It is sunny and the river moved steadily. I thought about how I caught your eye and lingered. I’ve always had a hard time with eye contact. You told me “I am looking at you.” I was shy and I don’t remember if I said it, but I was looking at you, too. We both said this was healing, to become whole in our bodies. You stuck your nose in my armpit and I did not feel embarrassed.
Today the river is moving so fast- helpless branches and a plastic bag rush by. I am aching in my chest. I am impatient. I’ve been smoking too many cigarettes, more than the amount that feels like I have it “under control”. As I inhale, my throat burns and I am too easily out of breath when walking uphill. Still, I went to the path by the bay and let my feet move while all of the plants and leaves around me rustled in the breeze.
The river was slow and overflowing today. The path was flooded and I couldn’t complete my usual walk. I got caught in a thorny bush trying to go around the path. Halfway through our time together, I watched a waterfall and was so overwhelmed by its lack of restraint. There were little moments of slowness where water fell more slowly and rested, but ultimately it could not be contained, and went rushing. We talked about this, but we didn’t know what it would be until we were pulled under, only to emerge from the other side and gaze back.
Every time I see a body of water I think of you so I didn’t go to the river today. I think of a line by Rebecca Solnit: “The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.”
I went back down to the river today and it was no longer overflowing. It was moving at a gentle pace and there were two ducks floating downstream.
Last spring I wrote the above about a whirwind of love, grief and healing and how the river became a metaphor for it all. I feel a little embarrassed when I read it. I also wrote about healing spirals and how they evoke duality - drawing from both within and without. That in order to heal, we need to continue to put ourselves in the way of the human experiences, and then draw inward and investigate. Returning to these writings was a practice in noticing all that has and has not shifted in both my internal and external worlds.
It honestly feels self-indulgent to write on here these days amidst the horror of what we continue to witness and experience. Are we doing enough to stop the suffering?
Maybe my lack of enthusiasm to write is also because I’ve thrown myself into gardening, and most recently making flower beds in the spots that receive sun around my house. It is the first time in my adult life I’ve had the opportunity to really garden, since I no longer live in a city or a second story apartment surrounded by concrete. I just want to dig my hands into the dirt, pull out weeds, and plant seeds. I had no interest in it until now. Any time someone identified plants around me or spoke about the flora and fauna extensively, I checked out. Maybe because I knew I couldn’t really access it. But now, all I do is stare at plants and try to slowly learn their names, where they are from, what they like. I long to return to the garden when I’m anywhere else. I not only long for it, I feel I need it to keep on living.
In front of the house, I dug out a few new beds that were once just weeds and gravel. Initially using a mattock, and then squatting to use a handrake or my bare hands to remove the dandelions, purple loosetrife, and other grasses. The loosetrife roots are the most relentless- sprawling laterally underground from the taproot, or the main root, which is as thick as a branch. I claw through the smaller roots and eventually wrestle with the woody taproot. Occassionaly, the meaning behind digging up old roots and sowing seeds for new roots pops into my head and I smile a little. My bare hands navigate through the cool soil because I can feel for roots more easily without gloves. Sometimes I graze an earthworm, a colony of ants, or a spider. Too much dirt collects under my fingernails and push against my nailbeds that ache at the end of the day.
In between being on my hands on knees, much of gardening is also stepping back and looking at a small effort in the context of the whole picture. How does that part of the stone wall I just put up fit with the rest of it? How many weeds are left- oh, I missed a bunch over there. Does the sun hit this spot? Yes, but only until early afternoon. After looking, you return to the same task or a new one you just noticed. The cycle repeates until it is ten minutes before a dinner plan, and I’m still covered in dirt and sweat. Or in the best case, until it is too dark to keep working. All of this immersion into the soil feels so right.
Last week, after a long day of removing loosetrife where I plan to grow zinnias, bachelors button, and cosmos, I listened to Upstream by Mary Oliver. I couldn’t help but feel a deeper meaning behind the narrator being Hala Alyan, a psychologist and poet who has been a beacon for many of us since October of last year. I listened to Hala’s voice recite the following lines:
It is summer now, the geese have grown, the reeds are a bearded green flocculence, full of splinters and light. Across the pond, the purple loosestrife (alien here, but what does that mean—it is recklessly gorgeous) has come into bloom. A fox steps from the woods, its shoulders are bright, its narrow chest is as white as milk. The wild eyes stare at the geese. Daintily, it walks to the pond’s edge, calmly it drinks. Then the quick head lifts and turns, with a snap, and once again the geese are appraised. Perhaps it looks toward me too. But I am utterly quiet, and half-hidden. (48)
I remark on how I had just spent hours and days digging up that recklessly gorgeous plant so that I can grow some pretty annuals. And it is recklessly gorgeous, a deep evergreen leaf against purple flowers spiraling upwards.
I also remark on that since April, I’ve seen a heron, a baby black bear, two red-spotted newts, a groundhog family, white-tailed deer, many chipmunks, three cardinals, and most recently a spring peeper resting on a small stone wall I built.
And that they’ve all always been here- but now I’m paying attention.
In April, I drove to Canada. On the drive, I sensed how the surroundings were about to burst with green. A glass jar of tulips for my friend rattled in the cup holder while I watched the sky go from bright white to a subtle light blue. There were clouds hanging low over the hills to my left, perflected shaped like the outline of high, distant mountain tops. Everything was exposed again after the snow melt, tender and fresh, maybe a little shy from being so bare. I think back to that frenetic build-up- how its all bloomed now. And the shameless, total lack of restraint. How the cycles we’ve depended on for decades are less and less predictable.
When the peepers returned this year, I thought of the first time I heard them the year before. We had just parted ways, but I knew we’d find a way back to one another. Here we are now, remarking on the sounds of early spring in the parking lot of the market.
I still think of you when I look at the river. I take note of its flow each time, remembering how I leaned so heavily on it this time last year as a way of making meaning through the pain. Winding through field and forest, alongside the interstate and into the lake. I drive by the river I wrote about earlier on my commute to work, but I moved to another town and now I’m 40 miles Upstream.
Yesterday, on my way to a friends house, we drove past a field with two highland cattle in it. The sun shone above distant mountains behind them. We could hear birds and crickets. On our way home, the two cows were now closer to the dirt road. We could see their long horns illuminated. They both stood and stared as we slowed down and got out of the car. We all looked at each other, under the moon. After gazing for sometime, we got back into the car and drove home.