Morning Glories At My Window

"Be willing to be a beginner every single morning."

-- Meister Eckhart

Morning Glory 7-25-14

"A morning glory at my window satisfies me 

more than the metaphysics of books."

-- Walt Whitman

Earlier this spring Leo planted some pots full of flower seeds.

One pot has been growing stalky sunflowers.

Another contains a crazy wildflower blend.

My favorite, though, are the Morning Glories. They're in the pot with the tall, fragile, willowy tangle of green vines and heart-shaped leaves winding their way up slender stakes, reaching for the sky. The first two buds on this one finally unfurled yesterday morning, so that the first thing I saw when I looked out the kitchen window were the fresh, wide-open faces of two Morning Glory blooms.

It made me feel good.

I think I might have said something like "Hey, Morning Glories! There you are! I've been waiting for you."

Morning Glories are smart flowers. They take advantage of the early morning sun to get their blooming done, and as the afternoon wanes and evening falls, they wisely close up shop and turn in early, somehow re-wrapping their papery, fluttery, blue and purple petals back inside that tight pointy whorl where they rest all night.

When they wake well-rested the next morning, they are bright eyed -- literally -- with a light-up yellow center that practically glows with brightness and hope and encouragement.

The hopeful presence of these flowers makes me feel like I might just have a chance of getting a re-start on some stuff I've been fucking up and stumbling over lately. 

Leo's Morning Glories remind me every morning that it's never too late to start over, to try again, to go back to the beginning and give it another shot. 

Morning after morning after morning after morning.

Individuality

"The things that make me different are the things that make me."

-- A.A. Milne

Flower in a wheat field 6-28-14

"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."

-- Joss Whedon

Columbine

"If I choose to look up and not down,

it's because I know what waits below."

-- Sally Brampton, 

Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

Columbine flower 5-30-14

Columbine is one of my favorite wildflowers.

Happy, sun-drenched clumps of it run rampant along the south side of my house. They remind me of the funny stilt-walkers at a circus with their silly little belled, jester-hat blooms perched high atop long, leggy stems.

Up close, their demure, down-turned blossoms are a particularly delicate and lovely example of nature's wondrously deft hand at intricacy.

According to legend, the Columbine flower is the symbol for foolishness.

If you Google the word "Columbine" though, you won't get images of happy wildflowers. You'll get a startling barrage of words like massacre, rampage, psychopaths, shootings, murders, killers, monsters, bloodbath, horror, rage and tragedy.

Do an image search and you'll be smacked with an even more disturbing collage of photos depicting all of the above.

Sadly, ever since an April day in 1999, this happy, innocent wildflower that never hurt anyone is forevermore linked with unimaginable darkness.

It's the polarity of life, I suppose, the dramatic through-line of all existence, the tug and pull of opposite ends.

Good and evil.
Darkness and light.
High and low.
Happy and sad.
Love and hate.
Yes and no.
In and out.
Life and death.
Beginning and ending.
Now and never.
Here and gone.

I guess I'm writing this to remind myself (and you if you need reminding) that life's not all bad. Even the worst parts -- even the parts that seem unimaginably dark and hopeless when you're trapped in them -- have a flip-side.

Things get better eventually. Wounds heal, eventually. Even if eventually takes a lifetime.

At least I hope so.

I was reminded of this hope yesterday when I saw that despite the mud and blood spattered all over her good name (people used to name their newborn daughters Columbine. I don't have to do a baby names popularity search to know it's probably scraping the bottom of the barrel these days), my Columbine keeps blooming.

My Columbine keeps dancing in the sunshine.

Those silly little fool's caps keep bobbing in the Spring breeze.

Their heads may be bowed, their delicate faces may be down-turned, but they keep on reaching towards the sky.

Peace & Quiet

"... or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes

and you're alone in the whole house ..."

-- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

"Dancing Blossom" green tea with jasmine and red leaves 2-1-14

"In order to be open to creativity, 

one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude."

-- Rollo May