These are probably the last of the "backberries"--those from the tree line at the edge of the back field, which mysteriously keep bearing in August.
Today after our breakfast and (I feel cleverly deemed) "A.M. That Is" meeting, everyone skipped out the door and left me with the breakfast wreckage--the "breackage."
They left to swing, chase after butterflies, and check on progress at the newly fashioned "Rabbing" station.
To enjoy the last bit of summer, like egg quickly drying on a plate.
Explained to me during the materials request as "crabbing but with rabbits," (there's no intention to trap them), this experiment is kitchen string dangling mini carrots at various heights from tree limbs at the edge of the back field.
Depending on the tightness of the resulting knot (since these tighten under load), we may get information about the weight of the animal that received the meal.
I think this line of thinking is genius, by the way.
Also, it's pretty much all we have to gauge life's phenomenon, which we usually try to do after it's passed, since we mostly miss the now of what's happening:
How tight are the knots now that it's over? How bad is the tension?
Just how big were the bites taken out?
However, these are only clues to the beast of burden that was.
The beast of burden that is is Now isn't actually a burden.
I love that there's no real intention to their Rabbing method, but to cast it out there and see what happens.
They're not getting anything out of it--except to watch time mysteriously change a thing they set in motion, but is actually no longer in their hands.
And, hopefully, to know the joy of feeding some being that wasn't asking to be fed, but surely needs and may appreciate the nourishment a from a shaded tree line we simply cannot see.
This is a lot like parenting.
A lot like loving anyone, child, pet, self--human or…burdensome beast.
The day-to-dayness of loving people and feeding them sometimes feels more feat than fête (or even Fett).
Even on the most perfect of sun-dappled, dangling days, I get myself trapped in the farmhouse kitchen--where I most love to be, but where there is so little space. As my office, yoga studio, and the whole family's HQ, it all needs to be cleaned up and set in order before moving on to the next thing.
An endless cycle of scraping, scrubbing, washing, drying.
These are the things we do to remove the egg-yolk scrim, to unburden our plates so we can be closer to love, to become less "content-laden," as Ram Dass, who never fails to astonish me, says in his newest wonderful book, Polishing the Mirror.
We do it over and over, so we can both hold and offer more.
Drying the dishes, polishing the mirror--these are the same.
The heart is a shining plate.
Or do I step out into the All is well Now, into the flourishing cosmos, which has become a happy harbinger of bees?
The milkweed is full of monarchs.
I think Boba-fett gets kind of a bad rap, by the way. Like Darth Vader, it's just too obvious to completely disdain him (and you know I fear being obvious).
We are all after the bounty, whatever we perceive that to be.
Maybe we're hired on for that job by the Dark Side of ourselves, but the innate goodness of ourselves and our shining, empty plate, that is the bounty.
Dishes will hunt you. Mess will hunt you. Clutter will hunt you. The end of summer and the cold winter ahead (okay, anything under 70 degrees) will hunt you.
This means, though, you are the real bounty.
T.S. Eliot recommended that we do dare to eat the peach, and I think we should eat up all bounty as it comes.
It simply helps us berr the weightless weight of imagined fears of the future.
Highly recommended readings:
"The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot
Polishing the Mirror by Ram Dass with Rameshwar Das
No comments:
Post a Comment