This is a story to honour a forsythia bush that was the catalyst for learning a worthy lesson and giving me a tool for the enhancement of life.
Buttercup bushes have been a part of Spring for me always but one particular forsythia presented itself when I moved to Toronto from small town Ontario and was in a cognitiveness of the most dissonant sort about giving up relatively rural for make-no-mistake urban.
To be sure there was a forsythia on my property, and mock orange, and lilac, so Spring could unfold in splendid colour and scent. But this outstanding forsythia was a glorious riot a block or so from my home. I made sure to pass it on daily walks with one or all of the kids to Licks or the library, badminton or the beach.
It tore out my heart with its beauty. I could never get enough of it. In sunshine it was a translucent foil for the sky ball rays. On days of cloud each flower looked as if it sheltered a candle. And in the rain – well, I had to make a conscious effort to remember to breathe at the sight of such glistening perfection of shape and hue and intensity.
Of course I was seeking essence but not knowing how to find it.
I tried many things over many years. Photographing from all angles, in all lights, in all moods (mine and the flowers’!). Burying my face for the closest of contact. Standing and staring and staring and standing and standing and staring… Trying so hard to be one with that forsythia so I could have enough of it and let it go without regret even knowing it would return next year.
And one time, in one long episode of standing and staring, I go so frustrated with not getting what I needed and wanted that I shot back into myself in despair and then – THEN – I got it. In an instant.
What I had done was stop trying for out there and come back to in here and FELT forsythia. Thought with the body and felt with the mind, I suppose. The anguish was gone. The satisfaction was enormous.
At times I forget what I have learned (isn’t this a strange phenomenon, this forgetting?) and have to be pushed to unbearable longing and then, once more, leap back to self and let myself feel. So much is tied up in intellect, in attempts to understand, to grip with the mind. Often - mostly! - we simply need to let go and feel with the body for true knowledge to come, that knowing that comes from within.
It is an effective endeavour in all aspects of life, the garden none the least.
Solutions have popped up when I’ve taken the problem out of my head and let it meander all over the body. F’r’instance, say I’m in a bit of a dither about thinning out those hairs of carrot-promises, fretting over the ones that must be sacrificed if others are to mature, wondering how my very-large-in-comparison fingers are going to manage the task. When I let go of thought and let my hands simply do their thing some sort of ancient remembering happens and soonest and satisfactorily the carrot patch is effective and I feel a oneness with other gardeners across all times. Then I use the thinnings in a salad snack and counter the illusion of waste.
In the past, when I have come back to self around birds, they have immediately flown to my outstretched hand and perched on my finger. I move toward the joy of this again. And carry the memory of a forsythia bush on Norway Avenue in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto as my guide.
(I celebrate New Year’s on December 22, the first day after the shortest day of the year. It makes sense to me to mark a beginning as the light begins to increase again. Whenever and wherever and however you celebrate I wish you a Joyous 2000!)
Karen has her finger trustingly extended as she journeys for the moment in an apartment cocoon.
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