Like soup, or the contents of a cauldron
It was on or around the weekend before Labour Day, two or three weeks into my “official” efforts at charting out my next source of income, that I realized I was heading for the final week of the first summer I’ve spent outside “the building” in seven years, and that I would be better served doing nothing, actually.
Doing nothing is not easy. For one thing, obviously, one is never doing nothing; even sitting on the balcony watching the slow movements of the neighbourhood — which I do nearly daily — is actually “something,” but I file it here under doing nothing. Meditation and moonrises are doing nothing. Reading a paperback is doing nothing. Baking is technically doing something; but enjoying the fruits of that baking is doing nothing. The critical component, as a friend and former colleague reminded me a few months ago, is to absent yourself from “the need to be productive,” whatever that means. The in-built, adulthood-long practice of intentionality. Intentionality and purposefulness are great; knowing the goal, as another former colleague of mine and I like to say, is the first/only criteria of doing anything at all. But they become tricks; habit-forming. How much time do we spend in the conscious mind and by doing so, press down all the things beneath it. Weeding a garden is great — the crops grow better. Not weeding a garden, though, looks like this:
There is a hill on the headland above Catra’s Walk, down near the Corktown Common, that is left to grow every summer, and by the last week of August it looks like (the above). They’ll chop it all out soon and the snows will come and then next spring it will start all over again; but every year since the pandemic started I have watched this mess of bracken become a part of the world. You could get lost in it, and come out dusted with ticks. It comes up so fast, but then, so does everything opportunistic, life-borne. Look the other way in my herb garden for a week and there they are, two or three foot-long shoots of the weed I let grow (experimentally) five summers ago and has been valiantly clawing its way back to the sunlight ever since. God fucking knows what’s under the tomatoes. God help you if you haven’t been harvesting your basil correctly.
In Virgo season, in the blue supermoon, in the pre-Festival, in the Ahsoka era, in the breaking of the over-30 heat and the coming of the under-15 mornings, in the back to school, back to socks, back to sweaters and candles and the lights down low, I am at the absolute apex of my power. Yesterday in my novel my heroine climbed into a cave below her home, one that she never knew was there, except that as soon as she was in it, she’d always known. I had no idea what would be inside that cave when I sent her inside, except as soon as her eyes adjusted to the dark, I knew every thing she was going to see — none of it committed to paper yet; all a DNA chain folding backwards from the cord behind my eyes. This is what is underneath the steel plate of the conscious mind. “Should” thinking. Being productive.
The collapse of the planet has begun
Out there, the plot thickens. It is so much thicker than you know. I thank you all for your text messages. I was with my tomatoes. Yes, I do feel vindicated. No, I don’t feel good about it. It’s sad. Things going very badly and then falling apart, is sad. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. I try not to look back at it, any more than I have to. I suppose for the next few weeks I won’t have much of a choice. I am planning about that far ahead — ten or twenty days, at most. Most days, not even that far.
Recipes!
- Creamy Tomato Soup (Tupelo Honey cafe)
- Beef and cheese pie, New Zealand-style
- Lavender & Earl Grey scones
- Bacon and tomato hash (Nigella)