Nature

from the bottom up

/ howardshapiro / 3 Comments

I feel so stupid starting off with a couple of stalks of flowers, when children are being killed in classrooms; the newest television series is produced by the January 6th committee; the rights of women to control their bodies seems to be eroding; there is a war in Europe and Ukrainians are dying for our freedom; and every day the cost of everything seems to be rising. I bought two ice cream cones yesterday at over $5.00 each. (Granted they were waffle cones, but they were classified as smalls.) And there is nothing complete about this list.

There is so much happening in our world it is hard to focus on the simple things that remind us that we are not the only living things that inhabit this orb that is steadily hurling through space in a predictable arc. I am looking at the last flowers of the Hollyhocks proudly blooming. They seem to bloom from the bottom up which by the way takes me right back to the politics of this fragile democracy we call America. It too blossoms and flourishes from the bottom up. My reading of American history is that the framers of our political system wanted our representatives to be responsive to us. They are not landed gentry; they are not noble men and women who are entitled to power based on their class. They are us and are supposed to be listening to us. When they don’t, America is precariously close to being broken.

I remember the wild hollyhocks from my youth when they would grow alongside the grey cement walls of the apartment building in Dorchester or maybe even the one we lived in before that in Roxbury. It’s a long time ago and almost the length of the Atlantic seashore away. I doubt if anyone planted them. In the world I remember no one had time to plant flowers. If you planted anything it was vegetables – most likely tomatoes – or am I confusing my Jewish upbringing with an idealized version of our Italian neighbors. And is all of this memory pieced together from the movies and stereotypes?

I didn’t plant these hollyhocks where they are growing now. When I bought them at a local nursery, they told me they would blossom every other year. So, I placed them near the house where I would remember to watch over them and patiently wait. But they had a mind of their own and somehow, they wound up happily flourishing near the tree halfway down the hill. I guess the world has a mind of its own; we probably should listen to it more often.

That Was The Plan

/ howardshapiro / 15 Comments

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I sat in the rain next to the sign that says “lake” fixed to the tree whose trunk split into three.  I had come down to feel the late afternoon sun and the breeze that sometimes gently caresses and rocks me to sleep. That was the plan. The skies had been blue all day, no threatening clouds, just the ones that puff and fluff and blow this way and that. The lake was a mirror, that which was up was also down.

It’s ok I said to no one in earshot.  I love to hear the wind pick itself up and carry the raindrops through the trees and across the now rippling waters.  It is good this sound that brings you back to self. It is good this rumbling of thunder that rolls across the mountains and dares you to guess where it’s coming and going.

 
I’m in a golf cart – dry and feeling how blessed, how beautiful, how filled with awe this place, this moment. Struck with the discordance of the act, I write this on my phone as an email to myself. No pen, no yellow pad, no Ipad – just this cell phone with no service – just the patter of water dripping from leaf to leaf, just nature doing its thing with none of us to manage or control her with our expectations.  No Trump. No CNN. No news real or fake. Birds chirping add to the music of the moment. The thunder is closer over my head to be exact. Its beginning to weigh heavy now, disturbing the peace. The base vibrating through my body breaks through to that part of my brain that whispers it would be wise to go back up to the house, or at least the porch. Hard to move from this place sheltered by the trees, this place of tenderness, this place where water bounces off water creating circles that bump into each other disappearing as they become one body dancing in the muted light.

As I reluctantly listen, it is gone that fast. This place that is neither latitude or longitude is over at least for now. I am sure I can find it again. I call that certainty faith or trust or believing that the world outside of me mirrors the world inside. It takes settling in secure that you are meant to be here affirming all the while that the trees, the leaves, the water, the heavens and the skies all speak, not once, not only in a thunderstorm, not only by the lake but anywhere we are open, anywhere we can be deeply quiet, anywhere we can look and listen.

If I were a TV preacher or an ancient storyteller destined to wind up in the Bible, I would look back and tell you God was in this place. I would echo ancient sages and write that the word we use to describe both the mystery and the infinite is everywhere persistently patiently perennially waiting to be discovered.
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