Heart 10.05.13

My culture has learned not to stand still and I have followed seamlessly, valuing brain over heart. But water makes we want to stand still. I feel as if I should enjoy the loons, so I point them out to myself, and seem to marvel at their shimmer against the water’s surface as my mind wanders. I squat and try to feel the ground through my callouses. I try to appreciate each buzz of mosquito, knowing the irritation is tamable somewhere deep inside me, but I swat as it tries to land. The cattails are pretty, but the air is muggy. I should come back here more often, I think as my right brain makes a shopping list and remembers that important email. I should be more quiet. I should meditate. I should learn to be present.

The brindled pitt-mutt is relaxed at the edge of where our house will be, content by the pounding of his heart and the twitter in trees above. Five-foot walls of earth shield the bathtub; wildflowers and scrubby grasses provide complete privacy. He lays sideways, hind legs extended, facing the opening where the home will transition between half-underground to level with the topsoil. He breathes heavy, but his ears catch each stir in the evening hum. He guards seamlessly, completely at ease.

We are all on edge. Not dis-eased, uprooted, filled with worry. But stirred, opening to the present. It is as if I stand on the last inch of sandstone above a clearwater quarry, but I don’t wobble. My toes grip at the edge, but slowly lift, as if ready to fly, placing my heart in my stomach. Purely  translucent, as deep as sky. Weightless.

There were four fava beans in the pod I opened, trying to stay present in the inspection of the garden without drifting. Each bean is flat, an inch long and nearly as wide, and not yet fully grown. Proliferous, strong stemmed and think-leafed, with white and black flowers covering the plant from tip to nearly ground. They germinated on a sheet of ice this spring, straddling the transition in seasons with near-perfect ease. Within the thick skins there is more protein than any other bean, and they despise soil that is too rich. Use them at the edge, between the time when grassland or lawn becomes thriving garden. They seem to transform sand into carbon, pulling up minerals, making vitamins from soaking in sun. Their roots reach one yard down, and their vines reach one yard towards the sky. They will heat hearts in dreary February - a thick warming down the chest - their radiance accepted by weary muscles and valves.