The rest is negotiable

“What is your favorite story?” She asked me. “I don’t know its name.” I told her. “But I can tell it to you.” And there, late at night on the bus, I did. “What is your favorite story?” People have asked me since, but never before. A basic question, but one that means a lot. What is your favorite story? ************************************************************ At some point it occurred to me that it doesn’t matter what I end up doing as long as the essentials are met. I want a garden. I want chickens, bees, and goats. I want a beautiful wife, and even more beautiful children. The rest is negotiable. But here, now - I’m not in a place to have a garden. I’m not in a place to have chickens, bees, and goats. The beautiful wife is still a work in process. The children can only follow. I am not meant for apartments. Still I try. On an impulse, back visiting papa for his birthday, I grab some plants before I leave. Chocolate mint, horehound, yarrow, lemon balm - even some nettle roots in the helpless hope they might survive. I stuck them all in water on my back porch. I had inherited some cinderblocks, and thought I could use them as pots. I needed dirt, but that’s doable. Maybe I could have some semblance of my garden. Maybe the rest will grow from there. My pilgrimage to the coop for dirt is more of an adventure than I expect it to be. I get off at a further stop to check an antique shop for a butter dish. No luck, but there is a bottle of pebbles. I buy it for the bottle as well as what it contains. Then I have a long walk through the neighborhoods that make up the west side. Through The Nest where I find a free pile with two pots. Past Alex’s new house where I peek but don’t see anybody at home. Detouring into the abandoned lot and its secret chamber made of grapes, too ripe and sunsweet on my tongue. The garden center is open. I ask the kind woman there if she has any small bags of dirt. She shows me the smallest. Large for walking back to the bus stop, but I’ll manage. We also talk kale, I’m unsure of what will overwinter - “this one can even become a weed in your garden,” she warns me. “Perfect.” I also get rosemary - and elfin thyme for the name. Waiting for her to finish with another customer, I head into the Coop proper for the one thing I get there these days - my Tibios needs it’s special sugar. They’ve automated the system, and dropped my membership - so I have to fill out a form to apply again. The cashier gives me a paper to fill out and I do, quickly, handing it back to her. “Pan? - I thought you looked familiar.” I look up startled. This cashier happens to be a young woman I’m going to be giving sword lessons next week. We’ve only messaged online. The coincidence tickles me, and as synchronicities always do, makes me feel held. I make my way back over to the garden, buy my dirt, hoist it over my shoulder, and stagger out of the parking lot. I make it a block before my bag splits, trickling dirt down my neck. I rest often, but make it to the bus stop with most of my precious compost. I stuff the bag awkwardly into one of the big pots I picked up, and run my hands through the tear - stopping suddenly as I find myself a bit too aroused by the rich soil underfinger for comfortable communal bus stop sharing. Sandy rides by on her bike. “Hello friend!” Suddenly with the dirt, and the synchronicity, and the free pots, I feel like I’m in a community. The bus driver doesn’t even look at me funny as I hobble onto the bus with my leaky bag of dirt. It’s then that I know today is going to be a lovely day. When I get back I plant my plants, burying some less decomposed compost under the nettles in the hope they’ll like it. I whisper encouragements to the smallest kale, shame the yarrow that if it doesn’t do well in a pot when it grows as a weed everywhere else . . . and promise the mint I’ll keep it watered if it gives me lots of tops for tea. ******************************************************************************* I eat, dink around on the internet for an hour, and misremember when I need to get to dance to help set up, until I’m on the bus heading down. I arrive just as it begins. It is as if I begin just where I left off the week before. I am exploring moving through the dance, rather than just staying in one spot as has become my custom. I don’t know when I stopped, maybe the same time I stopped dancing with other people. Neither are habits I want to keep. A woman walks onto the floor - I don’t know her name, but I know her. Short, dark haired curvy thing - she’s danced my Anima often enough. Tonight though, she’s followed by a little girl, maybe three or four, and a man. Is she a mother then? Both adults are dark haired, and the little girl is blond as corn, but I cannot shake the possibility. The woman is about my age, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. When Beth announced her pregnancy I began having intense dreams. Sometimes I was pregnant, others I was a father, in either case they always felt real on waking, every detail remembered. More friends have had babies since then. It will only grow - but that proof of fertility in my generation - it is always visceral. The feeling of rich dirt under my fingers arrises again, and here, this is the place for it. I dance tucking each plant in. I dance pushing Sweet Cicely seeds into the soil, watering them and begging them to grow. I dance the Nettle seeds scattered above the roots as a second chance. I dance the pressure of a woman my age with a child, and the eroticism of a garden. And then sweet Gabrielle is dancing with me, and it’s so fragily perfect. As is my custom I try to hold my dance rather than slipping fully into hers, and she lets me, mirroring mine back at me instead. It makes me laugh a little, seeing my own tension in her exaggerated movements. Over Masculine on her, I cannot decide then if it’s too much on me. Then she’s gone, and I’m left spinning in community. Not dancing alone anymore but with, and less subtly than usual. I edge towards the woman who might have a child a few times, but either she’s not interested or I’m not clear in my desire, and that’s okay. I’ve never needed my dance with Anima to be literal - though it’s always pleasant when she comes and mirrors yours. And then dance is almost over and there is Sandy lying on the floor, and I go to her like I used to do, but instead of cradling her head I lay down opposite her touching her head with mine. We mingle hands and breath for a while before the music ends, and I hope she feels the thank you for making me feel held before. ******************************************************************************* “What is your favorite story?” She asked me. “I don’t know its name.” I told her. “But I can tell it to you.” Once upon a time, a long long time ago, before time wound around quite like it does now - there was a cave, and in that cave there is a woman. Now this woman is weaving a tapestry. The most beautiful tapestry that has ever been. And she is almost done. The only thing she has left is the edging, which she has decided to do with porcupine quills. They are hard and in order to turn them into beads she must flatten them, and she does this with her teeth - but she has been doing it for so long that her teeth have worn down into nubs, but still she continues. But then she raises her nose and smells and she knows that she must got to the back of the cave and stir the cauldron before it burns, because this cauldron holds all the seeds of the world. She shuffles back and takes the big wooden spoon, and slowly stirs. The black dog What black dog? The black dog takes hold of one loose thread and pulls, and the tapestry begins to unravel, and it pulls and pulls until it it is nothing but a great pile of snarled thread. And so the old woman returns and as she stands in the doorway she sees what has happened, and for a moment she cannot even respond. Then she sinks to her knees and weeps. But after a while she looks up again, her eyes glossed with tears, and she has a vision among all that snarled thread - she sees a new tapestry, this one even more beautiful than the one before. And she gets up and begins again.