yarnivore

9/22/24

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that my life is a fantastic fairy tale. Of course another less balmy narrative could start up at any moment (and perhaps already has, since I live this fairy tale life in the 100% real world), so I should take this breather to tell it thus.

Once upon a time, when I was heartbreakingly young, I ran headlong into a villain. My life to that point had not included any men of his type, and I was relatively defenseless. Through shameless manipulation he lured me from my studies, selfishly misused my talents, and sucked very nearly every bit of life out of me to fuel his own pursuits. It was a classic “misuse the muse” story of the Sandman #17 version.

One of the places that gave me life through those terrible years was my garden. On the grounds of a house built in 1847, with the help of a professional gardener for advice and a small library of reference books for raw knowledge, he and I built a garden. It would be wrong of me to suggest that it was only my garden, solely, but it was absolutely mine, a bit of land that absorbed my blood and sweat and tears, as gardens do.

The ensorcelment lasted for over six years, but I eventually broke the spell, and found what was left of myself, and made my escape. The way I know this to be a fairy tale? Who but a fairy tale villain would behave this despicably: He refused to let me take anything from my garden. NOTHING. No cuttings or transplants, no seeds or bulbs, nada. It takes real effort to be so stingy about a garden — it is a perversion of gardening, in my opinion, which is fitting, given the perpetrator.

Because my life is, at least in some tellings, a fairy tale, his attempt to keep me from my garden backfired. I mean, he clearly succeeded on some metrics: I did not take, and do not have, anything whatsoever from that garden that is tangible. And his villainy really did hit me where it hurt, one of his superpowers.

However, because fairy tale, very nearly every person who has been fool enough to cross me, who has had the temerity to keep things from me (gardens, knowledge, companionship with others, even my home) has been thwarted spectacularly: In this case, gardens, riches started pouring in immediately. The friends who took me in let me tend an herb garden out front; another friend shared her community garden plot and taught me about vegetable gardening. My psychiatrist gave me a start from his exquisite jade plant. And the first official act F. and I set our names to, when I landed in NYC: A membership to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The message was unmistakable. That guy would deny you even a fraction of his ⅖ of an acre? Here, have 52.

It wasn’t just that first year, though. My life has been filled with gardens and plants shared over the years. This morning, fall equinox, walking around my garden gathering a bouquet to make art with got me onto this topic.

This little bouquet has three kinds of sage — a purple one I found on the property, a red one that was a gift from a friend, and an electric blue sage I bought at Berkeley Hort — I’ve seen hummingbirds drink from all three in my yard. The marigold I grew from seeds I saved from last year’s ofrenda*. Two kinds of California poppies (I have 5 or 6 in my front yard, in a postage stamp-sized meadow). Pink and white and orange cosmos, all from seeds I saved from last year. Mint and purple basil, flowering (I love seeing their square stems and knowing they are kin). The seed stalks are Clarkia, and a native local abutilon, and self-heal, which showed up in my yard after I started telling folks that my abuelita was a curandera, and which I just discovered is also a Lamiaceae cousin.

The bouquet, picked this morning, embodies this day, this place. I’ve arranged it in a dark blue Heath Ceramics bud vase, and I love that the pottery is also local. I’ve already made a bunch of art documenting it (photos, shadow tracings) and I’ll make more (watercolors, pen and ink drawings). I could even write a multi-book series, Transcendence of Things Past, about this particular bouquet and how it comes to be that I live alongside these plants, but I’m pretty sure I’ve already exceeded the “good bits version” length for this morality tale, so I should wrap it up.

My garden now is made of other gardens, and it makes yet more — I share my seeds and starts and cuttings. I choose to live in an abundant world. The villain of our story today stole some particular plants and made a small patch of ground off-limits to me, and by doing so showed me the door to every other garden and pointed me towards finding Real Home (which was inside me all along). It’s hard to even be mad — he chose to be small and mean, and I have chosen to be vast and kind, its own intrinsic reward in every present moment.

Honestly, I hope that garden continues to be thriving. May it grow lush and be a constant reminder of what was squandered by his villainy.

As for myself, your loving narrator, well. I don’t know about living happily ever after. That’s only in real fairy tales, and I am decidedly human and mortal. But I have the capacity for joy and awe and transcendence at any moment, the love of a small army of friends and lovers and relatives, and many gardens full of endless treasures and knowledge where I am welcome.

That’s a fairy tale reward if I ever heard one! It’s my intention to appreciate every drop and crumb of this good fortune, and to find ways to use it to benefit others.

Living well turns out to be the legit best revenge. People who don’t treat me well don’t get to stay in this ongoing story. That’s it. Seems like just punishment to me! And all I have to do to enact it is to let old, bad stories go. I resign my role as the implementor of past villains’ dastardly schemes!

*NB: Refusing a personal invitation to see someone’s ofrenda is rude.

[Post title from the fine Taylor Swift song, “Karma” 🔥]

9/16/24

When I say my life often feels like a novel, a magnificent picaresque romance, this is the kind of thing I mean: This morning I drove over to O—– Avenue, in Richmond, to look at a house for sale. It is a 30-sec walk from where I lived on C—– Avenue, with the friends who took me in 8 years ago. (One of those friends bought that house, in fact!). It’s a 2-min walk to the entrance of the Ohlone Greenway. It’s adorable, and there is a treehouse. I drove away musing about where I might volunteer, and guerilla gardening some open spaces, and just how big a thorn in Chevron’s side I might choose to become.

From there to Catahoula Coffee, on San Pablo Avenue (which began its existence as the Camino de la Contra Costa – the “opposite shore” from the Presidio – and which is an extraordinary urban sociology laboratory for its entire length). I came specifically for one of my favorite decadent treats, a “Mexi-mocha,” a mocha with cinnamon. I got to chatting with the manager, and said they should sell stickers – he said, “Oh, no, here,” and pulled an arm’s length of them off the roll (they seal bags with them). In thanking him, I explained that I am from Louisiana, and that my father grew up in Jonesville, which is in Catahoula Parish. He’s heard something like that before, I’m guessing from his smile, and he told me about the owner and his four Catahoula Curs. Turns out there is a woman in Richmond, CA, who breeds Catahoula Curs as search-and-rescue animals. I honestly couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll try a little harder to document some of it.

xoxo – Rosa

[Post title is a line from the lovely boygenius song, “Without You, Without Them”]

If you would like to spend about half an hour contemplating aging and impending death with several versions of a beautiful song, I seem to have you covered. [The footnotes are partly for me, but also I showed this to a friend who copyedits. 🙂 ]
————
Over and over again these last weeks I’ve been seeing various situations I’ve been in from different angles. In some cases, it’s because there is a factual thing going on in which I have a different role than I did the last time I was in that story. Other times it’s been a song or someone else’s story that comes into different focus. As I told my friend F., when I was asking for their thoughts on all the connections I was seeing: “Apophenia turned to 11, it’s fun but it is a LOT. Help?”

It’s as apparently trite as the song “Both Sides Now” — but that song is not trite. That song is profound and heartbreaking. When I hear Joni sing it as a young woman, with her clear, high-pitched voice, I find the song is precocious and bittersweet. Even at 26, her wisdom was shining out.

https://genius.com/Joni-mitchell-both-sides-now-lyrics

I actually first heard it sung by Judy Collins, and although Collins herself has grown on me over the years, the horrible bouncy (electronic?) (harpsichord?) in this recording, at that tempo, made Joni’s compelling, specific, original lyrics feel rote to me.

Hearing Seal sing it at Joni’s 75th birthday concert, I was openly weeping in the theater. His phrasing, the instrumentation, the gravity of his performance, all contributed to an elegiac mood. “So many things / I would have done / but clouds got in my way”.* When he spoke directly to her across the concert hall, I felt like I had snuck a glimpse at their private life. So beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3J2nqeDf2g

Joni performing it at Newport this year had me straight up ugly crying. I’ve seen the recording several more times now, and I no longer sob or weep so hard I have to stop the video, but that has happened a couple of times. (I find it’s actually more cathartic if you keep watching while you cry, FYI. Ymmv.)

Joni Mitchell. Many of us thought she was done. She was a lovely old lady who came out to various events, was praised, didn’t say much, had horrifying health problems. But Joni in 2022 has significantly recovered from a stroke that ruined her hands, among other things. She can play guitar again. She relearned her own songs by watching videos of herself playing the songs. She performed at Newport this year, her first public performance in TWENTY years. It was an emotional performance and viewing experience from the get-go, but when she sang the lines, “And now old friends are acting strange / they shake their heads, they say I’ve changed / well, something’s lost and something’s gained / in living every day” she knocked every bit of breath out of me. I was not alone; I’ve seen many accounts of people saying that was the actual second** that their tears started.

More than one friend (and nearly every asshole on the internet) has mentioned Wynonna Judd fidgeting during the concert when she wasn’t actively singing. She looks so uncomfortable at times. Well. Wynonna’s mama, Naomi Judd, shot herself in the head the night before she and Wynonna were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, just under three months before Newport. Naomi Judd was depressed and frantic and miserable. She decided to kill herself rather than be seen in front of her peers and fans looking older or fatter or lower-voiced or crazy or…. When I see Wynonna watching Joni, I see a woman thinking to herself: Mama. Joni’s doing it. You could have done it. You could have heard every person still alive who has anything to do with country music say nice things to you to your face***, but you noped out.

One true thing I know, after a challenging life to date, is that being dead is far worse than looking foolish or fat or old in front of your friends.

_________

*I have been coming to feel that the period should go outside of the quotes. Perhaps because I read a lot of UK content? But this is not a careless error; it’s me as author(!) asserting a non-standard preference. If the universe keeps giving me presents, I will discuss this with Teresa Nielsen Hayden someday. (Patrick just posted that Making Light is going back up! Huzzah!)

**Side topic — the power of recorded music to invoke emotional states down to the split second. [Side side topic: I want to talk to someone who knows about music programming in NBA arenas. I have SO MANY questions.]

***In “Girls Against God”, Florence Welch opens with “What a thing to admit / That when someone looks at me with real love / I don’t like it very much / Kinda makes me feel like I’m being crushed”
[NB — I have a LOT to say about this song, and also the album. It’s tremendous. That might be the topic on 11/2.]
https://genius.com/Florence-the-machine-girls-against-god-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoahSZdx-eA (edited)

In kindergarten, no one else knew how to read, so I kept my mouth shut about it. My kindergarten teacher was gobsmacked when they assessed my reading skills at the end of the year and discovered that actually, I could read at a fifth-grade level, at least. (They ran out of readers to test me with, because my school only went to fifth grade.) 🙂 First grade was much happier for me, because I was free! Freeeeeee! And the librarians had been told about me, and they offered me ALL THE BOOKS. <3 I couldn't possibly love librarians more than I do.

The following was originally posted on FB on September 15, 2014.
_______________

Sometimes people want to know how I turned out “like this”. That’s a long story, y’all! Thankfully, I’m in no rush here, I’m from Louisiana, and we know when to take our time. Here’s a fairy tale from when I was tiny:

When Mama and Daddy had a little bit of extra money, Daddy would “get cleaned up” and we would go to this seafood restaurant in Baton Rouge that he loved. I must have been about three or four years old when this happened: We were there, and a rich family, I mean RICH, was there, enjoying themselves a big seafood dinner. (I only understood these folks were rich later. I mean, we *all* like our fried shrimp in Louisiana, right?) They were so entranced with our family that they came over and started talking to us. I was sitting at the table *reading the menu out loud to Mama and Daddy* and talking about what I wanted. I had long black hair and looked like a china doll, I have been told. My mama, y’all will remember, was an exotic and beautiful Mexican woman, and my daddy was just as handsome as a movie star, in my mind, at least, in his 40s and all cleaned up. This gorgeous, though poor, couple had this exquisite bitty child reading out loud from the menu. The family made friends with us and kept in touch. They were well educated, well-to-do Catholics, and they sent me books and bought me pretty black patent leather shoes and when their daughter got married, they asked me to be her flower girl. So I walked down the aisle of a huge Catholic church in Baton Rouge, about six or seven years old, with black hair loose and wavy down past my bottom, and a beautiful dress they bought me. Mama and Daddy got dressed up so fancy like I had never seen them before, and we went to a party that filled my head with images of parties for the rest of my life. I DRANK CHAMPAGNE OUT OF A FLUTE, Y’ALL. Just a little sip for the flower girl, because *everyone* should have a toast to the bride and groom, cher. There are pictures. This really happened and I am not even making it up.