“What is natural, anymore? The more I see, the less I know, as my memory becomes a loosely tied bouquet of elusive artifacts. What did I think I knew about clouds? Joni’s song takes on new meaning. Sure, I might have looked at clouds pretty closely over a lifetime, but still not understood a damn thing about them in the end. It’s “cloud illusions” I recall, I guess. But grudgingly. Yanking my steering wheel to the left, & braking abruptly, I’m suddenly scrambling for my camera, as the strangeness above thickens, while threatening to simultaneously, disappear. This is how life is for some of us, prone to a self-doubt which by extension implies mistrust of mostly everything. Baited daily by the clueless neutrality of trusted media sources, egged on by a now socially acceptable dumbness, we all can and do, understandably, falter. Falter, and flounder, until knocked flat by a wedge in the sky not immediately recognized as real. I dunno. You might say, who cares. Just enjoy life. Look up at heaven, accept your inferior status as idiot, and obsess about cars, or farms or aikido. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. One small point, about inconsequential, dwarfish men, who pull strings. They also wage silent wars in homes, and destroy innocence. Also, dwarfish women, but fewer. I continued on up and over the mountain, trying to etch each piece of the rugged terrain into my heart. Not clear why, but doing it, feeling dutiful, maybe possessed by the land. The day promised a cool breeze, better for working than a brutal stillness, infested by black flies. The old ranch house was sweetly situated with a view that must have been bucolic, once upon a time. The enormous black pile of some farmer’s idea of composted soil, lay inert on a tarp, for me to move, using a wheel barrow. I had both forks, and shovels, ready to garner the best tool(s) for the job. A lost patriarch remembered on stone, probably local granite, announced himself, under a weeping larch. I missed him … for some reason. Felt cheated, for not having known him. His wife, so gracious & his son, who’d hired me, and told me not to bill his mom. Jobs that sit on this kind of love filter up to the gardener, & honor moves with it, paying forward. No, I wasn’t happy with the amount of buried “landscape fabric” lurking or visible, making a mess of things, making my job a chore. Don’t ever use it, despite the tempting promises. In the end, I pulled to the limit of my strength, to get it out. While the insects, despite a stiff wind, bit and swarmed, and bit. Sometimes you feel you’ve earned your wage, in extremis. You know? I was thinking about getting all the sodden composted soil, distributed, in time to get to the grocery store, to buy organic cucumbers and tomatoes, for my dinner. Is this unusual? To push, to pull, to worry, to strain, to help, to set right. I do think I have a knack for seeing what needs to be done. When they fashion my tombstone, perhaps consider the words: “She saw what was needed, and she was right”. I’d take it as a job well done, to be so noted.”
