Gangsta Crap

October 24, 2005

It’s misting again outside, but harder than it has been the past two mornings. It’s enough to change the timbre of the cars as they pass by our house, enough to start the germination of all those native seeds I have yet to plant. Enough to make you a little sad if you stand in it by yourself and feel the fall coming on.

Maybe it’s just because I’m done paying bills (which is always excruciating to me), or because my wife is talking to her estranged father on the phone, but the sadness gripped me when I stood on the porch looking out at the massive juvenile California sycamore we planted when Ryan was born.

There are reasons I’m a frustrated gardener. Probably one is, like the bonsai artists, I want to control the world, and it angers me when it doesn’t listen to my commands.

Looking at that beautiful tree we planted when Ryan was born I think of how different I want the world to be, a longing for peace. In my garden I hope to undo a little of what my fellow humans have instigated on the very ground we walk on. Ridiculous as that sounds as a man who lives in a dirty, crime-ridden city, it’s something I still believe strongly.

There was a day, a cold day last year, maybe the year before, Wendy was working and I took the children to Descanso Gardens to have a look around and ride the train once around the park. It was around this time of year, and the winter rains were just setting in. It wasn’t that cold when we started, but by the time I bought them hot chocolate and I held Abby’s little ice cube hands in mine, I felt terrible for letting her run around without gloves on.

They both fell fast asleep by the time I came home. I put them into their beds, turned on the radio, and started to wash dishes and look out at the beautiful rain.

Just then shots rang out, about a block away from our house. I could barely make out a black SUV driving away and a figure lying down. Police cars arrived in waves no more than three minutes later and neighbors started pouring out of their houses to find out what had happened.

Of course it was gang related. Of course all these misguided kids were killing each other like the assholes they admire so much.

I went back to my house and said, “We are moving”.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of how ineffectual my puttering in the garden had been. How, like the priest in the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby he walks away from the grave and “no one was saved”.

I believed strongly in God when those kids were shot and killed. And I do still, mostly. I don’t wonder how He would let them do something so horrible as that. He has let much, much more horrible things happen on a daily basis for everyone, humans, animals, and insects alike.

I wondered, tonight, staring out at that black, black rain, about another man’s garden, in a country like Iraq. A garden that has seen dictators come and go, withstood wars, jihads, and so much human misery.

Those closest to God, even the Buddhists who don’t necessarily even believe in Him, would tell me to continue to garden, regardless.

Mother Theresa continued to heal the sick though Calcutta would always churn out an infinite number more than she could ever heal, or help through the night as they passed out of her arms and into their Lord’s.

And those people would tell you that Smith & Hawken, Gardener’s Eden, Sunset, and your Sunday supplement are full of shit. There is Gardening, and then there is all the crap thrown on top of it. There is a deep reason for putting your hands in that soil and it may not always be clear. Many of those incredibly, wonderfully, unfathomably smart people would tell you they were not always clear, either, but you should do it.

Because it is in your bones.

Do it if you’re tired. Or nervous. Or feel like taking a rifle to every gangbanger, politician, and black SUV driver in sight.

There is a connection between your hands and the earth that started before you were born. Probably before any of us were born.

And it is as rich as any loam you could find in the finest garden on the earth.