Balance
I wanted to write about life: birth and renewal. On the balcony are newly emerged saplings of melon, red ginger and bell peppers. I will keep them sheltered from the salt water rain and the ocean blown winds. They will see the coming season through and hopefully flourish in the balmy weather that follows the monsoon. I planted a single melon seed. May it produce a huge fruit, sweet, crisp and juicy! The beautiful red yellow and orange baby peppers my vegetable vendor sent last month only had a very few seeds each. I planted them all and I think ahead of the same jewel like colours brightening up my balcony.
I must believe in that future harvest because all around me is old age, fraility and the sure evidence that life, at its end, is not all that it’s cut out to be. There is a deepening ache that runs through the bones and blood and taints all that life used to be. The drooping of the back, the slow shuffle of age flattened feet, the careful tending of routine and ritual, all these are markers of last years, last rites.
I wanted to write about hope love and the strength of faith. Why else would I plan for a future of the most improbable impossible plants ? Seed of mangosteen, bulb of hyacinths and iris. The garden renews, surprises, on occasion even disappoints. But it never allows me to lose hope. Sometimes, when a pot has lain dormant for far too long, this impatient gardener digs in to see what is going on. More often than not, a sapling is hidden there in the darkness. It waits for the right sunlight, moisture, shade…who knows? It may not survive my over eager surveillance but if it does, once again I am reminded of what a triumph life is. We so often take life for granted while death always comes as a shock, or at the least, a surprise.
I must remember that slow growing sapling biding its time because what I see in my life is hopelessness, despair, the struggle to get through another lonely day. The strongest yearning to lie down, close one’s eyes and leave for what was promised; the strongest will to regain lost happiness and the companion of a lifetime; neither can overcome this life force. The eyes blink open early in the morning and stare into the night. The clock tick tocks relentlessly and life clings on. Against all instinct or desire, life will not let go easily.
I wanted to describe the life I feel in the earth as I bury my hands in the dark perfume of compost and manure. The rich soil I prepare stains my hands a deep brown and leaves stubborn traces under my nails. The earthworms, disturbed by my hands, wriggle redly, and then burrow back under the surface. My plants need this renewal of earth each year just before the monsoon lashes down. Their roots need to be loosened of old, hard mud, freed of old growth and replenished in this fresh soil. Much like the worms, the dislodged taproot (in most of my plants) will quickly find its way back into the earth and settle there, to reach down, send out its branches, and send a supply of life coursing upwards into the stems and leaves, flowers and fruits. The old soil will lie dormant through the rain and then gradually rejoin life on the balcony. A handful will be mixed in with too wet mud. Another couple of handfuls will level out a large pot gobbling up too much of this year’s nutrient dense soil. And so the old will become undistinguished from the new.
This is what I wanted to write about because what I sense is decay and dusty memory. There will be no renewal in these old bones and not much use for them. When the priests have been and gone, when the furnace has had its way, it spits out sharp little shards of hardened innards. Skull and nails and heart all unrecognisable in these grey brown remnants of what was once a life.
And so we struggle. With hope and despair. Birthing and ageing. I find my way to the balcony when it threatens to overwhelm me. I stand amongst the green plants and the blue sky and the balance is somewhat restored.
Death though? No one can truly struggle with death. It isn’t a fight one can win. It is an adventure, the final, the ultimate brain teaser. The ones who learn to anticipate the adventure might navigate the last years with something close to hope.
I wanted to write beautiful words filled with all the joy of life and faith and love. It is draining to write of sadness and despair and I do want that writing to fade. But life is not only joyful. There is always the other side of the coin. Sometimes life lands one way, or the other, and then on days like today, it balances on the thin edge and takes its chances.