Dependence

'Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.'                    -Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to A Young Poet

We are so dependent on the weather, what we cannot control.  So I water and wait and hope that my newly planted vegetables and herbs will grow, grow, grow.  So I can share them and spread them around to my friends and neighbors.

I've planted and will post images as they grow:  squash, zucchini, eggplant, brussels sprouts, kale, basil, rosemary, dill, and chocolate mint.  Very very exciting.  Every spring and summer watching them grow convinces me of the divine presence everywhere---that there's nothing to complain about and that every moment is rich and miraculous.

Amen.

 Amen.

Amen.

Endless (Summer) Love

Hello World.  Summer sizzles again.  It's time to write again.  Time for another haircut.  A short one again.  I've put both off too long---writing and trimming my hair.  The pressure builds no longer.  My hair now cut short, I sit to write.

What a hot summer it's been.  90 degrees as often as the morning comes.  By noon, the glare is hot enough to burn your eyes.  Sweat is a constant threat.  And so is rain.  Which as of today we finally got for the second day in a row.  Scout is at my feet as I write; afraid of the thunder and lightning, he barely moves for hours during and after a rainfall.  And it's still coming down.

But the flowers grow more easily after such watering.  And they shine and elate the senses.  Around several corners from here, a proprietor of a cute cottage under the light of the sun has grown the most marvelous array of zinnia I've ever seen.  She's grown them in a wide circle around a sole tree in her yard so that they stand in attention, lowlighting the trunk.  She's also planted and watched them rise down the outside length of her chain link fence, street side.  The pictures are as close as I can get to showing you the amazement! 

So on this zinnia happy rainy day, I thought I'd get my hair cut and luckily Jane had time to do it.  Jane lives three blocks away in a small cottage that gets little sunlight.  Her porch is encumbered with growing plants, fake cats, knick knacks and two chairs.  Jane is a friend of Ronnie's.  Ronnie is my neighbor who invites and entertains Scout at her house three or four times a week.  Ronnie mentioned she had a friend who charged $7, "it might be 8", for a haircut.  She signed me up with Jane immediately.  I made an appointment and went two months ago for my first trim.  To my surprise, after I was settled in the chair, cape upon my chest, wrapped with a towel around my neck, I see that Jane uses a razor and no scissors.  Oh my.  What have I signed up for I feared.  But Jane did a great job and for $10, including tip, she was my new stylist.  

Jane and Ronnie are both over 65 but you wouldn't know it from their energy and skill in any given day.  At 85 years on the planet, Ronnie weedwacks her yard several times each summer.  At 72, Jane has her grand daughter and her daughter living with her, cooking for them, cleaning, keeping house.  Quite a pair of strong women in my life.  Both of sound mind, and both of firm opinion.  Jane's favorite singer is Lionel Richie.  Today she showed me Lionel's two new CD's---there he was as sensual in his stance and pants as ever!  He hardly looks changed from the Lionel Richie I loved as an 18 year old.

Changes, lasting ones anyway, don't happen with the work of some sheers and a wise and funny stylist.  Nope.  But getting my hair cut today I think was a way to keep some control, the illusion of it anyway.  Funny thinking I have control as I get my haircut because within three slices of blade to hair panic struck.  Jane was sheering me too much.  I feared being close to bald when I walked out. But no, within minutes, she had finished and voila, short hair and the same old new me!   Sweet.  Thanks Jane!

One must do something to care for oneself during this heat, control or no.  A hair cut did the trick today.  The world is conquerable again.  Ha, ha, ha!  But it's true for me, in a way.  No more bushy hair on the crown of my head.  No more flat laying curls going this way and that.  My mind and vanity can rest for a while, a day or two perhaps.  And now that this little vignette is almost complete, pressure abates.  Doing it, always doing it, that's the key. 

Everything takes everything we've got! So go for it!  What else is there?

 

www.in.gredients.com  How innovative!  What a needed idea moving into implementation.  Good luck to them!

What Is

It's summer officially....not that we need an official date.  We kinda can feel that it's hot, late June, and in full bloom....i/e: see gardens around your neighborhoods.   Do they look like this?
As you know being enamored of gardens is easy for me.  Scout and I walk and walk and walk and see many hydrangea, mostly blue ones like these: 
In our garden at home we have pink ones.  Sourced at the Farmer's Market, the big one on I-26, they were planted soon after moving in and they keep going.  Despite being covered with snow for two winters in a row. 

  

Lavender grows all over West Asheville.  It seems that it wants to grow, reach out, feel life outside itself.  Lavender makes me feel free, looking at it, laughing at it, smiling once it's gone.

 

Look at that beautifulness!  

sing or sleep sweet nightingale

isn't food a nightingale? taking care of us in more ways than just nutritionally. eating meals every day is a must for life, and for sure, we Americans take it for granted. forget how marvelous it is we do it so often, giving in to pleasure at least three times a day. it plays such a role in our lives, eating food. mmmmmmm, nutella. mmmmmmmmmmmm, peanut butter. mmmmmm, bread and wine.we are saved sometimes by the things we love. or the people. don't we seek nightingales every moment of our lives? often my mom arrives somewhere to take care of one or more, those who need her. you meet a friend for lunch; she needs to talk; or you give your friend a call because you do.

florence nightingales are we. ....we take care of each other.........baby and momma, momma and baby, student and teacher, parent and parent, friend and friend......dog and dog lover, lover and one who has momentarily forgotten to love and be loved....

you take a bite of a nutella-spread piece of bread with peanut butter too if you wish. you try not to be upset while doing so because it's so good, and right now, it's good for you; you need it! indulging once in a while is quite healthy, don't you think?

whatever I do, I do as a way to take care of myself, parenting myself, a salve for something that is bothering me, and chances are good that something is bothering me, (if you know me at all, you might have some experience of this) even if minimally, and that I am trying to fix it, fix myself, fix the moment.

ha!

the nightingale calls out: it's okay, it's all okay.

my sister had her baby late last month; the two met and have been getting to know one another intimately for several weeks now. in her learning how to be a mother, my sister is teaching me about this continual seeking for some lifeline that everything will be okay.

she is in the squeeze of life, of searching for some answer to make this new life, a miracle, satisfied. a baby cries, there's no doubt, and my sister's motherhood is teaching all of us that sometimes life is too much....it's too scary; especially when we hate being too needy, a bit panicked, worried about the next moment and the one after that.

and just in her arms, sweet baby doesn't mind being needy at all. she's 100% needy, 100 percent of the time, in her new life.and simultaneously, paradoxically, she's giving everything she's got. she's 100% sufficient, too, learning how to be a human being, already a human being. just like her momma. and her grandmomma. and her gorgo and aunt and uncle and friend....she's already making friends, this little one.

a teacher, a nightingale, a herald of the present.

1 salvation by way of repentance redemption, deliverance, reclamation. antonym damnation.
2 that conviction was her salvation lifeline, preservation; means of escape, help, saving, savior.

something like this