the (mountain) fire and the ros(i)e

I have discovered the joys of gardening. With time on my hands of late and feeling healthy, I've decided it's time to finally plant a flower garden outside of my home. The space around my home happens to be the entrance to the housing cooperative where I live. I've found that with the deer flies out, gardening fulfills yearning to be active during the "gloaming" (sunset) period of the day in a way that does not involve me waving my shirt around my head as I sprint away from a deer fly chasing me and batting at my head. I know many who love gardening and much like pets I have been a late bloomer. But, Shiva's continued presence in my life has brought beginnings and endings in equal number. Within a month or two, I am a proud owner of a cat named Snowflake and have watched the seeds of my efforts in learning about and diving into the practice of gardening take root in my daily life.

It is amazing, life, the way things start and stop and grow and die. All the while, I am just trying to be in the middle of the chaos, holding on tight and letting go with equal effort. ,

Shiva is the Hindu god of creation and destruction. Vishnu, the god of sustaining. My tattoo attests my love of the latter. However, my life the last 5 years (to the day) has been turned upside down. In many ways, tilling the soil, turning the soil or substance of my life over and over, each time the cycle comes full circle I compare and see how much change and growth has occurred. In the case of my illness, an inherently internal process, today I am speaking of the external circumstances and the osmosis effect of a life of coming and going and flowing all the while.

Gardening I have found, like running, yoga and my art collaging, to be one of the few activities in which I drop into a pure state of being present - meditation in motion. During these times, while the world around me is going up in flames, I feel I am at the center of the burning. Anything but morbid, though death is involved, this fire within and around me clears the forest of my thoughts and ruminations so that I can see with a more clear view. It reminds me of reaching the clearing - the tree line- at Linville Gorge and suddenly being able to see what was there but obstructed. To commemorate the mountain, the fire, the harsh burning and the softness of the new green growth nurtured by the sun's rays I purchased two particular plants.

1- A "mountain fire". It is a dark green perennial with progressively red leaves towards the top of the tree. It reminds me of the blaze that catalyzing creation of all things new.

2- A "redbd" named Rosie -  I discovered this tree in Linville Gorge and have wanted to know everything about it since captivated by it's characteristic red heart-shaped leaves two years ago.

The title of this post is a play on words inspired by the last line from my favorite poem, TS Eliot's Four Quartets: "The fire and the rose are one".

The red flowery leaves atop my "mountain fire" are about the birth that comes out of the hardest part of life - the experience of loss and letting go, death and dying - of the things, places, activities, identities, friendships, relationships, and so on. A heart broken open from which a seed sprouts.

I purchased my first redbud from Southern States, after seeing one or two on my walk into town to my amazement. My mom declared its name to be Rosie and I loved it instantly. The many hearts growing from Rosie's branching represent the intensity albeit fragility of and the beauty albeit anything but beautiful at time of love. My experience with the leaves of a redbud tree in Linville Gorge and now in my yard, an array of metaphors and memories, flourishing under the brightness of the sun's immense rays. Yet,  leaves commemorating my time spent under the sun learning and growing in love, a love that is as dead as the leaves kept as keepsakes. As if I could make the fleeting, finite, finality qualities of time transform into everlasting, infinite, unending I collected and arranged these leaves in a large collage. Where that is now could be anywhere in the world and only the scars of the experience, perhaps like the fall of flying too close to the sun, remain with me.

Rosie is a daily reminder to live every day to the fullest and to live everyday knowing that it could be the end of the beginning or beginning of the end. Everything changes.

Love and live. Life's too short.....