A thick layer of composted manure hides the cardboard. Grass and chickweed yellow and wilt against crumbly dirt underneath. There is death and decomposition and the nourishment of the soil, but it takes time.
After a week we plant squash by shoveling through soggy
cardboard and into the hardpan. A dusting of fish meal fertilizer and a handful more
compost, a tucking in of roots, a blessing on leaves. Months from now (if all
goes well) there will be butternuts and delicata and sweet pie pumpkins swelling
in girth and stretching vines to far corners of the garden where the mint grows
in clumps and the snakes lie still in the sun. The popcorn seeds will have
outgrown their hulls, grown into the sky with dark tassels waving, waiting for
specks of life to brush against silk and crawl into the belly of kerneled
possibility.
Changed, all of it.
Changed, all of it.
We nourish the soil for our own purpose, for this food that
is growing that will fill our bellies in the winter. We nourish the soil around
these little islands of seeds and stalks so that the ground will repair itself
with microbes and worms. We nourish the soil to nourish the soil. I may not be here to reap the benefits of the latter. I may
have moved house or leapt into the stars. It doesn’t matter. In this moment,
with these hands, I am creating beauty and healing in this place.
When I first moved in it was difficult for me to look past
the chipped paint and cracks in the wall and overgrown weeds in the garden. Why should we
fix up land and a house when we are not sure we are going to stay? I stared at
the crabgrass in the flowerbeds and the piles of dead blackberry branches and
gnarled pear trees and felt hopeless and resentful. Why should I fix up someone
else's house, why should they benefit off of my hard work? Why didn’t they do
it to begin with? Why can’t it be exactly how I want it to be!
I
was startled by the ferocity of my reaction. Where was this
anger and resentment coming from? Aren't most of our waking hours spent
doing things that benefit other people? What happened to the young girl
in the
family kitchen who only wanted to help for the sake of helping?
Out into the garden, out into the world is what needs to
happen when that anger arises. I picked up pieces of plastic twine and bottles, chip
bags and wire as I went along up onto the hill and deeper into the jungle of Scot’s Broom,
entangled in my thoughts. Tiny purple flowers led me to a clearing underneath a pine
where deer dream and squirrels chirp. Each step is connected with the past
and future ones and they overlap with all the other beings that have stepped and
slithered and floated onto this earth before. We are layers of being. Layers of
beauty and destruction and care.We can leave the trash on the ground or pick it up to reveal the growth below.
It hit me.
Beauty Way. The concept seems simple: leave a place more beautiful
than you found it.
It is that simple to do. It can be sweeping a floor or
placing a rose in a vase. It can be leaving a piece of art by a trail or
filling a bowl with water for the birds or changing a roll of toilet paper
before it totally runs out. Beauty Way
can also be amending the soil and planting and tending even when there is no
plan for the future. The ‘why-should-I-bother’ sentiment disappears and an
attitude of service fills in the void the more it is practiced. Why not make a
room, a garden, a patch of land, a community more beautiful than how one found
it just for the sake of beauty?
Why not give without asking to receive?
Why not give without asking to receive?
I’d like to think I’ve been doing Beauty Way all my life
but...yeah right. On the scale of generous verses transactional I do believe my
scale tipped towards the latter. That is how we often survive. And then, in a
very short time, I was shown another way to live. I don’t think I was fully
conscious of the magic and complexity of Beauty Way until staying at The Ojai
Foundation where I learned how to be of service joyfully instead of with a
sense of obligation or direct (or indirect) personal benefit. The transition was
steep and I spent more than a couple weeks checking my watch to see when my
three hours of “Beauty Way” chores were done each day. And then they ceased to be
chores. And then I stopped checking my watch and instead started watching the
birds play in freshly drawn water and felt the intense energy of the Beauty Way-ed land. I realized that sitting in Council
circle with others, listening for the sake of listening, that was a form of Beauty Way, too.
It
clicked that I was fully capable of choosing to live the
Beauty Way instead of a life of begrudging obligation. I still forget
this when
the bills are due and 18-hour work days leave me exhausted or the weeds
in the
garden grow faster than the peas or I get pissed off for having to clean
up
somebody's mess. If I can breathe and switch gears, refocus on giving
freely instead of conditionally, I am able to live in this beauty. It
doesn’t always work, that’s for sure, but when it does I am filled with a
gratitude that seems almost silly while washing dishes. And it is fun!
Finding ways to nourish the land or a relationship with little notes and
sweet gestures makes me realize that this life is a game. It is a
choice to see that game as warlike or joyful.
Dishes for Beauty. Toilet Paper for Beauty. Squash and Cardboard and Manure for
Beauty.
Life is beauty if we can just nourish the seed of playful generosity within us.
