The True Tomato

(first published in One Shot Deal, 2004)

Sweet May. Loverly warm breezes have finally come to the Land of Terrace Lake.

Flowers beds are awakening. Vegetable beds erupting with promise. An arsenal of rakes, spades and clippers have been gathered, and stand at attention next to the wheelbarrow.

It is the season of growth, when I become loving mother to the young and tender. As well, I become ruthless Kali, Destroyer of the Vines.

One morning, while going after the wild grape vine, honeysuckle, ivy, grasses, and Missouri jungle saplings springing up in a flowerbed, my friend Bill stood on my deck, watching, drinking a cup of coffee.

"Why are you killing the pretty green plants?" he asked.
We have this conversation every year. Part of our spring ritual.
"I am making room for the flowers and herbs," I answer, the same answer every year.
"There is plenty of room for all," Bill says, sounding so reasonable and global.
"It looks like there is room now," I gasp, pulling at a root, "but if I allow these pretty, innocent green shoots space, they are going to grow up to be choking monsters."
"But where do the tall grass fairies go?"
He raises difficult ethical questions.
"A gardener makes life and death choices." I pant hacking at a vine.
Bill sighs from his lofty perch, murmuring on about murder and the needless destruction of the pretty green, and then giving up he turns away and goes back to his paper and coffee. I go back to my murderous ways.

It is all about choices. Sometimes a thing must diminish or die for another to take root and thrive. When cutting back a tree root or editing the words of an article, the gardener and the editor must step into the sandals of the Destroyer and make choices of death, in order to choose life.

On a larger and more ultimate scale, we Americans tend to recoil from the very idea of death. It makes us uncomfortable. Rather than come to terms with death’s role in the Cosmic Dance, we fear it, and turn our view from its inevitability. An understandable, yet unrealistic approach.

In Carlos Casteneda’s book A Separate Reality, the shaman Don Juan Matus tells us, "every bit of knowledge that becomes power has death as its central force. Death lends the ultimate touch, and whatever is touched by death indeed becomes power."

He goes on to say, "A warrior thinks of his death, when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit." The purpose of tempering the spirit, is to bring one into the moment. In the moment we can learn to release past and future striving and to experience freedom of mind in a place of neutrality, acceptance and rest. It is in the present moment we apprehend the constant.

As one of the young people among the ranks of the Jesus People, I was exhorted to lay down my life for the cause. Nonetheless, in the summer of 1970 we were looking upward for the gathering in the sky. The rapture. We were counting on bypassing death altogether. To be transformed, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye.

I suppose, deep down in my swirling subconscious, I still hold out hope for such a scenario. A miraculous escape in 20012. But Bill says I have not a chance of joining the Spirit in the Sky. Because of my murderous ways. He’ll change his tune come harvest time.

So I do what I can to get a grip on aging. With grace. I do my yoga and qigong and eat my garden veggies to maintain myself and keep the edge of the Great Divide at bay. Ironically, as it turns out, although Yoga may bring health to self, its ultimate goal is its annihilation.

Patanjali writes in his sutras that Yoga is the process of stilling the thoughts waves, in order to end our conditioned, false definitions of self. One uses Yoga to uproot locked paterns of conditioning, compulsion, and trauma, which are held in our minds and bodies. Patanjali calls these ingrained patterns, vrittis, or definitions of reality. The goal is to to root out these definitions in the field of consciousness which hinder our apprehension of the true present moment.

Jesus says, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit."

It is all about choices. If you want juicy luscious tomatoes in August, a bed has to cleared in the spring.

"You know the vines are only going to come back," Bill jeers from the deck.
"I know." I die daily.

Although it will require work and a bit of death in the July heat, come harvest time, I will not be settling for false, hothouse varieties, but will find harmonious oneness in the True Tomato.

(footnote..Wendesday May 5)

Man oh Man what a beautiful spring! We truly deserve this after the long hard winter. Have you planted any tomatoes yet? Well there is plenty of time. Put em in the ground, plant them in a pot, on a terrace, on a deck, or in a straw bale. It is easy and so worth the reward. And oh so many wonderful varities to choose from, including heirloom varities, which I found at Soil Service. Also I am planning on scoring some bad veggies this week, first Friday, at the Bad Seed Market, 1909 McGee, 4 - 9, in the Crossroads. The Market has local growers and vendors selling organic vegetables and meat and cheese and eggs and bread and jams, as well as, in this season, bedding plants; a wide range of varities you will not find at your local nursery. Check it out. http://www.badseedfarm.com/. Plant some veggies. Eat some true food. Cultivate the True Tomato. deb out.