Holy Knows No Name

1/5/18

Before meditation:

Find a spot in the sun

On a cold morning like this and

Listen to the water fountain in the pond,

Learn the sounds of the birds,

Give without question.

Do not ask seeds in return for bicycles

Simply give what you have

Clear away all that stands before you and God

And by god, know that what you mean

Is everything. A connection to people

To the birds that you can hear, to the chickens

To the man that woke you with bales of hay

In the back of an old truck

Where you sometimes sat when you were a kid.

Not his, not this century

Years past there was a condition,

A season of relief when the fall leaves fed green

And during the cold season people made fires

And they survived and walked in tribes

Today, too, you walk where the steps

Take you beyond the absence of us and them

For there is no us and them

The first to come in this winter is the nettle, the needed leaf

For tea, walk around the 9th ward, why not

Let every stop sign be a space for holy basil

When the neighbor asks for her own

You will know that you have made a difference

Be not so set in the ways, holy basil plants

Should be bounteous and given throughout, planted throughout, taken care of and popped

From the ground in spots not wanted.

The chicken sits on eggs in the compost

The smell of cedar burning, the world

A fiction, a fact,

A matter for which, all investigation

Must be displayed for all to find

The gems within the unmined, the hillsides of Thailand

A gift of hay trampled by high heels in the Bywater

Now in your yard

To differentiate paths from growth

Pile high the aforementioned

Pile high the growing soil,

Pile high the wisdom that comes with experience

So when the sun moves you

Move

Like old Japanese commercials

Thick wood stems kept for sour, thick-skinned grapes

Muscadines that seem to thrive on the heat

That seem to like to be carried by the hand of man.

Know your role in all of this

To lift one plant to another space, to feed

The birds and create new species and blue species

And even when the season is right:

Dr. Seuss species:

Racist comics from another time

And does this cancel out the good he did?

Was his mind any more trained than ours is now?

We evolve, both physically and mentally

For those that wish to fly, at some point

This evolution must become spiritual

So when the word god is uttered

There should not be a shuddering, a shuttering,

Or a closing of windows and doors

For this is the day that the lord made means

A myriad of things:

Take time in the moment to collect sand

And let sand

Spill out and become a mountain

Gift given by god, by Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed

Names do not matter. Names cannot contain the truth

Of this connection in a world once separate, a world

Conditioned by a mind meant to categorize

In the beginning was no word

Was there?

What was?

Energy of the unknown

Focus on the moment

For with it and in it

And of the thought wondering a

Malabar spinach vine still growing in the cold of January

A microclimate

A crow that knows the sky

More than you know the ground

Down sense to play with

Nails on fingers and holding together

The bastion of words made by the weather

The glasses of lather collected

To bathe kings

Reign in the distance, make time contract

Take medicines for your thyroid

Speak highly of pact,

Retract statements that offend

Choose the words rather then

Letting the words be chosen by tone

Yet in this there may be words beyond you

Words of the muse

Feuds settled and met and made

One in the same

And then there is also the trite collection

Of frontal lobe knowings that drift forth

From every ape in a suit and every

Monkey with a wrench that stands between the history

Of where the words came from

And is Monkey Wrench racist, and if so, how did this come about

And if not, how best to be careful and kind and try not to offend

In doing so be ready to be wrong

To apologize

To answer questions

To learn that the rooster wants fed

And this day you have no daily bread.

After:

Wonder who has extra holy basil seeds to be spread

To be offered, for the chickens have taken all the seedlings

Rather, and more accurate:

The seedlings have offered themselves to the chickens

For in this world language is important

When trying to cultivate the mind, word choice means something

So typing too fast does not allow what is deep beneath all

Yet perhaps the very action, the very thought

The silence will

With practice

Align thought and intention

For the intention is to see the beauty in every moment,

The mirliton vines curling around air conditioners

(Rather than the thought that those can no longer be sold)

The bees buzzing between dwarf tamarillo and clove basil

(Rather than the scarcity of bees seen)

The passion flower coming up through the ground

New growth that might be spread

Up and down the street this summer

People awed by the shower of gulf fritillary

Like a shower scene from a Marquez novel and children

Chasing bubbles, the grubs under each log you lift

How to breed these and feed the chickens

And what is that sound that ripples?

That, my friend, is perfection

As is the smell and the sense and the chase of the rooster

The gift from Olivia that has taken over

and taken care to protect His girls

offer eggs

and give birth to more chickens.

This collection of 9th ward roosters and hens is one of the greatest gifts

This way of seeing that within them is life, life that I tried to fight in the beginning

Life that I needed to be different because I thought that I was in charge when the true reality is that I am here to serve nature and if gifted a cluster of elderberries before the birds come, god bless and thank you, for this earth offers abundance if we can only stop cutting down every bit that stands in the way of the compartmentalization we have been trained to work with since numbers and insurance first appeared on the scene. Though categories are necessary, they may do more harm than good, for everything is determined too quickly.

This is also the issue. Talking in blanket statements where there is black and white thinking, and a kid named Scott that I met last night, a kid that God put in front of me and yet somehow I missed the future of what we are supposed to do. I stopped before asking when we might meet again. I am learning in all of this, on a mission to be better, to realize that my purpose is the moment, my purpose is not to be on my deathbed and look back with I should have. My purpose is to find the sun, to watch the rooster step between the planks of this deck where I type, beside air conditioners covered in mirliton and to ask myself what more can be grown and what more can be spread.

In meditation I had to keep asking one thought to go away, a thought I might label a good thought were I in the business of playing god. I have always struggled with the “sustainable” part of CRISP: community research into sustainable permaculture. Lately the realization has come that this acronym is apt for there are numerous permaculture projects that are not sustainable, meaning they are only available for those with money or those with the capacity to raise money or to talk other people out of their money. Sustainable involves giving. It involves the sharing of seeds to find what is best suited to our climate, to take plants that work in other places, grow thousands of them and then spread seed to gather our own best. To make mistakes and dig up mexican petunias, bidens alba, and lantana and let these live in pots to bring butterflies and bees without taking over every bit of ground. Be with the beggars ticks and let them pull heavy metals from the soil one pot at a time.

The next step in spreading life around crisp will be to order bare rooted trees. Mainly persimmons and mayhaws and Chickasaw plums and other fruiting trees that can be grafted onto in the future. There is also the need to realize and understand relationships. Yet there is no cause and effect because there are thousands of causes and though science may say otherwise, each individual cause cannot be pinpointed.

        Take for instance the Satsuma tree that offered up sixty satsumas this year. Was this a result of being beneath a hackberry? Did it have to do with all the mulch that has been dumped and spread? Was it the other trees growing nearby: the elberberries and mulberries and dead roots of limes? Did more bees come because of certain flowers being grown? These are questions to be observed and witnessed and the necessity of taking them on a greater scale is one mission of CRISP.