SUBTLE REALMS OF BEING

Traveling Along

I gardened a lot recently due to weather conditions.  Weeds are easy to pull after rain, so I got right out there in the joint between wet and dry.  But between stones that line the garden beds, it's tougher.  I turn over stone by stone to floss the weeds and straggly grass out.  There's something about weeding my garden that is akin to smoothing down the covers on a made bed in the morning to get the lumps out.  There isn't a word for that feeling.  Mary Poppins called it "spit spot."  But that doesn't really fit me, because I do like a rough edge, flaws, unseen influences, texture, mystery.  Maybe I'm more of a lumps out but wrinkles okay kind of tidier.  In any event, I was weeding between rocks and it was supremely satisfying.  Again, I don't have a word for it, except to say that I know there is a universe under every rock and stone, even if I can't see it.  I can feel it.  Maybe weeding allows me to get close to the smell, the feel, of a subtle form of being. 

When Ted died, I was strewn about in bits all over the place.  This I felt, although when I looked in the mirror as I was getting ready for work, everything seemed pretty intact to me.  Bear in mind, however, that I do tend to miss a lot of obvious details when I'm getting ready for the world, such as the time I tried laundering my panty hose in lavender buds because I read the Victorians did that with their stockings.  I'm pretty sure I looked in the mirror that day and didn't see that the buds had busted into millions of tiny specs that lined my hosiery. I was itchy by the time I was half-way through my interminable morning meeting, and had a rash by noon.  All looked well on the outside that day, but the unseen upended my lavender dream of a day.  In short, I don't trust what I can see as much as I trust what I know is there, but cannot be seen. 

How did I go on, day after day, when Ted had recently died?  I was undoubtedly looking whole and intact, all the while knowing the lack of authenticity in what was seen.  I have to go back and read journals to recall that at some point, I got out of my widow's house and I went out of doors -- Ted died in March, so it was probably June or so when I went outside, aided by a slight recollection that I was a gardener.  I think I started with raking up winter's reckless disregard for my last year's work.  Tiny seen and much unseen life came to my attention.  I started with the subtle realms of life, my old life drifting away, a new life only an abstraction.  I saw a bird.  Then, I saw the world of the birds, a world that was going about being itself, unchanged.  It began for me in raking away, digging under, breaking up, watching.  In no way was I hoping for or trying to build something new.  Not yet.

Strangely, I must admit that I sometimes want to go back to those days and take myself in hand to remind myself of a few things.  Thing One:  I am a spiritual being, having a human experience in the world.  This is something I realized after Ted had died and yet I could still feel him close at hand.  Thing Two:  The subtle forms of being, of knowing, of feeling, of growing and leaning in are more to be trusted than anything I can find in the world I can see.
Somewhere during these early days of being a widow, I came across a Carl Sagan quote that helped me get through it all.  He said:  "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."  Maybe he was talking about a quasar, but I doubt it.  We know they are out there, even if they aren't all found and named yet.  No, I think he was talking about the mysteries of life itself, and how endless it really is.