On This Morning, This Is True:
(for larger versions of these images, just click on them and they will open in full resolution) On this morning, when there are those of us arguing over which dead humans get to be Official Dead humans in Gaza; while billions of dollars have been spent getting Rosetta within 60 miles of comet C-G, both of whom are now traveling at 35,000 miles per hour to engage in a deep space dance of never-before-achieved research of this comet's frozen layers of ice, dust and rock – particle leftovers from the formation of this solar system within which we float, of which we are an inextricable part; when famous interpretive ramen master Ivan Orkin has opened a long-awaited restaurant on the Lower East Side serving, yes, ramen...On this morning when it was 54 degrees Fahrenheit upon my waking at 5:31am, when the flatirons echoed the dusty pink glow of the rising sun's reflection, while the coyotes slipped back into the willow hedges in the field just beyond the pond, tails protruding for the briefest of moments as if beckoning me to follow....On this late summer morning as deep green jack-o-lantern pumpkins, 20 pounders at full growth, lay indolently (but not at all) in the garden like beached whales...
This is what I know to be true. That Giardia (a gift from the waters of my beloved Adirondacks, and as such, gladly received) can go away on its own with plenty of charcoal and red wine (this is an anecdotal study and not one recommended by the sponsors of this blog); that Luecobryum glaucum (otherwise known as an Acrocarpous variety of moss – distinct from its sister moss family, the Pleurocapous, due to the fact that its female sex organs are borne at the tips of its soft bushes of abundant green foliage, appearing to the average passerby as a solid, even firm, mound of indistinct formation...which would be missing the point entirely) is now growing at the edge of the pond, which can no longer be considered or referred to as 'my pond'. It's secession, as its own sovereign nation, became clear as soon as the third species of water strider, Aquarius remigis, moved in.
On this morning I know to be true that thriving unapologetic Life shows itself in the darnedest of places (pay attention here) once I spotted the tiny Aspen tree, no more than six inches tall, growing out of the rock wall which forms the north side of the aforementioned renegade pond. On this morning I know to be true that somehow, burdened as it may appear, the dwarf Bosc Pear tree, now mercilessly, resplendently, drooping under the weight of its first crop of plump reddening fruit, is bestowed with the wild erotic intelligence which tells it exactly how to bow to this burden, like a pregnant woman's hips and spine know exactly how to tilt.
On this morning I know to be true that wildflowers in their first year, from seed, arrive in the garden an exact version of their adult selves ... only tiny. Tiny perfect coreopsis, cosmos, gaillardia, blue bells, and more have popped up in a place I'd forgotten I seeded, a chorus of blossoms so perfectly small and so perfectly right I have pleaded with them to stay exactly this way, forever. On this morning I know to be true that pollen-laden honey bee thighs and cattail fronds bearing new staminate flowers look so very similar. And on this morning I know to be true that unfurling water lily leaves look exactly like horseshoes floating slightly submerged on the surface of the water. And finally, on this morning I know to be true that the blossoms spawned by the water lily with the horsheshoe-shaped leaves looks so much like a fried egg I salivate when I look at them.
I know that everything I have spoken of this morning is true but beyond this, what I have said here is as much about me and about you as it is about these subjects of my devotion. I know these truths are the source of our belonging to this world, The World. They are the connective fiber, the bridge, that brings us back to intelligent participation. And it starts with our attention and our wonder. Like a game of hide and seek with psyche, our task is to understand how this can be so and then fall to our knees in endless gratitude for the fact that, on this morning, all this is exactly true.
