On time and place
If sometimes it seems that time passes much too quickly, disappearing into an abyss of 'then' within which it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened to all of those millions of seconds, minutes, hours, days, there are other times that are so impossibly rich and full that those same seconds, minutes, hours, days no longer seem relevant. Time out of time.
This morning was bright and grey and rainy. Gray as far as the eye could see, fat drops splattering in random intervals, but the landscape suffused with light rather than dull as rainy days usually are. It was beautiful. A few hours later the sky was a patchwork of clear and cloud. A few hours after that it was nothing but blue and properly hot for the first time since I returned to Dunedin a week ago. I gave up my pretense of work and went for a walk in the gardens.
I feel eternally blessed to have New Zealand's oldest botanical gardens literally across the street from my home here. And for all the dozens of hours I have spent wandering its grounds (with varying levels of intensity and purpose), it's amazing to me how often I am still surprised by it. Not only by the constant shifting of the trees and plants from day to day and season to season, nor by the movement of wild (and not so wild!) birds and other creatures, but by entire sections of garden that somehow in all of my meanderings I have never before managed to find. For example, the mediterranean garden that I stumbled upon today, up on the hill almost perfectly in the center of everything, symmetrical stone terrace surrounded by candy-scented bushes in soft shades of silvery green, punctuated by perfectly pruned cypresses like exclamation marks at each corner. One striking bush had needles like an evergreen but tiny blue clusters of flowers that looked and smelled suspiciously like sweet peas, one of my favourite plants in gardens in Canada. Inhaling their sweet fragrance took me back to all of the many bouquets of sweet peas I've had over the years, tucked into Kerr jars on kitchen tables in all of the places I ever lived before leaving the country. Delightful!
The mediterranean garden is just down the path from the Australian garden that I used to like jogging through at daybreak (back when I did things like jog at daybreak). In the frosty air, the eucalyptus oil cleared my lungs and made it easier to breathe. In today's humidity, the scent was only evident when I rubbed a leaf between my fingers, and rather than clearing my lungs it reminded me of a distant afternoon lost in a thick fog (literal, not figurative!) in the southwestern Chinese countryside in which I happened to pass through a large grove of eucalyptus trees. With so few visual cues to focus on, the smell was powerful. And comforting. Amidst all the unknown around me, buried in the mist, eucalyptus was something I knew. Not long after the path cleared and I found myself right at the edge of the very place I had been trying all along to find, and I've barely thought of it since. Until today. Canadian kitchen tables and walks through the Chinese countryside all in the span of a few footsteps in the garden. Time out of time.
One of my old flatmates, a wonderful Botswanan woman who has since returned to her African home, never, ever, ever walked in the garden. Such a loss! The trees frightened her. Day or night, rain or shine, she was convinced the place was unsafe and did everything she could to avoid it. Since it is the trees that make me feel most at home in this part of town, I always found this hard to understand. Trees make me feel grounded, less distracted, calm. I guess this is what happens when you grow up (essentially) in the forest, versus when you grow up on the plains like she did. Different people, different sense of place.
I taught a food course in Changwon this semester, in which we looked at different international issues through the lens of specific parts of the food system. In a survey of my students, only two out of around 60 had ever grown anything on their own. Not a garden. Not a flower. Not so much as a bean seed in a plastic cup. So I shouldn't have been surprised that they were totally disconnected from the land (as I think of it). One group, preparing an assigned class presentation on the documentary 'Dirt!' called me repeatedly looking for help in making a connection between their film and food. 'Well, food comes from dirt,' I tried the first time, 'you know, it grows in the ground.' The second time I tried 'plants need dirt to live and a lot of food either IS plants or EATS plants. Which grow in the ground. Which is made of dirt.' The third time I knew I had a real problem. It wasn't a language problem, it was a conceptual problem. Having grown up in cement high rises, homes, schools, offices, entertainment, it was hard for them to grasp the connection between land and life. Different people, different sense of place.
I hope I never lose my sense of awe in green and growing things, my ability to step outside of time among them and calm my chaotic mind, to feel that with days like these life is full indeed!
This morning was bright and grey and rainy. Gray as far as the eye could see, fat drops splattering in random intervals, but the landscape suffused with light rather than dull as rainy days usually are. It was beautiful. A few hours later the sky was a patchwork of clear and cloud. A few hours after that it was nothing but blue and properly hot for the first time since I returned to Dunedin a week ago. I gave up my pretense of work and went for a walk in the gardens.
I feel eternally blessed to have New Zealand's oldest botanical gardens literally across the street from my home here. And for all the dozens of hours I have spent wandering its grounds (with varying levels of intensity and purpose), it's amazing to me how often I am still surprised by it. Not only by the constant shifting of the trees and plants from day to day and season to season, nor by the movement of wild (and not so wild!) birds and other creatures, but by entire sections of garden that somehow in all of my meanderings I have never before managed to find. For example, the mediterranean garden that I stumbled upon today, up on the hill almost perfectly in the center of everything, symmetrical stone terrace surrounded by candy-scented bushes in soft shades of silvery green, punctuated by perfectly pruned cypresses like exclamation marks at each corner. One striking bush had needles like an evergreen but tiny blue clusters of flowers that looked and smelled suspiciously like sweet peas, one of my favourite plants in gardens in Canada. Inhaling their sweet fragrance took me back to all of the many bouquets of sweet peas I've had over the years, tucked into Kerr jars on kitchen tables in all of the places I ever lived before leaving the country. Delightful!
The mediterranean garden is just down the path from the Australian garden that I used to like jogging through at daybreak (back when I did things like jog at daybreak). In the frosty air, the eucalyptus oil cleared my lungs and made it easier to breathe. In today's humidity, the scent was only evident when I rubbed a leaf between my fingers, and rather than clearing my lungs it reminded me of a distant afternoon lost in a thick fog (literal, not figurative!) in the southwestern Chinese countryside in which I happened to pass through a large grove of eucalyptus trees. With so few visual cues to focus on, the smell was powerful. And comforting. Amidst all the unknown around me, buried in the mist, eucalyptus was something I knew. Not long after the path cleared and I found myself right at the edge of the very place I had been trying all along to find, and I've barely thought of it since. Until today. Canadian kitchen tables and walks through the Chinese countryside all in the span of a few footsteps in the garden. Time out of time.
One of my old flatmates, a wonderful Botswanan woman who has since returned to her African home, never, ever, ever walked in the garden. Such a loss! The trees frightened her. Day or night, rain or shine, she was convinced the place was unsafe and did everything she could to avoid it. Since it is the trees that make me feel most at home in this part of town, I always found this hard to understand. Trees make me feel grounded, less distracted, calm. I guess this is what happens when you grow up (essentially) in the forest, versus when you grow up on the plains like she did. Different people, different sense of place.
I taught a food course in Changwon this semester, in which we looked at different international issues through the lens of specific parts of the food system. In a survey of my students, only two out of around 60 had ever grown anything on their own. Not a garden. Not a flower. Not so much as a bean seed in a plastic cup. So I shouldn't have been surprised that they were totally disconnected from the land (as I think of it). One group, preparing an assigned class presentation on the documentary 'Dirt!' called me repeatedly looking for help in making a connection between their film and food. 'Well, food comes from dirt,' I tried the first time, 'you know, it grows in the ground.' The second time I tried 'plants need dirt to live and a lot of food either IS plants or EATS plants. Which grow in the ground. Which is made of dirt.' The third time I knew I had a real problem. It wasn't a language problem, it was a conceptual problem. Having grown up in cement high rises, homes, schools, offices, entertainment, it was hard for them to grasp the connection between land and life. Different people, different sense of place.
I hope I never lose my sense of awe in green and growing things, my ability to step outside of time among them and calm my chaotic mind, to feel that with days like these life is full indeed!
posted by Roberta | 2:50 PM
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