I am cutting bamboo today.

And I’m thinking about a conversation I had yesterday. I was talking with a very talented writer friend whose words just won’t come right now.

We talked about the empty space. The isolation uninvited that visits weighty upon one’s shoulders in times like these.

How it comes calling in companion of a dark pointlessness that is both seductive and fatal. How it leaves one feeling utterly cut off from everything.

I thought a lot about this while looking down at the bamboo piling up at my feet. Realizing I’d let the stand grow much to thick. That it was choking the decades-old sword fern planted nearby.

I knew I’d waited too long to thin the bamboo because I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up any of its beauty. I was focused only on losing what I was trimming away, rather than on the space and light I was giving what remained.

This made me think about how I fight the fallow times in my own creative cycle. How I forget so easily that the goal is balance. How there must be an exhale to make room for the next breath.

And I thought about how the serene sound of bamboo in the breeze is a wave oscillating above and below the line, automatically balanced perfectly about it’s center.

I thought then about how this was so much like my creative biorhythm. How the only times I really lose track are when I stubbornly keep pushing in the same old direction. Forget to step out of the trench my feet are grooving in the path.

About the times I don’t realize that the light is having trouble getting through.

I wished then that my friend had been there with me in the garden. That the bamboo might remind her too of how important that empty space is. That if no light can get through it is challenging for anything to grow.

So, I finished up thinning out the bamboo until I could easily see the afternoon sun shining through. Until the fern had some room to reach out.

And then I took some of the beautiful stalks I’d cut and put them in a bucket of water in my front window.

I figured they deserved a chance to take another breath, a chance at a new reality, another kind of growth.

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They are gathering now.

Each day in greater numbers.

Sparrow fledges arrive first, then soon the Starlings and Finches. And if I’m lucky the Horned Wrens will come for a week or so while they have young to feed.

Sparrow fledglings are so round, frizzy, and scared looking to me.

They sit almost always in pairs. Teetering on the wrought arms supporting my feeders. A blur of wings beating for balance and a lovely din of insistent chirping.

It is the dad sparrow that does the feeding.

One seed at a time.

He flies down to the feeder and up to one waiting mouth, and then again, and again. And then he flies to the nearby tree. Waits there. Watching to see if they will try on their own.

The babes flutter and chirp. Call out to him. Look down at the source of their food. Then cry some more.

So dad returns. And reassures them, shows them again that there is food.

Feeds them more seeds, one at a time.

This makes me think about all kinds of hunger.

(more…)

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