5.5. Out of My Head

Doctor’s appointment for a hormone shot, scheduled for 11:30. I get a late start leaving the house, drive like maniac, reach the Sherman building with about five minutes to spare, decide at the last moment to go past it and park in Brookline instead to save the parking fee. The street is packed but I squeeze into a borderline legal spot, then get out and run back across the Riverway, across Brookline Street, into the building, and take the elevator up nine floors to the oncology/hematology department, where the clock shows I have five minutes to spare. Guess my watch is fast.
I check in, sit and wait. As I said, 11:30 appointment. I get my shot at 1 p.m. Just one of those things.
I’m supposed to call them if I get a rash from the shot. I leave the building, run back to the car, and manage to get to the highway before the afternoon build-up. Back home I try to catch up on my work, and sort of get somewhere, and then get tired.
Eventually I get myself out of doors. It’s about four thirty, but after a day of some rain, more threats of rain, and a steady cool wind, there’s some sun in the sky. I work on the vegetable garden, because I want to plant some more peas and get some greens in the ground, and the hard work with the shovel will warm me up. Half an hour later it starts to rain hard; run back indoors. Looks like my outdoor time is over.
But fifteen minutes later, the sun is out again.
It’s chilly now, but the light looks great on the fresh green plants. I squat down beside a patch of Mazus, a low thatch-like colony of light green “stepable” plants that make a delicate pink flower once they settle in good for the season.
I finally get what I need.
I stop having the usual thoughts. And start having different thoughts. It hardly matters what they’re about.
Green thoughts.
Not about the “green” in nature, but green in the sense of newly grown. And of course they’re not really “new” to me, or probably anyone else. But green as in the sense of fresh. We eat the green leaves off plants, like lettuce of spinach, because they’re fresh. Deer eat the green shoots from plants, including the ones in your yard.
Green as in newly emergent. Not “new,” but new again.
The produce you buy in the market, or pick from your market, is fresh – but a fresh carrot or tomato is hardly something new under the sun. It’s different materially – not the same carrot you ate last year, but definitely a carrot – the same in essence. That’s Platonism 101.
My thoughts are like my violets, my Japanese primrose, my ever-spreading blue “forever” flowers. The fresh expression of seasonal product.
Which is why people spend time doing things they like, why they need to. My “gardening” is a really a matter of spending time with plants. After a while I stop thinking about what I should be doing better, and then the fresh thoughts push their way up from beneath the surface of whatever we are. The earth of us.
We feel refreshed.