The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_
WHAT GOES AROUND
This is just the tip of the elephant's tail. The party's over and we're nibbling left overs. Anyone who doesn't get this now, soon will. Distress.
It is late in November. Leaves of the hackberry tree have picked today, the twenty second, to fall all together. Yesterday I swept silver maple leaves off the back patio, big piles that filled the yard waste can. Today Leaf Man is visited by finches. One of them is splashing in the bird bath, raising a happy spray of droplets that fall to the ground. A hummingbird comes to perch on the TV cable. There is a way of communication that goes beyond words, that out stretches the internet..
“My point of view” expresses this report but does not comprise it. To write one word presumes one to write it, but who is that one? Words are hesitant to proceed, here in the fields of distress. The tail twitches.
Most people now do not dress for winter in animal skins, or cook with the new discovery of fire, fed by gathered sticks. No need to note the intervening steps, but some progress might be cited. Leaves are covering my pen. There are leaves of grass, as sung by Walt, leaves of paper, sometimes a great notion like turning over a new leaf. Which is what might happen for anyone not fixated on what's been written, including this.
The fallen leaf cohabits this page, for now. In it I see veins much like those on the back of my hand describing them. The leaf has landed on “My point of view . . .”
It is surprising how whatever is speaking finds its means ready at hand. And I do appreciate the almost ready made pun. A breeze sweeps it off the page.
Maybe someone's tugging the elephant's tail. It's all in fun. The beast doesn't mind, hardly notices. Late comers to the party are gathering up what's left, avoiding places in distress. Barren patches. Piles of plastic that don't compost. Flights of birds trying to migrate where? Places that no longer exist.
There is a place that doesn't exist in anyone's point of view, and not very hard to discover. Makes itself known when, like Candid Camera, you least expect it. Once you’re onto it, or it's onto you, the party lacks appeal – a dull waste of time, especially as time itself disappears. Just ordinary everyday stuff is infinite, to borrow a word, beyond appeal. Trees, waterfalls, other people, rocks, insects, even nuclear and fossil fuel wastes, all the detritus and denizens of this world, or contemplate a multitude of stars or atoms in a grain of salt.
If it seems a far journey from fire sticks to nuclear fire, still it's but one small step for humanity. All along there have been, and there are, those who have gone beyond and, on a cosmic scale are not dismayed. This world is one of countless many to be appreciated or maybe, to scour out another term, atomized. As we evolve from fire to fire, there is a choice of where to place attention, to appreciate who we are, where we are beyond the confines of “My point of view.” Certainly this too has its effect.
At any rate it's certainly good to have Twinkie's company. She's on the cushion as I write, beginning to get the idea. Several times I've shooed her out from beneath the bird feeder, reminding her they're my friends. It's hard to understand, she's a cat of course, but now for once she's just watching the dove eat seeds.
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The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_