Come Back to Yearning

Winter has been mild. The ground is soft. On the downslope behind my house, I labor to clear a mangled overgrowth of briar, bittersweet, nettle, and privet which, from years of neglect, chokes out most other flora and threatens the old tall trees. I want to help variety grow. I squat with a little metal hand rake, clawing open the giving soil, loosening mats of roots and rhizomes. I lift aside the delicate myrtle and once I’ve cleaned the path, plant it back again. My knees and gloves are caked with dirt. Some days, I linger in one spot for two hours, snipping, ripping, and hauling, getting scratched, whipped, and poked. It is slow going, but the birds keep me company, chortling in the naked canopy, rustling low down in the dry leaves. Space opens up. A woody path unwinds. Whatever ails me melts into the ground. Once, I found a tiny snake under a rock. And worms of course. 

As I dig, antique bottles bubble up. At first I piled them under a tree as if, having discovered them, I should exhume them and do…what? I finally realized they belong to the bottle cemetery where they’ve been resting, doing no harm. I re-inter them. A friend told me about a sculpture class she’d attended where the artists made icons then buried them. No exhibits, nothing gathering dust in a room. Create, then move the artifact into to a long decay and dissolution. A de-creation, almost an absolution, I’d say. Because everything is like this, we just don’t actually look at the consequences of creativity. We get stuck on making and building, disregarding what comes next. At this moment in my life, many of my creations could be bathed in myrrh, wrapped, and placed in an honoring darkness. I fill the back hill with old bottles and with done dreams. Only then is there space to meander among the trees in the Creative Unfolding. This feels wonderful–to not stumble over accumulations, those ‘just in case’ husks that are memorials to past selves. It isn’t that I disavow my past, but my being is relieved to stretch and shift. My being is a waterfall. My being is an alchemy. There is a difference between a creation and creative unfolding. 

The other morning I woke slammed with vertigo, disturbed by the poison gas of national politics. Vertigo is my barometer; it comes on when, distracted at the soul level, I allocate too much energy to whatever is not part of my soul’s purpose. Over the arc of human time during periods of difficulty, mysticism and art and simple daily happiness have persisted, flourishing in the nooks, hidden in the deep heart. Truth has been spoken. Goodness has flowed. Our energy is a precious thing: we must not squander it, or let it be stolen, whether the thief is inside or outside. We must always come back to our yearning. The garden and the woods are yearning. In the winter ground, roots and small green shoots nestle in dark dirt, lush with energy to persist in their being-ness. As gardener, my act is to discern and selectively clear. To encourage and discourage, root by root, stem by stem. To see it all, feel it all, and not get stuck anywhere.