On Begetting

Begetting

Your birthday  is coming

like a thundering train;

 like Fall's first brutal blast; 

like a lump in my throat that never leaves. 

This morning I got up, put collars on our dogs, and let them out. I could hear the tinkling of their tags as they tripped across the porch and into the dark of pre-dawn. I drank my coffee and read, as a mosquito buzzed nearby; swatted it away and considered whether to try to catch it to turn outside or simply let it land and kill it. Instead, I just let it be; decided to let it have a drink of me if it comes back to my spot on the couch. Nothing should be hungry today....

Not so close to your birthday.

I've been reading about the value of kindness in "Spiritual Literacy". It said that the word generosity comes from GENEROUS, which is close to GENIUS whose derivative is the Latin root word GENERE, which means to BEGET. I looked that up too.

"To bring something (a child, for instance) into existence.

To give rise to; to bring about".

To me that sounds a lot like creation .

To be a generous heart, a genius heart, in fact to be in the act of creation and expansion. As I chewed on that thought,  a memory burst into my brain like a solar flare.....

Sometime after you expanded, a woman contact me to tell me she had met you several years before. Your Dad had built them a house in 2002 when you were about 7, and then later when you were about 16, she reached out again and asked him for help digging rocks out of her back yard. It seemed her husband was now frail and dying, languishing his last days in a hospital bed in their living room, and she wanted to build a garden for him to enjoy as he lay bed bound. 

I guess you were in high school and doing some work for your Dad; probably paying off some sin or infraction. I don't even remember.

She said you were so polite and gracious while you worked removing all those rocks and building a flower bed. From the big windows they watched you work, moving back and forth hauling rocks and building something for the old man to look at in his last days. 

She brought you water from time to time. She remarked how sweet you were, and how big. 

One day, she said she came in from shopping to find you sitting at her husband's side, listening intently as he told stories of his life, asking questions....paying attention to him.... and comforting him through a rough moment. Maybe he was lonely and struck up a conversation when you came in for water? She said you were dusty and and sweaty as you sat there chatting the old dying man.

It touched her to see a big kid showing such generosity; such genius of spirit. Your begetting of the moment. Yes, begetting. Knowing when to stop and listen.

I knew all of that about you, it was apart of your DNA.

You knew how to love generously.

You knew how to open up your heart and fucking SHOW UP for people.

This was not something you were taught; it flowed out of you like a spring from the Earth. It was not contrived or showy. In fact, you could mask it quite well under a blanket of being a bit of an asshole to people who were not really deserving...You are  just a crisp and clever in that way......  

Always finding that kindness and generosity are best delivered in secret and without a show. 

You, the person sitting dusty and hot with a lonely and sick old man....that was you....the one I always knew. I saw it in you as a small boy in the tender way you treated animals; in your fierce protection of underdogs and your brother and sister.....and me.

That lady's loving memory didn't surprise me in the leas, t even in that first dark year of longing for you, but it did remind me of the truth of who you are. She ended her story by saying she tried to hug you that day as you got up to leave his bedside to move more rocks. You wouldn't let her.

"I don't want to get you dirty, ma'am"

was all you said.

You never could do that, 

My beautiful boy,

You are exquisitely clean.

   Happy 28th Birthday beautiful boy,  

Love Momma                            

Spider Haiku

 Spider Haiku

Don't worry spiders,

I keep house

casually. 

                                                                  Kobayashi  Issa (1790)

The spider haiku made me feel guilty today because lately I have been evicting them from the corners and window sills in my house. Little black and brown ones are being shooed from where they are  leaving disturbing evidence of their meals, then depositing little ammonia drops on the floor. I clean up their mess, put them outside, and hope I don't kill any of them; taking special care to avoid casualties.

Now I just want to clean up their mess and leave them alone. Like Kobayashi Issa said.

It's a quiet time here at this house-not going anywhere very much; not hearing from anyone out in the world. People, even the ones that aren't particularly "awake", are very busy and I don't seem to come to mind. I eat my meals alone, spend days and days finding filler work to do like pulling weeds in the front flower bed. Even pulling spider grass makes me feel guilty, with each pull I am a little ashamed and regretful. I sigh as I write these words....I just hate death.

Compassion can be a curse.

It can be more of a shroud than a halo.

With my compassion for nature, I often can't stop thinking that every living thing must be protected. I over-sanctify life, which is problematic in a world so steeped in constant death. Constant comings and goings of life.

Once I read that some religions (was it Hindu?) say we should strive to not even break a blade of grass or step on an insect, and this seems to be about the only spiritual rule to which I am totally true. I get this notion entirely.

Yesterday I was buying potted plants at a garden shop and had to put back one because there were a few fire ants in the soil. If they came home, it is not that they would spread and colonize; it is that I know that three or four would disorient and die in a new world without their colony. I never questioned my decision, I simply put the plant back down, ants and all. It was not an option to do that to them.

What contribution does that kind of thinking have on humanity? I'll wager I am the only person (or one of the few) who think like this.

I'd like to know a few more who do, too. Chris does, Ian did. My favorite humans....

Solitude draws me even deeper into a world where human occupation is superfluous to everything else going on around me. I don't want to feel ashamed of us humans for bull dozing other life on earth, but I do. I feel that I am unwitting member of a hostile invasion. Gentle as I am, spineless and melodramatic is how some might describe me, I still worry that my presence disrupts the living of others here at  764 Narrows. So to mitigate the damage, I try to go a little further to run a safe house of sorts;

To be the watering hole; 

The Buckees for birds and butterflies; bugs and bees.

Fruit rinds are put out on a tray for insects;

Seed for protein;

Chicken bones are thrown out my car window as I drive to work, so my dogs won't get them but a fox might get it as a supplemental snack. Coffee grounds are shared with house plants, bread crumbles and old nuts are given to the very fat squirrels.

The length of my madness goes on and on. I run my sprinkler under the canopy of a red bud tree because I have noticed the birds like to sit on the lowest branches and have a shower. 

A hose on my front faucet is never screwed completely tight, so that it drips down into an old bowl that is also a toad swimming pool. Sometimes I find a dead insect in the bowl that has drunk itself to death. I guess that is a better end than thirst.

My attic is full of residents that I rarely see, but the signs are there....in the Spring wood ants march in a line along my porch beam. I chose to ignore them and hope they are not eating anything "load bearing". In the winter, if I listen carefully, I can hear the scritch-scratching of a mouse. I even catch them on occasion in a live trap, if they start over-helping themselves to my vitamins and pantry food. (They seem to love turmeric and cinnamon caps the most...God knows why). I set the trap with irresistible globs of peanut butter and pecan pieces. There they are, on my bathroom counter the next morning, in a plastic box. I can take a few minutes to observe them up close, their little dark eyes gleaming and tidy grey coats. Then I drive them to Art Lopez's horse barn 2 miles down the road where I have wagered that they can live quite nicely on horse feed and trough water.

There is never a question that the deep violet blue mud dobbers who find their way into my house through the AC vent will be carefully collected in a towel as they beat themselves against a window pane. As I open the towel up outside, it is a magnificent feeling to see them reorient, then fly off into the sky. It feels like a communion of sorts.

It is NOT magnificent at all to find them dried up dead in a curled heap under a table because I missed a capture. I really hate to clean along the sliding door jam, where there will always be little dead fellows....bees, flies, dobbers....who were trying to get out. Especially cruel to imagine that they can see outside and cannot get there. 

I don't mind helping any and all of them, even if other stuff around here doesn't get done. I'd honestly rather liberate a bug or move a mouse to a more suitable home, than anything else on my to-do list. Maybe my epitaph should read:

                                                        "She was a friend of bugs".

And until I find another human partner who feels the same, I'll man the gates myself.

Someone who understands that we must watch the water level in the bird bath; keep the flat rock in my goldfish pond suitable for bees to bask upon; someone who remembers to fill hummingbird feeders...

Someone who can fathom the logic that the black stink bug that hangs around my front door mat is there because she can feel the cool air from under the door on horribly hot summer days; and also knows to be extra careful watering pot plants so as to not drowned the anole that has an apartment in a large turquoise pot. I can wait.