Slowly Growing

A list of noticings...

In an online writing sanctuary with my beloved, long-time writing companion, Isabel Abbot, she offered this magnificent poem and a prompt.

The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

a painted window seen on a door in Albuquerque, New Mexico

From Isabel: "What is growing quietly in and around you, something you can’t see the shape of but are tending anyway? What are the daily, humble acts of care that keep it alive?"

Here is what I wrote in response to this prompt this morning: 

1. Future self, Elder self, Santa Fe Babe self, Indigenous Possibility self, Mama Refugia self, No Bullshit self, quietly growing, deepening roots, branches quietly reaching. Growth, and an abundance of letting go letting go letting go. Following those underground rivers of intuition, again and again and again, staying true to my body as divining rod even when it doesn’t make sense to others. It never steers me wrong. And from this, this ripening.

2. Having transgressed myself for others, having justified the bad behavior of others, having trusted those who turned out to be false and duplicitous, even though my gut knew who they were in the very moment of meeting them, I know now I will never do any of this again. I know where I stand. I never fit in with the mainstream, even the mainstream of the fringe. I must stay true to my own knowing. Turns out it is not subtle at all. It is right here, quietly growing all these decades. It is trustworthy.

3. I have no need to know what is right for others. I know what is right for me. Relief.

4. I trust myself. I am trustworthy.

5. After all this time, a velveteen-rabbit kind of softened gratitude for the fuckery I’ve endured.

6. Because of that fuckery and abuse, I am very clear about what I will never do to or with others: Dominate. Pull rank. Imagine I know what’s best for them. Belittle. Bully. Force. Try to be on top. Hook. Even in the most subtle of ways. Never.

7. No longer so worried about being right or wrong, good or bad, but instead a simple clarity: This is what I’m up for during this season of my life, and this is what I’m not available for. A commitment to keep listening to the evolving shape of that. And others? Take it or leave it. But never ever attempt to force me, dominate me, pull rank with me, imagine you know what’s best for me, push to shape my choices, hook me, or try to be on top of me. The simple summary of most relational conflicts I've ever had: "Get off me." 

8. The people who have crossed this line are few, but there is rarely a coming back once you’ve crossed it. I’m a Scorpio. What can I say? Bye.

9. Quietly growing… this deep reverence for the sacred ordinary. And the liberation of no-big-deal mind. Both of those.

10. Quietly growing... I am home. My body is home. Breathing is home. Skygazing is home. Spaciousness is home. Deep Earth connection is home. Kindness is home. These hands are home. The multitudes within now have a welcoming home. This day, home. Connection, home. Improvement, however, is out. Retired. Done. I am home. 

11. I want to reread Joy’s Fear Poem. Because it feels true inside me. “I take myself back. I am not afraid.” And I want to reread For Calling Spirit Back on its Wandering Feet. Because it feels true. And because I revere the line where it ends: “You must help the next person find their way through the dark.” I want to reread Mary’s poem, Flare. Because it feels true, and because this part of the poem just won’t leave me alone this fall. She writes this of her parents, but I say this of all my past outer authorities:

I mention them now,
 I will not mention them again.

It is not lack of love
 nor lack of sorrow.
 But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

I give them–one, two, three, four–the kiss of courtesy,
 of sweet thanks,
 of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
 May they sleep well. May they soften.

But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
 I will not give them the responsibility for my life.

12. Thank you, Mary. I can give Courtesy. Thanks. Anger. Good luck. But no kiss of complicity. Growing: Knowing what I will not carry. The fierce truth that no one gets responsibility for my life – no one but me. Isabel said it gorgeously: “What a glittering, filthy-rich, frightening thing that is, startling in its particularity and at times both terrible and terribly beautiful.”

13. Gratitude. Even in the moment yesterday when I caught the accidental selfie view from below not only with that double chin that can come when looking down but also a look on my face that said I was reading some serious bullshit - political updates I’m sure - and I saw this rather fierce, slightly jowly, “fuck this bullshit” look on my aging face - a look that would probably scare a child - at that most unflattering angle no less, and I even felt gratitude for that. That I could appreciate my aging and highly imperfect face while not looking cute or happy or smiley, but in an authentic expression of “fuck this bullshit” - it made me laugh. 

14. This softening. Quietly growing. Even in the moment when I drove the kid to basketball last night and realized the Subaru had a flat, and I had told C earlier in the day, “if you park in the driveway before the roofers clean up we’re guaranteed to have a flat” and he did anyway, and a tire was of course flat, and at first I was pissed, thinking, “Ah shit, I told him this would happen,” and then I just softened and let go of big deal mind. A flat tire is a pain in the ass, but it could be humorous rather than a big damn deal. Softening. A quiet miracle. 

I would love to know, dear reader, what has been quietly growing in and around you that you might want to name? I’d love to hear.

the gorgeous linden tree next door, quietly growing into this autumnal glory