I Feel Like the Karate Kid, but Something is Breaking.
a suspension
Ungardening is a kind of meditation. An unthinking whilst moving through the despair of all this wrongness. The toxic Garlic Mustard clearing a path for an army of itself. When I focus on one thing at a time it sends me into other realms, it releases the voices. I know a lot about Garlic Mustard now, but I won’t bore you with the details. What may be of interest is the pesto that I made that wasn’t pesto in the end. I hate the word dip, the idea of it. But that is what it was. A dip. I cringe at myself, though it was wondrous. Isn’t there a better word? An immersion, perhaps. Or a plunge? A bath? A dunk, even?
Gardening, conversely, requires all of me. I must consider (to be clear, I google this) spacing, depth, soil, rocks, water, the sun, Pearl. I tease apart rhizomes with silvery fur, rhizomes with long tangled rubbery roots, dormant rhizomes with some years blooms halted and shriveled. I must consider their height. The light. When they bloom. Their most suitable companions. I feel like the Karate Kid, but something is breaking. There is no all of me. There are only fragments, tangled and smudgy.
This morning I informed my family that I am changing my name to Smudge. “Margaux Smudge?” they asked. “No,” I replied, “Just Smudge.” Little more was said. They understood, I think.
My neighbor, a year or two older than Søren, emerges from the woods in sweatpants and a baggy tshirt. She could be Billie Eilish from where I stand. As she nears, I smell the scent of her — Frankincense and Myrrh. She glides down the path looking for a golden egg. My friend, a gardener with his own earthy scent, sometimes close to fig, but distinctly his own, is coming from another direction. Both are headed to my studio door. He is perplexed at her emergence. She doesn’t notice him.
I take an ice-cold shower to reset.
I go for a walk to reset.
I Reset. I Reset.
Ingredients for my Garlic Mustard ________
Garlic mustard leaves, flowers, and seeds
Walnuts
Olive Oil
Garlic
Lime
Himalayan Sea Salt
Cracked Pepper
Queso (because we had it and here is where it began to mutate)
Maple Syrup.
I may have added some fresh turmeric, but I can’t be certain.
My fingers are stained from the turmeric of the past.
And the dirt and the ink.
Agreed, the “dip” is the action of adding something with more taste to a bland thing in search of more. Like a cucumber, a bland cracker, or even a piece of celery, which in and of itself begs for flavor. Celery is always in search of a companion. Otherwise, it’s cardboard in edible form.
Wingin it, I came up with “uptick”, “a “spike”, or even an “accession sauce”. I like “Boost”........
“Garlic Mustard Boost”
You made me consider what a smudge was….a mark, a waft of smoke, not quite all there, but present….