My Brand of Crazy—The Vision Thing
There are tribes of humans who, when possessed by a vision, think of it obsessively until its conclusion. Failure is not part of the vocabulary. Get it done or die trying! The vision must be brought forth ahead of whatever competing priorities exist at the time. I have allowed for the practically of other wants and needs, and so there are boundaries that has kept me from going too crazy. Success by whatever metrics are used is by no means guaranteed even if the vision is fulfilled.
Writing a book was for me one such vision that required a long, arduous journey. But I am often struck by smaller-scale vision quests as I was last week. My gardens often trigger a wouldn’t this be cool idea. I have an herb garden in the backyard with a cistern in the middle. In prior years, wild papayas have grown fast and tall, shading it out, but then turning into mush with a hard freeze. After the last such freeze, I did a lot of work cleaning up that area and I decided that I was done with the papayas— freezing to the ground didn’t bother me but I wanted an herb garden that wasn’t shaded out.
As I gazed upon my cleanup handiwork, a vision struck! I would place 3 blueberry bushes where the two tallest papayas had been. I dug out their trunks and roots and went to the nursery last Monday. Alas, one of the workers told me that the varieties that were left would not fruit in the Houston inner loop due to insufficient chill hours. I left with no blueberries feeling defeated. I did some checking on my own and got some contrary data, but it was on the margins.
The vision would not go away. I want back Tuesday and bought 4. I put 3 on the cistern’s right where there was much more space and the location of the 2 tallest papayas and 1 on the left. The structure of these primarily climax blueberries had the upright aesthetic that was exactly what I wanted. On Wednesday morning, I went back to the nursery and got 2 more—one for each side. The vision wasn’t done, however. In the afternoon, I returned for another 2. On Thursday, I went back for another 2. On Friday, I went back for another 2 and I thought I was done. But the vision itch remained. As I monitored the sunlight, I realized the area behind the cistern would work especially with tall, sculpted plants like the climax (also what had been the home to a couple more papayas). So on Saturday, I bought 2 more (in two trips of course bringing my total to 8 nursery trips in six days!).
I ended up with a dozed blueberry bushes surrounding the cistern where I see a dance of fairy folk prancing around a silvery totem. The vision is complete. I busted by gardening budget. I allocated time away from chores and writing. But when the vision was complete, I enjoyed a deep sacred satisfaction. A kind of art had been created, and if the blueberries never fruit so be it. Transitory beauty is sometimes enough.
I was blessed and grateful that my departed husband thought my escapades endearing even when sometimes exasperating. The wrong partner might have resulted in a lot of fights. Visions are often impractical, expensive and unyielding in their holder’s determination to see them created. I loved my partner and in return I worked on curbing, though not eliminating, vision quests. But today I am single. And I have 12 blueberry bushes dancing around a cistern, and I can’t help but smile.
