Decadence
I don't have much to show for this, my 600th day of retirement. Or is it my 900th? I have lost count. But, then, I haven't been counting, have I? Counting doesn't count for much with me, anyway. It's all numbers. And the same can be said for money. Take the $20 I just spent on coyote urine. In fact, take the coyote urine, if you'd really like. It can't hurt. The manufacturers promise that with a money back guarantee. Well, not the real manufacturers which are, presumably, coyotes. Where they are, how they are domiciled, how much water they have to drink or not drink and whether they are or are not 'paid' in any coyote form of exchange...none of these details are available. The company is just another producer of eco-friendly products, Bio-Green Farms, or whatever they're called. And in one sense they're in Missouri, and in another they're in the Web. And now their coyote urine is on its way.
It's the squirrels, of course. When I first moved into this apartment, a decade and a half ago, they scampered about quite pleasantly, all bushytailed, furtive and jerky in their rodent way. But the charm has worn off squirrels. Now they are an unwanted link in the food chain, burying acorns in my raised-bed garden -- which I can live with -- and assaulting my sunflowers -- with which I cannot. When a plant is racing for the sun and sold in the annuals rack of your hardware store's seed display, and it's only got a year to be successful, and if things don't work out there's no career counseling, retirement or, God knows, a health plan...the last thing you need is squirrels. Whose body weight or paw strength is sufficient to topple a 6 foot tall sunflower, or at least, knock off half its leaves in the effort.
I am easily convinced that squirrels fear coyotes, can smell their urine and will be repelled by its presence. I am repelled by the mere idea, as a matter of fact. I never thought I would give money to anyone for urine, producing such an impressive supply on my own. Not only did I send money to this company in Missouri, I specified express shipping. We are in a hurry, aren't we? Not only does the squirrel assault have to be stopped, but Marlou and I are journeying to Tuscany. Defenses need to be put in place before our departure. Wouldn't want to come home from a euro spending spree and find that our garden wasn't up to snuff, would we? Yes, it's comforting to know that while one is sipping cappuccino in Val d'Elsa, Chiantishire, one's sunflowers in California are well protected. Organically, of course.
If this isn't decadence, what is? I don't mean indulgence -- I mean decadence, the decline and fall, Sodom and Gomorrah...that sort of thing. And curiously, decadence is becoming productive.
I just sat in my garden, overwatering my raised beds. In a drought year, I'm spraying hundreds of gallons of the Sierra's finest over my cauliflower and beyond, to the very edges of the beds where the basil resides in a sort of rain shadow, a corner zone slightly out of range of the mist from the soaker hose...and eventually watering beyond that, irrigation running down the redwood sides of my raised beds, wetting the wood and ultimately the sand where the Portulaca is sprouting. It's wasteful and, no doubt about it, decadent.
What's productive about decadence is that it stimulates my mind. The more I hang out by the raised beds behind our apartment house, and the more I watch water dribbling down the splintery wood to the sandy ground, the more I think. And the more I think, the more I write. Hard to say if I think watery thoughts or wooden ones, but by the time it's all over, I'm back inside virtually hitting the keys. Or hitting the virtual keys. You get the idea. For a quadriplegic, it's only ideas, fingers being limited and inefficient, with typing done virtually through voice recognition.
It's the squeeze. The one squeezing what in my youth was called my main squeeze. Marlou's cancer has squeezed both of us into the present. We are learning lessons fast, because we have to. Decadence? Indulgence? These are concepts that belong to another era in our lives, we are learning. In this period, Marlou is living with rogue cells as determined as Attila...whose hordes are out there somewhere, maybe camping in the Gobi, maybe sweeping down from the Hindu Kush...but ever on their way. Squeezed by their imminent, or eventual, attack, we learn to live under siege. Quadriplegia being a more drawnout siege, I suppose, and Marlou's more concentrated. Squeezed. Squeezed into action, into knowledge, into decadence.
Marlou and I have been talking about the prospect of capping our extravagant summer by shoveling yet more money, at least not euros, into a holiday rental at Inverness, California. Neither of us can justify it. But that's because we haven't quite learned the lesson of the dripping, overwatered vegetable beds. There's a time for indulgence, for doing what you want, for suspending the sense of proportion and excess and responsibility. When you want a coyote to pee in your garden before rushing off to your Tuscan villa, you've got to do what you've got to do. And you've got to do it in a hurry. You can't board Air France stinking of coyote urine. You've got to have time to wash the stuff off. And since you don't have as much time as you have always thought you did, cancer and quadriplegia being what they are, you do what you have to do.
Hello? Get me coyote urine. Forty ounces. In a spray bottle. And step on it.
It's the squirrels, of course. When I first moved into this apartment, a decade and a half ago, they scampered about quite pleasantly, all bushytailed, furtive and jerky in their rodent way. But the charm has worn off squirrels. Now they are an unwanted link in the food chain, burying acorns in my raised-bed garden -- which I can live with -- and assaulting my sunflowers -- with which I cannot. When a plant is racing for the sun and sold in the annuals rack of your hardware store's seed display, and it's only got a year to be successful, and if things don't work out there's no career counseling, retirement or, God knows, a health plan...the last thing you need is squirrels. Whose body weight or paw strength is sufficient to topple a 6 foot tall sunflower, or at least, knock off half its leaves in the effort.
I am easily convinced that squirrels fear coyotes, can smell their urine and will be repelled by its presence. I am repelled by the mere idea, as a matter of fact. I never thought I would give money to anyone for urine, producing such an impressive supply on my own. Not only did I send money to this company in Missouri, I specified express shipping. We are in a hurry, aren't we? Not only does the squirrel assault have to be stopped, but Marlou and I are journeying to Tuscany. Defenses need to be put in place before our departure. Wouldn't want to come home from a euro spending spree and find that our garden wasn't up to snuff, would we? Yes, it's comforting to know that while one is sipping cappuccino in Val d'Elsa, Chiantishire, one's sunflowers in California are well protected. Organically, of course.
If this isn't decadence, what is? I don't mean indulgence -- I mean decadence, the decline and fall, Sodom and Gomorrah...that sort of thing. And curiously, decadence is becoming productive.
I just sat in my garden, overwatering my raised beds. In a drought year, I'm spraying hundreds of gallons of the Sierra's finest over my cauliflower and beyond, to the very edges of the beds where the basil resides in a sort of rain shadow, a corner zone slightly out of range of the mist from the soaker hose...and eventually watering beyond that, irrigation running down the redwood sides of my raised beds, wetting the wood and ultimately the sand where the Portulaca is sprouting. It's wasteful and, no doubt about it, decadent.
What's productive about decadence is that it stimulates my mind. The more I hang out by the raised beds behind our apartment house, and the more I watch water dribbling down the splintery wood to the sandy ground, the more I think. And the more I think, the more I write. Hard to say if I think watery thoughts or wooden ones, but by the time it's all over, I'm back inside virtually hitting the keys. Or hitting the virtual keys. You get the idea. For a quadriplegic, it's only ideas, fingers being limited and inefficient, with typing done virtually through voice recognition.
It's the squeeze. The one squeezing what in my youth was called my main squeeze. Marlou's cancer has squeezed both of us into the present. We are learning lessons fast, because we have to. Decadence? Indulgence? These are concepts that belong to another era in our lives, we are learning. In this period, Marlou is living with rogue cells as determined as Attila...whose hordes are out there somewhere, maybe camping in the Gobi, maybe sweeping down from the Hindu Kush...but ever on their way. Squeezed by their imminent, or eventual, attack, we learn to live under siege. Quadriplegia being a more drawnout siege, I suppose, and Marlou's more concentrated. Squeezed. Squeezed into action, into knowledge, into decadence.
Marlou and I have been talking about the prospect of capping our extravagant summer by shoveling yet more money, at least not euros, into a holiday rental at Inverness, California. Neither of us can justify it. But that's because we haven't quite learned the lesson of the dripping, overwatered vegetable beds. There's a time for indulgence, for doing what you want, for suspending the sense of proportion and excess and responsibility. When you want a coyote to pee in your garden before rushing off to your Tuscan villa, you've got to do what you've got to do. And you've got to do it in a hurry. You can't board Air France stinking of coyote urine. You've got to have time to wash the stuff off. And since you don't have as much time as you have always thought you did, cancer and quadriplegia being what they are, you do what you have to do.
Hello? Get me coyote urine. Forty ounces. In a spray bottle. And step on it.
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