And without so much as a wisp of wind, I returned.

I haven't been to E2 in a really long time. I mean, a really really long time. I'd been visiting the site long before I first thought to log in. Then back in March, after creating my user, and a few unsuccessful posts, I stopped visiting. Whatever excuses I may come up with, I do realize that it was simple scorn on my part. I was being a whiny fuck. Upon retrospect, one of my posts was blatant crap, and the other was lacking any real content.

Then this weekend came along. You see, I was having a conversation with the girl I'm seeing about good books, ie - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She brought up The Edible Woman, and this made me think of Books that will induce a mindfuck. I'm going to attribute all this to the fact that mindfuck is just such a memorable word. So I came back, started browsing, and remembered how much fun it was just to read stuff here. Hopefully I've improved in the writing aspect this time around.

O mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give....

Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

We breathe, we dance, we sing, we read. The sun's energy, captured by protoplasts, converts carbon dioxide and water to form sugar. Our brains cannot function without the sun's energy. The saccadic movements of your eyes as you scan the words, capturing photons, transform the energy of photons captured on a farm not long ago. We once worshipped the sun; now we praise the mitochondrion. Energy flows and transforms in either model. Grace.

None of this is earned, or deserved. Just is.

Our greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The cry for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is not a cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. God has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a herenow.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone

I am a man of faith in grace...faith reaffirmed with every easy breath I take, faith that will no doubt be questioned when my breathing becomes difficult. Do not talk of heaven (or hell)--both unknowable, and the future, truly, does not exist. It never exists. We have herenow.

My sister no longer breathes in the herenow, and her last breath was pushed in by a machine, no doubt. I could look at her chart, and see the numbers, and know what they mean. Peak inspiratory pressure. Positive end expiratory pressure. Tidal volume. Rate. FiO2 1.0. That is not grace.

Grace was the last breath she took before seeing a car in the wrong lane, headed for her; she was on her way to her favorite place in the world, an apple farm in Michigan, to see her love.

Grace. Her words now in my head, already asking me to forgive the carelessness of another.

The world is a wonderful place. She knew this and lived this. I may need reminding for a bit.

Well, it's been a gorgeous autumn weekend, and time to take stock in the garden. Lots of pruning, weeding, digging and moving. A hard pruning session sometimes means sacrificing some leaves and flowers the following year, and having to look at bare, naked wood for a while, but needs must, and in the longer term the benefits of all that hard work will become obvious.

It is a time for reflection and decision making. There is that plant in the corner that you love dearly, and have tried to nurture. But now, in autumn, you know that it was planted in the wrong place, and it will never reach its full potential. If it's not too late, move it to another spot. If it's suffered too much damage you might have to bite the bullet and decide that it's time to give up on it.

But why, what went wrong? Sometimes you make a mistake, and the plant is too strong and vigorous for its situation, and tiny, more delicate plants are suffering under its shadow. You can try to keep it contained by vigorous pruning but you lose the benefit of its full glory in trying to maintain its shape. The work involved will be never ending, and other parts of the garden may even get neglected in the process as you run out of time to manage it all.

Sometimes it just fails to thrive because it is too dark, or too dry, too hot, too cold, too crowded - there could be any number of reasons why it's just not going to happen. Wrong time, wrong place - move on. Remember: Tend to the things that you know will survive. You will still see those favourite plants, they're not gone forever, just growing elsewhere.

There is much to do in the garden. I may not be around quite as much.