I used "goodscape" in a post tonite. Such a pleasant word and a pleasant thought that one can just decide something is a word and make it so. The post-comment arose as I pondered a blog's gardening theme, and 'cause I followed D2's nagging exhortation to only think/write/say/stay POSitIve in my remarks, and she is right. Flowers bloom and poetical things emerge if I can just stave off my usual focus on the negative.
It's becoming easier, but you wouldn't know it reading here. The moral inventory aspect of AmZyg's purpose is becoming apparent: my resentment over a twenty year ongoing offense has turned toxic. It crops up, twisting my heart, cutting too close to the bone... & I wonder how anyone can escape the smell of anaerobic waste reeking from the cracks in my composure. I am a walking bad-scape.
So, I avoided Zygoting last week. Avoided my Bible, avoided God & people, and on Sunday, thought up three good excuses to skip out on church & communion after my 3's room fun was over. Rather than retreat to prayer, I went wandering around blogspot when I got home, posted ill advised comments on blogsOfStrangers. Zygote is such a simpleton not to post anonymously. Zygote is too lazy to learn the ins & outs of techdom, true, but worse than that, she harbors a madness, a narcissism that believes the laws of the web will be suspended for her alone. And, while she's too private for Facebook, she was not so humble as to let the big orange button pass her by that day she clicked on
"Start Your Free Blog Here!"
It was probably that word FREE! that nabbed her, a tractor beam word too powerful for over-budget housewives to resist. [What IS a tractor beam?]
I fancied a blog that would inform my kids, my DH, a blog wanderer or two, & a generation of grandchildren yet unborn: some audience of peccish teen relations in 2030, or 50, or 70, who will want to know who their grandmama/aunt/9th cousin-once-removed was; what generational sins will likely plague them, what blessings and curses may confront their offspring-yet-to-be? D2 reminded me I could post privately, yet, what lure, what voyeurism, what love of taking risks is it that leads a person to throw their stuff out there hoping it might be seen? The pure ego of it spawns an imaginary search for a shrink again, my eleventh, or thirteenth. I've lost count. (Now, wait. If you'll dare to peek beneath those thirteen layers of denial, you'll recall a sinister wish that your Enemy would find these pathetic rantings and decide you are somehow not worth hating... that's like wishing everyone would wake up and suddenly give Hitler the "benefit of the doubt.")
At its best, public blogging forces the heart and mind to meld themselves into something approaching a psychological GoodScape; a horizon line at sunset to look upon, anticipating a new day ahead while simultaneously reflecting on the one about to end. . .
. . . HeaveAsigh. Tonite, I forgot my cares and found myself poking around sites gathered from Friday's HortSymposium. Freeing, blessed, wondrous, beautiful landscaping sites governed by people who live like they were fine pieces of acoustic music. Uncomplicated; honest; hardworking; artful. Once again, the temptation to post on a blogOfStrangers overtook me. It was bliss, leaving my moral inventory behind and reliving simpler times.
This time I copied it before I left, so I could have it 'for keeps,' the Nursery Blogger's theme, evident:
"My favorite nursery of all time has passed on, as do all good things, including the owner, whose life story and great soul left a permanent wake in our home that has yet to subside. It was a destination, 30 minutes south in Westminster/Huntington Beach: Heard's Country Gardens, & it lives on in the Salvia that dots my front walkway; in the mounds of Mondo that have endured season after season; in the love I have for the simplicity of dirt--a love cultivated by Mary Lou Heard's singular newsletters which, upon arrival, would bring to a halt whatever we were doing so we could sit & devour every word. Her heart and her great humor permeated her business, and inspired us to hatch our first landscape plan, & to launch it by composting-in-place: We drove to nearby Sycamore-lined streets, piled high a load of fallen leaves into the back of our stationwagon, then pulled Old Blue up & onto our dead lawn where the kids unloaded it by the handfull. Over the mound we spread vermipost and grass clippings... & mixed everything with a pitchfork for four or five months. The goodscape remains to this day, ever-blooming in seasonal colory.
Soon after she died, some nice folk organized a womens' shelter benefit
around Mary Lou's folksy style, & all her newsletter contacts now further
one of her worthy charities.
I miss Heard's."
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