WONDEROUS THINGS

How privileged we are to notice wondrous things. Pick any one of your human senses, they are all miraculous for the task and joy of noticing. Yesterday I took Coco outside at the studio and as I waited for her to smell for the trail of EVERY squirrel on our block, I looked down in the bright sunlight at the snow covered ground. I saw the browned corpse of a former spray of chicory. Where the flowers used to be I could see down into the black, velvety, brittle tunnels to where the seeds are snuggled in waiting. Waiting for a wind, or my dog or a squirrel or a human leg brushing by to deposit them onto the ground. They like the crappiest soil possible, roadsides mostly. It’s like being able to see the whole world at once. All of it’s cycles and it’s infinite patience. So heavy and so light. So easy? No, the chicory plants are a great reminder that we are not as significant as we think, in the best way possible. The the looming T**** presidential term is nothing compared to this “weed” who can do everything from make a coffee substitute, a natural, nutrient rich deworming forage for livestock like sheep, and the most beautiful blue colored flowers I can think of. It’s in the aster family and it came all the way around the world from Europe, Asia and North Africa in the pockets of immigrants, and sadly too of captives to use as medicinal herb.

 

Chicory plants decorate the roadsides in later summer where other plants won't grow. It is a marker on my internal calendar. The air feels a certain singular way when the chicory is in bloom. It stays late in the year too, sometimes blooming into late October. “Summer will be back next year, I promise” they say. A kinder world will return too. We can even make it now if we like! We are not as significant as we think and also so powerful in a way we have forgotten, but which reveals itself to us with even the smallest foray into it’s mystery. Our instincts want so bad for us to remember them, the missing chunk of ourselves we long for without knowing. We want to reunite with ourselves and our world. That’s what that gnawing feeling is. It’s what’s inside the dark velvet tunnels if we bother to notice. “Come home to me” they whisper. Where that current diet soda hangover feeling of being “online” and social media is inside your body or your slow and saturated heart, gummed up with grim human news and lies could become a garden of light and possibility if you tend it. That sounded gross and cliche as fuck but there was no other way to say it. Haha! 

Every single plant has as equally interesting and transformative properties as chicory, and we haven’t even found them all yet! Think of that army, silent to our human ears healing and building and feeding us all the time. For the world, for the creatures, for itself, for the air and on and on. We are going to be ok. If you need to break out of a bad cycle, try turning to some ancient friends you may have never even thought about . They have never forgotten you and they are waiting until you need them. XO

What wondrous thing do you feel has your back?

The Chicory of July