if i were to start a garden

honest to god i can't get these black beans out of my carpet

A shelf fell from a poorly painted wall in my apartment this week in the early hours of the morning, — and I hadn’t shot up in a start, I hadn’t launched out of bed to see what the hell the sound had been, I hadn’t been alert in any way. Rather I grogged myself over to one side, then to the other, sat up eventually because my arm was sore, winced at the sunlight and thought vaguely about how exciting a break-in would be. Would it be exciting? Probably yes, but maybe not in a good way, or so I told myself. And who the hell would break into my apartment? Of all the apartments in Lincoln Park?

Two weeks ago, my roommate and I had drilled the bookcase into the wall three feet above the carpet, a whole entire three shelf bookcase hanging on two screws dug into the drywall. We filled its rosewood shelves with all sorts of kitchen things: plastic wraps, plastic bags, aluminum foil, protein powder, turmeric powder, a blender, chips, popcorn, more chips, dry rice, dry black beans; and it had all come crashing down on a Sunday morning. One of the screws had broken loose.

Two glass jars survived the fall; the other jars broke. Rice and black beans went every which way and covered the floor. Somehow black beans had cleared the room entirely, ending up, somehow, in the living room. Cleaning up the glass by hand and sweeping the rest of what I could into a pan, I ran the vacuum over it all once, twice, three times.

Some of the beans and dry rice wouldn’t come out of the carpet. Vacuuming again and again. Nothing. Nada. I gave the struggle up and went about my day, apathetic to the whole situation, leaving the bookshelf there dangling from the wall¹.

Time pushes forwards in starts and stops. The summer feels like an eternity; and the autumn feels quick as a sidestep. The rice and beans are still in the carpet. It’s humiliating in a way to not be able to clean your own space.

The leaves outside have gathered on the sidewalk and on the road but these concrete avenues are not the place for fallen leaves; — the concrete and the roads do not hunger for the leaves like the Earth does. The Earth eats them up, takes them in. The thematic “return” of autumn is here, there, everywhere. In my apartment too. The dry rice and the dry beans have begun to merge with the carpeted floor. I almost expect there to be a bean stalk emerging come spring.

I slept in the same place that night. Where else would I sleep besides my own bed? I dreamt not of my carpet or of fallen fall leaves, not of fallen bookshelves or fields of plants lush with beans; instead I dreamt of an ocean stretching to the ends of the horizon and a pier snaking out into the waves from where stones and rocks have been skipped, tossed, and slung into the waters to bloom beautifully but unseen underneath the immense depths of salt water.

A spider hung loose and idle above my head when I woke. A small spider. The kind of spider that strikes me as perhaps more expressive than other spiders. The kind I usually find charming in a way. Well let me say… I was not charmed... I shot up and the spider flung itself into the abyss.

Pushing off the quilt, putting my feet down on the floor expecting carpet, my feet instead settled onto loose dirt. I can’t say I flinched. The whole floor of my apartment was dirt, — the smell was like coffee, — and fresh, damp dirt as if a gardener had arranged my bedroom into an empty flowerbed while I had been asleep. Certainly an odd thing to wake up to. I didn’t think too much of it. So be it.

I made myself coffee. The kitchen floor was dirt too. As it brewed I dug into the dirt with my big toe and I couldn’t find the linoleum underneath the dirt. The dirt just became hard like clay the deeper I went.

I sat at the dining table and read a handful of newsletters on my phone, drank my coffee. The smell of fresh dirt was nice, pleasant even.

I’ve begun walking around my apartments in my boots. There are still vague questions floating around my head of “why is this potting soil here?” or “who did this?” or, simply, “wha?”, but in the face of such questions I often feel apathetic and, to be honest here, I don’t care all that much. So I continue on. The dirt is here. It’s not just on the floor but it is the floor. That’s a simple truth; it’s enough for me.

I suppose this was all probably my doing. I’m not sure how I pulled it off. To be fair, these past couple of weeks I’ve stopped vacuuming, cleaning, running laundry, performing general upkeep. My apartment’s grown wild, unkemp. Or at the very least, it’s become vacant in a new way. This is what I deserve and also what I need.

Because I’ve been hurt before, so many times, — and who hasn’t? But then comes the time to pass forward those hurts onto others… I’ve hurt others… Sure, unintentionally, — again, who hasn’t? Sometimes it’s as simple as an emotional vacancy, not reciprocating a feeling… and those somber paragraph-length texts concluding what was a meaningful but hesitant couple of weeks spent walking and swimming and being together… something about such an ending breaks me into a million small bits spread out across the carpet. Maybe they’ll grow into something new. Hopefully there’s enough natural light in my apartment to facilitate. If not we’ll wait for spring.

The winter in Chicago is cold and desolate; it’s now, in this transitional period of seasons’ changing, that I’ll make my apartment into my garden, into my growth. 

I will till this Earth through the white overcast of winter, the passing, handing, and shaking off of the night’s shadows as they lengthen and move westward and then eastward, separated by the shimmering, golden bookends of dawn and dusk.

And someday soon, in the Springtime, I’ll return with my woven baskets overflowing and my bare feet pressing down into the grasses now grown long with soft weeds and new growth, having explored these indoor pastures fully to where they lead. I’ll meet you on the other side of all of this. You’ll be sitting on a park bench reading a paperback. I’ll walk past. You’ll say, hey it’s you. And I’ll say oh my god. And we’ll catch up then. We’ll catch up then.

I’d go on. But here we are.

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