(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Tom Robbins, bearded cactus on 2008-02-11, 10:13:00

"The only truly magical and poetic exchanges that occur in this life occur between two people. Sometimes it doesn't get that far. Often, the true glory of existence is confined to individual consciousness. That's okay. Let us live for the beauty of our own reality."
Tom Robbins, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"

I noticed cactus plants quietly preparing to burst into bloom today.

When I had a small child, and I tucked her in at bedtime, we would often sum up our day for each other by answering the following question. What color was your day?

It started out simple and intuitive – my day was often blue because I hated my job. Hers was often green – especially on days she got to play outside at after-school day care.

After a while, we got all existential and symbolical. I’d have a day that was pastel blue shading into pink with shiny silver highlights. That meant there was a silver lining inside my professional rain cloud. I was going to law school, and was learning how to think straight. Hers was sometimes yellow with orange streaks and flecks of gold, a kind of impressionistic finger-painting representing a sunny day on the swings, but with a bully lurking at the bottom of the slide. She was growing in body and spirit and learning not to be intimidated by playground bullies.

The fun was explaining to one another how we arrived at specific combinations of colors, and what they signified. Yesterday, we had a preview of Spring: warm, sunny, temps in the middle 70F range. I went to an event at the garden where I volunteer. My day was pink and green, like the prickley pear and bearded cactus plants getting ready to burst into bloom.

It’s been years since I’ve summed up my day in terms of color. I should get back to that.

(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Tom Robbins, black pine, stability on 2008-01-04, 16:11:00

"Disorder is inherent in stability, Civilized man doesn’t understand stability. He’s confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It’s their favorite word, next to ‘power.’ Gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government and so forth. Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that’s a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls.

“Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn’t the same as stability at all. True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed…

"Wouldn’t you say that a stable individual accepts the inevitability of his death? Likewise, a stable culture, government or institution has built into it its own demise. It is open to change, open even to being overthrown. It is open, period. Gracefully open. That’s stability. That’s alive.”

-Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, 1976

My black pine is a 10 year old one gallon plant that I have been envisioning for years as a life-sized bonsai from a Japanese courtyard garden. Here it is being pulled by an old hose wrapped around waterfall filter pipes and some clothesline. Beneath it struggles a bougainvillea that is deep purple, although it's been too thirsty to bloom for years. It too, is about 10 years old. This bougainvillea is less hardy and slower growing than its bright red sibling, "San Diego Red".

Part of being a gardener is trying to plant trees to make shade for the next generation to sit beneath. Attempting to attain Disorder, the pine snagged by the hoses and ropes of Stability. Pine and vine, both living things destined to die, caught between two rocks symbolizing a sort of chronological immortal existence.