Earth

Okay. It is Spring. Time to start new projects. Plant your seeds. Find inspiration. Get going.

Garden & Gathering has been a lot of things in the last year. It started (and was named) for a radio drama. I wanted to write about a world that had exhausted its resources and how people would cope in this dystopia. It turned into a place to challenge myself and write. It has turned into a combination of all these things. The goal is to not get to that dystopian future. The goal is to inspire people to reconnect with the land, with each other, and with themselves.

I hope to post weekly challenges that I myself will partake with a report. This is just one tiny goal that will be the lifeline for the blog. I hope to support small, local businesses. I hope to support the arts. This summer my goal is to release a quarterly publication. Physical, right in the hands of anyone that wants one. Each season has its theme, this Spring it is EARTH.

I leave tomorrow on a sort of “vision quest” that will unite the last few weeks I have spent in semi-isolation. I will wander from North Carolina to Philadelphia and end in Brooklyn. I have made little road trips all my life, with the only goal to make it to the end. I am usually accompanied by a friend or lover, but this time I am on my own. I have lots of little art projects I have brought in my bag. I brought colored pencils, pastels, stamp pad, glue stick, charcoal, pens, pencils, and lots of paper. My challenge to myself is to meet new people and discover myself. To do this I have challenged myself to not bring headphones.

You see, I have a tendency to walk around to my own soundtrack. I never really realized that this is blocking out the world around me, it puts me in my own head. I cannot escape into the world if I am just walking around in my head. Today I sat on the deck at my Mother’s house surrounded by the forest. I rested me feet in the sun. I pulled up my pants to my knees to let as much sunlight hit my body as possible. I closed my eyes and started to listen. Far away I could hear trucks and motorcycles on the road, but that was quickly drowned out. Birds flapping, pecking at the trees. Wind rustling up dirt from the driveway. Branches bending in the breeze. Inside my head I heard nothing, at first. After awhile I heard the sound of peace and my mind exploring out into the universe calling to me.

This is my challenge: leave your head phones at home. Connect to the sounds of the physical realm around you. The same realm that holds more magic than your earbuds could hope to produce.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Pears

Pears in the park
Ripe with blue-black
Bruises, guiding the golden
Hand of sun clock stretch
Across aluminum can littered
Lawns of Cheesman
Pictures of Plato
Painted by companions
Begging a word from an acorn
Dried apricots and fermented hops
Drowning in leaves of grass meditating
On meditation

Haiku

When there is lightning
Your eyes lighten and laughter
Rolls between your teeth

I won’t go to work

Made a good cup of coffee
Should not that be enough to sometimes
Say I won’t go to work today

Happiness might better be birthed
Basking in the low light of a basement
Bedroom where traffic bleats

Dimly on wet cement outside
Looking for a dry place to park
Holding your head in your hands

Before making an honest dollar
Even if the bus
Costs two and a quarter

After all you cannot take it with you
Which should be enough to say
I won’t go to work today

What is Hidden

In summer you won’t need
A bed covered
In rose petals only a bed
Of grass
A pear
A bottle of red

Maybe a tree
With young branches
Framing the silver daytime moon
In summer remember stars
Blanket you at noon

One lover shakes as you hold her
Under rolling thunder no one hears

But you
In summer keep windows wide
Hear the city

Vibrate
Moan and shudder
Cry out your name