All goes onward and outward
This afternoon my cousin shared with me a memory of his friend who, on a stroke of wild luck in 1998, won $ 45,000 in Las Vegas. Bob’s* luck had started in cards, at the black-jack table, but had also included an unheard of twice consecutive win at Russian Roulette. My cousin - Ken* - held his stomach in laughter as he remembered that day in Nevada, and how in the rest of his life, before and after, poor Bob was very unlucky in all things.
Suddenly Ken controlled his laughter and became serious. “Why can’t we just store up luck?” He asked me. “Say, like Bob, you were on a roll but you decided not to cash in at THAT moment - wouldn’t it be great if you could just say to the world, ‘You know what? I’m going to hold on to this luck, for a rainy day’?” Ken looked out the window and fell silent for a moment. Between the billowing American flags that hung from the outside of the building, we could see to the sunny street below that bustled with tourists and shoppers, and harried people just passing through the crowds on their way to someplace else.
Ken turned to look at me again and with a quieter voice continued, “Say you were thrown in JAIL for instance, even though you were innocent—you could just say ‘no no! Look, I have this card—I’m cashing in my luck RIGHT now.” He made a frantic pointing gesture with one hand, pretending to hold a card in the other. Still himself picking up the pieces of his life after having been wrongfully imprisoned in a maximum security facility, his comment was particularly poignant. He of all people needs one such luck card. But, not one to dwell on dark things, Ken quickly moved the conversation to some other topic, made me laugh with some other story, and I had all but forgotten his wish for the good luck card until tonight.
A couple of weeks ago, I was given two paper-white bulbs. I didn’t have any proper forcing vases, so I nestled each atop a turkish tea glass; I didn’t have any surface on which to put them undisturbed in my 220 square foot room, so I sat them on my draughty window sill, between a trifle dish in which I keep apples and kiwi, and a stack of library books.
Each morning I draw the curtains and look at the bulbs. I had no hope that they would grow. I thought the tiny tea glasses would cause them to rot, or else would crowd the roots; I worried that the rushes of cold air from the window would kill them. A week ago I awakened to find, upon opening the curtains, one tender green shoot on each bulb. I stood transfixed before the window, marveling at the little sprouts—life in my cramped studio! Something growing in the gray and cold of February! Small outposts of nature here with me, in the austere, steel and glass grid of midtown! Instantly I was reminded of a few verses from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass:
The tiny green growth in my apartment, so simple and striking, has reawakened in me a love of the world; it has re-established my connection to it. I do not connect to grids or cement or stretches of treeless streets—I connect to the world above and beneath that. I long for grass I can smell, trees I can touch, clouds I can see. So although I frequent Central Park as a visitor and volunteer, I have felt lost here in New York. What I needed was to grow something with my hands, to nurture some green growth before my eyes. My bulbs remind me that deep below this building, grasses wait to grow. The natural world is not dead here beneath my feet. Always there is something waiting to grow.
Now I touch the tissue paper top of the bulbs, gently run my hand along the smoothness of the leaves, I stoop to smell the heady fragrance of the first blossom, opened today, and I am infinitely happy. The paper-white bulbs open the walls of my room, blur the grid of the streets around me, and I recall the Michigan spring. I feel again the excitement that came when the daffodils at Cranbrook began to poke their heads out from the soggy thawing earth. I feel at peace as I did walking beneath the fragrant pine by the Greek Theater, gently grazing with my fingertips the tender leaves of trillium and fern on the forest floor, and I realize that inside the two paper-white bulbs in my apartment grows the happiness and feeling of spring that I need to get me through the rest of the winter here in Manhattan. The bulbs trigger memories, and those memories convey to me directly a sensation of openness, connectivity to the growing world, and of the coming spring. And I realize two other things, concretely:
(Under the pine at Cranbrook, though not, as you can see, beside the Greek Theater. If anyone has a picture of that, please send it!)
Suddenly Ken controlled his laughter and became serious. “Why can’t we just store up luck?” He asked me. “Say, like Bob, you were on a roll but you decided not to cash in at THAT moment - wouldn’t it be great if you could just say to the world, ‘You know what? I’m going to hold on to this luck, for a rainy day’?” Ken looked out the window and fell silent for a moment. Between the billowing American flags that hung from the outside of the building, we could see to the sunny street below that bustled with tourists and shoppers, and harried people just passing through the crowds on their way to someplace else.
Ken turned to look at me again and with a quieter voice continued, “Say you were thrown in JAIL for instance, even though you were innocent—you could just say ‘no no! Look, I have this card—I’m cashing in my luck RIGHT now.” He made a frantic pointing gesture with one hand, pretending to hold a card in the other. Still himself picking up the pieces of his life after having been wrongfully imprisoned in a maximum security facility, his comment was particularly poignant. He of all people needs one such luck card. But, not one to dwell on dark things, Ken quickly moved the conversation to some other topic, made me laugh with some other story, and I had all but forgotten his wish for the good luck card until tonight.
A couple of weeks ago, I was given two paper-white bulbs. I didn’t have any proper forcing vases, so I nestled each atop a turkish tea glass; I didn’t have any surface on which to put them undisturbed in my 220 square foot room, so I sat them on my draughty window sill, between a trifle dish in which I keep apples and kiwi, and a stack of library books.
Each morning I draw the curtains and look at the bulbs. I had no hope that they would grow. I thought the tiny tea glasses would cause them to rot, or else would crowd the roots; I worried that the rushes of cold air from the window would kill them. A week ago I awakened to find, upon opening the curtains, one tender green shoot on each bulb. I stood transfixed before the window, marveling at the little sprouts—life in my cramped studio! Something growing in the gray and cold of February! Small outposts of nature here with me, in the austere, steel and glass grid of midtown! Instantly I was reminded of a few verses from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass:
“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life…
All goes onward and outward…and nothing collapses…”
And if ever there was it led forward life…
All goes onward and outward…and nothing collapses…”
The tiny green growth in my apartment, so simple and striking, has reawakened in me a love of the world; it has re-established my connection to it. I do not connect to grids or cement or stretches of treeless streets—I connect to the world above and beneath that. I long for grass I can smell, trees I can touch, clouds I can see. So although I frequent Central Park as a visitor and volunteer, I have felt lost here in New York. What I needed was to grow something with my hands, to nurture some green growth before my eyes. My bulbs remind me that deep below this building, grasses wait to grow. The natural world is not dead here beneath my feet. Always there is something waiting to grow.
Now I touch the tissue paper top of the bulbs, gently run my hand along the smoothness of the leaves, I stoop to smell the heady fragrance of the first blossom, opened today, and I am infinitely happy. The paper-white bulbs open the walls of my room, blur the grid of the streets around me, and I recall the Michigan spring. I feel again the excitement that came when the daffodils at Cranbrook began to poke their heads out from the soggy thawing earth. I feel at peace as I did walking beneath the fragrant pine by the Greek Theater, gently grazing with my fingertips the tender leaves of trillium and fern on the forest floor, and I realize that inside the two paper-white bulbs in my apartment grows the happiness and feeling of spring that I need to get me through the rest of the winter here in Manhattan. The bulbs trigger memories, and those memories convey to me directly a sensation of openness, connectivity to the growing world, and of the coming spring. And I realize two other things, concretely:
1) My difficulty in living in New York can be eased in some simple and meaningful ways: I can grow sprouts and bulbs in my window (with the exception of jade, which I have, all other plants die here because of the low light and the draughty windows) and
2) Maybe luck is not so different from happiness; maybe we can store up luck for a rainy day. Perhaps if we can retain the memory of the feeling of luck, if we can conjure it up at a time when luck is lacking, the memory and the feeling will merge, and bring luck back again. Is it not just this, after all, that I have learned from my bulbs? That to remember the spring is to experience it anew? For now, I think it is.
2) Maybe luck is not so different from happiness; maybe we can store up luck for a rainy day. Perhaps if we can retain the memory of the feeling of luck, if we can conjure it up at a time when luck is lacking, the memory and the feeling will merge, and bring luck back again. Is it not just this, after all, that I have learned from my bulbs? That to remember the spring is to experience it anew? For now, I think it is.
(Under the pine at Cranbrook, though not, as you can see, beside the Greek Theater. If anyone has a picture of that, please send it!)*I have, and will, change the names of real people in my posts. And I will pick ones that amuse me, like Ken and Bob : )
Is Michigan not cold and gray in February? Do not forget that life breathes, strives, thrives, withers and dies all around you. People are perhaps less beautiful, far more flawed than flowers and trees, but no less representative of life. Winter is always longest before the spring...courage!
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