Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Dirty hands

Today was hard. It was also bleak and ugly. I've struggled to keep my chin up, and to continue believing that, behind it all, the sky is still blue.
Insipid and rancid, are the other adjectives that fritter away at the raw edge of my mind.
Alex and Colette have just left. They came to pick hard-green-velvet figs from the overladen tree at the back fence, there by the veld.
My hands are now horribly tacky with the hideous fig milk; we filled a green Woolworths packet with the milky-sticky fruit.
I fetched a ladder from the storeroom. Alex climbed up and into the heart of the tree. She's one determined French woman.
We walked around the garden, and past many of Steffen's touches. He's very much here today. But not.
Another storm threatens on the immediate horizon, the umpteenth today. I long for it to break loose.
I'm sitting by my window on the garden. Time to make coffee and read. I was given an unexpected respite today, I'm probably squandering it with procrastination. But, I suddenly remember while typing these words, I am human. Very much so.
I press a spade deep into the hard earth packed around the kilometer-long tap root of my procrastination; I shovel out more questions than answers.
Alex left me a bottle of green fig preserve on the kitchen table. The green baby globes in the murky bottle are from my tree.
It's very hard work making green fig preserve. Alex does stuff; she gets her hands dirty.
Maybe it's time I threw myself into the fray...and got my hands dirty?
The storm-chilled breeze cools my arms, and ironically the first hard drops fall as the thunder becomes more muffled.

2 comments:

Mike S Vancouver said...

I found your blog because today I played - yet again - with how to share that people can communicate to commune - to be in communion with each other - and in that "field" the idea of A Beautiful Mind (title of course borrowed from the film) appeard and when it did I googled... and found you.

And yes, people can communicate to create communion and can do it with intention and skill. It seems hard to interest people in the ideas - in part because while it can lead to riches it leads only indirectly to (monetary) wealth.

So thanks for your writing.

Mike

Beautiful Mind said...

Good morning Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to commune with me in the comments space, to communicate to me your ideas.
And I believe that you are spot on, that people can communicate to create communion... And thank you for doing so with no expectations of 'pay-off' in terms of the worldy sense. It is for precisely this reason, your words, that I will never monetize this blog, because I come here only to "communicate to create communion". I do so humbly and without expectation, nor under duress.
May your ideas, and your humility, serve to help change this battered, broken and hurt, but magnificent world, into a better place, one good deed and smile at a time. Have a wonderful day. charles