If you had a crystal ball that could tell you anything you wanted to know — about your life, the world, or anything at all — what would you want to know?* My mind flooded with possibilities when I first thought about this question. For each possibility, I wondered, do I really want to know the answer to that?
How do we reverse climate change? The answer is likely: we can’t. We have to adapt. Why is human history filled with brutality and war, and why do we keep killing one another? I’m not sure knowing the answer to that would help me any, and I suspect I already know the answer: we are selfishly motivated and want to protect our own interests. How can we stop fighting and instead unite to take care of one another? Probably be open to other viewpoints, think of others besides ourselves, be kind. Love. Is this realistic, for all of humanity? Will we ever get there?
The biggest question that came to mind was, What happens when we die? Even this, I don’t know what would I do with the information. If the answer is nothing, our bodies are just food for bacteria and worms, and the energy that is us doesn’t really exist except as genes and chemicals, there’s no spirit, no soul to enter the stream of universal life force, would that change the way I feel about life? I mean, cool for the bacteria and worms. I guess I kind of think this is probably the truth of it anyway, but I also kind of don’t, and I think there’s more, and part of the fun is not knowing but believing, so I’m not sure I want the answer to that question either.
So maybe what I want to know is what goes on in the minds of other animals, and are plants sentient? We as humans think we’re pretty special, and we are, but are we the only ones? What do our cats, Tootsie and Tubbles, think and feel? Do my plants know me? What’s it like to be a tree?
I got out the hedge shears yesterday once the day had warmed a little. I sheared the dessicated salvia, blazing stars, and cleome, bit by little bit rather than cutting them at the base. I snipped them right there in the garden, letting the pieces fall where I cut. I wondered as I scissored if they’d break down much between now and next spring, or if come March I’ll find fully intact pencil-lengths of hard stems littering the flower beds. It feels like they need to be buried to break down.
For the larger stems too big for the shears, I bit through them at the base using hand pruners, and dumped them in the barrow to wheel up to the compost pile. The wheelbarrow is all rickety at the axle and the tire won’t hold air. The most essential parts of it are falling apart — the parts that give it mobility and make it more than just a bucket to hold pieces of garden. I need to replace it, but what do I do with the old one? It’s so big to just throw away.
I used the pitchfork to turn the kitchen compost. We’ve got two green garbage cans my husband drilled full of holes for worms and air and flies and water to pass through, but with snap-top lids to keep larger critters like racoons and possoms out. I keep one as the working bin and one as the resting bin. Yesterday, forkful by forkful, I moved the one that’s been sitting all summer. At the bottom, under the less decomposed pineapple tops and onion skins, was a thick layer of rich sludge. Now it’s been turned and and stirred and can sit and compost over the next few months with a brick on its lid to tell me not to add more kitchen scraps to it, and I have an empty can to add to all winter.
Our other composting mechanism is for yard waste. I used rabbit fencing to build an enclosure open in front for me to wheel garden clippings onto the pile. I toss the clippings on one side of the enclosure, and once a month I use the pitchfork to turn it, pitching forkful by forkful to the other side of the enclosure. Right now both sides are full: one side has a hill of finished compost that looks like soil, and that I hope to spread on the beds once I finish cutting things back.
The other side is loose, dry clippings that I need to figure out how to get going. I’m hoping by the time I finish cleaning up the flower beds by cutting everything back, the clipping pile will be heavy and deep enough to start decomposing at the bottom. I’ll dump some soil from the old planters on top and water it, too, to give it a boost. I probably won’t get many chances to turn it in winter, so I guess we’ll see what happens by spring.
The composting process of the garden is a lot like processing things in life. Older experiences, the ones that have sat for a while, that have felt the heat of emotion and the wetness of tears, those bring wisdom as we realize what we’ve learned from them, as those learnings infuse our daily life. Fresh experiences need time and consideration, need turning over, need blending before they fully integrate as nourishment.
I’m tidying and putting things to rights before winter. It’s that time of year, to go to ground, to turn inward, to rest and let things mulch.
I have a close friend, J, who has never met a mirror she didn’t like. When we were teens, and later in college, and her eye caught a reflective surface – a shop window, a car window, a mirror in a mall bathroom – she turned her head this way and that as she looked into it, smoothed an eyebrow, tucked a curl, and watched herself as she continued to talk, completely unselfconscious about her mirror-gazing as she carried on the conversation. We teased her about it then, and we tease her about it now, 25 years later. She laughs at herself when we tease her, then flits her eyes to a mirror and winks at the best friend she sees there.
This past March, at our annual Girls’ Weekend, we talked about mirrors and who among us looks into them. The conversation was spawned in part by J’s mirror-love, but also, at least for me, by a deeper wondering about our comfort with ourselves. J is one of the funniest people I know, and also one of the happiest. At several points in her life, whether on a precipice with a boyfriend or on the verge of a life-changing move, she has shrugged her shoulders and said, “I dunno. I think I could be happy with anyone” in the case of the boyfriend, or “anywhere” in the case of a move. And it’s true. She could.
As we went around the table at Girls’ Weekend, we found that we all have very different relationships with the mirror. J is friendly with them – she sees her favorite person when she looks into one. Others of us use them strictly for pragmatic reasons: check the teeth, blow dry the hair. One of us doesn’t use them at all – says she can’t remember the last time she looked into one. “Not even to brush your teeth?” I asked. “I brush my teeth in the shower,” she said.
And me? It used to be that when I looked in the mirror, the person who looked back at me was a mystery. The image I saw in that silver surface did not match up with the person I knew from the inside. All my life my reflection has caught me off guard. Recently I brushed our daughter’s hair and when my reflection moved in the mirror I did a double-take – Who’s that? Oh. That’s me. The same face that’s been looking back at me for 40 years. Why does she still surprise me? Why do I not connect with her?
I told my girlfriends about this weirdness, about the disconnect between me and my reflection, and after our mirror conversation, inspired by J, I said, “I’m going to start doing mirror work. I’m going to figure this out! I want to be best friends with my reflection too.”
I tried, but still, we were off, my reflection and me. And then, something changed. I got glasses.
Now, I look in the mirror and say Oh! There you are! And I smile. The Andrea that looks back at me – the bookworm, the word nerd – is the Andrea I know from the inside. I just never knew she had glasses.
I see this revelation frequently in fashion, especially on the the TLC makeover show What Not to Wear. Contributors to the show are brought to New York, instructed to dispose of their entire wardrobe, and then taught how to shop for new clothes that fit their personalities and figures. It is always difficult for the women to let go of their former clothing – even if the clothes did not serve them and did not even fit them, those clothes were familiar – but once they let go and start finding clothes that do serve them, that do fit them, the women are transformed. There are often tears when they see themselves in clothes that match their personalities. The women look in the mirror at their new hair, the skirt that flatters their hips, the fun shoes in their favorite color, and they point and they say, “That’s what I always felt like on the inside – now I look like that on the outside.”
That’s how I feel with my new glasses. Now, when my reflection catches me unaware, when I’m vacuuming and I see myself pushing the upright in the wall mirror, I wave or I wink. She and I, we’re on our way to becoming fast friends.
This is my interpretation of finding something, the day 13 assignment for Writing 101. *Edit: added next to last paragraph after initial publication.
Butterfly Mind 