garden maybe

The plot thickens. To be more accurate, it hardens, calcifies, solidifies completely. Given half a chance, or half a year. Anyone's who's ever worked a piece of land in the desert, especially a sometime-neglected one, knows what I'm talking about.

No one had started working this little plot of land yet, when I finally made it back here. It's just a solid sheet of clay holding a rock collection. Baked dry by another year of New Mexico sun, and hard freeze, and more sun. Mustard grows dense in the small sections that were cultivated last summer. Three short rows that held corn are now just-visible ridges. Two young trees seem to be holding their ground alright. The box gardens, overflowing last year with tomatoes, greens, and basil that I started and other volunteers nurtured, are empty and falling apart. Trash has drifted in from the street. Outside the low adobe wall, cars honk their horns and kids swerve by on bikes.

This place has been the gathering point of a true anarchist community, and a true spiritual work, for about 10 years now. I met its instigators 4 years ago: a woman of about 60 and a man of around 70, both devoted to lives of simplicity and service. They've treated me like family, even when I lose touch for months. Like this time. They always welcome me back, open-armed, when I come round. I want to start the garden for them. As well as for those who live here, and their kids. Much of the neighborhood's residents - and the focus of this outreach - are families of immigrants. Most from Mexico, a few from points further south. Largely without "legal status". Largely without the comforts taken for granted by most who live in this country, or in this town. The work of the community here is about connecting these families with the basics that they need to live and work and survive. Food and clothing (all donated), work opportunities, legal and medical advice, English classes. And - because it should be a right, not a luxury - fresh organic vegetables. If we're lucky. If we're blessed.

I'd rather do this the permaculture way. Careful, slow, planned. Build the soil over some time. Blanket this poor earth with mulches and compost. Introduce a colony of earthworms. But these kids need healthy food. And the instigators want to give them a chance to learn a few things about the life of the earth that breathes, just beneath their surrounding of concrete and asphalt. Their lives are even more transitional than mine. Who knows if they'll even live in this neighborhood next summer or not. Learning is now. Not to mention eating. Planting is now.

Except, it's raining now. And there were insatiable winds yesterday. And I have to work tomorrow. At two jobs. So far, my only work here has been clearing some weeds. I'm a little frustrated. It's a bit late in the spring to be starting a garden from the ground up (and down)...

Maybe I oughta ask for help with this project. Maybe I've taken on more than one person can do. We could surely open young minds to a wealth of beautiful knowledge, with a team of unofficial teachers. There are people all over who know so much more about gardening than I do. But here's the catch: the only guaranteed part of the project is the work. Not the when or how, and not the students. The kids will show up, if they do, while their parents are here for English class. Or when they pass by on foot, or on their bikes, and get curious. And unthinking neighbors, or those with even more struggle than the ones who participate here, might steal the vegetables, like they sometimes did last year. Who can I invite to participate in something this unpredictable?

Here's the offer: a lot of work. We provide all the materials. No guarantees of success. Anybody interested?

uncloser

These are not my beautiful words, but the beauty that Life brought this morning. A foundpoem from today's reading in The Sufi Book of Life (Neil Douglas-Klotz).

sometimes fear induced
hurt in the past
causes part of us to close
a clenched fist
experienced "ourselves" "failing"
illnesses or intoxications
very dense boundaries
emotional-somatic scar tissue

every being
already contained
heart of the One Being
lift the veil

expand your boundaries again
be as porous as you need to be
for this moment of your life

this does not mean eliminating
we need enclosure and container
only the One expands and contracts you
no other source of need
or bounty

Uncloser
open from the inside
reverse the direction
of contraction and incubation
the same radiating, creating energy
gradually expands from a center
in all directions
unfold into a larger circle
rhythm of your heart returns
to that found
in the heart of the holy
ONE