Floral Arrangements: My Compost Bin is Full

I met my new neighbors last night, as the sun set over the orchards and I returned from my walk past the hazelnuts. They were planting new flowers in the hopes of beautifying their front-yard landscaping, though they admitted to little knowledge in the horticulture or floral department. As I walked past my neighbor’s house, they were lamenting that they’d done a good amount of work, but could not finish because their compost bin was filled to the brim, and they couldn’t just leave the extras lying in their yard for two weeks.

I offered them my compost bin, seeing as we’d failed to fill it in our recent two weeks, and found the opportunity to discuss lives with my neighbors, learning about their church, their gardening naiveté, and their excitement about trying something new with flowers. I sensed, too, their relief at the opportunity to finish what they’d begun, and I understood their sentiment.

For me, this is how life is in everything. I’m terrible with endings and embrace them too soon, and understand the necessity of beginnings, and rush towards them the moment I see an ending in sight. I also struggle starting projects without knowing I’ll have time for finishing.

My entire childhood, and mostly in high school, I focused my entire night around dinner time. This wasn’t because I was constantly starving, but because I didn’t want to begin projects or homework before dinner unless I had enough time for finishing it before dinner as well. So I’d often find myself meandering around the kitchen, munching on chips or cookies, waiting for dinner so that I could get on with my life. Often, by dinner I wasn’t even hungry anymore due to all the snacking I’d done (this still happens).

But this is how I am. I want to devote myself fully, to grasp the horns of problems and wrestle them to the ground without any time-outs or ‘hold on, Mr. Bull, while I wipe the dust out of my eyes and take a short siesta’. I never understood the intuitive individuals who tackled so many projects simultaneously, and often finished few of them. I focused like a laser and picked off projects with precision and planning.

The problem is, I never liked transitions. If I knew that a project in school was worth nothing, there wasn’t a reason for me to lose blood and tears over it; knowing high school was ending and I was already accepted into college, what did it matter if I got a few A- grades or even B+’s perhaps? These are tame examples, and the real problem is that I carry these over into matters with greater gravity: social interactions, friendships, dreams, loves.

I remember that as I neared my end in high school, I stopped hanging out with some of my friends, knowing I’d never see them again. And I haven’t, but perhaps I might have maintained closer connections if I hadn’t severed contact with them so neatly, even when we still saw each other daily?  I see the endings drawing closer, and I think to myself: “this will be painful, won’t it? Maybe I’ll embrace the pain now so it ends sooner. That way, I can begin the next phase of life without having to wait for it.” And with this attitude, I truncate the ending and swallow the pain immediately, while floundering for the nearest beginning, any beginning really, as long as it has something tenable to latch onto.

I remember thinking once, in my last days of college, why make new friends now, or interact with people now, knowing we’re about to split off in a thousand directions?

This has definitely brought me trouble in the recent past, as I’m writing and forging paths for different projects, wondering whether I’ll finish them properly or hurry on to the next beginning; or in friendships, and in the phase of my life where everyone is getting married and starting new paths while I pursue different dreams that those espoused seem not to understand (for reasonable reasons, I suspect, but I’ve never had occasion to find out).

So I’m truncating strings right and left, chopping off the yarn before the sweater’s done, and I’ll be showing midriff all winter long, with a mighty cold belly, I suspect, and only because I didn’t have the heart to finish what was begun.

By dawn’s first light, it’s already night

to my eyes, and to my eyes

your every hello echoes goodbye

goodbye as the fawn born begins to die

as the summer arrives, the days shorten

as the birds rise, gravity reminds them

how soon everything must fall;

the universe expands, Alvie,

so don’t hold onto it all

the apple ripens the moment

it’s time on the branch is no more

and the core dreams already rotten things

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/floral-arrangements-my-compost-bin-is-full/

Anon

Dawn of a new journal, this morning, always one of my favorite times of the year. I love penning those last words and flipping back over the pages, nodding at the poignant passages, smiling at the triumphs and joys, and musing on the thoughts expressed over months of reflection. I often flip to random entries and read snippets, shaking my head at my ugly writing habits, and remember the days leading into these inked emotions.

Before I put a journal to rest on my shelf, eight since college ended, I flip through it quickly, not bothering to read any sentences, but just gathering in the pages like a flip book, watching time pass in a moment and creating a story I cannot understand at that pace, but seems somehow beautiful, in all the illegible characters flying by.

Finally, with a theatrical sigh and something like reverence, I pull out the descendent, and pen the first words: May 14th, 2014. Beginnings are just as tough as endings, because I want everything to be just so. I wrote a poem about that recently, like a romantic dinner (though I’ve not experienced said occasion, in my head I’ve romanticized the concept of romanticism, romantically), everything organized to a nuanced degree, showing care in preparation of love.

First words are important, and definitely my favorite things to write in longer works. I agonize for days over what the words should be; this is the hook, this hauls people on board and carries, drags them into a new world. But for a journal? This is just for me, and so the hook is simple.

There are a lot of beginnings, lately, and a lot of endings. I think there always are, if you know how to see each. I think this year’s journal is going to be exemplary, filled with some of the greatest moments of my life, captured in celebratory moments with my dearest friends. There will be associated sorrows, but this, too, is time’s prerequisite it seems.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

But I have plans, oh such plans, and adventures waiting in the wings. But like a magician, I redirect the vision until only I am seen, and not the things moving in the darkness on cue, waiting to spring into view magnificently. A magical year awaits – let the games begin, ladies and gentlemen, for when it comes to these, I’ll win or break trying.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/anon/

Hook, Line, Sinker

I've been thinking lately about beginnings, and endings. Many of my favorite books I remember via their beginnings and endings, and I picked up more than a few of them sheerly through becoming hooked on the first line.


The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

The wheel of time has always held a special place in my heart. I remember once, during the peak of my reading prowess, I read two in one night in high school (slightly over 2100 pages) before going to school the next morning (biology lab, 7:30). Despite this beginning being slightly overdone - Jordan does not alter it throughout the series beginnings - it has still stuck with me as a moving entrance into an epic saga. It was also one of the first high fantasy series that I read.

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

I've always had a little soft spot for Vonnegut, even though he's a tad vulgar at times. Though I may enjoy the beginning of Cad's Cradle even more than this one.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I've always really loved this introduction as something truly mythical. It is a mystical entrance into a divine work of art - our world.

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

I love Neil Gaiman, so it comes as no surprise that the beginning of Graveyard Book (one of my favorites of his novels) has a chill and incredible beginning. 

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a fantastic satire and comedy, and the beginning certainly did not let me down. I still read sections of this book when I see it lying on my shelf, forlornly, and it never gets old.

I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased.

Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky is not his best work, but I do still think the beginning immediately captures your attention. He knows how to develop characters like no other author I've ever read, though I've not even read all his stuff, someday I hope to.

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

This one is cheating, since it is a poem and not quite a story. Though perhaps it is a story after all... 

The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

However irreverent, Douglas Adams never fails to amuse me.

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

Oh, CS Lewis.

Walk any path in Destiny's Garden, and you will be forced to choose, not once but many times. The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's Garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness.

Season of Mists have one of my favorite beginnings of any of the Sandman graphic novels. This section continues further, and it is splendidly crafted.



I've been contemplating beginnings quite a bit, in stories and life. Sometimes, we fear them, though perhaps not so much as endings. Many endings are just beginnings in disguise, though the unknowing can be frightening. I'm walking my way through Destiny's Garden right now, making choices and turning along the hedges and vines - sometimes there seems not to be a path at all that I follow, just an imagined destination. Who knows where I will end up. 
I contemplate beginnings because I'm seeing endings, though they frighten me not. I've read some interesting books, lately, and many have had their own interesting hooks and I've swallowed line, sinker, pole on others. I also really like the beginning to Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, though that book is hilarious in its entirety. And the beginning of Name of the Wind, but that takes an entire prologue.