Printmaking is a garden

Today I watch the birds because the birds watch me. Today, I hear a butterfly adjust on a salt colored stone step. This is my enchanted pathway, a messy ode to The Bridge to Terabithia. The book seeded the question of gender into my fourth-grade fantasy life. A curious bulb that has grown into a quiet connection via green touch under a heavy bodiless pandemic.

Over the years I forgot what was planted where. Art students speak about this often, letting the material lead them, giving power to the unpredictable agent in the equation. I appreciate this about them, fearless, not reckless, an invitation, not spontaneous or strange, but planted firmly. One student asks in class, do you speak to trees?

I go to garden stores and wait for plants to speak to me. Sometimes their voice is in the red markings on crumpled yellow paper half of what it once claimed to see. Sometimes their voice is a blanket utterance moving me back and forth through the aisles, avoidant of those without masks, or the elderly who are looking for their own enchanted path, maybe a place where they are appreciated as alive responsive beings.

The last six months is my pathway.

The beginnings of spring sought randomness, privacy, walls to cover my fear. Early summer waved in auras of shrub, ferns, a bit of reweeding, the beginning of a dream.

The day before my birthday P cut down a hanging branch, the branch that covered a hole that exposed me to the road and dogs and neighbors. I was ashamed of my rage, and drove to drive it out. I hurriedly purchased a butterfly bush and tall grasses to conceal my growing throat spasm.

The next day he took me to get whatever I wanted. With a goal of want I couldn’t think, I couldn’t open, I was still. We went home with no new friend.

The day after my birthday, I returned alone and met several comrades. Purple leafed, yellow twigged, lavender longing, spiky questions, sage, and Hosta for my mom. I furiously dug in root death heat. I was determined. I was watering. I was sogging, bloated, hung over, and wanton. I was the plant god refused to me, it wouldn’t give me a baby.

His mother on the other hand had a deep appreciation, and gifted me one after another cutting, cut it, loving. She didn’t know how to use words gently; spikes filled her accent with tongues she never knew how to grip. Her life felt left. I wasn’t sure who went first. I accepted every lover, niece, nephew, and other. I put them here and there, the elderberry is a giant.

It was mid to late summer that I began to love in-path. I changed the outdoor light bulbs, to less bright, more golden. It was late when he tripped home, finally saying he under stood in chanting. I smiled; it made my summer truthfully.

It was then that I began my research into the magic of everyday pathways. This research looked like sifting, licking, buttered spoons, wondering about mulch, lifting up my gaze from the street to see what struck me first and last about the decisions each gardener was making. I became engaged in the lawn fairs around me. I wanted to root more.

The way one might go about feeling something that they haven’t already identified as part of their process at the age of forty –

try scratching thick weaves of grasses against your skin, next to where the new kitten just clawed you, accidentally. And then wait to see the red flares of touch imprinting their way on your arm. I bought eighteen varieties of ornamental grasses. I rubbed them on my shoulders while we were searching. Prints made of pink haze, low lying orbs, spiraling dolphin tubes, blue punch dotting, high rise switch blades, standing ovations, and crow’s feet filled my marred limbs.

The grasses swayed and buckled with wind and rain; their roots responded to wet in a way I could relate. I felt my stomach, the tension of not knowing how to grow with the tools of abuse, a family I couldn’t remember. It must have been around now that I dropped out of the volunteer training for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, for the second time this decade.

When I said I didn’t understand why sexual violence was disassociated from sex. She said thank you for your thoughts. That power and control became the focus and the origin. That without recognizing the role sex plays in violence, systems would never be held accountable. That without recognizing the role violence plays in sex, humans will never be understood.

I returned to my path. Between Hope and Joy I remain. They are two people with names I admire. They are two people who have reminded me to orient one’s acts and sadness to the ground. This text is for them because I never would’ve written it without a weekly watering or sunny encounter.

 sept 5, 2020