I.
All week I have been reading about faith: faith answered and faith deceived, faith ignored and made immaterial. There is Cassino's faith (in State and in armistice, both betrayed) and a Benedictine faith (in God, whose favor is indicated by and redeemed through your destruction); there is Isaiah's Lord, who smites you despite your faith, and J's Yahweh, who rewards or punishes many generations for the faith or sin of their forefathers. Have faith in yourself, urge my family and friends; but the god of the Tanakh says: no, have faith only in me.
"A man should do two things: bear a son and plant an oak tree," according to the German proverb told me by a family friend; and I first found the idea charming, its slightly archaic emphasis on male lineage aside, this parity between what a man might leave in and to the earth, this attempt at marking the future - but now, of course, I see that the metaphor of seed is no accident, and the man himself stands alone from nothing at all, barely exists in the present: his whole purpose is thrust forward into the future, he matters only in the context of the tree and the son; they are not incidental. (This discounting of the present terrifies me, because J's Yahweh-god who promises to sow seed so ruthlessly dispenses with the individual. Faith in Him does not entail hope: to have faith is merely to understand His predictions and warnings for the facts that they are, to accept a future that may well destroy you and yours.)
In our contemporary, mercantilistic world, gardening is an investment, but it's more than that, of course: it's an expression of faith - faith in place, faith in time, faith that what is now will endure. To garden is to express faith at the moment of planting and sowing, it is to look forward, it is the anti-exile.
II.
I was quite free with my faith, before. I lugged pots and dirt and plants up staircases, fertilized with fish emulsion that spilled on my shoes and powdered bat guano that blew in my face on windy days. I staked, I deadheaded, I plotted the spread of leaf and vine; and alongside every moment that I enjoyed in the present rested my unexamined faith in the future.
I first made a garden in Los Gatos, where I bought tiny little boxwood bushes and Japanese anemones and red geraniums at a nursery that was, as I remember, on the right-hand-side after you took 17 down along the reservoir, through the historic town on Santa Cruz Avenue, if you continued past the main intersection, another mile or two, up a slight hill. (But it has been so long, it has been 7 years, and who knows where I'm giving you directions to now: you'd better leave your faith aside and bring a GPS.) ...I placed the boxwood at the base of our stairs, in a slight semi-circle; I think the anemones were white and went in the middle, although I hardly remember now: I do remember their upright, discrete closed buds, greyish-green limbs curving outwards elegantly, like dancers' arms. The geraniums I planted in round silver pots, and they flourished in the cool night air that slipped down from the mountains and lingered in the morning fog on the reservoir as it stretched before us.
I had not realized when I planted it that my garden would last for just one summer. That fall, I knew that the boxwood would simply be a gift to the landlord, but I was dismayed to find that when the planters arrived, my crimson geraniums, too, were gone, dumped out by the movers. I imagined them lying on their heads in a pile of potting soil and styrofoam, and I hoped that someone would redeem them.
We soon moved into a Brooklyn apartment with a deck, a place in which I had faith as I've had faith in no place since my childhood home. (Strangely, I now have no photos of this place that I believed to be my home, I don't know why.) My garden was all whites and greens: many boxwood ('Faulkner') and one white climbing rose, striated grey painted ferns, geraniums, clematis 'Henryi' growing up the wall, one mis-marked peony ('Shirley Temple') that was actually was blush pink (but such a small betrayal!), pillowy alyssum. This garden, too, was not to last long - less than two years. On the day that we moved, it rained heavily in the morning, and the surly Russian movers didn't show until late in the afternoon, at which point they summarily refused to move the planters, now swollen and heavy with water. "Is dirty," one of them sneered, looking as though he'd just as soon dump me and my planters off the Outerbridge. I thought, "I'll be damned if I'll leave my plants behind," feeling like I were one of those mothers of lore lifting a car off the body of my stricken child. The prospect of losing those plants - as I'd already lost my home, my garden - filled me with a horror and a fierceness that defied even my fear of those men.
My faith was a little battered, a little weary, by the time we returned from Gurgaon, by the time I set up that last garden in Chelsea, but I could still look at the space, imagine what it deserved to be, and know that I would be the one to do it. I eagerly began the process of moving forward by staying still. That Chelsea roof terrace grew lush and lovely, the loveliest I've had yet, and one day I'll be able to talk about it. I remember that the afternoon our furniture was delivered from India, I said, "I am not moving anywhere for ten years," and like the prideful hero of tragedy taken down by a god who says, "Eh, you think so?", we were gone in two and a half.
III.
I have been thinking about my own faith, and whether that faith is yet so etiolated as to require guarantees. I have this narrow deck now, I've told you, and I've yet to step foot on it. I've planted nothing, have rationalized that my head barely hits the pillow, so how could my hands touch the soil? there's no time, and anyway, it's almost winter, I may not be here long... Of course, my previous faith in longevity, that my gardens would endure, was always betrayed, in the end; and yet in my prelapsarian innocence I loved those gardens. I didn't know how things would turn out; that my faith was all wrong didn't matter; I had happy months and years and moments.
I think now of how free I was with my faith, that I have never regretted those gardens for being so brief, and I wonder what my time is worth to me in the absence of faith. How little time would be enough to plant a garden? How little time would be enough for me?
All week I have been reading about faith: faith answered and faith deceived, faith ignored and made immaterial. There is Cassino's faith (in State and in armistice, both betrayed) and a Benedictine faith (in God, whose favor is indicated by and redeemed through your destruction); there is Isaiah's Lord, who smites you despite your faith, and J's Yahweh, who rewards or punishes many generations for the faith or sin of their forefathers. Have faith in yourself, urge my family and friends; but the god of the Tanakh says: no, have faith only in me.
"A man should do two things: bear a son and plant an oak tree," according to the German proverb told me by a family friend; and I first found the idea charming, its slightly archaic emphasis on male lineage aside, this parity between what a man might leave in and to the earth, this attempt at marking the future - but now, of course, I see that the metaphor of seed is no accident, and the man himself stands alone from nothing at all, barely exists in the present: his whole purpose is thrust forward into the future, he matters only in the context of the tree and the son; they are not incidental. (This discounting of the present terrifies me, because J's Yahweh-god who promises to sow seed so ruthlessly dispenses with the individual. Faith in Him does not entail hope: to have faith is merely to understand His predictions and warnings for the facts that they are, to accept a future that may well destroy you and yours.)
In our contemporary, mercantilistic world, gardening is an investment, but it's more than that, of course: it's an expression of faith - faith in place, faith in time, faith that what is now will endure. To garden is to express faith at the moment of planting and sowing, it is to look forward, it is the anti-exile.
II.
I was quite free with my faith, before. I lugged pots and dirt and plants up staircases, fertilized with fish emulsion that spilled on my shoes and powdered bat guano that blew in my face on windy days. I staked, I deadheaded, I plotted the spread of leaf and vine; and alongside every moment that I enjoyed in the present rested my unexamined faith in the future.
I first made a garden in Los Gatos, where I bought tiny little boxwood bushes and Japanese anemones and red geraniums at a nursery that was, as I remember, on the right-hand-side after you took 17 down along the reservoir, through the historic town on Santa Cruz Avenue, if you continued past the main intersection, another mile or two, up a slight hill. (But it has been so long, it has been 7 years, and who knows where I'm giving you directions to now: you'd better leave your faith aside and bring a GPS.) ...I placed the boxwood at the base of our stairs, in a slight semi-circle; I think the anemones were white and went in the middle, although I hardly remember now: I do remember their upright, discrete closed buds, greyish-green limbs curving outwards elegantly, like dancers' arms. The geraniums I planted in round silver pots, and they flourished in the cool night air that slipped down from the mountains and lingered in the morning fog on the reservoir as it stretched before us.
I had not realized when I planted it that my garden would last for just one summer. That fall, I knew that the boxwood would simply be a gift to the landlord, but I was dismayed to find that when the planters arrived, my crimson geraniums, too, were gone, dumped out by the movers. I imagined them lying on their heads in a pile of potting soil and styrofoam, and I hoped that someone would redeem them.
We soon moved into a Brooklyn apartment with a deck, a place in which I had faith as I've had faith in no place since my childhood home. (Strangely, I now have no photos of this place that I believed to be my home, I don't know why.) My garden was all whites and greens: many boxwood ('Faulkner') and one white climbing rose, striated grey painted ferns, geraniums, clematis 'Henryi' growing up the wall, one mis-marked peony ('Shirley Temple') that was actually was blush pink (but such a small betrayal!), pillowy alyssum. This garden, too, was not to last long - less than two years. On the day that we moved, it rained heavily in the morning, and the surly Russian movers didn't show until late in the afternoon, at which point they summarily refused to move the planters, now swollen and heavy with water. "Is dirty," one of them sneered, looking as though he'd just as soon dump me and my planters off the Outerbridge. I thought, "I'll be damned if I'll leave my plants behind," feeling like I were one of those mothers of lore lifting a car off the body of my stricken child. The prospect of losing those plants - as I'd already lost my home, my garden - filled me with a horror and a fierceness that defied even my fear of those men.
My faith was a little battered, a little weary, by the time we returned from Gurgaon, by the time I set up that last garden in Chelsea, but I could still look at the space, imagine what it deserved to be, and know that I would be the one to do it. I eagerly began the process of moving forward by staying still. That Chelsea roof terrace grew lush and lovely, the loveliest I've had yet, and one day I'll be able to talk about it. I remember that the afternoon our furniture was delivered from India, I said, "I am not moving anywhere for ten years," and like the prideful hero of tragedy taken down by a god who says, "Eh, you think so?", we were gone in two and a half.
III.
I have been thinking about my own faith, and whether that faith is yet so etiolated as to require guarantees. I have this narrow deck now, I've told you, and I've yet to step foot on it. I've planted nothing, have rationalized that my head barely hits the pillow, so how could my hands touch the soil? there's no time, and anyway, it's almost winter, I may not be here long... Of course, my previous faith in longevity, that my gardens would endure, was always betrayed, in the end; and yet in my prelapsarian innocence I loved those gardens. I didn't know how things would turn out; that my faith was all wrong didn't matter; I had happy months and years and moments.
I think now of how free I was with my faith, that I have never regretted those gardens for being so brief, and I wonder what my time is worth to me in the absence of faith. How little time would be enough to plant a garden? How little time would be enough for me?
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