Not everyone is your friend

Due to an intoxicating mixture of laziness, depression, a sense of futility, and a renewed appreciation for and sensitivity to pollinators, I allowed my yard to grow wild over the last few years. The bees, butterflies, moths, dragon flies, fire flies, chipmunks, squirrels, woodchucks, raccoons, black bears, coyotes, red foxes and a wide variety of birds seem to enjoy it. With the re-wilding comes the proliferation of all sorts of plants. Among them are a few very aggressive ones I'd rather not see quite so many of. Briars, tree-strangling bittersweet and , worst of all, poison ivy. 

Poison ivy does well in the shade of other taller plants and shoots its woody vines out across open areas. It's flowering white right now. Beautiful in its way, but it makes me realize that most of this parcel that I colonize has a ground cover of poison ivy. 

Between the ages of 7 and 18, I found myself allergic and highly sensitive to the oils of this plant. I didn't even need to come into direct contact with it. Sometimes several times a year, including during the winter months, I'd find myself with an unbearably itchy, oozing rash everywhere that I had skin - from my scalp down to the soles of my feet. I've had it less severely a few times as an adult too. So, I have a certain amount of antipathy toward that plant. 

One could say that my relationship to plants has changed and deepened significantly during this passed year. I have a growing awareness of our interactions. I am more careful with them. I think about reciprocity - what they give me and how I might give back to them. First, do no harm, right? 

Well. my jungle experiment shows me that without some sort of behavioral management program (limit setting) these aggressive plants will take it as far as they can. How should I respond? Part of me thinks that man should probably just surrender and let the jungle reclaim what we've built. Some other part thinks that I have a right to exist like everything else and that harmony is something that only exists from high above the fray of the every day. In the moment and up close, there is tension and conflict in co-existence. 

Roundup kills poison ivy effectively. It kills everything else too. I don't want to resort to that. Over the last two days I filled a spray bottle with a solution of salt, distilled vinegar, and Dawn dish soap and went to war. Let's see what happens. I have to learn how to communicate more skillfully with that plant. 

Fruitful

Fruit is arriving. Nearly July. The hilltop looks different since my last visit a week ago. The grass is high and strewn with wild flowers. The oaks along the road know me and appear somehow more animated than before. Today passed so quickly, but I didn't miss it. 

It took me missing a great many days to get to this place. Nothing is really wasted.

Busy as

Turning my head to the side to be eye level with the white flowers in a field of clover so that I can watch the bees doing their work. Bumble bees (or what I think of as bumble bees) of different sizes; a few honey bees; and two or three varieties of very small bees (some of whom liked the sweat or the salt on my hands and arms). They live just four to six weeks and literally work themselves to death. Such focus and intensity. Never once questioning the veracity of their purpose.

Savory

I didn't want to mention it because I'm a little superstitious about good things. To me, they're fragile and shy. Even just noticing them causes them to fly away. The weight of scrutiny and examination are too much for them to bear. 

A couple of days ago, I found myself feeling really good. I felt really good like that all day long. And that good feeling was not attached to another person or another person's actions. This hadn't happened often in recent years. 

I got out of bed at first light. I drank some water. I jogged about half a mile up the road to a field of mowed grass. I faced the rising sun and did four warm up exercises meant to expel internal negative energies and to get the stagnant energies moving through your body. Then I did some random calisthenics - ten rounds of 30 seconds of work followed by 30 seconds of catching my breath. Then I stood in the grass on bare feet and let the rising sun shine into my eyes. Earthing, some people call the barefoot thing. Grounding. Being in contact with the electromagnetic energy of the Earth. Sharing my energy with it. I started to say thank you to the Earth and the Sun which I could feel viscerally nourishing me. Then I just kept going saying thank you for so many other things. The song that sprang into me last week rose again and I started to sing. The grass was damp and cool under my feet and the air had a light sweet smell to it. A gift from the trees and plants. I started to speak affirmations out loud. They flowed naturally and easily. I spoke about what I wanted the day to look like. Then I sat in the grass for about ten minutes to get my stiff body used to seated meditation. When I'd done that, I ran back home. I stepped out of my clothes and into a cold shower. It was incredibly refreshing.

The rest of the day just seemed to flow. I got things done. I could focus. I didn't get drowsy or feel foggy all day long. Oppressive thoughts didn't move in.  I found myself singing, smiling a little bit, and moving more. 

It felt very good to be me for a change, and I savored the experience. 

Act your age

Well, I had the pepperoni and hot honey pizza I was craving so fiercely during the diet tonight. I ate three slices and boxed the rest. No great shakes, honestly. I was unmoved. 

There was only one other man eating at the bar. He told me he was a truck driver, crane operator, mechanic and kick boxer. He said he was sixty-three but he looked to me like he was in is mid-40's. He told me growing up he used to tumble the neighborhood kids in his parent's dryer. He took credit for toughening them up. 

I did a lot of laughing during the hour I spent with him. I'd nearly forgotten what that feels like. 

The funniest story had to do with him and several same age friends consuming some sort of ghost pepper extract and suffering mightily a couple of months ago. He thinks he probably broke his stomach. The exact same sort of idiotic dares we took on as high school kids. Innocence endures.

Hadwen Park

A white swan swims gracefully in the dirty shallows of the city's river which is punctuated with cast-off tires. I imagine myself crossing on a blow down and climbing the slope through the sea of graves. Notre Dame, the French cemetery of Our Lady. I've got relatives in there. And even more across the street in the Irish one. Hope, it's named. 

I sat on a flat rock under direct sun in as close as my inflexible body could get to a seated meditation position. I tried relaxing into it, breathing my way in, but a horsefly arrived almost immediately and began to relentlessly attack my sweating face. I finally killed it against the side of my nose and continued sitting for the rest of my ten minutes. 

Later, I took off most of my clothes and laid flat upon the ground under the hot sun and asked Madre Tierra and Padre Cielo to heal me. Before long, I could imagine negative thoughts and detrimental  patterns rising up and out of me like steam being burned away to nothing deep within the heart of the sun. I could imagine past experiences and their corresponding emotions which were locked painfully in my tissues being drawn down into the Earth turned under and into compost to decay and transmute into essential nutrients for new and healthy growth. 

I trusted them. They held me securely. What now can I do for you?

Cut off

At dusk last night I caught a raccoon trying to open my slider. He definitely seemed to understand the door's mechanism of action. This is what happens when you feed the birds. The squirrels and chipmunks also feel invited. So too do the raccoons and the bears. 

It's summer. There are other options out there, Critters. I'm gonna have to cut you off until the cold returns. 

All except you, hummingbirds. I shall always remain in your debt for delighting her the way I wanted to.   

Sunday morning on another planet

A black bear came through the backyard yesterday afternoon. The jungle has grown so high out there I hardly noticed him. I took myself out to the local restaurant for dinner and a drink or two. Some of the things I'd looked forward to having again tasted wrong, overpowering, and even repugnant. The people seemed exceptionally loud and obnoxious and the bits of conversation I overheard were vapid. There were keno screens; loud piped-in music; four or five sporting events on different screens; all of them making focus and thought impossible. That's the point. 

It was a sharply-felt generally unpleasant experience all around. 

I'm up early this morning to drive to Ayer for some donuts - a promise I made to myself during the dieta. Ruby's Donuts is on somebody's national list of top 50 donut shops in the country. So here we go. 

Song

Have you ever said thank you to a tree? Do you understand that the tree and you breathe one another?

As I was walking down the trail, words started to come to me. Nouns. They arrived in the same cadence as my tramping boots. After a while, I began to chant the words in the rhythm of my marching feet.  

Soon, a second round of words arrived. Adjectives this time. One for each of the nouns. I added them to my chant. Before long, the chant had become a song. By the time I arrived at the tree I came to thank I'd been singing it out loud. I felt good there with my hands pressed to the bark saying what I had to say.

After, I walked to the top of the hill to the spot where I sometimes pray. A warm rain began to fall. I said my thank you's there too. I asked for help for all of us. I made my offerings. I left sunflowers seeds for the inhabitants. 

When it was time to go, I picked up singing that song again. Distant thunder sounded. More words arrived. Pronouns this time - You, I, We. 

When I sang the "We" verse, the sky opened up in a deluge. The hard rain felt warm, cleansing, and encouraging. I sang louder. Thunder rolled and the trail soon became a narrow river. The harder it rained, the louder I sang. And I did so all the way back to where my car was parked.

We are healing light, endless love, gentle strength, unlimited power.

Detoxify

Tomorrow the dieta ends. I've lost 20 pounds and am craving salt, seasoning and spice. I've been experiencing intrusive thoughts about pepperoni and hot honey pizza. I got to know a relation in the plant world and received some valuable insight over the last 21 days. Now, embody these changes in the world. I let the Sun and the Earth work on me today. I felt better. 

Solstice

It's been a year of working from home and not interacting in person very much with the outside world. The season is changing. It's time to get back out there but in a different form.

Beautiful

He looked like a short haired biker. Burly with a seemingly permanent don't fuck with me expression on his face. He spent 20 years in the military and left with PTSD. He said he walked around for years not feeling anything. And that cost him. He'd lost a lot. We talked for a while. He told me that therapy at the VA just overwhelmed him by making him re-live his past trauma. He told me about one thing that did help  keep him going. He watched The Wizard of Oz at least once a month. Tears came. Innocence still lives within us. Even now. 

Morning has broken

The moon was bright last night when I arrived home after spending a little time with my kids and watching my son act in a student film. His teacher was there and she told me that he'd made an experimental film she'd show in a film festival if she had one. It was good to see him absorbed in something. To see the spark in him. I fell asleep peacefully. 

In my dreams, I saw people I'd known in the past. Their faces hardened when they recognized me. Not one was glad to see me. I had a feeling that somehow I'd done nothing but harm all of my life. That's not me now, I wanted to say. 

I woke early. The light in my room is dim and the air feels cool. There's peace here. I don't really want to move and just watch the sun ascend slowly. The heat arrives today. It feels like a ceremony by ordeal is about to begin and I have been fasting and purifying myself in preparation for it. 

When this is over, if we are left alive, I'm thinking of celebrating with my kids and Korean fried chicken.

Maine

Maine for the weekend in a beautiful place watching over others who were going within to seek a truer connection.

Food and other things

The scale tells me that I've lost almost fifteen pounds in twelve days. I'm probably dehydrated from a run last evening so that number is likely optimistic, but still I'm shrinking. I'm getting used to the food restrictions. No sugar, salt, seasonings, caffeine, alcohol, bread (gluten), onions or garlic, citrus, red meat, pork, and no dairy.  I'm eating apples, berries, bananas, nuts, chicken, ground turkey, trout, eggs, potatoes, rice, couscous, corn tortillas, greens and other vegetables. Drinking water and sometimes coconut water for electrolytes. I'm not as achey and moody as I was the first few days, but I still get occasional headaches and feel off balance sometimes. I'm almost half way through. What I miss most is seasoning - flavor. This is true in the rest of my life as well. 

Right way

Proactive. A full day of getting what needed doing done.

Tree

A mighty oak and I with the white clouds blowing over us up there on the hillside when the sun came out. My hand pressed against the bark as I looked up into the high branches. I see sunlight streaming down through holes in the leaves. The gypsy moth caterpillars are on the move. 

I see you've got your troubles too. I thought about that for a while and just kept my hand on its bark. Can you take some of this from me? And I'll try to take some of yours from you? 

I closed my eyes and breathed evenly. We inhaled each other's out breaths and were nourished by them. We breathed three breaths together. Reciprocity.

Blink

There was a dying man in the road today when I went out looking for strawberries. Traffic was stopped. Someone was vigorously performing CPR on him. It occurred to me to pull over and help, but the ambulance was arriving as I approached and there were plenty of hands already there. I felt like he was already gone. A woman was kneeling beside him.

Change. Pieces are coming off. Peeling off in strips. Dropping off in chunks. And none to soon.

Now, there's a firefly against the glass, signaling me. Greenish-yellow lantern blinking its secret sequence. 

Finish line

My youngest graduated high school this evening. I felt strange driving out there. It's hard to describe the feeling. After, we went out to dinner with a group of people. We took pictures. He might be just a little taller than I am now. Something's starting to dawn on me. This self has served its purpose. Let it fall away now. 

Place holder

Sometimes you get the message too late. Or maybe exactly when you should. I'm not sure how to interpret these events. Doors closing and doors opening. 

What you said you'd do

Resistance is a problem. Stop arguing, stop pushing against, stop bucking. Stop trying to be something. Find a place of calm in you, it said. A few minutes later you were attacked from all sides. Your nervous system did what it does - ramps way the hell up  - and you want to roar, to strike, without even knowing at whom or why. This is in you - still. This is what you do until you don't anymore. Until you change what it is you do. When will that be?

I'll be here when you get here

A diet of sorts. Three days in. It's not even that restrictive. I'm irritable, achey, clumsy, morose, weaker, tired and pessimistic. A mild inconvenience is all it is. Change. Grow up, I tell myself. 

Meanwhile, the great oak waits patiently grinning very slowly. 

Another walk

Closer to the trees, I wanted to see if I felt differently. It was dusk and seemed to be the confluence of the seasons of the various blood seeking insects - black flies. mosquitoes and horse or deer flies. I watched them driving a raccoon crazy a few days ago. They're not above waving their hands around their heads wildly either. I tried to refrain from doing that and just allowed the cloud around my head to travel with me. Down the trail, I climbed a hill and heard what sounded like a large group of men shouting chaotically on the other side. Bullfrogs in the swamp. As soon as I crested the hill, despite being quiet and hidden by foliage, they stopped in unison. Protecting the secrecy of some sacred rite. Some of the chattier young ones soon resumed, but the wise ones remained silent. Below, there was a small cove. Two large beavers floating on their backs chewing young trees. I've never had the opportunity to watch a beaver couple interact. Whenever I've seen them they've been solo and stereotypically busy. This was leisure. There was a softness to them. They ate and dove under, swimming short distances around each other languidly. I could see they were in love. I believe they were basking in it.