Prolifically Raw: Pennies of Praise

Monday, October 15, 2007

Pennies of Praise

The climbing roses send forth one more round of blooms and they are a cluster of pink and cream loveliness. I lean against the wood frame of my bedroom window and wonder: Just why are you blooming, so beautiful, in October?

Of course, roses aren�t big talkers so they say nothing and I�m left to wander the halls of my mind, in search of my own answers.

There�s the stop at the threshold of Judgment. He�s still the frontrunner of my internal institution. His name plate is secured firmly to the outside of his door. He likes to be called, simply: THE JUDGE. He�s in his office, wedged behind his boxy metal desk, horn rimmed glasses on his face. He�s wearing a perfect pressed white shirt buttoned at his neck and a no frills black tie that is straight out of the up-tight 50's.

�You could tend them more,� THE JUDGE calls out, just as he has for the last three years of my life. He keeps a check list of To-do's and it's snapped into place on his clipboard. (I think he wanted to be a doctor but somehow ended up here.) �And, you could trim away the leaves with black spot," he snaps. "You certainly could add more fertilizer to the soil, and what about water? Yes, you could water them more.�

I don�t sit down with him, I�ve been in his office too many times to count. Rather, I continue past his door and traverse to where Memory resides with my record keeper Truth.

In the archives, I can see those easy, breezy days when I told myself I was truly happy in that quick-take-a-picture-everything-is-perfect way. My roses were really pretty then. In fact, the entire garden was a sight to see! People would stop on the sidewalk to tell me so and I�d go on and on about the Indian Hawthorns, the Weeping Manchurian and, of course, the tea roses, the climbers, the floribunda�s. They�d ask if I was a gardener and if I had a card. That had to make me laugh out loud. I am the gardener, I�d say but I don�t have a card. This is my own garden. �I just do this for myself, for free, for fun, I guess.�

Truth steps up to remind me the way things were. She�s gentle but firm, guiding me away from Memory where I have a tendency to get lost. She whispers reminders about how I tended yesterday's garden so well to make the overlay of my life look the way it ought to look. The people who stopped to talk were part of my plan. Their attention was a kind of trade where they�d give over pennies of validation that paid the way through another bland day of predictability.

�Then the pennies ran out,� Truth reminds me, �and you were broke.�

It�s true. Pennies of praise just couldn�t pay the bills anymore so I relocated to the underbelly of being where I learned to cultivate dream symbolism and decipher meaning from the appearance of animals and shifts in the weather. I became educated on how to look for the blades of interconnectedness between humans and lived experiences. I collected feathers and arranged them on the windowsills of my house. I searched for the answers between the lines of words that others wrote. I practiced �just love� and found out just loving really works.

And somehow, I managed to collect the gems that were waiting within all along, each one worth countless pennies. Truth wants me to say that I am still collecting and will be collecting for a long, long time. She's helping me get back to the present again. Honestly, she�s has a way of keeping my story in perspective. I like her but she can be pretty relentless.

So here I am, back to these unexpected roses. I can report no one stops by to say, �Wow, nice garden, do you have a card?� Today, it�s just me with me being caught by how those untended roses seem to follow some deep code of knowing and that is what results in blooms so authentic and even inspiring.

My judge, feeling a bit left out says we are lonely for the rusty old pennies of praise that used to come our way but between us, he�s a liar. He always was. That�s why Truth doesn�t spend time anywhere near him and helps me steer clear too.

In the present, Peace is here in my quiet musing on this fall day. All the perfectly coifed and cultivated roses from that old play-by-rules-life wouldn�t add up to one sacred bloom I now watch from my window. Like peace, they are priceless. Truth says she agrees.