Context

This redcurrant sprout (Ribes rubrum) stands out amongst the other species of plant life populating the strip of land across the right of way. There are maples sprouting here, too, but despite its similar appearance, this redcurrent sprout is not one. The lobes are too rounded. It is distinguishable from the flowering weeds (forgive the term) by its more complex leaf structure; it has sprouted a leaf that reveals that its plant will produce wood, something in its glossy heartiness, as compared to the more soft and fragile hairy leaves all around it. Redcurrants are a shrubby plant that have adapted across the temperate zone in the northern hemisphere, but not the southern. Mi esposa no los conoce antes estas viviendo aca, por ejemplo. They produce a a bitter fruit full of acerbic acid and they are delicious in a cold chicken salad, as I learned. These sprouts prove the tenacity of life, the miracle of the living context. Last July I was charged with assembling a meal entirely out of locally grown and raised food; it had to have come from less than 50 miles. I needed flavor for my salad and something to baste the chicken when I barbequed. Redcurrants, growing in clumps in the backyard of a friend in the next town, gave me the help I needed. I picked a bucketful and brought them home and pressed most of them through a wire mesh, leaving behind a pile of skins and seeds. I deposited the so-called waste material in amongst the grasses here, and this spring, without hesitation, they have taken root, sprouted, carried my own energy and life force back into the history of this little strip of land across the right-of-way. There are raspberries (Rubus idaeus) growing further along the right-of-way that, no doubt I now realize, have a similar history. Our lives are all connected in our landscapes, human hands and thoughts and natural growth and expressions. Nothing escapes context.

Perhaps among all other failures of the present travesty of politics is this last little nugget. The pre-modernist notion that one people or state or ruler or class can somehow transcend context, ignore discussion, and fail to behave with diplomacy should have died with Napoleon. Yet here we wallow, hoping for the warming daylight of a political spring to sprout new seeds from the waste of last year's dinner party.

On April 17, 2006 I predicted a tapestry of maple, grape and choke cherry would block the view of my neighbors' house, and them, me and mine. Alas, the predicted future has arrived. Am I now a fortune teller? How did I possibly see the future so clearly? And, before snickering too much at what sound like facetious questions, ponder this: Can these 'common sense' predictions help us to see something about the essence of chaos and order, something about where each of them reside?