Thursday, May 14, 2009

I am running incredibly low on both inspiration and energy lately, wrestling with another bout of bronchitis and waiting for the spring to hook me. I am thinking only of taking naps and growing things, of how many people there are and how many years are left and how many miles can be covered by how many steps. I am exhausted by the sheer volume of numbers available, all the time and distance and options available. Just now, the world is too big and time is too much.

My garden this year is running more and more toward falling and climbing sorts of plants, plants that will wind around all of the metals of my balcony and greenly cocoon the end of my apartment. I'm growing three-leaved clovers in the hopes of growing a four-leaved one, and I've sown flower seeds and seedlings in whatever containers I could find. I won't even know what some of them are until they bloom, my usual need for order trumped by this sudden strong longing for the unthinking beauty of growing things. I suspect that this is related to how gray and flat I've been feeling myself, lately.

Some number of weeks ago, a cluster of balloons got tangled in one of the trees I walk past every day on my way to and from work. Most of them managed not to burst on impact and have slowly deflated over the space of days, victims of the wind and small twigs like spikes, of visiting birds, of too many hours. On Monday there was only one left with any air in it at all, a small lump of balloon still holding on while all of its compatriots lay exhausted and tangled in the branches.
By this morning the leaves of the tree had filled in completely, obscuring anything higher than the bottom most branches. I like to think that the final balloon was still a little bit alive when it was finally covered all the way by that tree's leaves. It held on long enough to deserve the shade and the green.

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