The desert was warm at dusk when I slipped out to the pool alone. It was a still, uniform heat that held me all over. A soothing certainty to feel even the tiniest, boniest toe warm as I swiped my key card, passed through the black gate, and circled the pool. Selecting a chaise lounge, I set my towel on top of the key card and removed my sandals. Earplugs, swim cap, goggles in place on my head, I removed my pink crocheted cover-up and dropped it onto the folded towel. Just as the last guest departed through the gate with a clang, I lowered myself onto the lip of the pool at the deep end. After swishing my legs in the water for a moment, I plunged in headfirst.

That initial entry is singular, like take-off in a plane; exciting, promising, turbulent. My custom is to snake my way across the pool on that first plunge, the way a mermaid would swim through the open sea on a single breath, my body adjusting to the pool’s temperature. A plane flew very close overhead. Gusts of cooling wind began to shake the palm trees as the light drained out of the sky and darkness took reign. Under the water, the pool lights created the most marvelous caustics that I have ever seen.

My favorite part of any swim is passing through these ripples of light. I never fail to think of them as lace made of light. They were more intense with darkness surrounding the pool and the illumination beaming from within it. Alone, I swam everywhere, seeking these pockets of radiance, enjoying the patterns, relishing the feeling of my body in the water, and the quiet of my mind with my breath held. Beyond the pool, beyond the gate, there was disaster, disease, and death circling my family. Within the pool, only sacred elements and my own spirit were contained.

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Mysteriously cool and cloudy for a summer morning. I wear my red sweats. At first, I can’t imagine eating anything. Then I put frozen falafel in the toaster oven and start making a salad. The kitties come to the bar to watch, sitting politely on the stools, peering across the counter at the cutting board and my hands busy chopping carrots and celery. It has been a long time since we performed this little ritual together. I recall rainy Sunday dinners last winter when they lined up at the counter like this to watch me cook.

It is a quiet, understated pleasure. I’m afraid that any thought or extreme appreciation of it might disrupt the scene, causing it to melt away like a mirage. I push a carrot end across the counter to them. They take turns sniffing, recoiling slightly. They hate celery even more than carrots. Salad and dressing assembled, falafel toasted, I crowd onto a barstool beside them and eat. They watch for a while. The gray-striped tabby slips away to look into the yard from the screen door.

He watches the corn. Somewhere out there, my calico is doing her rounds, sniffing grapevines, lavender stems, and rose bushes. Perhaps he is watching her. She might be among the tall green cornstalks. Young hawks scream from their nest in one of the nearby oaks. I should give up on the seasons. This sunless summer morning could be the final evidence of the futility of my pattern-seeking, my meaning-making. The storyteller could vanish into scenes out of sequence, time that loops back on itself, lunch for breakfast, and breakfast for dinner. Real comfort seems to flow from my tired surrender to chaos and meaninglessness. Aren’t these just the guardians at the gateway of the infinite?

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Her clothes were in a suitcase in a corner, things hurriedly packed after her home was flooded by a toilet she couldn’t hear running. Precious little items were tucked away in a small green wooden box and three different cosmetic bags that I had given her over the years. These cosmetic bags, too, were treasured by her. I unpacked the suitcase slowly. The intense physicality, the reality of these items left behind, made it feel as if I might see her again, as if I was almost touching her. I won’t see her again. Won’t touch her soft hand or kiss her forehead.

I look at the corn growing in the garden. She is the person I would talk to about the corn. I used to call her with FaceTime and walk around the garden showing her every green thing. She grew tomatoes when I was small. The memory of being in a garden with her, hunting for tomato worms, pulling them from the plants, and throwing them to the chickens has remained with me, whether I was angry with her or forgiving of her, whether I was in a city or near the hills. When I wanted to excuse our distance, I considered the cigarette she smoked while I was in her womb, my premature birth the proof that there was more than one transgression.

Right now, I would smoke a cigarette with her again from inside the womb if I could. It would mean that we were both still alive. She is not, and that is all. I stood with her in the garage by a mural of a waterfall while she loaded the washing machine and smoked. I played on the balcony beside her while she smoked. When I was fifteen, she underwent open heart surgery and never smoked again. Thirty years later, the morning after she brought the suitcase to the hotel room, her heart stopped.

I have contemplated her heart in artistic terms after every hospitalization. A queen of hearts, a broken heart, her heart a galleon sinking in the sea. At first, I believed it was the shape of our lives rather than the death that was so tragic. But the death. The death. The death. Terrible punctuation to our heart-shaped, womb-shaped, lung-shaped, only life together.

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At dusk, the light touches the awning, and even spider webs look exalted. Bathed in gold, the small corners are kingdoms too, resplendent, glorious. Birds are conversing on this particular evening. One makes a short statement. Another answers. A third debates the point. A fourth asks a clarifying question. It’s a very casual, unhurried dialogue. Shadows cast by the setting sun make a lacy fringe around the small corner kingdom.

I limit my view to just this tiniest ordinarily unobserved slice. I deny my eyes the shift in focus onto the street, house, and trees beyond. The house across the street usually garners my enthusiasm at this time of day with its glowing face. Often, the curvaceous tree in the yard sways, rustles, casts shadows- a busy performer. Too easy, I think. Tonight, I want this ruined arachnid ghetto. I want the sharp line of the beam, the right angle of the window frame, the gold patch of light, the shadow fringe.

In this way, it is just the light. It has always been just the light entertaining my eyes, but now, this is obvious. I cannot think that there is some beauty inherent in my neighbor’s house, lawn, or tree. With my eyes trained on this segment of a wooden beam, threads of spider silk glistening, I know it is the light. Or do I? For now that I have become so focused, the forgotten spinnings of a spider and this rough brown wooden support are so beautiful to me, so worthy of affection, it feels close to obsession. Could I ever love anything more than this small corner kingdom?

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This morning, blue sky and bird song. Gentle sunlight caresses the dark green leaves of rose bushes and oak trees. The aroma is beyond delicious. It reminds me of a lost park I frequented as a teenage girl. It smelled magnificent there, like sweet, sappy frankincense and myrrh, with wet green notes, geosmin, and a whisper of hay. There was an oak tree in the center and in its heart a beehive, which hummed resonantly with mystic anthophilous chant. I could not explain this place. Masked in the banality of a tiny public park with an altar disguised as a solitary stone picnic bench, it dripped with magic.

I went there daily and never saw another soul. What was there for an ordinary person to do in such a place? No space or attractions for children to play. No room for birthday parties, soccer matches, or softball games. Only gorgeous aromatic plants and herbs, and an old tree full of bees at the apex of a long uphill road flanked by suburban neighborhoods neatly tucked behind high stone walls. Beyond the park were wild hills full of coyotes and jackrabbits. To be there was to inhabit the remarkable dissonance between one world and another. It was an impossible liminal space that welcomed me alone.

Two black kittens sit beside me as I write these words, twins, sniffing the air. Air like this can be drunk like wine. A white rose blossom ignites with morning light. Birds flutter among the oak leaves. When I was a teenage girl, I wanted to escape the town where I lived. In my urgency to be elsewhere, and my newness, I couldn’t comprehend the uniquely wild strangeness that lurked around almost every corner in that place. When I think now of where I grew, I see that I could only become a strange bloom and then a bitter fruit. Sweet fruits are for the breakfast table, and bitter fruits are for the perfumer’s vial.

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I want to go outside. I need to go outside. I have things to plant and trim. I feel stuck indoors, trapped in this room, hiding from a plumber who always seems to be here. My walls are torn open, have been torn open for a month, and I yearn for walls, peace, and privacy. I long for the walls to be whole, and I want to be outside of the walls, under the sky, watching lavender grow.

The cat is in the closet. The kittens are hidden under the blankets, inside the bed. I wince whenever some horrible sound of beams or pipes being sawed shakes the house. My head hurts. The water is turned off. What can you do when the source of life is suspended? Hold still. Hide. Wait until you can come out to drink, bathe, and sing like a bird again.

The plumber means well. I think. At least, he is only doing his job. Thanks to him, all the aforementioned drinking, bathing, and washing may resume soon and continue every day without water pooling under floors and over ceilings, and dripping behind walls, expanding into grotesque damp patches and secret conclaves of mold. He’s like the doctor or the dentist. You may need him, but you don’t want him and can’t wait to wiggle away.

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I fell asleep listening to Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, read by Tilda Swinton. Lulled into a sweet, pacific slumber by the gorgeous prose dripping with delicious descriptions of nature, I was jolted awake by these words:

“It is, as with all creation, matter impregnated with mind: but the resultant issue is a living spirit, a glow in the consciousness, that perishes when the glow is dead. It is something snatched from non-being, that shadow which creeps in on us continuously and can be held off by continuous creative act. So, simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.”

A single tear spilled from my right eye upon hearing that final sentence. I silenced the book so that those words would be the last to enter my ear for the day. That continuous creative act involves a special attentiveness to the riches of sensorial experience dropped at our feet in every moment. It is an extra, but I suspect necessary, second step to weave those enlivened impressions of these riches into an artifact of some kind. How else will the uninitiated find the secret that is no secret at all, but a deluge swelling all around us, waiting for us to cast a glow over it?​

Important too, not to underestimate the power of forgetfulness. The artifact I make may be for my future self. One who knew but forgot is as uninitiated as one who never knew. It isn’t a shortcoming, not a sin, but it is a deprivation. I should like to kindle that glow in myself and others whenever I can. Why not lovingly widen the domain of being?

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I sift dried rosebuds and petals out of the basket with my bare hands, removing stems and pointed leaves. The desired bits are placed carefully in a glass apothecary jar. A litter of dried stigma or pollen, tiny yellow crumbs from the center of the rose, falls through the weave of the basket, remaining on the tabletop. Placing the lid on the jar, I admire the multicolored confetti of petals contained within the shapely glass vessel. A petite black cat hops onto the table to examine the installation.

I place the clippers and gloves in the basket and carry it, hanging from the crook of my arm, until I am standing before the roses. Then I pull the gloves over my hands and select from the two pairs of clippers. The basket hangs in the kitchen all year long. In the winter, it was full of drying mandarin peels, ribbons, and paint. Now it is time again for roses. I clip close to the bloom, letting the flower heads tumble into the basket. Then I prune the branch properly at the node to stimulate future healthy growth.

Neon red, maroon, white, and yellow. I bring my harvest inside and set it on the ground for the four young cats to enjoy. They encircle it, sniffing. One watches a spider run from the basket. Another snatches a yellow rose between her teeth and scampers away with it. Rescuing the spider with a jar, I return him to the garden. After collecting my stolen rose from my sleek little thief, I hang the basket of blooms from the hook in the kitchen.

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Attention devoted anxiously to the copper kettle and coffee grounds, I hear the chirping of a bird, dimly, dully, through the fog of caffeine addiction. I turn my head, registering a hummingbird hovering over the nasturtiums, very close to the ground. Across from the bird, the cat is taught, strung like a bow, prepared to pounce. It happens. I see them connect, and I’m out the door like a shot fired, both hands around my ferocious feline friend. Nothing in mouth or under claw, I spirit her away.

She complains as I plop her hastily inside. Shutting the screen door behind me, I return to the bed of nasturtiums, heart racing.

”Are you okay? Are you okay?” I ask again and again, voice trembling. Lowering a hand, I gently push aside leaves, flowers, pods, and vines, searching. Nothing. I know what I saw. My pounding heart and the flood of adrenaline that propelled me are confirmation.

Gingerly, my fingers creep along, lifting nasturtiums. With a feral cry, the tiny bird reveals itself, wings thrumming in a clumsy but speedy take off. Shooting past my ear and away, he is alive enough, well enough to vanish in an instant. Relief doesn’t quiet my heart. The rain and the empty feeder were critical factors, I decide. Rushing inside, I replenish and then replace the hummingbird feeder. Still in shock, I return to my kettle. All day, I will watch birds feed and wonder, Is it he?

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Thunder? The clouds in the sky indicate it’s a possibility. I turn off the fan to listen. The absence of kittens is telling, too. The sound sent them to their favorite hiding places before I could register anything at all. Coffee half consumed, brain wrapped entirely around the creative task in front of me, I consider the rumble at least two whole minutes after it has passed. Not entirely. While I had been copying and pasting and reviewing edits, the question of the sound filtered slowly into my consciousness. I contemplated the impact of self-doubt. Now that I am so close to becoming the creative dragonfly that I’ve always dreamed of being, I quiver, hesitate, and backtrack. Time to find a job. Feed my life into the dollar-making machine.

It is self-doubt clothed as practicality. Mortified by the costs of perfumery materials and medical expenses, paralyzed by ISBN numbers, struggling to draw a flower, covered in kittens, I think, Lady, you gotta get a job. I turn the fan off to listen for thunder. The wind blows the blades of the fan around, the curtains dance, wind chimes tinkle. No thunder, but after a few minutes, I hear sirens wailing in the distance. Not a kitten in sight.

​Then I consider another possibility. Tomorrow is trash day. Early in the morning, the day before trash day, some neighbors will roll their cans out before they go to work. This way, they may come home late and go to bed without worrying about the detritus left by their existence. Thunder? Or garbage cans rumbling? This is the question I face about my creative work. It’s the suburban representation of self-doubt. Is this awe-inspiring beauty shaking the heavens, or smelly rubbish rumbling down driveways on plastic wheels?

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My calico cat sits on the retaining wall, watching the sky full of roiling gray-blue clouds. I race against them, my fingers bumping into wriggling pink worms as I work. This contact fills me with electric joy. Hastily, I cover unearthed worms with soil, losing track of my planting pattern as I go. There’s no time to worry.

​I’m nearing the end of the garden bed, dirt embedded under my fingernails. I feel a drop on my cheek, push a clove down. The water breaks, clouds bursting overhead. I scoop up the loose, unplanted cloves.

”Come on, Pumpkin, it’s raining!” I yell, dashing for the house. “Come on, run!” A black kitten is waiting for us at the screen door, prancing excitedly at our approach. “Move! Let us in!” I push her aside with my hand, holding the door open for Pumpkin. The excited kitten’s tail puffs out, achieving unprecedented volume. She dances around us with her bottlebrush tail as we shake the water from our fur and clothes. The rain slams violently against the earth beyond the screen.

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I am tired, but I am awake. It is morning, but it’s still pitch black outside. Hoping for some stars or the moon, I pull open the blinds in the kitchen and stare at a reflection of myself. I had a glimpse of cool white stars before closing these blinds at bedtime. It hadn’t been as dark then. Little wisps of violet were still visible around the tree tops.

Now drenched in tar darkness, I withdraw from the window. The midcentury clock on the dining room wall features a four-pointed star. I content myself with this, watching the second hand travel over the face of the tile. There is no other clock like this one in the world. It was made by my grandfather. To the right of the time-keeping element, there is a mosaic of a ballerina.

Not just a ballerina. She is a depiction of a very specific ballerina, the first black ballerina that my grandparents saw in a televised performance. She is Janet Collins. My grandmother wept when she saw her dance. My grandfather made the clock for her as an anniversary gift. Remembering this, I am more than content. I am awe-struck, filled with love and joy. I couldn’t wish on a brighter, more unswerving star than this.

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Wrathful spirit, be still. Waves of yellow pollen rippling on the wind, be done with your lusty exercise. I threw open the windows and welcomed you in, dear spring, so lovingly, as a friend, but you’ve come with vengeance in your heart. The snowmelt and sunshine embolden you. You push against balance, away from center, unwholesome in your zeal.

​City forefathers planted the pines along the streets, thinking they could rule the earth, selecting only male trees to prevent them from propagating as nature dictates. I never knew those so-called planners. My innocent wheezing kitten was born long after their time. We suffer the decisions they made brashly, without humility, thinking themselves wiser than you and all of your kin.

​They didn’t consider the four seasons or the four winds, or even me and my asthmatic kitten. They, no doubt, thought about paychecks, promotions, and budgetary considerations. Perhaps they sent their children to private schools with the wages they earned by placing trees as if trees were merely scenery rather than living members of the community themselves. Now, spring, you’ve come to my house enflamed. My head bends in helpless sorrow.

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Welcome, fair spring, wherever you find her. It is early, just a tad, but she is here, warm and gentle. We wouldn’t dream of asking her to go and come back later. Always a welcome guest, we go out to meet her at the gate, welcome her into the yard, throw open our windows, and call her into the house. Graciously, she glides in, train of green flowing behind her, golden sunlight for hair streaming all around her, cheeks that are the blush of fresh blooms.

​Time has transformed me into one who understands that toil precedes pleasure. There is always digging, hauling, pulling, washing, and pruning before seeds can be planted. Only after that can we begin the gentler work of watering and watching. Much later, we will do whatever harvesting there may be. Deciding what must be removed and clearing it away is a prerequisite to selecting and cultivating what one desires to grow.

​Gardens are filled with such universally applicable wisdom. If you long for a teacher, find a garden to work in. Then you will have four mentors: fair spring, wild summer, prudent autumn, and solemn winter. In truth, there are myriad instructors nested in each of these. We are all composite beings, not least of all these mighty seasons, the personified ebb and flow of life. Their character changes, adjusts, and evolves with every iteration, and so must we if we are alive and wise and part of the great composition.

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Golden sunrise. Brilliant half moon dawdles in the morning sky. Luxurious scent of pink jasmine blooming over the fence. Nervous spring energy. Birds singing. Bumble bees visit during the heat of the day. Hummingbirds chat with us through the open window at bedtime. A first poppy bud, yet to unfurl, waits for the perfect moment.

​Weeding makes a green imprint on my mind. When I tuck in for sleep, memories of root, stem, leaves, and flower flash over my fingertips, flicker in my mind’s eye in hues of emerald, ochre, white, pink, and black. The plants I lovingly touched are all imprinted there too, along with their pungent, fresh, herbaceous aromas. The sleep is heavy and deep. It comes quickly, early. Morning finds me bewildered.

​It’s darker than I’m accustomed to until it is suddenly luminous and filled with sun and moon and birds all at once. Morning doves coo. The scrub jay complains of the calico cat in the yard. A crow laughs at everything. I recall discovering an owl pellet on the garden wall while weeding. The limbs of all the trees framing the moon are green again.

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Once upon a time, we threw birdseed into flower beds, lined the beams of wooden fences with it, poured it over stepping stones, or heaped it on the cinderblocks of a retaining wall. The birds so favored also carried alien seeds into the garden upon their feathers or in their droppings. It was a collaborative chaos. Many strange and wonderful things grew around these impromptu bird cafes. Wild grasses, tall sunflowers, mysterious shoots. All burst unabashedly from the soil.

Our promiscuous behavior with birdseed had come to Wonka-esque fruition. Giant sunflowers grew to towering heights before turning to seed again. I removed most of our strange harvest before the entire neighborhood succumbed. One renegade seedling whispered to me as I approached with my deadly trowel in hand. It was no more than four inches high, sporting substantial, lovely, dark green leaves on its woody stem.

“I’m really something quite beautiful,” it whispered.

I hesitated. Part of me thought that real gardeners show no mercy, but I said, “Excuse me? Did you say something?”

“Yes,” it replied softly but assuredly, “I’m really something quite beautiful. Please let me live.”

I was skeptical, but readily acquiesced, granting sanctuary. I didn’t need to be a real gardener. Years have passed. The stranger has grown in that spot at the edge of the garden, near the wrought-iron fence, nodding to me whenever I pass. She now stands at an elegant five feet tall. Today, for the first time, she bore clusters of white blossoms among those lovely green leaves of hers.

“You’re really something quite beautiful,” I whispered as I snapped a photo for a Google image search.

“I know,” the mock orange tree replied softly, “thank you.”

“Pittosporum.” I replied in awe.

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Before sunrise, the full moon hangs pendulously among the branches of the great old oak. I dreamed of oak branches while I slumbered, and oak branches are among the first things I behold upon waking. I gape at the cool, bright moon, so visible in the clear dark morning sky.

​I want to talk to my husband about this moon. I mumble incoherently to the cats about it as I walk around opening blinds to prepare for sunrise and the day to come. Brewing coffee, I wonder if this moon had so spellbound my husband while he was out on his run. Would he tell me about owls and coyotes and mice traveling along the path with him under its silver illumination?

​As the sun begins its ascent, a Gaussian blur of mist pours into the neighborhood, filtering out trees and rooftops. Gone is the moon. I can’t help associating this vaporous veil with the lunar visitation. Surely this is moon mist. I catch sight of a golden disc reflected perfectly in the bedroom window of the house behind mine. Momentary brilliance before the sun becomes a diffused light somewhere beyond the mysterious fog.

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After the rain, little fat birds sit on the fence and hunt in the mulch below for worms. They find seed, too, broadcast upon the earth when an anxious squirrel toppled the small table that serves as a bird feeder. This destruction of the tower transpired before the storm. The following morning, the lightning flashed. Thunder shook the house. Kittens took refuge under beds.

​The cat did not hide during the thunderstorm. She has always been bold. That boldness has served her well for nine years, compounding with every event survived. She remained alert, eyes wide, ears attuned, body seated, composed like a perfect statue of a cat. Not unaware, no, but not about to flinch over a little weather. After the exciting bit passed, it rained hard all day. In the morning, there was snow on the mountain.

​Today, little fat birds climb on the limbs of the rose bush, flit excitedly from branch to soil, fence to limb. Kittens watch from the desk at the second-story window. Sunlight peeps brightly over the rims of some particularly voluminous clouds migrating eastward. We hear the geese, but they pass unseen over the roof. The cat sleeps peacefully, unfazed by shocking patches of blue sky and rowdy birds.

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We sat in the sun, cold wind cutting through our sweaters like knives, whipping our hair around our faces. Eating hot clam chowder with plastic spoons from paper cups, we imagined it was all balancing out, that somehow, cold wind versus hot soup equals a comfortable neutral state. We split a mini baguette with our hands and drank cold bottled drinks. Surely that was the unbalancing element that left my chest cold. I felt as though I was topless.

​Sometimes the wind stopped, and I thought I would be warm, and maybe it would not return, but then it did. I thought of my jacket left in the car, but felt that going to get it would only make me colder. The soup would get cold too if I backtracked to recover what I should have brought in the first place.

​Ah, but the sun. It made me optimistic. I believed a sweater would be enough. It was beautiful and bright, and I imagined we could eat outside, bathed in its radiance. Huddled on the bench, I focused on eating my soup. It was gritty, as if sand was a crucial ingredient. I ate faster to stay warmer, clinging to every morsel of heat.

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Roses. In time for Valentine’s Day, they start blooming. It’s such grace to a parched soul recently returned from the desert. Peach. Red. White. Neon pink. Couched in green of every hue. Among the baroque emerald foliage, the crimson leaves of the berry bramble encircle precocious white blossoms.

The sun gives warmth, touching my cheek and temples through the window. Cats recline behind me in the rectangular patch of light cast upon the floor and foot of the bed. Bird song mingles with the distant growl of a leaf blower, drifting in with the fresh air through the cracked window. Just a small opening. The air is still cold.

​I watch birds chase each other across the blue sky. A breeze pushes a wind chime to sway and call softly. The leaf blower nearly drowns it out completely. It’s the toll one must pay to live in the beauty and peace of the suburbs. There is almost always a leaf blower, a lawn mower, or a chainsaw at work somewhere. I endeavour to regard their drone as an essential element of the sweetest music.

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