In The Garden Living an RPG Life

I don’t know if others have such moments, but I remember when I became ordinary, when I stepped off the path of wondering and into the street of just doing.  I buried my other self so that I can only really hear her when I’m dreaming.  Not, sleep dreaming, but in a reverie in which my daydreamed self dreams.  This is beginning to change.  I am beginning to recognize (one of my own magic words) how to feel that other self’s feelings.

I remember, when I was about 5, a sensation that felt like a round soft ball being squeezed between two fingers until it could compress no more and then expanding to its former size.  Over and over I allowed myself to feel that.  I haven’t been able to feel that sensation for a long time.  I have felt it since my childhood, but not recently.  Is this my flexibility?  Is this what I need to recover?  I don’t know.

OK.  What do I know, in this moment?  I gave my power away the day I stepped away from myself.  I did it in the way most of us do so that we can feel safe in this world.  We didn’t know how to believe that we had made this world ourselves. We might have remembered how to do special things, but we didn’t know the other part, the power of acting in the present part.  Adults still call it magical thinking.  “You didn’t make us divorce”.  “It’s not your fault your brother died”.  But it is.  Not in a first world, Newtonian physics, kind of way, the way the adults talk about.  We know we are responsible because we know we are powerful.  We know there is magic and that the magic is real.

This is where I am at the moment.  Trying to remember the feeling of stepping away from myself.  I’ve got it caught in my body as a memory.  It’s holding me still in a way that doesn’t feel good anymore, like an anchor holding the boat still in a storm.  How many of these anchors have I thrown out in my life?  What parts of me are now stiffened because of the salt hardened on the ropes?  How do I let go?  Do I cut the ropes?  Do I try to raise the anchors?  Do I just let the anchors go from the boat itself and go on?

I like those images.  I like the way they feel in me.  Just finding them leaves me feeling a little more fluid.  A little softer.  A little more sure that I am leaving the street and headed back onto the path. 

Chris Baty of NaNoWriMo issued a general Call to Adventure and like a good adventurer, I responded:

What do i want in my garden for this year? Now is the moment of power, the time to plant for this year’s profusion and beauty.

It’s raining, softening the earth, cleansing the air and the plants themselves. The colors, the plants, the groupings all will contribute to the beauty of the garden. Some annuals and of course perrenials. Trees and grasses grouped together. Pots and boxes. Edibles and cuttables. Environmentally suited. I love my succulents that reach deep in the earth and create a savings of water. Seed plants also save resources for another time. Flowers that dry, leaves becoming wreaths and swags. Cuttings to be regrown and passed on. All resources and assets to share, to build an economy on.

This is the first time I’ve really felt the garden for myself. Art and fashion are calling to me even more than writing at the moment. I still have the long novel to work out, and while that has anchored writing, there is more to do with it. Like a vegetable garden or an herb garden, the writing needs to serve more everyday needs. Knitting keeps me quiet and grounded these days. I’m happy. It is the beauty of the garden’s function. Knitting is hummingbirds and butterflies and ladybugs. It is other birds and insects and worms. Practical beauty.

Now is when I put together my ideal garden. And this is also when I add drawing and music. So much to decide on and plant. Chris Baty is hosting a further adventure and it coincides with the new year’s blessing I composed for the Ku’mmunity and continues the theme of profusion. OK so the idea of profusion comes from me, but the opportunity for profusion, for planting a garden of fashion and art and music–that comes from the call.

I’ve been courting the idea of more artistic clothing or at least being styled to reflect my interests, beginning to invest in myself as an expression of beauty as balance, of inner and outer symmetry. Here is my opportunity to commit and consumate.

Listen! Song is everything. The hum of the bird is the bird making itself manifest.

Since it falls very near NaNoWriMo, I spend my birthday as the last free day away from writing. I focus outward, looking at the world around me. This time, I spent the day in San Francisco, the place where I recreated myself in an image that I hadn’t quite formed yet, that I’m still shaping.

I visited old neighborhoods and found them standing and not so changed that I would not want to reclaim them as my own.

And I left feeling renewed, rejuvenated and re-organized. I don’t have many memories of my childhood, or the life I had in Philadelphia or New York. It wasn’t until I lived in San Francisco that I became my own person. I’d changed my name and left all that I believed belonged to my father behind me.

Only recently have I begun to look behind me to see what I’d left behind as meaningful and maybe even necessary to who I am to become tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I prepare for November. I have an idea for the story and more importantly for me, an idea for my knitting. I also have committed myself to being a companion to other writers next month. I’m excited about the adventure. My spirit is satisfied by the adventure of my birthday and my imagination inspired by the advent of the NaNo.

So, how old am I? Usually I don’t hedge or retreat from revealing my age. I’ve come this far and survived my own insecurities so why hide. Well, it’s not because of shame or vanity that I resist telling. It’s the number itself. I’ve told a couple of people and I’ll tell you, whoever you are.

55 is not an age; it’s a speed limit. 54 is an age. 56 is an age. I will not be a speed limit!

I have my very own special neighbor! Hez.

I don’t know why i feel that this is a special thing, an occaision worthy of announcement and celebration.

Hez is the one who took me to buy my leathers for welding class. Maybe that is all that is required. This means he is the first male in my life to stop and commit to helping me move in a direction that I desire.

I think it would be less than loving to say that I am someone special to him. That I am The One to see him as more than others see him. It’s simply not the case. Tom sees Hez’s greatness. I don’t know what I bring to Hez’s life.

I do know that Hez brings to my life the feeling of being a girl again, and in the right way. He’s been a kind of big brother to me, and has inspired in me the desire to return with my own gift. Whatever that might be, as a neighbor, it will be enough.