Good Green Gr@ss

"A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields."

--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

So I live in a city. It's one continuous sprawl of creeping concrete from ocean to mountain. I've left the farms of my native Midwest behind. But I do have a lawn, a front yard, and back one. There's this random little stone horse that stands guarding the dusty, far corner of the back yard where the sprinklers don't reach and the grass doesn't grow. It looks how I feel sometimes. Lonely in the desert... (I know, I know. Cry me a river. Sheesh.)

The days have blown by like the broken blades of grass beneath my weedwhacker.
Yes, it's been weeks since I last posted. And yes, I do have a weedwhacker, and I have, as of tonight, finally used it to whip our lawn into complete and total submission. After that piece, I'm a mess, but I'm here at another coffee shop beside a table of "Inland Empire Atheists" (they're wearing t-shirts) and...I swear that woman who just walked out the door was a dude.

It's interesting to me how quickly my life has been blown around this country and transplanted into this corner of the desert. I don't know if you can say that I have roots, but I'm down home here, wearing suits to work, trimming the weeds around my front porch, scrubbing the linoleum in the kitchen, feeding the cat, chatting with Saúl (my neighbor) across the white picket fence between our houses. I've even gone out on a few dates. I'm still living out of suitcases and half of Maranatha's closet, but I'm slowly finding my way. Even finding new friends.

Green spaces are at a minimum here. But new, wonderful, mysterious things are sprouting here, striking stubbornly, haphazardly through the soil of my heart and mind. I can't tell what they are yet, but they're green, I hope they're green. It's my favorite color.

I try to write stories with my life, and I always want them to be amazing, cozy, squirmy, shocking. But the real things, the little green things that just keep growing in spite of the desert heat are making stories for me that I never could have anticipated, never could have written or revised. I'm living miracles. And I'm the one whose astonished to find anything, to find something so green and fresh. Sorry if that sounds abstract or cryptic, but that's just how things roll tonight. That's just how the leaves of grass blow.

"WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love...

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles."

--(Again) Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

To the Power of Twice

Lately, I've done a bunch of things twice. Twice. Double-teen.

I just finished my second summer working at MiVoden. El campamento extraordinario. Took it to the second power. That's right.

I went on a roadtrip and fed prairie dogs in South Dakota (on my way to MiVoden). Then took another driving adventure to my new casa in Southern California. On the way, I stopped in Weed, California by Mt. Shasta mostly just because of Weed being Weed and a little bit because of Mt. Shasta. It's breathtaking, really. So, roadtrip times dos.

That brings me to my new state and my new state of being. I am a resident of California, the country. It basically is. My new mechanic even says so. I am also a management resident. That's my job title. Ambiguous, I know. So I'm a double resident residing in a green Victorian house built in the late 1800s with a cat I didn't know I had coming. The cat is Maranatha's. Maranatha is my MIA roommate. She has been loosely calling the feline Harriet the Spy, but since she peaced out for Nicaragua the evening I got here, I've decided to call Harriet Halloween. Actually, Holla for short. I can't help it. She's black and orange. It's perfect.

I talked with my new neighbors twice, in Spanish. Love them. Love Spanish. Love them in Spanish.

Back to that new job of mine. I've gone to work twice so far. Yesterday and today. And today in general orientation, I learned that our corporate values are: Compassion, Teamwork, Wholeness, Integrity, and Excellence, which spell the word TWICE acronymically. Ode to Corporate Acronyms.

What else?

Oh, I've caught the bridal bouquet twice this summer. Two separate weddings. Two separate bouquets...in my hands. I might have tried for the first one (just a little out of respect for the tradition). I hardly saw the second one coming, I swear.

You just never know what's in store, when you'll discover you like the random cat you didn't know you had, or when irony will strike like a wedding bouquet.

What's in store? In the Store of Life, sometimes we get to choose; other times not as much.

Time for my second passion tea here at Starbucks? Oh, choices, choices. Choices.