Cobblestones

My camera and I venture out on a lunchbreak walk on one of the week's warm Carolina spring-in-February days. We are looking for snapshots that speak to me of my One Little Word for the February assignment. I get sidetracked by cobblestones that pave one of the Cameron Park alleyways. I spend the rest of the week noticing what a linear world we live in.



Modern brickwork is of identically-sized bricks; and, unless the designer chooses to mix and match, they are all the same color. The patterns, though varied, are symmetrical; and they are tightly bound one to the other. It takes a jackhammer to dislodge them. Though I am sure the creators of cobblestone roads laid them out with some
kind of a plan, cobblestones are not all the same size or shape or thickness. They had to work with what they had, so the pathways are not linear. The stones are not mortared into place. Over the decades of time and weather, and the pounding of horses hooves, they have shifted; some have come out, leaving holes that no one bothers anymore to replace. Generations since they were put down, they appear haphazard in their beauty. I have to slow down when I walk on them, which is why I notice them.

My life is more cobblestone than brick. It didn't start out that way. I had a plan, one set before me by my parents' example. There is great comfort in having a plan; one that doesn't require

much thinking or decision-making, other than maybe at the beginning of the journey. Not to trivialize the traditional get married-have children-follow a career path up the symmetrical ladder that is missing no rungs-life, but the GPS is programmed and works well as long as the driver makes no off-grid mistakes (or choices) or the battery dies. There are of course, detours that the nice voice in the unit's box didn't anticipate, and she has to redirect. It takes a few moments to get back on track. Sometimes I long for a brick road life. Well, not really.

So all week I notice the straight lines: crosswalks, fences, power lines, buildings, walls, ceiling tiles. And I notice the contrasts: a cobbled together wall; a newly-blind woman learning to walk with a white cane tap-tapping back and forth and forth and back, unable to see the dangers that lie just ahead of her feet and her cane (perhaps it's better that way), but thankfully with a friend

walking with her as she learns to navigate; a vine wending its way around the linear fence in its way, and the square-cornered path of my passion flower vine. Like me, the passion flower began on a linear path, then it erupts into randomness, going this way and that and popping up in odd places, but always growing and blooming.

I pause on my early morning walk and watch the asymmetrical jet streams slow dance across the sky, glowing pink and gold in the dawning sky.

Linear, symmetrical paths are easier to race through life on; it's easier not to stumble and fall, or get lost. Cobblestone paths have bumps and can be unpredictable, often ending before reaching a destination. Connecting paths are not clearly marked, requiring some off-road walking and searching and path-cutting. Perhaps my side-tracked observations this week do tell me something about my One Little Word, after all.

"Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use." -Carlos Castanada

Happy Valentine's Day to all my dear readers. May your journey be paved with at least a few cobblestones.

Desire Lines

The warm bath that passes for air this week, reminds me why I want to return to living in the Pacific Northwest. In the spring it’s easy to forget. But now, already, the air conditioning has been on much of the week. Though I have turned it off and opened the windows the past two nights, I know the nights that is feasible will soon be over for the duration--the duration being too many months away.

Along with afternoon steam, though, the rains make the garden--and me--happy. Second only to mountains, there is no place I would rather be than in the garden after a good rain; particularly in the early morning, or in the evening when the sun has gone down reducing the sauna-effect. The air smells fresh and fragrant, water drops cling to leaves, and I can almost see my garden growing and blooming. There have been some lovely rains this week.

As I sit in the Adirondack chair on my porch after work, with a glass of Cabernet and a book, a strong gust of wind blows through the trees. A handful of last year’s leaves blow down and scatter across the yard and porch; one falls into my lap. Some leaves come down with the first windy days of the late southern fall and most come down before the cold winter; but a hardy few cling to their branch through the snow and into the resurrection of spring. I feel the familiar ache of sadness. No matter how hard the winds of difficult times blow, there is going to be some lingering pain. I think, as fiercely as the wind blows at the beginning it should all be blown out of me. Then, long after the initial grief, the self-doubt, the anger, another gust of wind blows more of it out and away. My knee follows suit. After several days of recuperation it feels so good that I forget I just had surgery and overdo it. Pain returns and I have to back off from activity again. I am frustrated. Healing takes time.

Two friends left on a jet plane this week, and one in a car, for points west. The one who left in the car will be back, the other two will not. They are all following their lines of desire.

You know those dirt paths in parks and campus quads and the National Mall that crisscross the carefully laid out paved paths? I read that landscape architects call them desire lines. They are visual evidence of the places we really want to go, regardless of where the architects, in all their research and planning, think we should go. Some walkers begin those dirt paths, others use those forged by others, and many of us want to create or at least use them but follow the "right" ones instead. I suspect that no matter how many desire lines get paved over time, someone will make another one. I also suspect the desire to be outside the lines is strong, but many of us are afraid to step off the path. Although I rarely follow the renegade paths, I can see that my decisions over the second half of my adult life to do what I am supposed to do--or thought I would do--end at paths laid out through the grass. I stay on each path I establish long enough to feel safe and comfortable and then I start watching for the next one calling to me. I wait for kairos, the right fertile time. One day I, too, will leave on a jet plane or in a car and cut a renegade path to points west.

The ground is soft after the rain this week, so I spend a couple of hours pulling weeds and the last of the pansies. I love the space the subtraction adds to the garden. It looks clean and ready. I am not quick to fill all of the spaces, though I do make a Farmers' Market run for a few more perennials. I am still trying to get something to grow in some of the gardens. I buy plants beloved for their foliage, their steady beauty are some of my favorite garden dwellers. My departed friends leave space, but in truth they are like the pansies. I have been gradually pulling the pansies over the past month; just as my friends' lives have diverged from mine over time. The loss doesn't feel sudden. I am ready to fill some of the space.

The last of the old leaves blow off the trees as the garden comes back to life. I wonder if it can get any more beautiful--everything is so fresh and new as it emerges from its hibernation.
And then the cone flower blooms, and the yarrow, and I find the first bloom of the Purple Heart after the rain. The annuals increase in girth and bloom, and the ferns and hostas get bigger. The grove of  banana trees is already as tall as I am, which is as tall as it got all last season. I observe the baby birds visiting the feeder and I pick fresh basil and the first squash for my dinner. Does life get any better than this? I sit on my porch in the Adirondack chair with my Zinfandel and I am content.

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Ralph Waldo Emerson