DIRT

watering plants on a full bladder is not a good way to go about, but thats how much i love my grandfather.

four generous cuttings from his garden. i was worried theyd be confiscated, but they went through just fine. now i wait to see if theyll take root. while planting them where my dead plants used to grow, my digging, burying, and watering felt a little more intentional than usual. this, i thought to myself, is gardening.

my grandfather's garden is nothing impressive--two tubs of dirt in the tiled yard, bearing only what he deems useful--but its his. and now i plant something mine too. i wish them good dreams and walk back inside with a newfound responsibility.

meaningful additions like this tidbit by tidbit are what end in an everlasting garden, pleasing to both heart and eye. english cottage. now i approach my backyard with awareness. awareness to be unaware. awareness not to force it. haha, funny its ironic and hard. but letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves goes both ways.

recently i finished narcissus and goldmund in the backseat of my car. a revelation as lifting as it was crushing. when i started the novel i saw myself in goldmund's hopeless admiration of his friend, and found hope in his redirection away from him despite and because of him. now i see myself in neither, but envy goldmund for becoming his friend's equal.

i followed goldmund through his journey intently. but while he had nothing and the whole wide world, i have nothing and no world. still, images come to me in the confines of my black car, in the face of the passenger seat. they seem to me foolish, frivolous, especially because i am tethered to them by the narrowness of my experience. but are they? i like my little dissatisfactions with my bleak world. i just wonder, if i roamed this earth alone what would i be all about? what would come out of me? that, i dont know.

and its hard to know yourself in an industrial zone, but ive touched dirt on my own today and feel i might have landed somewhere. dirt under nails for me, regardless of anyone. or is it my writing? my art that ive abandoned long ago? no, i was never good at that and it makes me sick now.

i dont know what to find in myself. age wise im still in the early leg of goldmund's journey. but i see myself nowhere soon. will it be this way forever?

maybe i should approach it the same way i approach gardening. but i cant help agonising its just part of the deal.