afraid now,
of all this pain,
for i suspect it is inflicted
with precision.

∴

I’ve had three gallon-sized bags full of buttons, sitting in a closet, untouched for nearly four years. They were hand-me-downs and garage sale finds, given to me by my mom. Tonight, for some unknown reason (when I should have been making dinner) I decided I needed to organize these buttons; or at the very least, do away with the plastic bags and transfer them to a glass mason jar. Much classier.

And a funny thing happened when I started sorting these buttons: I became entranced in the same way one becomes hypnotized whilst engaged in a puzzle. I simply couldn’t look up. The colors and textures, the sizes, their total uniqueness – and oh, the sound! as I crackle-mushed my fingertips into an undulating pile of buttons – brought some strange fascination I absolutely did not expect to come from a bag of buttons.

It was sand on a beach; it was a pool of those plastic balls you still want to wade through no matter how old you are; it was mud without leaches in thin shores of wide lakes.

Admittedly, I’ve been near throwing these bags out multiple times in the occasional “minimalist frenzy” we all must endure from time to time. But I’m glad I didn’t miss out on what I learned tonight:

• some buttons are saved because of fear. fear that you will not have enough. fear that something might get left open if you don’t have a way to fasten it closed.
• some buttons have pairs, some have crowds, some are unique onto themselves and may coordinate with some, but will never quite match another.
• some buttons are hard and sharp, and would hurt the nail that forces it through, and some are smooth and small and slip in fingers without much effort at all.
• some buttons are old, and carry a spirit of the garments they adorned and the people that wore them. other buttons are new and unused and waiting to be put to work, if only they had a mantle.
• some buttons have bits of binding thread and bulky fabric stuck at the shank; that will need to be removed before they can be used again.
• in a sea of disposable, forgotten buttons, you can find peace and wonder by looking at the individual ONE.
• every, single, one button is useful.
• every, single, one button was made.
• every, single, one button is worth looking at and holding, at least for a moment in time.

There is certainly a monastic streak in me.
I’ve always been a bit of a hermit.
I like to go out into the world
and collect the sea shells strewn about the beach;
I like to hear the stories the old men tell
and the songs the lovely ladies sing,
but I always come home,
like oxygen,
like breath,
to care for little worlds
and observe them as they spin –
like I spin –
we, the weaver’s workers
in ceaseless centrifugal force.

Plant and food,
flora and fabric,
sweet scents of cinnamon baking and sweat from the brow,
a wet bang slapped to the side with a huff –
the flour erupts in a puff –
as I keep kneading away.

A little more tired than well-rested would be
and a little more task that needs doing,
but the sun keeps her schedule
and the moon keeps her call
and there’s music at night
to remember you by.

This is the vital importance of brainless task:

It is in the process of ordinary, daily chore that my intellect is freed to wander far enough away, that I might ponder great questions, figure strange puzzles, and laugh at mean ironies.

Profound thought percolates under the business of fingers.
Imagination unlocks at tinkering, trained muscles, traversing in memorized beats.
I am stirred by the monotonous movement of the mundane.

The simplicity of duty can be the most liberating thing when I do not marry the mind to task, but engage it, rather, to eternity.

And then,
at last,
I am home.

#foldinglaundryisfertilesoil

On the days you wake up
by a breeze,
and nothing hurts,
and autumn’s calm cool
collects in a pool
in the middle of summer,

and sometime in between
a brief, fat-drop sprinkle
and sun’s brilliant return,
you run out and collect as much color as you can,

these are days –
when witnessed
and present within –

there is no feeling but “happy,”

again, and again, and again.

(the color I collected)

The roses know when a storm comes through
and their branches strain under the weight of wind and water.

They know when I come with strands of twine and tape

to bind them.

They feel the pull of their limbs as they’re bound in strange arrangements

up,

up,

and off the ground.

They pant from the sting of food I place at their root,
when fuel burns and seeps

down

though the earth and into them.

They know what it is to be cut.

When I come with shears
and find all the dead growth;

the hard hips, spent to stones,

the blighted leaf,

the broken bits that burden the bush

and keep it from getting taller.

They know the wound of removal and restraint.

But what the roses don’t know,

what they can’t see
– though they may sense –

is what they’re about to become…

I lost count at 24.
How many buds do you see???

Where does your good grow?

All the things I grow

in the earth
in my mind
in my heart
in my home

too often stay there,

in the earth
in my mind
in my heart
in my home.

and I wonder,

is that the best place for them?

The good things I grow?

Of course, when they’re seed,
yes,
they must be sheltered and shaped,
pruned and secured.

We all need safe places to be new.
to be green.

Then comes sprout and leaf
and we test our foliage against the sun.

But the bloom –
the perfume –

This is the harvest. This is the good that grew.

Now we must bear it

out of the earth
out of the mind
out of the heart
out of the home

and into green rooms,
black corners,
blue moods,
and red mornings,

and there, it might bring good to others, too.

Here is a sea of smooth fabric before me…

It was hand-washed with care and watered with perfume. It was delicately dried so not a wrinkle remains and laid out true on a table, ready, waiting, waiting, ready.

It could be any number of things.
It could take any number of forms.
It could serve any number of purposes.

How does one discern the RIGHT one?
and is there such a thing?

There is only this:

a tactile sensation, a palpable sense, a glimpse of shape, a squeeze between the fingers, a brush against the flesh, and the material issues a wish.

if you listen closely, you can hear what it was made to be.

You can fight this, as you are the one with shears in hand. You are the one with needles and devices to alter and restrain, to tuck in, to let out, to pin down. But it the end, if you have not listened, this garment that you have made will be ill-fitted, either straining at the seams, or lost in drape and hang.

Still, you must act, for fear of making the wrong thing will only leave you with a heap of cloth and unspent energy.

Rules a tailor must accept:

• You must let the fabric dictate the design.
• You must see it in your mind before it’s visible on the body.
• Consider your true size. Do not construct what shall constrict you. Do not devise what would drown you.
• To take shape, you must first cut.
• Reaping is 30% of sewing. Make peace with this and the reaping will not be done in anger. You will break mislaid threads and make stronger stitches.
• When you’re mid-construction, and the pieces make no sense, and the two-dimensional is at war with the third, you must stay the course and follow the pattern. Confusion is just a phase. It’s possible to lose sight and keep vision.

and most importantly,

wear it.

These are the tulips that came up in my back yard last month.

I have about a hundred bulbs in the ground and these are the THREE that made it over the winter and through the deer, o my. I decided to leave them in the earth, where they grew, as there were only three. It felt like madness and greed – a great reaping – to cut them and bring them in. If I should be so edacious, there would be nothing left on that little patch of brown, and winter would fade into green without ornament. Leave them. How considerate of me.

But here’s the deal: I only actually LOOKED at them when I took this picture.

The rest of the time they were out there, unnoticed but for the bees.

And it made me kind of mad, in an injusticey kind of way.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there…
does it make a sound?

If a tulip grows unseen…
does it open to the sun?

(save your scientific retort… this is poetic analogy. go with it.)

So, when the lilacs came into bloom, the polite gardner in me – the one that takes a few blooms (and only from the back of the bush) to fill a single vase, and leave as little a mark as possible – got out every vessel I could muster,

and went to town, hacking off the most beautiful blooms I could find, and stuffing their chambers too full to be seen beneath:

It was fragrant vindication.

and the great lilac bush?
The one whom I had delicately pruned and cautiously whittled all these years?

She seemed oblivious to the violation, and I’d like to believe, actually grew larger, and more aromatic by coming into my home – in every corner of my home – and imparting joy just by being.

Being near. Being smelled. Being seen.