Truly Alive

"A baby's body is soft and gentle.
A corpse is hard and stiff.
Plants and trees are tender
and full of sap.
Dead leaves are brittle and dry.

"If you are rigid and unyielding,
you might as well be dead.
If you are soft and flexible,
you are truly alive."
- I Ching 76

My red basil start is beyond hard and stiff: it is gone!

So young! So tender! So truly dead. So “disappeared” leaving a small divot in the spot where it stood. After I spent my yesterday afternoon strengthening the perimeter, guarding the borders, trying to keep out the goblins in this time of terror. (And so overwrought, the anti-war metaphor!)

So, in an attempt to become softer and more flexible, I spent the afternoon today watering in the wind, listening to the sounds of wind chimes, their voices becoming more shrill as the wind picks up. Sometimes there’s a hysterical clang! The perfect soundtrack to the chore of watering on a windy, sunny, Spring afternoon.

I puttered around and got my hair blown in my face. Did I become softer and/or more flexible? Not so much.

But I was truly alive out there, with the wind tossing around sweet springtime fragrances of orange blossoms, mock orange blossoms, lilacs, wisteria and those endless yellow wildflower species. Their fragrances were being tossed around like an aromatherapy convention in a tornado. The sunshine, hose rainbows, wind and wind chimes - my Springtime Symphony of light, sound, touch and smell. I call it "Truly Alive"