Monday, October 05, 2015

Summer's End

This is the time of year when what your efforts were worth are displayed on the shelves in your basement if you're lucky enough to have one. Here in the 21st century we can tomatoes from grandmother's saved seeds, we pick up fallen fruit and make sauce, jellies and juices. We start pulling finished plants out of veggie beds and setting things up for next year. And we evaluate how we did.

People sometimes ask me how I manage to be so busy when I am in such pain, but when you are in the garden weeding or harvesting you aren't thinking about pain and your back, you're thinking about jelly and stews and root cellar designs. You're thinking about all those hops you harvested, estimating how many gallons of ale can be made. You're feeling a direct connection between your stomach and the Fecundity of the Earth. You feel the love of the soil. This is worth a little pain, and sometimes it can be worth a lot of pain.

Sometimes I relate to the garden as a newer Eden, testing my ability to learn from the planet, to find a spiritual meaning in life. The Japanese have gardens of sand which never give forth fruit, and this is where they meditate on life. I have gardens of flowers, fruit, veggies....all vibrant and alive most of the year, inviting and supportive of my life in my pain. My ashes will be scattered in this garden.

My parents are dead, my son is dead, my best friends Teddy and Larry are dead... yet the other day I got an email from a man I had been sure was dead! Seems my information was premature. The thing which intrigues me is the concept that maybe in my previous universe he was dead but when I shifted into a different shadow I found one where he was still living. In an infinite universe this is possible. So the thought comes back instantly, "Where would I have to go to get Teddy and Larry back and how would it impact my current family? What about Jon?" Say you knew you could shift universes and somebody you loved was dead, so you shift and now they are alive, maybe they had a little accident but not fatal. But when you look around you find that somebody assassinated the President or your daughter was still born.... what would you do then, go back? How would you find the right universe? Lots of details to consider. Sometimes it is best to let sleeping Universes lie.

No comments: