Decisions
“I was cleaning up my garden and I thought you might like these,” he said as he handed me four big garbage bags of dried trimmings from his garden. “I don’t know what they are, but I thought maybe you could use them in your art.”
I love it when people think of me when it comes to dried leaves and stalks and seed pods! So I was elated when my friend Ken handed me the bags. When I peeked inside I saw long seed pods from the southern catalpa tree, spiky seed heads from coneflowers, and flower-like seed pods from the rose of sharon bush, and more. I had a hard time containing my giddiness.
A few days later I sat down in my living room to sort through it. There was so much and I knew I couldn’t keep it all. My studio is small. My work is not big. The decision to keep, the decision to let go. The decision to bring something close, the decision to move something away.
Ken did that by giving me the trimmings from his garden. And now it was my turn to make other decisions, I somehow felt. But how would I decide? By sensing and listening like I do, I figured, and deciding together with the dried seed pods and stems and dried flowers. And so we did.
“Back to the earth”, is what I say when I put things in our compost bin. I knew that was where most of these natural found objects would end up — with their tangled stems and debris, their broken pods and distressed edges, their discolored seeds and worn surfaces. And it was okay. This would go into our yard waste collection bin, which the city picks up and makes into compost and mulch.
I started eyeing the elongated bean-like seed pods of the southern catalpa tree. I have long coveted its inner winged seeds, and how they are lined along a center spine and delicately loosen to be free.
When do we decide to stay within, and when do we decide to let go and venture off? Look how many are scattering to the winds. Look how many are in it together.
Curious about the coneflower seed heads, I began imagining what marks they could make, dipped in ink and moving across a page, already hearing their scratchy sound. Holding one of the coneflowers, the tiny spiky seeds started falling out, and then more.
As if nudged to help it along, I started plucking the spiky seeds out and then more and more and more. The inner part was smooth, with a pineapple-like scaling pattern, and tapered to a point.
When do we decide to shed what no longer benefits, or what is no longer true, to reveal something else of our self? And when do we decide to keep our spiky exterior too, because we really do still need that sometimes?
The rose of sharon seed pods are familiar. There are two tall shrubs on our neighbor’s side that peer onto our side and bloom gorgeous white flowers in the summertime. They are a kind of hibiscus and their blooms eventually fall in delicate coiled shrouds.
In the winter the shrubs look different, with their tall thin gangly branches reaching up and everywhere, with the seed pods fully open on the ends, looking like five-pointed flowers. At a distance they look really cool.
Yet as I held some of the seed pods close up in my hands, they looked tangled and withered and gnarly and I had a hard time seeing much beauty or interest in them.
When do we decide to keep our distance, because it looks better that way? Up close are our faults, our shadows, and scars. The truth, even. Can I get that close? I must try. Gently, I must. I can. This I can decide.
✻
Considering decisions...
LouLou
“Decisions” was originally published as an exclusive post to my Ko-fi supporters in February 2023. Now it is public to you, too!
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