listening to the radio, a nocturne by mikhal glinka. such a sweet sound.  it's astonishing, isn't it, how sometimes a song will just enter you by pure chance.  had i turned on the radio a minute later, or gone to open my mail instead, or done a million other things, i would not be here, listening to this music, and i might never have found out about this russian composer. 

oddly enough, i am reminded of the first time i listened to chopin's nocturnes (clauddio abbado) -- in my dorm room, sophomore year in college.  how astonished i was back then, by this thing called piano music.  it was as if the world melted away and all there was to do was to bathe in this luxurious sound.  a sound of such longing, i did not know how a person could stand it. 

back then i put the songs on my mp3 player, my first music player, the size of a pack of cigarettes. it had a blue scrolling display and held 20 songs. i listened to those songs on it over and over again, along with chopin's etudes (claudio arrau) and whatever else i could find.  i took it to the library, i listened to it on long walks by myself, and i studied the notes as if it were sanskrit.  when the songs ran out i listened to the silence, and then after a while, i turned the songs back on again.  what was i hoping to find?

looking back it seems like such a different world, with all those long bouts of silence punctuated by chopin.  i see my younger self walking down res-halls and cafeterias, around the bends of campus, which, for some reason in my mind, now feels vast and empty, although logically i know it could not have been this way. but my younger self, he does not say anything, he only listens to nocturnes and to silence.  and he is silent, even more silent than i am now.  i know now that he belongs to a different world.  a world perhaps lost, forever -- with only the memory of it that remains, like the grooves of a footprint, covered by rain.

I grow two, three, four times my size. The vehicle I am traveling in floats over the streets like a speed boat over water, barely skimming the surface.  at every corner there is something that the city has to offer -- a restaurant, a bodega, a haircut.  good music.  a museum.  i am at once glad to be in the city, and exclaim unabashedly to my companion, "i feel like my batteries are charging again!"

exhausted but happy by the days events, i lie down in a room, on a mattress i have prepared for this trip.  i have my laptop open, where i am waiting for several emails.  the light of the screen softly fills the room.

the light flickers for a moment.  i lean over from the mattress to take a look.  on keyboard is a scurry of movement, little black spots scattering -- what are they?  

my friend walks by -- i ask him, did you see that?  

see what? he asks, turning on the light.

but they are already gone.  nevermind, i say.  but i know what they are.  they are too clever to be seen, the little creatures of darkness. they know when someone is looking.  they hide in the nooks and crevices, and they operate only at night.  

uneasy, but unable to do anything, i lie back down.  even without looking i know that my laptop is a mess, a small crater where the keys used to be.  there will be no more email checking tonight.

when the lights finally go out, i see them make a mad dash for under my hand.  in an instant they burrow into my hand, disappear into the base of my wrist, where they shoot up along the inside of my arm, straight into the cavity of my chest.  and for some reason i can see them, inside of me, as if i had become transparent, my body like a glass chamber.  and i can see, clear as day, the slow blackening of my own heart, as their darkness begins to fill it, one hardbacked shell at a time. until there is no light that can pass, once again.

if love is a thing that grows, as in a garden, then it could be said that no two loves will grow in exactly the same way.

there are some loves that sprout like wild grass, like waves upon waves of wheat, carpeting entire fields in the blink of an eye.

there are some loves that age more slowly, in turn transforming into magnificent trees, that with time provide strength and comfort, shelter and shade.

some loves are like the mustard plant, arising from the tiniest germ of the tiniest seed.

there are loves that crystallize as individual blades of grass, each its own lullaby, new every morning. and there are those loves that blossom only at night.  and even still there are the loves that blossom only once in a millennium.

some loves, alien and pure, grow to reveal things entirely unexpected, with strange leaves and even stranger fruit that only grow more beautiful given the chance.

some loves sprout only from one spot in your heart, but having once taken root, will hold forever.











it’s hard to say, then, that the means by which one love should grow should somehow be better, or superior, than another.  just as a rosebush, a maple sapling, and a cactus all depend on different kinds of shade, nutrition, and care, so too it would seem that every love deserves its own consideration.

where one love might obtain the most energy under the robust heat of a tropical sun, another might feel most nourished by the stream of a cool shade.

where one love would wither without enough water, the flame of another love may become extinguished by too much of it.











the overwhelming temptation however, i think, is to try to rig the heart in a certain way, perhaps to achieve a desired outcome, or perhaps to make it grow in accordance to some preconceived notion of what love "should" be.

to this end we pull out all the techniques we have learned from our past, we try all kinds of fertilizer and chemicals, and we put up crazy houses and irrigation systems.

even the best of us will look longing upon all the devices available to us, tools by which we may try to coax, to resurrect, to coerce, to mold that which we have, into the thing of our desire.










but not every love can be a rosebush and not every garden can be like the ones that appear on tv.

for like a lot of things in life, no garden can be forced to grow.  sometimes, despite our best efforts and calculations, it will simply not take. by no fault of our own.











the same plans fall apart, the same shortcuts do not yield fruit, and the same rules do not seem to apply.

for what may have worked for one love does not always work for another. once is not forever. every love is different. just like us, different people.











there some things, still, that must come elsewhere, beyond what a gardener can provide.

for lest we forget, love is still a wild and unbridled force of nature.











think of the seeds that no-one knew existed, the ones that suddenly take root in the garden, all on their own accord.

think of the struggling saplings, that unknowingly blossom into a magnificence no two people could ever imagine, together or alone.

think of the loves that come, like a thief in the night, to plant themselves, and grow into the mightiest paradise you ever did see, with roots so deep and flowers so beautiful it takes your very breath away.

how then can we not be but grateful, but for what should bloom and yield fruit?





~ ~ ~





just as there are many kinds of gardens, so too are there many kinds of gardeners.

a fearful gardener is so frightened by the possibility of love that he will tear up his own garden, with the anger of his bare hands.  stripping bark from trees, snapping saplings in half, uprooting every little thing until his hands are cut and bloody, he will stop at nothing until everything within him is destroyed.

one day he will wake up, and realize how much he has lost, and it will be too late.











a spiteful gardener populates his garden with stone statues which, in his frustration, he uses to replace his failed attempts.  a stone statue, he reasons, will never break; a stone statue that will never move, never hurt, never disappoint.

but pretty soon the garden is all but white with concrete, perfectly preserved, insoluble to time, and frozen, just like the gardener’s heart.











a careless gardener lets his garden grow wild, until it is completely overrun by both weed and plant.  the careless gardener thinks his plot is more generous than it actually is. he waters indiscriminately but erratically.  he invites love in but actually does not have any room for it, such that any seed that is planted there in the end gets choked out.

in some ways, perhaps, he is the worst gardener of all.











~ ~ ~





When it comes to our own lives, it is surprising just how little control we have over something so elementarily part of us.  it comes and it goes, as a wild thing, as a force of nature, and at its helm just are we merely the helpful gardener, always secondary to the thing that consumes us, involved, but never quite in charge.

yet at the same time, the question before us stands, in the form of a bulbous shoot in the seat of our soot-covered gloves: what kind of gardeners should we be?

do we tear something out, if it does not look like love? do we take up our shears and shovels?

or do we risk letting it grow?

and if we do let it grow, how do we know how much of ourselves to give, how much shade and how much sunlight, and how do we discern what is toxic versus what is food, and how long do we wait, for what does not take?





~ ~ ~











in the garden of ancient creation, before the unpleasant business of the serpent, lived the gardeners of original paradise.  together they oversaw the needs of life and tended to the fruits of love.  true, the work was hard and their weekends were only one day instead of two, but it's hard to say they were unhappy in any way.  together they cared for all that lived in the garden, marveling at all the new things before them.

together they bestowed names, one by one, to all that they saw.

"what name shall we give this love?" asks adam.

"and what name shall we call this fruit?" asks eve.

for each one did they deliberate, for each one did they give pause, allowing for the full measure of its being to reveal, both in the solicitude of thought and of being, the essence of its spirit, the full meaning of its name.

and after finally having given a name to the love that they held in their hands, they saw that each one was good, and gave thanks.

and all the birds of the sky, and all the beasts of the earth, and all of creation celebrated with joyous song.





~ ~ ~











i step outside, to the cimmerian darkness before dusk.  it's colder than anything, and the smell of burning leaves mixed with smoldering chimneys singes the air.  a conic silence descends and then expands, as if to evince the onslaught of winter.

in the darkness, i do not need to look into the yard to know what has been lost, what has been buried under the earth's heavy frost.

yet even with the promise of spring, i do not know if i will ever find in short supply all the vicissitudes of sorrow.

where are you, i wonder?  i cannot do it alone.  i call out with white ghost before my lips, but try as i might i cannot hope to find you, not in this darkness.

in the distance lies a burnished sun that cannot emerge soon enough.  i wait upon the column of light that will stack under the horizon, a crumpled can of glistening brass.  behind which lie the crossed swords of lost eden. the hanging gardens of Babylon. the lush fields of all our greening dreams.

my thoughts, they run there, hopelessly and forever.

the last of the gardens with no name.