I en joy gardening.
While living in Virginia Beach my only choice was patio gardening in pots. Not the same as digging in the dirt, wiggling toes in the soil and breathing the garden scents but one works with what is given.
This year I have been given fertile New Hampshire soil. Soil that has just been waiting to grow. Add to that a spring and early summer with abundant rain. So, I garden.
Gardening has always been a mental exercise for me. Time to just play, time to push your body while the mind soothes. Today it was more. Two and one half weeks into recovery from surgery that removed my internal womb I am learning the art of therapeutic gardening. Recovering from major surgery is giving me the chance to know my body. I've learning to know when it needs to rest before the signal that rest is necessary. I'm listening to it's beats.
In this strange way by listening to the body's signals the mind is also heard clearer. Not as a separate entity that orders the body to respond to it's whims but as a part of the whole. When the mind/ body is working together there are no thoughts of what has happen or what will happen; all thinking is of now. The mind instead of living it's small ego world has become the caretaker. It is more alive than it has ever been feeling and sensing what the rest of the temple is living. The feel of the turned dirt, the coarseness of the weed pulled, the beauty in the new growth... therapeutic, very soulfully therapeutic... living in the now and growing stronger with ever breath.
Nothing brings more pleasure on a rainy day than a comfortable chair, good book, homemade latte and a window to watch the weather...
This is my spot. Has been my spot for days now since the rain clouds seem to have found a home on our hill. No problem, I have my faithful summer read, "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver and plenty of time while I recuperate from having my womb taken out of body and given to the Universe.
Lully-gag was introduced to me, the word for it anyway, by the recently departed man in my life. I learned a lot from Bobby and only learning to understand, but that's for another post. Today, is lully-gagging. The art of doing as little as possible in a day, or whatever length of time you can pull out of the usual rat race schedule...
Karma... aha, natural law righting itself, paying our debts, balancing the universal scales...
Sounds so righteous and then it's actually your turn again to receive the karmic sword... "He loves me, he loves me NOT..." or at least not the fairytale love that has followed his memory for some 25+ years.
Well, it was excellent in the budding. Laughs, loving, poems that made goosebumps scatter down the skin and then those fateful words, "It's me not you." Yeah right, I knew something was up when "5" after sex became a rollover and snore... oh and let's not forget the snores and funny noises that started the decline. Almost 60 and no one else ever noticed my little sleeping sounds enough to comment. Oh, I should have seen this coming. We became two recluses where once there was communication until 4 a.m. and an invisible shield that shouted don't touch.
So, now what. Accept the karma of this because once many a year ago, I did the similar to a young man and now I'm zapped by the karma bug so I can understand his pain. Okay, I get and I feel that but I'm blessed once again because having been through the youth of life and the years of maturity, I can say, "This too shall pass..." and believe that it's true.
