Exploded Dreams

When younger," said he, "I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. My feelings are profound; but I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed; for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures. When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors…. My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense… My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred it did not endure the violence of the change without tone such as you cannot even imagine.
- Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

Langston Hughes once pondered what happened to dreams when they were “deferred”. That’s a nice way of saying when they don’t come true. Rather than the artful raisin in the sun, I like the last line of his poem when he posits that such deferred dreams might just explode.

One fortunate consequence of losing one’s mind with age is that the dreams of youth fade too. So, it’s not like I mourn all the childish dreams that shriveled and dried up. It’s more like I don’t remember them, and thus they don’t sting.

It's more like there’s this empty shelf in the increasingly dusty and disordered cupboard of my mind where the dreams must have once resided. There’s a button, a dessicated and now colorless flower, a mysterious key to some forgotten lock, a pretty rock, a small picture of Dopey, and some blue lint. Luckily, I am educated enough that I still recognize the astonishing breadth of my ignorance; and more fortunate still that I no longer have sufficient imagination to be frightened by the unknown.

The dreams of my youth didn’t so much explode as fizzle. I don't think I was destined for illustrious achievements. I didn’t discover some unknown land, or write a book or stop a war. I didn't posess a sentiment of the worth of nature to support me in tough times. Then again, my sensitive little heart didn't get unimaginably wrenched by misery.

I did forgive instead of holding hate. I learned how to cook. I learned that I like cats. I read of few books and understood fewer.

I loved my family, and knew love in return. I made a garden. I am satisfied.

The Idle Gardener’s Mind

"Dic mihi quid melius desidiosus agas"
The line from Martial (8.3.12) translates "Tell me, what better will you find to do in your idleness?" Alcaito's jestbook

I have a very vocal cat. Pacifically (sic): a Tonkinese, which is supposed to be a cross between a Siamese and a Burmese. Since neither of these countries existed when this breed was created, my cat may be a lurking illegal alien. Or as we like to call them here in mellow inland San Diego, uninvited guest. She’s vocalizing at the moment, pacing up and down the halls whining that she needs love, which, like we all do. Lily is a bit “dumb” in a “cute-but” kind of way. I say it’s no small wonder we all don’t pace and whine like she does – though perhaps with less righteous passion than her walnut-sized brain can muster. I prefer to assume she’s crying for me than to worry that she might be a terrorist-in-waiting, a sort of sleeper-cat, and that she’s really crying “Death to America”.

Besides, at least my Tonkinese cat has “papers.” My camera and my new pressure cooker also have papers too, which means I could ship them to my sister in Arizona, no questions asked. Or at least, questions about papers answered. So my pressure cooker would be a more comfortable resident of Arizona than the bilingual American citizens who use leaf blowers to clean my front yard.

I am not worried about alien invasions. I am also immune to the scary threats of fools. With the possible exception of my cat, I do not to suffer fools gladly. But, like a psychic once told me at the fair, at least I do suffer glad foolishly. I could spend all day with her (my cat, silly) (not the fair psychic) on my shoulder as I rock her, purring advice into my hearing aid.

Finally, needing something better to do with my idleness, I managed to clean up the patio yesterday. The guys just blow the leaves and pine needles into corners for mice to inhabit. A job that once took me an hour, now takes me most of the afternoon. My gardening is becoming more like tai chi – slow, purposeful and conducive to meditation, rather than the ass-kicking karate gardening I did in my prime.

In addition to the cat purring into my hearing aid therapy, I need any exercise that serves to lengthen my attention span while it stretches my kinking muscles. These days, my tired muscles are the kinkiest part of my life. Fortunately, I have all day to accomplish this task of cleaning up the patio, and find the finished product just as satisfying as if I’d done it in an hour.

The yard guys who come every other Friday mainly keep the sorry all front yard hill from pegging out at the bottom end of the curb appeal scale. The state of my front yard is not quite at the point where I dot the landscape with a few cars on blocks, a whimsically placed old door-less refrigerator laying on its back and breeding pestilence, and hostile parasitic net of acid yellow dodder vines slowly engulfing rusty piles of unidentifiable junk. Not quite.

Crazy Salad

"It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone."

William Butler Yeats, A Prayer for my Daughter

At the most primal level, a garden is a refuge from the world. It’s the place where Man meets Nature, and where all the first and endlessly variable and complex relations between the two begin. The Garden of Eden however, was not such a place. In Eden, everything was perfect and unchanging. Since the fall, in earthly gardens, man contends with the endless cycles of birth, death and rebirth. Perfection, if it’s ever reached, lasts mere moments in a garden. A flower at the moment of it’s most lovely bloom, is lovely precisely because we recognize that like all that lives, it will die.

Anyway, I’m not so sure I like the idea of a heaven in the hereafter being a perfect and unchanging garden. Immortal gardens would, I think, lose something vital if they didn’t embody the energy of what we call the Cycle of Frickin’ Life. Winter rain is as much-appreciated part of this cycle. We actually had some hail during a particularly hard rain the other day. - you can see it on the ground in the top picture. In the second picture, Lily is checking out this view from the safety and warmth of the love seat in the living room.

In front of the stone lantern, are the two thin stalks of the red-trunked, green-leaf Japanese maple. In the background, to the right of the old olive tree, you can see the bare branches of the red-leaved Japanese maple, silhouetted in the wet driveway beyond. These trees, including a third out of the picture, were moved from the tsukubai garden in the back yard where the two older trees had staggered through harsh dry summers for about ten years, and were on the point of giving up. Japanese maples are one of the inappropriate plants I insist on keeping alive in my yard against all odds. I’ve given up on lilacs, lilies of the valley and most violets. But I insist that these trees occupy a position of respect in the crazy salad of my garden.


The horn of plenty Yeats is talking about is the myth of the cornucopia, that overflowed with whatever the holder wanted. For example, imagine if you will, an endless abundance of cheesy-poofs as you sat by the fire watching old movies on TV. Then, if you wished for linoleum in a green and white pattern, the cornucopia would presumably provide enough to replace the stained living room carpet, including extra to allow for measuring and cutting mistakes. Is Yeats saying that wishing for such a crazy salad would cause the horn to malfunction? Would it perhaps spit out some malformed green and white cheesey poofs, or cheese-flavored floor tiles? Is he saying women in particular are inclined to prefer such a crazy salad in their lives? Is he saying it’s ok for me to try to cultivate Japanese maples in the harsh Zone 9 climate?

Even if he thinks this would be crazy, he refers to such ladies as “fine women” and that is how I chose to interpret his letter to his daughter. He’s saying, be sure to eat your meat, but also to enjoy your own personal crazy salad, and accept the imperfection and mortality of your garden. Good advice.