Jennifer, lovely to hear you are gifting your place with your own wild garden. Truly a hopeful action on behalf of the Earth. 🌎 Thank you for reading. xo
Thank you, Carmine. What an incredibly beautiful garden you're growing in collaboration with Mother Nature! I found you just a day or two after my neighbor was complaining about crabgrass. I was torn between amusement and chagrin and too diffident to tell her crabgrass functions to prevent erosion and build healthy soil, like so many other "weeds." Gardens take time and this piece of land had been badly neglected. Rewilding and no-mow gardens are catching on, but slowly up here in conservative central Maine. I hope as I get more natives in and develop healthy quoroms of plants there will be less crabgrass and other plants that distress the neighbors and many more birds and insects, along with beauty for all of us. In this case, showing will be more useful than trying to tell people. It was a great comfort to find you and know you would perfectly understand!
Me, too! I'm caught up with "Departure" now. What a wonderful story! In an entirely different context, I have also played with this kind of sensual idea of no touch, though in my case I used scent. I was struck by the similarities in our writing and the unexpected eroticism when we focus as writers on intimacy as experienced through our senses. I hope my work is half as beautiful as yours. Thanks so much! I'll be exploring all your work going forward.
Also, I'm so sorry about Pepito. I wept for your family and the power of our bonds with beloved creatures. What a gift he was to you, and you all to him as well. What a painful loss.
Your question about our relationship with death is timely, as the third book in my trilogy, which I'm writing now, is titled Death. I also read and love Death and Birds. I think of Death as the great balancer. Without Death, Life is meaningless. Without Life, Death is meaningless. Together, they close a circle, or I could say they complete a spiral in the endless cycle of life-death-life-death. Ancient people recognized this with old stories, symbols, and art. I have long believed one of the greatest pieces of wisdom any of us can aspire to is to let die what must. Not only resign ourselves to it, but embrace it, dance with it, release with grace and gratitude that which is ready to die. Those we lose are worth our tears and grief. Tears and grief are healing, natural reactions that keep us well-watered, pliant, and human. They give us the gifts of empathy, sympathy, and shared life experience. They prove our ability to love, surely the greatest power we have.
Please don't think I say that lightly without regard for the pain of loss and death. I spent last year watching my mother die of dementia and, ultimately, a broken hip. I've done animal rescue and hospice work. I lost a cat who was to me what Pepito was to you. I still can't talk about it and it happened 10 years ago tomorrow. I"ve also worked on an ambulance and seen many kinds of death, particularly highway trauma. As a young woman I worked with chronic and terminally ill children in an inpatient hospital. But to me, each of these deaths was as sacred as birth. I think we've lost something culturally in our understanding of the rightness of death, the naturalness, the need for it so Life can remain healthy and robust in its turn. I wish we didn't demonize it, fear it, and have an attitude that it's something to conquer or avoid. Death and aging are as natural as birth and children. Somehow we've lost our way in the cycle, we think we should be above it or is shouldn't apply to us. Good luck with that!
A wonderful personal post and a great question. Thanks again. Be well.
Thank you so much, Jennifer! I'm thrilled to hear you're enjoying Haggard House. This made my day. :)
Jennifer, lovely to hear you are gifting your place with your own wild garden. Truly a hopeful action on behalf of the Earth. 🌎 Thank you for reading. xo
Thanks for the mention, Jennifer. I’m so happy you discovered my work.
Good! Glad to have found you!
Thank you, Carmine. What an incredibly beautiful garden you're growing in collaboration with Mother Nature! I found you just a day or two after my neighbor was complaining about crabgrass. I was torn between amusement and chagrin and too diffident to tell her crabgrass functions to prevent erosion and build healthy soil, like so many other "weeds." Gardens take time and this piece of land had been badly neglected. Rewilding and no-mow gardens are catching on, but slowly up here in conservative central Maine. I hope as I get more natives in and develop healthy quoroms of plants there will be less crabgrass and other plants that distress the neighbors and many more birds and insects, along with beauty for all of us. In this case, showing will be more useful than trying to tell people. It was a great comfort to find you and know you would perfectly understand!
Me, too! I'm caught up with "Departure" now. What a wonderful story! In an entirely different context, I have also played with this kind of sensual idea of no touch, though in my case I used scent. I was struck by the similarities in our writing and the unexpected eroticism when we focus as writers on intimacy as experienced through our senses. I hope my work is half as beautiful as yours. Thanks so much! I'll be exploring all your work going forward.
Also, I'm so sorry about Pepito. I wept for your family and the power of our bonds with beloved creatures. What a gift he was to you, and you all to him as well. What a painful loss.
Your question about our relationship with death is timely, as the third book in my trilogy, which I'm writing now, is titled Death. I also read and love Death and Birds. I think of Death as the great balancer. Without Death, Life is meaningless. Without Life, Death is meaningless. Together, they close a circle, or I could say they complete a spiral in the endless cycle of life-death-life-death. Ancient people recognized this with old stories, symbols, and art. I have long believed one of the greatest pieces of wisdom any of us can aspire to is to let die what must. Not only resign ourselves to it, but embrace it, dance with it, release with grace and gratitude that which is ready to die. Those we lose are worth our tears and grief. Tears and grief are healing, natural reactions that keep us well-watered, pliant, and human. They give us the gifts of empathy, sympathy, and shared life experience. They prove our ability to love, surely the greatest power we have.
Please don't think I say that lightly without regard for the pain of loss and death. I spent last year watching my mother die of dementia and, ultimately, a broken hip. I've done animal rescue and hospice work. I lost a cat who was to me what Pepito was to you. I still can't talk about it and it happened 10 years ago tomorrow. I"ve also worked on an ambulance and seen many kinds of death, particularly highway trauma. As a young woman I worked with chronic and terminally ill children in an inpatient hospital. But to me, each of these deaths was as sacred as birth. I think we've lost something culturally in our understanding of the rightness of death, the naturalness, the need for it so Life can remain healthy and robust in its turn. I wish we didn't demonize it, fear it, and have an attitude that it's something to conquer or avoid. Death and aging are as natural as birth and children. Somehow we've lost our way in the cycle, we think we should be above it or is shouldn't apply to us. Good luck with that!
A wonderful personal post and a great question. Thanks again. Be well.