Dilemmas

Prompts for the first two pieces of this beautiful set were lines taken from the poem Innocence by Linda Hogan. The prompt for the third was “In the end …” Original prompts are in black italics. As so often happens, the titles for the pieces emerged organically.

The Gardener’s Dilemma

Inside this simple flesh…

It’s been nearly 6 weeks that the roof of our home has been pelted day and night with acorns falling form the great oak trees that canopy our house. Day and night of a few drops, like large rocks every so often, landing above with a thud and rolling to the shingled edge to make their way to the ground below. Sometimes, with a steady breeze or gust of wind, the pelting comes in the thunderous sound of hundreds falling at once. Sometimes, just one lands on the tin roof of our sunroom, startling the most snoozy and relaxed cat onto all fours, scrambling for unnecessary cover.

Last week, as the weather turned, it was time to repot flowering plants that adorned our front porch and back deck for the summer. As my hands dipped into the cool damp soil and pulled out acorns that had landed there, I felt such surprise that many of these little nuts, not yet cleared by the landscapers or busy squirrels, had grown tender, long roots alongside the flowers they had taken residence with.

What is that parable or is it a children’s story about the acorn who became an oak tree that sheltered others? I felt disgust at myself for having unknowingly or unassumingly disrupted the life that had taken root. I wondered what I had unintentionally ended that needed to grow, what had desperately wanted to live and become something else.

This is the way it is with me most times. Sensitively feeling life--the simple fragile tender flesh and delighting at its possibility. The mystery of its becoming.

The Aunt’s Dilemma

There is nothing more innocent

Their giggles erupt in the back seat. A tone of mischievousness. I wonder what they are up to. What game, prank or secret they are spinning. I find myself wanting to ask, playfully so as not to dampen whatever creative aliveness grows in their plot. And just before I do, I hold back my question—some force saying to just allow them to be, to be the naïve aunt, surprised and shocked by their gusto whenever it shall be revealed to me, if at all.

I wonder what their mom would do. Is there some responsibility to ask not so playfully but full of authority in tone? Is there harm to prevent? Is it worse harm to put out the fire in their eyes?

I decide to do nothing. I want the light in their eyes to be ablaze with delight, mischief, compassion, suffering, joy, love, heartache, play, seriousness…I want them to intimately know the aliveness of this precious life of theirs.

So, I do nothing but naively drive with my own sly smile, basking in their giggles, feeling the fire of aliveness in my own precious life. There is nothing more innocent.

No Dilemma

In the end, it’s really simplicity and complexity woven intricately together. Love this one precious life. Rejoice in its beauty. Connect in its sorrow. And for fuck’s sake, play wildly.