And it was pleasant.
Today I had scant ten seconds human interaction. How often does that happen in a city? It wasn't until later that I thought that might be a little bit odd.
The garden is gone, and I'm glad. I'm tired of dragging the hose out there. So I stopped last week. Yet the weather is still often very nice. Like today. Today was a good day for plants to live. But the season is right for the plants to give up. I thought I would do this in pieces as individual plants departed this world. Parts of the garden are still hanging on and that makes me a bit sad to cut them down while they still struggle for life.
For about two seconds.
I took a kitchen waste bin with a new plastic liner and a storage bin to collect morning glory seeds. Many of the seed pods have not dried yet. Others already dropped their seeds. They're all over the textured concrete deck. I intended to clear about half the containers but I got much farther than that. There are only a few containers left to strip and then dig out the bulbs and rhizomes. The day was glorious. I wish I had started out sooner. I could actually watch the sun going down then continued in darkness by porch light. Just before it darkened a tiny voice, like a peep.
"Looking great up there."
"Wha...? "
"I say, looking great up there."
"Wha...?" He must be down there somewhere. I scan the balconies below mine. Spotted!
"Your garden looked great all summer."
"THANK YOU." This yelling is no way to have a conversation. But I accept the complement from a stranger. This must have been the first time he saw me.
And that was the only human I spoke with all day. A compliment. And the only thing that I spoke all day was one single thank you. I like that.
This could be my template for simplified ideal days. Start with saying only thank you and try to leave it at that.
5 comments:
Killer frost tonight. I brought in the two plants I hope to keep alive over the winter and said goodbye to the rest with a silent but heartfelt thank you.
There is interaction here, but when it involves me it is mostly inter-species.
10 seconds? I suppose that's possible, but let's see if we can cut that down a little, and lets reduce the frequency to an as-needed basis.
Your interaction was with (I think) a stranger. Some of the best interactions are with the people you cross paths with in your normal rounds, which intersect with their normal rounds. Or in simple english the people you see on a regular basis. They're strangers and at the same time familiars. And the best interactions with them are wordless. You acknowledge them and maybe (you're not sure) they acknowledge you. Without any actual exchange of words taking place. Did I oversplain that? Probably. Anyway, one of my favorite writers, William Saroyon, has a passage in which he talks about a little tailor shop near an apartment he had in Paris and the little tailor in it who he noticed when he passed by (and maybe was noticed in return by the tailor) and one day he had to take something in there for alteration and rather than the almost wordless exchange between customer and tailor they had a little conversation because, as memory serves, they were both Armenian and it wasn't as good as if they had been wordless strangers/familiars. I mean it wasn't ruined but it wasn't as good. Capisce?
I met a stranger once, but he wanted to be friendly, and that ruined the whole dynamic.
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