in light of my thirsty, sunless cacti

I have failed my cacti. Several weeks ago I brought them in out of the cold. A week too late. Since then I have watched them become gaunt and emaciated. Have winced as Scooter (the short one) lost his happy plumpness, looking squished. Have frowned as Pickles (the tall one), once straight and proud, listed then bowed beneath its own weight. Have grimaced as Beans (the most ferociously prickly one) bruised like wilted lettuce on a Wendy's burger.


Attempts at revival have been made; but I fear the end is near. Am I ashamed? A bit, yes. Any regrets? Of course.

Speaking of: I call shenanigans on those who swear to have none. If truly one has no regrets then s/he just wasn’t trying hard enough, I think. S/he took no real risks. S/he has yet to live. As near as I can figure, I would say that my life is seventy-five-percent regrettable. Of the remainder, I am cautiously proud; cautious because pride comes before regret; so I hush my rare successes and teach them to be gracious--knowing how quickly they can be wrenched from my grip. On the remainder, I am sufficiently nourished; who needs the worry of perfection when hard-fought, dearly-bought sustenance is enough?; so I feed my rare successes in nibbles--knowing how thunderously gluttonous ones fall.

A life without regret? Perhaps. I'm not saying it's impossible. Maybe I'm saying a life without regret is itself regrettable. (Don't stop to do the math, come back to it.) We hear it asked: If you could go back in time, what, if anything, would you change? What would you do differently? And we hear it answered so often: Nothing. I'd do it all again, just the same. No regrets. But really? Perhaps. I suppose it's conceivable. But most likely, I think we answer that way for shame of the truth. We are conditioned to be ashamed of shame, to be embarrassed by failure. We fall on our swords rather than face our compatriots with egg on our faces.

In light of my thirsty, sunless cacti . . . If nothing else, I tried. In light of that . . . If I have failed at every turn, I have learned during the next straightaway. If I have failed to learn, I will, without fail, as often I have, come to regret it.

of numbers and names

So now it's getting a little ridiculous. Beans and Pickles continue to grow leaving Scooter ever diminishing in comparison. And it's not cool that I am thinking of my cacti in terms of exponents and algebra. Let the growth of Scooter be x and the growth of Beans/ Pickles be x squared and the increments of development be equal to the time elapsed between blog updates on the growth of my cacti. Or something. I'm not a mathematician. Which, Ether, is why I'm here and not elsewhere. Well, that and jocose crows. Side note: I actually scored higher on my GREs in math than I did in language. Perhaps why so many English programs turned me down. Well, that and the B- undergrad GPA. Well, those and the weakness of my writing samples. Anyway. Yeah. And speaking of weak writing samples . . . BEHOLD THIS POST. Johnny's my name, Lackluster's my pain. [See track 28 on my little ditty widget below to the right for this realization in slapdash song.]

Oh yes, let me introduce you to my hyacinth--the purple butterflies seeming to flit about the top of the frames. What's that you ask? What's her name?
First of all, it's not a she it's an it. Secondly, therefore, she doesn't have a name. It doesn't, I mean. Why on earth would I name a plant? Next thing you know I'll have it talking, telling us of the vicissitudes of purplishness, the vagaries of rain and wind.

It will say . . . fine she will say . . . fine Calliope will say, "Johnny, lacklusterest of poets, ramshacklest of bloggers, listen as I whisper soft against the vines, gingerly through the cactus quills. There is a story in the veins of my leaves. A story of love purblind and purpose lost. And the cost of pennies flicked in wells for wishes ill-conceived."

But that would just be silly.

Silly and AWESOME.

snuggle-puff

Look how my little babies have grown. Granted not much, but they're jus' lil' things to begin with. (Check out their baby pictures, I'll wait.) Clearly, Beans [left] has grown the most all around. Pickles [center] has gotten taller but remained skinny. Scooter [right] . . . well Scooter's a little tubbier and still the shorty of the trio. But bless his heart, he's still my favorite because he's safest to pet. Quite the snuggle-puff by comparison, actually.

Meanwhile, what have I done in two months? I love my cacti, but darn if they haven't made me feel stunted. Have I grown at all? Girth-wise, let's just say I'm like Scooter minus the shortiness.
But I'm not here to talk physiology; I'm here to talk poetry, philosophy--of life's riches and dearths. Have I made progress in my understanding of the world? No. In fact, I have been in retrograde motion in that regard since I was 25. Have I grown to know myself any better? Well, I have grown to bore myself more, if that counts. Hopefully that's just the contempt born of familiarity and not the 4D image I project on the world.
Have I learned new things--unnecessary but beautiful things? Have I chiseled any marble-nudes? Are there any tempera frescoes on my ceiling? Perhaps, I expect too much of myself. Maybe I should measure my success in ounces and millimeters. One poem at a time. Paragraph by paragraph. In doses of modest improvement. Horizons expanded by the merest thread each day.

All things considered, it may be my only choice. Which is no choice at all but one, nonetheless, I must choose. Or not. There's the philosophy. Here's the poetry: Cacti are green/ Roses aren't blue/ Both will prick flesh/ What else is new?

beans, pickles, and scooter

There is a woman who plays golf in the morning. Strapped across her back
is a bag full of clubs. She doesn't even put the bag down to putt. When she's done on the green, she jogs to the next tee, bag bouncing and clanging off her back. After she tees off, she straps the burden back on and jogs down the fairway and out of sight. One can only assume she keeps this pace for the whole round. And one knows for a fact she'll do the same in the rain. If one would take my word for it. Because, I've seen her. I stop what I'm doing and I watch her.

I stop what I'm doing. To witness endurance, I submit to laziness. Ether, what to make of that? Consider this poem, let's learn more of this wherewithal, this evident though mysterious momentum:

Survival

The sun-kilned carapace

Of the Cumberland slider toils

On hoist-thick legs across

The newly tarred highway.

The nearest bend of creek

Runs through Abernathy’s

Farm, and that’s a good half-mile

Behind the arrow of her tail.

She nears the citrine stripes—

The painted, double caution-lines.

Around the arc of gleaming pitch,

An El Camino revs.

Macadam resonates with bass

Guitar and kick-drum underneath

Her plastron. Bald tires squeal

And burn and stop just short

Of the turtle half a mile away

From Abernathy’s farm

Where her family forms a dragon

On the petrified logs.

The gumptious golfer, the toilsome turtle, and, exhibit C, behold my new friends, the cautiously-quenched cacti.

I had been coveting cacti
quite consistently for a while
when I found this trio of adorable pricklers at, of all places, though where else of course, Ikea.

Why cacti, Ether? Can't you guess. I am drawn to their hardiness. Not as kindred spirit but as jealous admirer. As pupil to student.

The cactus needs little to thrive. It stores nourishment against the barrenness of dry months on end. They can be the only green in eyesight, like a crop of alien fingers pushing through the crust of a desolate planet--galaxies elsewhere.

And then, sufficiently slaked and stock-piled, the cactus dares all comers to plunder its hydrant trove. Come skewer, lance, and shiv yourself; come dare and steal my liquid treasure.

My cacti (Beans, Pickles, Scooter from left to right on bottom picture), beyond being adorable, serve as symbols of the writer's life. At least the life of a writer like me. Because a writer like me has very little water. It only comes in sips when the occasional poem gets published or a kind word comes on unexpected lips applauding the virtue of some random line. The temptation is to gulp, because the thirst is so great, because it's been so long and who knows how long it will be again; but no, save some for later. Against the barrenness of months on end. And when the rejections come, and come, and come, like flocks of pillaging birds, from all sides--let them come. Let the thorn in your side be the thorn in theirs. Because turn about is fair and all is fair in poetry and poetry can protect itself.

But it takes reminders. So I look at my cactus friends. They sit on my desk like a macabre memento mori of old. But instead of a skull to evoke thoughts of death they are alien fingers evoking thoughts athletes and turtles, endurance and survival.

When I stop what I'm doing to look at my cacti, it is not to submit to laziness; it is to prick my finger and get back to work.