Do not
wish for too much, nor think that the things you wish for are the only right or
necessary things. You should wish only for those things for which God wishes. –Henri
Amiel
This is
growth. This is the love of neighbor no matter where he lives. This is joy at
hearing and seeing the chickens, a realization that they were here before you
and that your complaints about them eating what you plant fall on deaf ears.
They do not even have teeth. They do not even know how they got here. But they
have lived through a hurricane and overcome the onslaught of rocks slung by
neighborhood kids. They have survived cars speeding down side streets at sixty.
They have taken on a kitten and now allow that cat to be a part of the pack
that roams along France Street in search of crumbs and bones.
God wants only that you plant seeds,
that you be outside, that you take time and stop to talk to the people who pass
by, and, sometimes, God wants you to give to the lady in house slippers and robe,
the one who asks for fifty cents and looks at you as though you have never met.
She will surprise you one day by knowing your name, and you don’t know how she
knows your name because you have never told her your name. You don’t know hers.
Yet, somehow, her knowing yours makes her less of a burden.
There will be a new man, a Latino
named Diego. He does not know that was your first dog’s name. You do not know whether
that is actually his name. He may have said Emanuel or Daniel. You can’t be
sure. You only know that his presence lets you stop, pause, and remember why
you’re planting. You don’t know at the time, or before, that this is why God
had you plant extra seeds in the greenhouse. You don’t know that the man
standing in front of you is better skilled in English than you are in Spanish.
Neither of you know the exact words,
but he understands that you know sol and he knows flowers and that it is best
to dig a deep hole and cover most of the stem, that this will make the flowers
fuerte and that these flowers are a gift.
You do not tell him you only know
frijoles because you have read the word on a menu. Instead you set the bean
plant next to your own fence and mimic the motions of climbing and spreading,
and the second time he repeats your words. Muchos
frijoles. He points down the street to the casa where he lives and you
wonder who else is in that home and what they will talk about at the dinner
table that night and whether they are new to the neighborhood and where the
rest of his family is. You remember the Treme, 2008, singing Pablo Neruda poems
as the Hondurans played guitar and drank Budweiser from tin cans. You think of
every neighborhood you have ever lived in. The stories go on and on without
end.
You would have you rush. You would have noise cycling in your head. God would have
you silent, planting your own frijoles, taking the time to read the words of a
man from Austria, a man who speaks of using brambles and thorns to keep wild
animals away from tender seedlings, a man who suggests piling up bio mass:
twigs and bushes and branches, to let the seeds find their own way. You have
seeds you try to control in the greenhouse.
Sepp Holzer would let nature decide.
So would God.
You think that you are too busy to
determine just how blackberries should be pruned and that you need to get right
to work rather than reading about what to do. God would have you use some of
this time to see what the world says, to use the computer not as a place to
judge and feel less than, but as a place to learn.
You would go out and start cutting
at the blackberries. You choose to go with God. God is the internet at the
moment. The internet/God tells you to relax, that pruning is not imminent, that
three blackberry plants is enough for a good start. You do more research,
searching your email (still God’s work) and you find that you ordered your
plants—a Shawnee, a Chickasaw, and a Kiowa—January of last year, and put them
in the ground shortly thereafter. They are babies in the grand scheme of
things, babies that you have ignored for the most part. You have two neglected
big red muscadine plants and a crimson goji berry. You do not need to run to
the greenhouse when there is work to do right outside the door. Feed what you
have planted. Open the gates and see what happens.
You miss God’s gift. After layering
bags of leaves around the blackberries, halfway through planting Scarlet Runner
beans along Mr. Lee’s fence, moments after Nathan passed to talk about himself
and his truck and what he was going to do, you missed the moment. Mr. Lee, well
past eighty, used to stand with his arms folded and watch you work. He would
chew on his cigar, never lit, and when you
tried to greet him he did not respond. Less than two years later, Mr. Lee gave
you the materials and knowledge to build a fence at a new garden down the
street from his house on France.
You are focused on the Scarlet
Runners. They are meant to fix nitrogen, to eat, to come back year after year. Mr.
Lee, the old man who has become your friend, calls down from the steps that
lead to his second floor. (He had to climb those steps just to see over the
fence and talk to you.) His arms are not folded.
I see what you mean about those chickens,
he says, as they peck through the remains of the raised bed Patrick recently
helped you move.
You tell him that you will have to cover everything. You tell
him that you are planting beans. There is a small part of you that knows it is
time for him to tell you, but rushing, rushing, rushing has taken over. You
are trapped by what Allison Armstrong calls diffuse awareness. Everything you
see is a task, even Mr. Lee, even this man who brought out his Brooks Brothers
shoes months ago to show you what quality used to look like.
You could have slowed down. God gave
you the opportunity to slow down. Put Mr. Lee right there, perched atop his step,
and you had a chance, even at the end, even as you saw the top of his head and
the half cigar in his mouth as he descended, and you could have called out, Mr
Lee! You should have called out. You should have shared with him what was going
on in your head. He might have told you what he has told you,
that you can work like that when you’re young, but what would he have said about the chickens? What
would this man who has been here since horse and buggies rolled down these
streets have said about the rights of the chickens?
You will have to wait. You can’t just walk up to
Mr. Lee’s door and knock. There is an eight foot chain link fence at the
sidewalk with locks too big to cut through. Behind this is a cinder block wall
that is the railing of his front porch. You will have to wait to see Mr. Lee.
He said he wanted some of those peppers that grow on a bush in clusters, the
ones that point up, and you think he means Tabasco. You have the seeds, but he
wants plants. Time will deliver plants, and time will deliver answers.
