Thoughts Among the Orchids

One logs in here every morning with coffee in hand and writes a little something about her early thoughts of the day, and sometimes, she wonders what this place is all about, what the point of it is - she wonders if this is not just an exercise in self-indulgence and futility, a jagged heap of shored fragments with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

There are reminders here about what matters (or ought to matter), sticky notes, exhortations to myself and pep talks, odd bits of grumbling and peevishness about life's potholes, large and small, an occasional sharp tap on the ear and terse suggestion to get my act together and stop whining. I know for sure that there are a lot of bad photos along with my stray thoughts and random potterings - perhaps something a tad more thoughtful and profound a few times a year, but then again, perhaps not.

Is that all there is to this place? Sometimes it seems so, and I was seriously considering writing something longer here this week and then being away for a while, but as I sat among the orchids at the bottom of a dank sunny Lanark bog this past weekend, all my odd cronish notions, aches and nausea and grumpy bits went sailing off into the sunlight like cavorting motes of leaf dust.

One simply cannot be snarly or morose in the presence of wild orchids. There is mindfulness and rapt attention in their perfect nodding velvet heads, elegance in every stem and leaf. They haven't a care in the world, blooming gloriously (and for the most part unseen) for a few days in late June, then fading into the shadows and waiting patiently for the wheel to turn again, for their blooming time to come again.

Looking at it another way, it seems to me that what I am doing here is scratching out the text of my life on the wall of this cavern (or rather bog) with an antler. Whether or not this badly told story of mine belongs to the shared patterns of the great, true stories—the myths— it is how I am journeying along this trail, how I am finding out my relation to the sacred, to others, the great wide world and the self (to paraphrase Linda Sexson and one of my favorite books, Ordinarily Sacred).

This is my song - the orchids told me so.