The Wag

A riddle:

What's five foot four, loves leather goods, has two green thumbs, and gardened his childhood away?

Spoiler: It's me.

As a boy, the days spent mid-calf in fertilizer, pruning my tomato flock amongst the high crests of sunflower, burned at both ends. You might as well've called me "James," as in, "He of the Giant Peach."  Suffice it to say, friends, that I've seen, and dealt with, my fair share of weeds. When I moved to the big city, however, I thought the creepy green stuff was out of my life, and I mean for good, but this week, as I'm sure you've heard, they're back, and making headlines.

My American Revolution by Robert Sullivan

“What a trip!” –Sam Robert, The New York fucking Times

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

“A novel may be full of opinions, but it must never be a sermon.” –Hillary Kelly, The New Republic

Where on Earth by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Anyone who makes the old accusation that sci-fi authors "just can't write" should have this collection put in his hands, as Ms. Le Guin would do, kindly but firmly. Many sci-fi authors, we know, are as clever and tricky as so many Coyotes. Ms. Le Guin, though, has matured from the vividness and imagination she had from the beginning into wisdom and a clearsightedness that reaches past sympathy.” –Tom Shippey, The Wall Street Journal

You have found yourself in a competitive eating competition, and while you don’t classify eating as a sport, the table is decorated as a football stadium, and you are wearing the player’s codified polyester and spandex.  There is an associated shame with such an act.  It is often inevitable that we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations—motivated by pride, or sex, or competitive will.   We find ourselves trying too hard.  The most humiliating moment comes when you stuff your face with hot dogs, eyeing your opponent’s heap against your own, feeling the expansion of your throat, swallowing with the aid of water.  Your cheeks flush as you realize the waste of your pursuit, the punishable gluttony. Push through, try to reflect and then forget.

The process of making words is physical.  Words create safe passage over raging rivers.  Words are walls to keep out the cold.  Words are chimneys that send smoke up and not out into the living room.  Words are foundational, and they may or may not create the most seamless journey this week.  Be aware of the way that what you say has earthly consequences.  What comes out cannot be easily shut away again, just as trash cannot be easily reused.  It builds up.  It creates immense landfill wastelands that will outlive humanity.  Be cautious about what you expel.

You have lost yourself in the best way possible.  There are times our minds connect with something—another person, an idea or transcendent concept—where we suddenly sweep up into the cosmic readiness and sense the whole mesh illuminated.  It is a lovely time of levity.  Do not let this message interrupt you.  Do not let it sweep you out into too much self-awareness.  Stay as long as you can un-centered.  For so long we have emphasized the center, but enjoy this time on a more important plane: the edge. 

Do not envy the person who makes the jokes.  In your envy, you may in fact feel deep admiration, even love.  You may admire the joker so much that you lend a large chunk of yourself to the desire to be the joker.  What you really desire is that someone pays attention to you—likely someone who is laughing at the joker’s jokes and not yours.  Whatever misdirected attention you seek, remember that you will not gain admirers through resentment.  Be your flawed raw self, and be so without reservation and with deep generosity. 

You’re sitting on the train feeling the crusty edges of some new deficit when you see the billboard that reads: SURVIVORS BLOOM.  The text is bedded in different colored pink carnations.  Suddenly, the pink in the sky grows highlighted, and you open your hands to look at your palms.   You will become aware of your essential vitality this week.   In whatever large or small way, you are surviving.  No matter how you look at it, survival itself is grace.

It’s unknown how you got to this point, naked in a bed of tall grass in a gravel road ditch.  You ingested something that drugged you, and thus places you at a distance from yourself.  This creates new boundaries and destroys others.  To people around you, you may seem particularly vulnerable right now, even neurotic.  But in this new sun, you will wake as you haven’t woken in a long time, and this is something to record and know.