F**k Around and Find Out

Prompts for Thinking Like a Scrap Heap

Hollyhocks are friends of the scrap heap. These live in Zutphen, Netherlands.

My body thinks it is still in Olympia. So does my spirit, which is wandering around the garden by my studio, smelling the jasmine that decided to bloom just as we were getting ready to leave for The Netherlands.

Yesterday, we were in the air for over nine hours. We crossed continents and seas, massive masses of land and water eaten up by jet engines and steel. No wonder my body doesn’t know where it belongs. When we were crossing over Greenland, I wanted to start writing this post, but my brain was lost somewhere over the east coast of America. Instead, I pulled out the water color pencils I bought just for this trip and tried to figure out how to use them while drawing a blue jay feather I found in the backyard last week.

Last night, we stayed in an old monastery turned hotel in Zutphen. This morning, while eating breakfast, I watched a rook wander under a current bush and walk along the edge of a small stone trough. Grey feathers crowned its cocked head. It clacked its beak like a grumpy elder whose patience ran thin.

The hollyhocks of Zutphen grow in the cracks between buildings and cobblestoned streets. They push up through broken concrete in the industrial end of the canal. They choose the places that aren’t cultivated or kept neat. I imagine the hollyhock is a friend of the scrap heap. It is a scavenger, making a home along the edges.

Seeking Joyful Practice somewhere over Greenland.

Stick any two things together and see what happens.

I’m sitting on the balcony of the apartment we will empty out over the next few weeks. A late afternoon thunderstorm is taking a bite off the hottest part of the day, and I can hear the pigeons hiding in the Linden tree. It smells like the earth opening up to the rain.

I’m gathering the edges of my thoughts, birds floating in my mind. I’m taking in the discarded moments, hemming up the tatters, making something new from what was scattered. A monastic rook and the scent of jasmine. Zutphen and Olympia. Dank je wel gets stuck on my tongue, and I don’t know why I’m saying gracias instead.

Sometime during the first year after I’d moved to Olympia, I wrote an essay for a class about growing roots like a strawberry plant, about taking those roots and stretching them far enough to reach Texas and snug it up next to Washington, so I didn’t have to feel so out of place, so far from home. The desire to get lost pushes up against the onslaught of responsibilities and the certainty that there isn’t enough time to do everything that must be done. The desire for connection and intimacy rubs itself raw in search of solitude.

This afternoon, sitting in the sun with Yme and his father, I saw a strawberry the size of my pinky nail growing along the edges of the concrete patio. Yme’s father and I sat with our eyes closed, listening to the bird song. Under the bleeding hearts, I found a dead bumble bee, its perfect abdomen tucked in, wings resting forever under its thorax.

The afternoon storm has passed, and the sun pushes through the clouds. I can feel it on my face and arms and wonder if I am getting burned. This moment is like my strawberry roots, pulling everything closer together. The birds are raucous after the storm, singing the evening awake. But I am all stillness. Soon enough there will be the active detachment of hanging out around the edges of conversations where I understand only a handful of words and make meaning out of gestures and tone.

Jasmine rook. Airplane blue jay. Raucous stillness.

Instead of stealing time, I’ll time my steals. Strategic wanderings. Getting lost inside moments. Two minutes can hold the depth of an afternoon when I let myself get consumed. The magic of a labyrinth is that it takes you on an entire pilgrimage in the space of a few moments. It only takes a few steps to turn and turn again into the center.