14 August 2010

A thought occurred to me this evening as I was talking to my mother over the telephone, pressed up against my sliding glass doors in the only spot in my apartment where I have even the slightest signal on my cell phone, looking out over the garden and orchard as we spoke. Living our so-called civilized lives today, we are no different from our ancestors millennia ago in that our existence is a struggle against the overwhelming forces of nature. Certainly in our advanced day, we have claimed to conquer, to tame, to cultivate her, but I think that we are merely fooling ourselves, for if an orchard is left unkempt for a short period of time—perhaps even in so little time as a week—it will swiftly turn back to wild. Our dominion over nature is really just an illusion. Our lives are but a battle that we have already lost, for we all, at some point, turn back to dust, whether our bones are bleached by the hot sun, swallowed by the sea, or ground under the soil. Whatever marks we have left will fade with time, but the world will still turn and the wilderness will still creep to our abandoned doorsteps. Castles have been built and fallen to ruin, and the earth has reclaimed what was rightfully hers, for was she not created before us? Nature is always the victor, and we are all the great Ozymandius.

I suppose that seems to be a rather morbid and depressing thought, but, for some reason that I cannot quite put into words, I find it oddly comforting, though as I read back over what I’ve written I cannot see why I find it such. No, I don’t think comforting is the correct word. Humbling, rather. Perhaps it is the same sentiment that secures one of Dylan Thomas’s poems as my favorite:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell the weather’s wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

A delicious shiver never fails to crawl up my spine whenever I read that. Time and nature both are conquerors in the end. There is something altogether chilling and yet beautiful about that.

I had the entire day off today, though I did have to get up and have the signs hung out by the road and the table of peaches set up for customers by eight. And then I had to go collect the night’s fallen peaches. That just goes to show you that on any sort of farm, the work is never-ending. Once I was finished for the day, I walked down to see what Tim and Leslie’s small plot of shore looked like in low tide. I came back and cleaned my apartment, airing out the rugs, sweeping the floor, scrubbing the kitchen counters, rearranging my books. Then I went into town to the library to get on the Internet and to the store for a few items.

I spent the entire afternoon cooking. I’m just so exhausted by the end of the day that I don’t feel like preparing a meal. So today, I went ahead and prepared all of my dinners for this next week. I baked some potatoes, an acorn squash, banana bread (and I baked another loaf of apple zucchini bread last night); made granola; and fixed a pizza. Sheesh. I had a little bit of zucchini left and some carrots and beets Leslie had given me the first day I came. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them (I mean, what does one do with a beet?), so I just cut them up and sautéed them, boiled some spelt pasta, and had vegetables over noodles tonight for dinner. I am stunned to inform you that it was actually quite good. Slight charred because I burnt it, of course. But really tasty. Who knew.