The Land of Flowers

“Un, uh, uno - taza café - noir - uh - negro.” With these halting multi-lingual words, I placed my first ever order in the United States to a waitress who spoke no English. This was at a McDonald’s in Mission Beach, California, where English is kind of like a rumble seat - quaint, but not very useful if you really want to go anywhere.
Another trip, this time to San Diego, La Jolla, Tijuana, Tucson, and other assorted points. Best memories were of the cliffs at La Jolla and the Kielbassa seals lying about fifteen feet away from the wild photographers behind the fence at the Children’s Pool.
I Had no idea which flowers were native, but there are probably more flowers there than I have ever seen anywhere else “ . . bowers of flowers . . . bloom in the smog. . . ”. At the beach, above it really, $15 breakfast problems now were blown away on salt-scented breezes. Memories become bent, and distort into shapes that belong to another world. Clouds come off the ocean, teasing and imploring the Torrey pines which already seem crossing from land to sky, ready to be the first tree to fly, waving their great cumulo canopy of rising needles and only one slender, twisted foot still tenuously reaching to touch the earth.
The zoo was good, and it wears on one, although I confess I felt very sorry for the animals. I know some of them keep their species alive only in zoos, nonetheless. it is a repository of just bodies. How can one live in a world with no sense of discovery, challenge, curiosity, or mystery? Can a soul survive without mystery? And in a world without decay there is not even that hope of final escape. (You just become nothing? ) Then, what about the morphological impact? What kind of kinks are being twisted into the habits of the universe? Here is an area for Sheldrake to study. Best exhibit? Polar bears; next, the gorillas; third, the pandas. All three of these had significant protection against the constant man-made noise that overwhelms the zoo. Worst thing about the zoo? The noise. Weedeaters, lawnmowers, blowers, kids shrieking, prams squeaking, interstate traffic drumming and pulsating, horns, sirens, telephones ringing, back-up beepers all constantly sounding while hamburger wrappers and cellophane bags swirl past the bewildered animals.
There are lots of surfers and kayakers in San Diego and La Jolla; everywhere you look people are drifting by - like the fast-food wrappers at the zoo. I stopped at the Torrey Pines Glider Club to watch people flying parasails and hang gliders, all at very close ranges. They and the torrey pines seem to sum the entire message of California: “Why Stay Rooted?” Problem is, once airborne, there is nowhere to go - you leave California, you get back in the muck - so there’s a lot of hovering going on out there.

©John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Life Comes.

Gift
Originally uploaded by Pretty Penny.

Spring is a reckless season, coming in wild, ahead of time, before things are ready, before the safeguards have been put in place.
There’s more to Spring than just its beauty - it’s wet and cold and it comes here lost. The rest of the world dosen’t know what to do with it. Sometimes we just want it to go back, get its act together and come back when it’s ready and when we’re ready. But that’s not how Spring comes.
Life came briefly in the form of tiny animals to our doorstep last spring.
As the ephemeral wildflowers began to fade and the early spring flowers rose through the cold wet leaves, the New Green cast its magic colors across the mountains, bringing bright young leaves out in profusion, so also then come to us tiny animals.
A dead possum lay in our yard one spring morning, obviously a victim of our dogs. I went out to bury it and found tiny creatures, still without hair or opened eyes, that had tried to crawl out from her pouch. One was three or four feet away. It had died while crawling away from that suddenly cold world it had know all of its entire life. I wondered briefly what it must have been like in that sudden silence, when the great heartbeat stilled, leaving a moment that wouldn't end, a moment in which it must have also felt the aura of its mother's love slipping away, and with the silence that followed an unknown coolness came creeping into its world. Then it went crawling, looking for Mother. It embarked upon the greatest trip it ever took before it died; a mind-boggling journey of a lifetime.
Mother and children were reunited in a shallow grave below the crowfoot flower, with human words of sadness to bid them farewell.
Next midnight three tiny creatures lay on my back deck, obviously brought there again by my dogs. These too were without hair or opened eyes. I placed them on a newspaper with another on top of that, perhaps to die, not being able either to kill them or to care for them. Next morning, I found one had crawled away from its now dead siblings and had nestled under a light. The solar powered light had also been chewed by the dogs and had also been placed on the table for its protection, and thus these two survivors of the beasts provided each other a measure of their own cold warmth. I was touched by the tiny creature’s will to live, its mad desire to find out what Life was all about. It kicked and thrashed and struggled, looking for food. I called the Nature Center in Asheville and found that they would take it in, and there was another place in Cullowhee. Both might as well be on the moon. I was finishing IRS taxes at the last moment and preparing to leave for Florida early the next morning. The tiny creature was placed in a shoe box with old towels and it wrestled quite mightily, snuggling into the warm darkness. Every time I tried to feed him I was impressed by his energy and and strength and desire to live. It was obvious that he would survive, somehow. He must have been his mother’s pride. She must have a long time to see such a special baby.
Telephone talk indicated that Gator Aid and moistened and mashed dog burger- bits might be edible for him. I tried these with a dropper, and he struggled and strained but did not know how to drink or eat. I toured all the veterinarians in town to see if they would take my little gift of life, which I realized by looking at its see-through ears
was a tiny cottontail rabbit. They all held their hands helplessly and showed signs of profound pity as they sadly shook their heads.
A wonderful friend named Jan agreed to accept our little burden and we left it with her along with Gator Aid and dog-burger bits.
When we returned from Florida, we found its search for life had ended. I had somehow seen it returning to the wild to race through the brambles and canes, leading our dogs on years of fruitless chases. Burial was beneath a bramble bush on the south side of steep hill; its monument a small stack of rocks; also a memory in the hearts of those who shared its life .
Now the tiny rabbit lives on, not in this world but in another world, close by this one,. It lives with Zach and Cherry and Scooter and those other ancestor creature-beings, part now of the soft, dark summer breezes, sharing together the magic moonlight nights of autumn, and delighting in the sparkle of winter sunrises.
And now spring comes again, and whenever spring comes, life comes.
©John Womack, 2005, All Rights Reserved.