soil and soul

start of a new circle garden. different now, but camera's broken. alas, or la, la, depends on awake on not, eh?


SOIL AND SOUL
Sometimes we are walking down a sidewalk, lost in our thoughts or daydreams, our plans, our regrets, rehearsing some future conversation or rewriting a past one in our head to our advantage, and a dog rushes a fence, barks, and suddenly a surge of adrenaline pumps through us and we wake up from our lostness. Not exactly enlightenment, but we do yank our attention to what seems really important all of a sudden: is that a fence there and is the dog really safely restrained on the other side.?

We might feel a little giggle of awareness. As, in, oh my, was I lost in some other place. And from that giggle we might look around and enjoy the trees, or flowers, or sky, or the feeling of our feet pressing into the sidewalk as we walk, the swinging of our arms in the opposite pattern of our thighs, the freshness of the air, the quality of the light.

And this, this waking to our natural world, and our own moving and alive bodies in that world, we could call a little bit of enlightenment after all. Shocked into the present by Mr. Mean Barking Dog, we sail forth into trees and footsteps and sky and the feelings of being a walking being on this planet earth.

It’s a pretty amazing thing, this planet Earth, and as we live in our Sonoma spring, and are either about to have or just have had both Easter and the Equinox, we have all sorts of springing into life images and feelings and maybe even thoughts in us. The plants all around are blossoming, the pears and jasmine and daffodils and tulips and Ribes and even some California poppies are shouting out their glory. But winter this year has been such a strange blend of intense storms and then warm spring-like days (or, sometimes fooling my system, Indian Summer like days), that sometimes I can forget it’s spring and how amazing and beautiful it is.

It’s as if we are spoiled here is this part of California, getting a pretend spring in the fall, especially if the first rains are followed by the “real” Indian summer. And then between the winter storms, more spring weather. And now, by spring, except for the blossoms, maybe we are becoming a bit too nonchalant about our “perfect” days, with their sunny warmth and 70 degree comfortableness.

Of course, come mid summer, we’ll wish we had appreciated the cool clear warmth when we had it, but that’s human nature, isn’t it?

Still, no matter how many “false” springs, this one now is the time of the garden, the time to harvest the weeds of winter and turn them somehow into soil. The soil calls out for a turning fork, as the hills call our for walks. Walking, the blue sky reminds us, like Andre, struck down in battle in War and Peace ( the new translation is fantastic), that something infinite exists, within and without us.

Soil down, rich, deep, call us to plant some seeds, start some roots down into its nutrition. Soul up there, in here, who knows exactly what or where, but that feeling is nice, isn’t it? And to actually look into the vastness of the blue is always some kind of reminder for me.

That feeling of something infinite and beyond words and deeply worth experiencing. As if we are being kissed by life. Or are kissing it.

Or both.