Chapter 2, Verse 47

I didn't want this house when I bought it. I mean, I wanted it. But I didn't want to own it. I didn't want to own a house. Alone. 

I couldn't figure out who to blame for my misfortune. I knew I was getting an opportunity so many people will never get. I was aware of the socio-economic exploitation - past, present, future - that was providing me with this opportunity. Somehow, this awareness did not make me feel better. 

I was aware that the way that I "earned" the money and credit history that was convincing the bank and the title company and the "homeowner" to hand me this "property" and this big ass debt - was by being married to a very handy white guy for 18 years. 

There was honestly never any question that I would buy this house (or that I would try) once the connection was made. Friends of friends. Right time and place. The Universe. Whatever you want to call it. I don't need to lay out the many ways it made sense.

I couldn't feel choice inside all that sense, though. It feels stupid to say - I have shame about this - but I walked in cuffed. 

To a garden that was once someone's baby. That flourished in the shade of a huge protector. A garden who had her own loses - goodbye tree, goodbye gardener - and became something totally other. The bones were there, some blooming and lush, some blasted by the bare bulb of the sun, buried in poke, giant thistles, nightshade, dock. It was a raw scene, the shock palpable. 

I wonder now - 14 months from when these photos were made - if blame for the way I've felt my hand forced (by patriarchy, capitalism, failure, divorce) was easier to feel than the rawness underneath. Because choices had to be made. I've moved three times in the last four years. I've moved my whole heart. 

Maybe that's one source of the shame, and the blame too. It isn't pretty. I'm not smiling right. I don't feel ownership or triumph. I feel like a grub: eating and pooping soil, cowering as the hoe comes down - even the hoe that I hold. Somehow I'm both swinging and saying no. God I fight. Being small. 

This day - in the photos. I knelt on the ground in the thistles and prayed first. Pulled some cards, smoked some flowers. Bowed, asked. It was a new moon, I think. 

Directions, discovered as I go along; known and unknown: Put lavender in to help heal the poison wound. Lift out the dead and cart them away. Look for protection for those who need it; more space for the thriving ones. Follow movement with pathways, instead of forcing our feet onto old roads. Remove history's weight so the present can breathe. Layers of mulch: the housewarming gift of the PNW plant-cell community. Feel a yes: make way. Feel a no: find a door. 

Even as I am in it, and the flow of blood to fingers reaches to touch the sap flowing from another's earthbound heart -- I doubt. 

I'm changed. I know what to do next but I'm tired. I know what we make won't last. 

So it's that much more true: we don't do it for the fruit.