July 23, 2014 CHI SA?

This morning we cut down an acacia tree in order to open up the view to our favorite hill. It is the first of many such loppings we will make over the next couple of weeks as all of the trees and shrubs encircling our bit of land have shot up in the last three years, gradually obliterating the panorama. Of course, like much in life there is a choice to be made, if not between a rock and a hard place still, a choice between two less than perfect scenarios – if you’ll pardon the puns. The choice is between a view that includes an electric line or a hidden electric line and no view. And yes, I have fantasized about being so filthy rich that I could have the electric line buried.

I find myself turning to the land more and more these days; these days holding a fair measure of frustration, most of it to do with the revision of my novel and the interminable waiting, which is part of a writer’s journey towards publication. Whereas a sojourn to the garden will always provide me with something tangible to do, whether it’s deadheading, transplanting, fertilizing or watering. Not to mention the joy of harvesting basil and the sense of accomplishment one gets from making enough pesto to drench a bowl of pasta, smear some more on bread, and still have enough to put in the freezer for some wintery night when a taste of summer past might be enjoyed in front of the fire.

I guess I am a woman of action. I get an idea and I want to execute it immediately. As I write that last sentence I think what strange terminology: to execute an idea. Taken literally it would mean to kill it, no? Language. There’s another frustrating field. The more Italian I learn the more there is to learn. It’s quite something to continue studying something that you know you’ll never master. Maybe that’s part of why I’m in a funk today: caught between 2 languages, each carrying their own struggle, the one not native nonetheless gives me more pleasure right now that the one I like to think I have mastered enough to have written several novels, stories, poems, essays and a play…none of which have yet been published.

Joel, lovingly trying to help me change my tune, offers to print one of my drawings. I go through perhaps 50 pastels from my Vessel series to find the one that he will scan and print and as I look at them I feel a bitterness in me, that a life of creative output seems destined to dwell in drawers.

What does it all mean?

I come outside to the table under the pergola and immediately feel such gratitude for all these living things I’ve planted and tended this year, the majority of which not only live to see the light of each day, but respond to my effort with voluptuous displays of courageous growth, in spite of a cool, wet summer.

I look out to the hill through the new opening we made and try to stay focused on it instead of letting my gaze wander down the remaining 100 feet of trees still waiting to be trimmed back. But you can’t rush a garden, any more than you can rush a book to press…unless you’re a film star in recovery or a disgraced politician.

Instead, I perfect more ideas in my mind’s eye: the loping stone steps I want to insert into the sloping path from gate to door; the superimposing of 1 fig and 2 plum trees near the yet-to-be sun terrace. I see quite clearly where I want the white oleanders to bring light to a corner and the 3 cypress trees placed just so and the installation of 2 enormous boulders we found in a stone-yard last week.

The list is long, and like all lists stops momentarily with et al.

A friend responded to the last blog saying he was struck by my search for the truth, suggesting that there is no such thing, only stories. I agree, and disagree. I certainly don’t think there is any one truth, nor do I think truth can be held captive. For sure, much of what we try to convince ourselves is ‘the truth’ is just a fancy description of today’s reality, which will become tomorrow’s story. I do however, believe it’s true that some days are better than others; that the notion one can master anything is a fallacy, and that artwork lying in a darkened drawer was once a journey of personal expression.

Besides helping Joel to deforest the land this morning, I also nailed a baby Jesus to the wall in our kitchen. Standing on a ladder so high up I felt a lack of oxygen, I drew a speech bubble on the wall next to his mouth. It’s an idea I’ve wanted to execute for a while. Here, when you ask someone a philosophical question they are likely to raise their shoulders, spread their hands in a somewhat helpless gesture and utter something that sounds like “Buh?”, which is basically Tuscan for “Who knows”. An indisputable truth I can live with.