how green is my garden

How to begin this…

I fell off my bike on my birthday. Don’t think I didn’t get a good laugh out of it. If I can still fall off my bike and peddle home with bleeding knees and elbows, I take that as proof-positive that osteoporosis has yet to set in and I’m doing something right. I figure I’ve got about another week till the last scab makes its departure. I’ve also either bruised a bone (again) or pulled something in one of my legs, exacerbated no doubt by my bright idea a couple of days after the fall to make good use of an expiring Groupon and begin my Krav Maga training. Judging from the pain shooting down my leg, that sucker will just have to expire.

Electra, my bicycle. She is pretty, no?

I don’t sit still well, in spite of the fact that since June, I have made a concerted effort to dial way the fuck back. I just needed to take a break, resulting in three months of downtime that I took to calling The Summer of No. I stopped checking my calendar. Social events – some embarrassingly important – fell off my radar. Auditions went unscheduled. This, admittedly, has left many of my performing arts colleagues flummoxed. In the meantime, I plugged away at the day job, got my copy editing certification, and am about 55K words into writing the first draft of a novel which has been taking up most of my time. Many of my acting friends don’t even know that I write, and those that do usually assume that I write plays. No, I don’t write plays. That is to say, I haven’t yet.

When not writing, I have been trying to stay physically active to keep both oxygen and inspiration flowing. High impact activity appears to be out for now, so I’ve been gimping over to the local yoga studio a couple of times a week. Classes are currently held in an Episcopalian chapel that has seen better days. I can hardly complain, though – the church was kind enough to offer their space when the yoga studio lost their lease to a multi-alarm fire earlier this year. What the current space lacks inside, it makes up for with their garden. I have delighted all summer in literally stopping to smell the roses.

I wish you could smell these things.

So anyway, yesterday’s instructor opened class, and shared with us that she had recently visited the nearby heather garden in Ft. Tryon Park. She was struck by the careful cultivation of that garden, much like the beautiful roses just outside the church. Seeing it as a metaphor for her own life, she mused upon the fact that, in terms of personal cultivation, she thought she could use some work. She encouraged us to think of places in our own lives – barren, overgrown, or perhaps fraught with weeds – that could stand some loving care and attention, and to dedicate our practice to making that a reality. I closed my eyes and envisioned my garden. Some parts I hadn’t watered. Some parts I had over-watered on purpose. Some parts I neglected out of disinterest. There were a couple spots where it looked like I’d tried, but just gave up. All told, it was kind of a fucking mess.

The heather garden: not a fucking mess.

And so that brings me here.

It has been a long time since I have shared anything of myself here. I hit a rough patch – a couple of them, if I'm to be entirely honest. I have, for quite a while now, felt like a girl standing in the corner with my arms crossed firmly in front of breasts, eyeglasses squarely in place, as though all of this might generate some magical force field that would protect me and keep safe all my ridiculous vulnerabilities. It’s no use and it’s no good. The hits keep coming. Not even Krav Maga can protect me from this shit. Hell, I can’t even protect myself from myself, going five miles an hour on the New York City greenway.

I guess the first part is just opening the gate to my tangled proverbial garden, and I have to tell you, the hinges on that damned thing need some WD-40. I have the tools around here – somewhere – to do what all needs to be done, but it’s going to take some work, and more than a little patience. Even with gloves, there are going to be calluses. The good news is I know I can take a break when it’s needed, and I will ride my bike like a lunatic seven-year-old up and down the greenway, wind in my hair, scabbed knees and all.