Growing Things

In college, I had a boyfriend who liked bonsai trees. He succeeded in over-pruning one straight into its death, and another into a life of stunted and strange angles. He meant well.

One afternoon, while killing time in a hardware store, he bought me a cactus. "It'll be your thing," he said. I definitely sneered a little. But I decided to try anyway.

As I did most things those days, I decided to just sort of wing it in terms of caring for my newly acquired plant. I knew nothing about cacti. I still know next to nothing. I do know now that you can over water them. And that they'll die. Slow and agonizing deaths. Because that's what happened to mine, of course.

After that, it was like the plant world had it out for me. And for good reason. I had basically water-boarded that poor cactus to death. Any and everything I had ever endeavored to grow from that point forward had died instead. My green thumb was missing. In its place, a fellow stood cloaked in black.

I had to get rid of that guy.

When we first moved to the suburbs, my mind concocted grand pictures of myself coming back from this bleak period of plant-killing and becoming a master of the earth - one with nature. Any fleeting thoughts of a lingering curse could be forgotten. I would find friends among the green and grit of nature. Dig my hands into the ground. Magically not be afraid of touching worms or dead things.

Yet year after year, in spite of my good intentions, my small attempts at gardening failed. Young plants looked flushed with potential in their early days, but then sat stillborn in middle development, green fruit hanging still too small mere weeks later. I did manage to get some herbs growing, but any idiot can do that in practically any climate, so I knew there was no real success there.

In fact, the very first thing I've ever really sucessfully grown alone, is a baby. But, for once, this story has nothing to do with her.

This is a story about my love for the internet. Did you know that, internet? I love you. Truly. Because if it weren't for the massive amount of easily accessible, important information dancing magically at my fingertips, I would still be an uninformed hack who kills a couple of tomato plants every year.

I was a rotten gardener for one reason and one reason alone: I completely neglected to educate myself. Like, didn't even try or think to try. I just hoped things would go well. That it would just be common sense.

It's not just common sense, by the way. There is a lot to know. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. You need to know what the hell you are doing.

The internet inspired me to become a better gardener, by first helping me to become a better cook. I started using the web to seek out simple recipes for favorite recipes and making them, modifying them, learning from them. Before too long, I was starting to make up my own stuff - I felt confident. I had gained a new skill.

Suddenly new hope came rallying into my heart like Gandalf leading all those guys down the mountain at the battle of Helm's Deep. I was like, "YEAH!" (at the movie, and at that very moment). I remembered my love of the earth, and my hope to gain its trust again one day. The internet was the answer.

My spirit renewed, I set out to learn everything I needed to know about building a home garden and maintaining it. I was overwhelmed by all the generous enthusiasts out there who donate their time to write blogs and create videos, because there is a ton of really solid information out there provided by people who are just passionate about growing things. I totally wanted to be one of those people, too.

We got our garden going on April 27th with a selection of cold crops. And I'll admit, I was nervous. As soon as they'd been put to ground I suddenly felt sure that they would all die. They were so small. Maybe they even looked a bit limp? Lifeless!?

Not dying. Just have nothing good to do. 

I calmed down a bit over the next few days. I covered the soil with a layer of mulch (which I had neglected to buy initially) and watched as the plants firmed up, started reaching out. But I still set to fretting like I had a sick child when the temperature dipped dangerously low one night. As the days passed I even started spending time researching how to harvest some of these things when that time might come - what should I look for? How will I know they are ready? But I kept my hopes on a short leash. No need getting too attached. 

I pulled off lettuce leaves that were low to the ground. Kept my kale trimmed back 25% at a time. I clipped the broccoli at the stem, and new heads formed in the vacancies. I felt confident one day. And more so the next. I challenged my luck by adding warm weather crops, filling my experimental plat to its brimming point. Crossing my fingers, and then uncrossing them and reading more gardening blogs instead.

I spouted easy advice and fact to friends and family. Locked in data points coming to call when beckoned by my memory - they were my facts now, of me.

I wasn't only growing things in the dirt, I was growing things within as well. My confidence came from knowledge - my knowledge from my effort, and the resources all thanks to the wonder of people looking to add to the world. Many of them contributing over the magic of the web.

So often we think of only what we want to take from this life - even in its most noble pursuits, the mind can be clouded to think of what we're owed, what should be ours without any real claim. But, I will venture this advice: happiness is in the growing of things - the making of things - the addition of life. It could be a garden, or a song, or an invention of process or practice. But it is adding, not taking away that brings fulfillment. It is what is right. It is what is good.

Well, that and the internet.

Nothing to Fear

My life can sometimes resemble a patchwork quilt of various colorful phobias. Odd little fears that reign strong in my peripheral thoughts - popping up time and again to shock me with an icy finger of terror in response to the unlikeliest of things. I admit freely that my long list of idiosyncrasies includes a great many of these triggers. Some truly irrational (like my consistent fear of the entire airplane just disappearing out from under us at 10,000 feet) and others, like the one I discovered recently, that border much closer to circumstances that might occur, albeit rarely and in most cases only in moments of blind stupidity.

I was cleaning up the kitchen countertops. Mopping crumbs towards the sink and flinging them headlong into the oblivion also known as the garbage disposal. I finished my quick sweep and snapped a final towelful of odds and ends into the stainless sink, rinsing it down the drain to join the other hapless dross that now faced the sharp edges below. I switched the water to flow down the drain, and reached for the switch that would throw the blades into ravenous life.

And there it was, that sickly green silverfish of a feeling - the cringing flutter of fear's black wings. Bleak and bottomless. Contracting tissues - causing everything to be clutched and bittersick.

I could feel the clenching of my chest, the protective screeching of my nerve endings: "Please don't chop off your fingers today!" they seemed to be screaming. I could see it happening - almost feel it. I shuddered, and forced myself to look at my hands, safely tucked in each others' grasp. More than sheltered from the fury below. Nowhere near harm. But I held them tighter together still, needing more of a reminder.

The wave broke, and I pushed out a heavy sigh, flicking the switch to kill the beast. The motor flew in one last violent push and died. The ruckus lost its legs, became only the white noise of rushing water - and with a single motion, I killed that, too. Color crept back to my heart, squeezing out the sharp black and white contrasts of fear.

It was but a moment. Like 10 seconds, tops. But the feeling crept onward, intentional. And relief was sweet when its honey-slow path finally slipped out of my system and back into the ether. Seeking new purchase somewhere else, however ridiculously earned.

And all because I turned on the garbage disposal.

This phenomenon intrigues me. That I could feel such intense, real emotion that had no claims to a grasp on reality fed the logical conclusion that we cannot (in spite of what you may have been told) always trust our guts. Sometimes they're damn liars. I had no hand in harm's way, but I felt it cut to bits regardless.

Maybe somewhere in the Multiverse another version of me got caught there, attempting to free up a rattling annoyance - no idea that the machine was set to malfunction any second. A power surge. A moment of intense and regrettable idiocy. Maybe I felt her pain for a moment. Maybe we shared a wavelength - a thought. Nirvana. A hand chopped to pieces.

Or I could just be a bit nutty. Much more likely, all things considered.

Bon Voyage, Mr. Vonnegut

The first book I read by my hero, Kurt Vonnegut, was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. To tell the truth, I hardly remember reading it. I do remember thinking it was bizarre, and wishing fervently that we could read something awesome, like Stephen King, instead. Ah, the ignorance of youth.

I have to laugh at that, because on occasion I was shockingly closed-minded in my early years for no good reason whatsoever. This is an example that gives me a special kind of grief these days because I became such an ardent admirer of his - and to admit that I didn't connect with him straight away somehow cheapens our relationship (as one-sided as it may be).

Fast forward to my early twenties - Bored out of my skull in a job that could have been performed by a monkey, I was tearing through books at a pace my wallet couldn't handle. I had just finished yet another snore-fest of girly fiction about someone who stole someone's boyfriend or some similar ilk, and I was in need of a book for the work day. So, on my way out the door I dropped to my knees in front of the bookshelf I shared with my roommates and began to quickly scan the available titles.

There are few moments in life that I would ever describe as being close to true kismet (seeing as I think that the idea of fate is ridiculous) but at that exact second, just as my eyes and brain focused enough to read the first book's title, Cat's Cradle basically hopped into my hands. I would say I was drawn to it for aesthetic reasons, but the spine is pink and pink is the color I dislike most, so that's not a likely answer. I got lucky though, whatever it was that caught my eye was the catalyst for a great explosion of joy in my life. I read Cat's Cradle in less than two days and fell hard for one Mr. Kurt Vonnegut.

"No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's..."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

Something burst inside me. It was like he understood me - like we spoke the same language. Different from most people. Beyond that, I had entered into a time in my life where I felt like I'd been rushed out of the main current of progress. Some eddy had interrupted my path and now I was stuck like debris along the side of the river, watching the way the system worked instead of being a part of it. And you know what? I found out that the system sucks. And he already knew that - he agreed with me.

It's difficult to feel lost, but certainly not rare - and I had spent a lot of time wallowing in the uncomfortable truth that I didn't know what I was doing in life. It didn't help matters that I felt like a bit of a traitor to my upbringing. Not everything fit me the way that I had been told it would. The potential of my youth gave way to the cold hard facts of my burgeoning adulthood - I saw the world for what it was, and because of it I started formulating my own ideas about what it all meant and where I fit. It was a strange time, and although my friends are basically the greatest a person could ask for, they were also very young - not ideal mentors for the lost. I was looking and looking for a place to land, and my spirit was tired from vacillating between ledges.

But Kurt Vonnegut understood. It was right there - in ink. He was looking and looking, too. Neither of us could see the point. It was ok that I felt like a black sheep. He was one, too. I felt the ground solidify under my feet, surprised that it had always been there.

What happened next is terribly predictable - I chewed my way through Slaughterhouse-Five and bawled my eyes out over that damn horse's hooves. I devoured Sirens of Titan, Slapstick, Deadeye Dick, Breakfast of Champions and so on.  Each completed novel fueled my own inspiration. I wanted so badly to write something Kurt Vonnegut would read. Because of him I tried to make art, no matter how piss poor. He was (and I daresay is) my muse - I have some of his words tattooed on my body. The rest are tattooed on my soul.

When I was planning my wedding in 2007, I decided that I would invite him. I knew he was not likely to show up, but when you get married you want the people who have impacted your life to be there. It was natural then that I should want him in attendance - but, I didn't get the chance to send an invitation because he died in April of that year.

I cried silently in the bathroom at work that day, April 11th, 2007. My hero had died. And I never got the chance to tell him that he changed my life, that he was the one to cast me a lifeline in the darkness of my self-doubt. I'm not sure the letter I planned to enclose with my invitation would have ever even been seen by him, but I regretted bitterly that I hadn't sent it sooner. So it goes...

I think of him when I am stuck creatively - try to channel him sitting at his typewriter, smoking Pall Malls and writing the Truth. Or drawing something deceptively simple that will still somehow break your heart. Sometimes it helps. Other times I just feel sad that he's gone.

Bon voyage, Mr. Vonnegut. Circle back here again and again - flip backwards in time for me.

Black Magic Woman

You ever read any of The Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher? If you haven't, you should. They are fast, pulpy and imaginative - sometimes a bit repetitive, but altogether fun and enjoyable to read. Forget a lame synopsis though, the only thing you really need to know for this story is that the books are about a modern day wizard and because of his magic he has major difficulties relating to electronics. Because his mere presence will interrupt electronic signals and fry circuits, only the most rudimentary machines will work for him - forget computers. Got it? Good.

Flash to reality, and I'm likely sitting jaw-dropped in front of yet another piece of electronic equipment that just won't work for me, or with me, or whatever. The screen may be stuck on a repeating, flashing, seizure-inducing image, or in the midst of a forced reboot. There is definitely a high probability that some kind of official-looking message containing the words "factory settings" or "restore mode" is staring back at me with startling hostility. I just have problems. Even my beautiful iPhone, just birthed from its packaging required me to restore to factory settings THREE times within the same day. And each time after I had entered in a few contacts by hand.

Right around Ryan's birthday last year, I nuked our laptop somehow. I was writing a blog post, switched to a separate screen and then when I came back to try to type - BLACKNESS. It was one of the more dramatic incidents I had experienced, and as this was only the most recent event in a string of minor problems I had caused (technologically speaking) it brought Ryan to his feet and set him pacing around the kitchen. Eventually he threw up his hands asking me, "What on EARTH is wrong with you?" I gave an exaggerated shrug and said, "I have no clue, man. I'm SO sorry." He shook his head, "This is like Harry Dresden. You walk by our laptop and the thing basically explodes - his magic fries all the electronics he comes near." I gave him a sarcastic look behind my smile. But he continued on about the logic of the entire thought, and the fact that he always knew I was special anyway. He winked away the last part, and I smiled again. We never really get mad about anything, and this was just a minor annoyance anyhow - magic involvement or not. I left him then to his impending repair attempts, and went on about my own thoughts.

All kidding aside, it did bug me that complicated electronics seemed to sputter at my touch. Was it magic? HIGHLY unlikely. It could be that I was just bad with computers - but, in my defense, my bad internet habits were few and relatively mild. But still, I'm definitely no computer scientist, so that could be it. Or was I just unlucky? Perhaps, but my bad luck did seem to have insane aim - hitting me in the electronic device Achilles each time. My thoughts of luck turned to the possible existence of Karma. Then fractured to another tangent, and another. Some far away part of my brain even worried intensely about the possibility that Artificial Intelligence will take over the Earth someday and I'd be one of the first they'd ax. "You just don't get us." They'd say.

Then I settled on a topic that Ryan and I had discussed several weeks prior that suddenly seemed to have a possible connection - he had brought up a concept he'd read about called a noosphere. Basically, it was the idea that we all have energy coursing through our bodies, and out around them in a sort of orb. Think an aura. A real, physical thing containing energy. And the interesting part (aside from getting to think of yourself as a cloud) is the way that our noospheres may be interacting with each other, influencing each other - all the energies of people, animals, and things able to push together. It might be a part of our existence that we have forgotten, or never really discovered. We might be able to unite through that, conduct it together - and what kind of world might that be?

I love the idea of being a conduit. Conducting energy as I see fit. Not the creator of the energy, but the one who harnesses it - directs it. The blessing of this life is just that, I think. That we may conduct the forces residing within us in whatever direction we choose.

Should the existence of a noosphere be the explanation for my mysterious and unintentional black widow-ing of computers, I feel badly. I would certainly never intend to set my phasers to kill. And should it be magic, meddlesome and swift, I'd be pissed - Harry Potter is like my dream life, so being a witch and not knowing it? NOT FAIR. You can bet your life I will be cutting out a lot of right-clicking and some other habits I have been informed might be troublesome, so any user error should shrink to a minimum. And hopefully it is not a curse of bad luck for I haven't the foggiest idea how to begin fixing that.

An aura of energy around each of us. Individual magic sipped straight from the belly of the Universe. Perhaps they are one and the same. The laptop was fixed and so far remains functional. My thoughts are mild and appreciative when we are in each others' presence - just to be safe, you know?

All the Winged Horses

As a child I used to daydream that there were pegasi flying through the sky outside the school bus window. Flitting in and out of the clouds, only I could see them. One would fly down and I'd climb out of the bus window and onto its steady back. From there we'd go anywhere. Everywhere.

My daughter takes a baby doll and propels it across the living room shouting, "WE CAN FLY! WE CAN FLY!" and I feel like I'll just die from the intensity of emotion hurling itself at my ribcage.

Such a sweet gift, the imaginings of childhood. The realness that dreams have. The magic inherent in everything - in a baby doll, in the clouds outside of a school bus. I love that parenthood allows me the privilege of reliving this part of life, albeit from a vicarious place. It fills me with happiness for Willow and with wonder. Curiosity and pride. All of those things.

But, sometimes the emotions springing forth from me are born from a place of pain, of a certain sadness. I have this longing to feel those things again, to believe them possible the way she does - it creates a feeling akin to jealousy. Not really jealousy of any serious variety, but it's there nonetheless. I find myself wishing I was her for a moment so I could see wonders, too.

But I just can't do it. I don't see winged horses in the sky any more. I know they are not there.

I also know this will not be the only time I feel this way - I mean, isn't it sort of a built-in part of parenting? I definitely heard the line "don't wish away your childhood" many a time growing up, and blew it off as old people being dumb. But now, I see it for what it probably was - a tiny twinge of impractical jealousy that gets redirected into a responsible statement of truth. Not that it will do your kid any good - they'll most likely blow it off just like you did.

She throws down her doll in favor of her blocks, and begins building a tower - a home to a princess or an ogre or maybe a vampire. I join in - saving leaning towers and building up places that are lacking stability. Redirecting. Doing the adult things - the responsible things.

I sigh and keep stacking. Trying desperately to dream up a pegasus or two.

Thanks Wholly to a Pop Culture of Insanity

Yesterday began as a brisk, cloudless morning. I decided to take advantage of the odd weather and went out for a run on my usual 5K route. My path takes me through an industrial park, and although I do see occasional people filing into their respective offices, I hardly ever run into anyone on the sidewalk.

So as I turned a corner and headed toward my halfway point I was surprised to see a man walking several hundred feet in front of me. It became quickly obvious at this point that I was going to have to pass him once to get to my halfway mark and then again when I turned around to head home on the same path (which is my typical routine). I weighed the decision for a second - then I noticed something else odd about this guy... he seemed to be more shuffling than walking. He was bent a little to one side, moved slow. My mind was made up - I wasn't going to get any closer to this dude. So, I turned around and headed home with the intention of taking an extra lap around the neighborhood to make up the distance.

As I ran the other direction I started laughing at myself because I realized the real reason I turned around when I did. I wasn't scared that this guy was some sort of criminal with a gimpy leg. My first thought: ZOMBIE.

Thanks pop culture!