Heirlooms

Missing my soul friends. Missing when I had them.

Missing beer and round table discussions. Missing how we laughed.

Missing my mom. Missing the years before I learned that life was complicated.

"That inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude..."

"Memory is the happiness of being alone..."

Missing me.  Missing my dancing heart.

Vines and weeds. And a frog.

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

I don't know who said that, but it's pretty right on. 

I also don't have a segue from that thought into my original intention for writing today. It just happened to pop into my head as my hands hovered above the keys. And it's not a bad Idea to remind myself of that fairly regularly - to stop comparing myself to every. Freaking. Person. Everywhere, because I inevitably either find myself lacking (which sucks and isn't at all accurate), or I feel superior, which, dammit, ends up making me feel bad.

But anyway. Original intention. 

Words and thoughts and words and thoughts and some more thoughts, and some words. 

You don't get them this time. Ha.

And maybe, this time, I don't really need to type them. 

Because as I think them, I see that they lead to a solution upon which I have landed many, many times already.

I need to choose happiness.

But here's the rub: choosing that comes with risk, and risk is the biscuit I choke on almost every time.

That's where I'm stuck. 

And damn, even the words and thoughts are stuck now. Like a tangle that keeps coming around on itself, each time passing "Choose happiness!" and "Caution, risk!"

So... maybe instead of drowning in words and thoughts (and words and thoughts), I figure out how to weed some of them out more often. Like I did a moment ago. (Ha.)

The ink and paper... I'll put it there. The ink and paper can be the starter pots, the seedlings, the compost, the nutrients, the, um, fertilizer - everything that helps grow - and also where I trim, untangle, weed, and encourage. Not that I can't and won't do that elsewhere, too... but I think the ink and paper is where I must do it first. And often.

I'm not sure how that makes the risk less scary, and I'm not sure if the metaphor here is really connected to the literal anymore. I'm not even sure it matters. There's a plan.

As I wind this up, I see that I wrote this so I could write the next one.

Which I won't do here.

Ha.

Gotta go. I have a frog to eat. And later, perhaps a little pruning.

Oh, and I have four blooms now.

Fruitlessly Prolific*

Today I discovered and read a handful of "sent" messages from me to someone far away and long ago.

They were... thick. Full. Too much. And, if memory serves, such messages were plentiful.

How did that person not drown, I'm wondering. How did they stay afloat in my words and words and words for so long?

They probably did it because they loved me and were as broken as I was at the time. But I realize now, just today, how much from me this person had to have choked down.

Too much. 

That's how I was during that season, with that person. I forced too much upon them. 

I've since stopped doing that when it comes to love, or even like. When I consider what I have poured out to others over the years, whether it was spilled, forced, coaxed from me, or even taken, it was usually too much.

So much so that now... now I allow very little. Sometimes not even a drop. Or, when I do have love (or, again, even friendship) to give, I disguise it with humor, with apologies, with indifference. Or I give nothing at all.

My single tomato plant is bursting with leaves. I have two small blooms - late - looking at the ground.  Harvest time is nigh, and I have have an awkward oxymoron* and uncomfortable irony in my basket.

I suppose I could add hope, though, to make things a little more bountiful. I have learned from those old messages from me, rambling and wearisome as they were (I gladly swept them into the refuse after reading).

So instead of beating myself up over my young(er) misguided missives, instead of comparing my actions to his or anyone else's, instead of apologizing, I'll reap what's good and useful.

I can learn to start again... and to stop before it's too much. It truly isn't too late in the season. There is room and time for so much more.

And I'll be thankful - to myself - for it.

Indeterminate

I planted a tomato plant a week or three ago. We shall see.

Well... maybe.

I learned just a few minutes ago that tomato plants can be determinate or indeterminate.

Guess which kind mine is.

In the grand scheme of things, this really means nothing, other than I'll need to buy a larger cage for it rather than one of those smaller, cool, colored ones.

But, I mean, indeterminate.

Of course it is.