Meditation on a Seed
Tender- hearts,
The soil is warming and buds are popping on the north side of the mountain. On Easter Sunday, I spent several hours planting seeds (medicinals and flowers) into the dozens of small, plastic pots we have amassed over the years. I labeled them carefully with black sharpie on faded green construction paper I found lying conveniently on the dining room table after the kids had abandoned it. See, they say, aren’t you glad we didn’t clean up? I carried the trays of seeds — five, total— up to my attic studio, where they’ve all germinated (save the arnica— which I was expecting to take longer— and a variety of sunflowers — which I was not expecting, and I think deserves some investigation that I may or may not get to this year) and are growing in the sometimes steamy climate of the top floor.
Even though we’ve only been in this house a year, I feel my magic permeating the attic— where I meditate, draw, read, paint, dance, lay in my bougie sauna blanket— and the plants, both the freshly germinated ones that have sprouted from those seeds and those that are drying in the window-sill or dried in jars waiting for a potion to be plunged into, cast exactly the kind of spell I’m looking for. This is a wild space, even though I’ve organized the space into zones for writing, sewing, painting, and the like. On the rug at the center of the room, I bring everything together. I mix every genre— scribbling poems right next to a pile of readings on composition theory. Every Saturday, I do a big clean-up, which is one of the most creative acts I can do. The juxtaposition and re-configuration of objects always sparks something for me, so that as soon as it’s neat, I’m untidying it with a new project. Nothing is ever complete, and I think depending on where one is and their tolerance/practice for/with uncertainty, that can either be a comfort, a bore, or a source of anxiety. For me, non-completion is a relative of hope, for it keeps us on our toes, in pursuit.
On that same Sunday, the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, I loosened some soil in one of the garden plots and planted two handfuls of marigolds directly into the dirt. I live on about a third of an acre, and there are lots of little pockets of garden space where I can experiment during this first real summer of living here. This old house sits on the upward climb of Mt. Tabor, a dormant volcano. In spite of this, and our relative distance from the two rivers that bisect and border the city of Portland (especially considering how close to the Columbia River I used to live), the soil here is extra-squishy, super-muddy and not at all rocky. When I walk around even the grassy, mossy parts of the yard— especially in the pre-dawn dark—, my bare feet connect with mud.
As I was digging in the dirt, I smelled the unmistakable smell of decay. Initially, I thought it was dog poop: at once sweet and pungent, pervasive yet not overpowering. I searched around for a forgotten pile, which perplexed me since Coco can’t access this part of the garden. My search yielded no material results, and, ultimately, I concluded that it wasn’t the smell of dog poop, but the smell of decomposition that accompanies and nourishes all life. We left a thin quilt of the last oak leaves of the season over this garden in the fall. I think what I smelled was the fragrance of six months of rain filtered by those brown crackly, then soggy then chewy-chewed leaves, loved on by the fungi, kissed by the bacteria snuggled into that dirt. I smelled movement, change, process, imprints of light and darkness, probably coyote scat. Now I’m romanticizing this still unpleasant smell, but the enchantment has done its job, and now I’m appreciating it rather than wrinkling my nose. I’m making kin with my own contributions to the smell of decay that is also the smell of a future currently beyond our wildest dreams.
A text I’ve been deeply engrossed in for the past few years (and I’m sure I’ve written about here, but can’t deviate from the writing to check it right now) is Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin with the Chthulucene (pronounced thoo-loo-seen). In it, Haraway describes—above all— a body/heart/mind-set shift for acknowledging and appreciating the interconnectedness of all life (and in conversation with Haraway’s other work, I’d argue everything created by life) and recognizing the role humans play in that interconnected web, without over- or under-stating our importance. In some ways, Staying with the Trouble is a variation on Shantideva’s Boddhisattvacaryāvatāra, or maybe it’s just my reading of Shantideva: everything is essential to every other thing; every being is neither more nor less important than any other thing. Even the things we make our do that repulse, scare, or confuse us contribute to the life processes of the planet. The shit is the compost that fills the soil with nutrients.
If you’re primed for this kind of thing, it’s easy to recognize the seed is a portal to the future; to look at a seed is to see potential not yet realized. A seed contains its entire life blueprint, including its eventual death. To look at a seed is to behold death that is only possible with birth. To look at a seed, seeing birth and death simultaneously, and holding each with equal reverence is a practice. The plant doesn’t stop growing when its first flower bursts forth. It continues: giving and receiving as it offers up new seeds, rains petals, and eventually unites with the earth as decomposition begins. It’s always beginning from somewhere, and the end of one cycle signals the beginning of the next.
🖤
reading + recommending
I read the poem “Original Sin,” by Sandra Cisneros this winter, and realized I had never read her canonical, genre-bending book The House on Mango Street. It is a gift. Highly recommend!
Deep into The Essential Muriel Rukeyser, whose work reminds me over and again how truly powerful poems are.
I added to and rearranged my playlist Venus in Aries, and I do think it pulls together a very specific type of energy. ENJOY.
If you have the means, please contribute in whatever you can to alleviating suffering in Gaza. This piece, written by Drs. Feroze Sidhwa and Mark Perlmutter, is one of the most moving reports from the genocide in Palestine that I have read. Here they are on Democracy Now. I support the International Rescue Committee and have for years— they are doing vital work in places like Gaza, South Sudan, and Congo. For opportunities to support individual families and people in Gaza, check out Operation Olive Branch on Instagram.
Finally, I’m posting practices here for paid subscribers. At this point, a paid subscription includes a monthly practice post (movement and meditation recordings from my archives) as well as a live ZOOM (recorded & posted here). I’m slowly releasing my last meditation and writing immersion (the reflecting pond) here, too. Thanks to everyone for reading and supporting the yoga! <3
LOVE TO ALL+++
kelly
