Little Weirds(29)

We were invited to have dinner that night in Karen’s castle.

In every window of the castle, in every single window, on every single deep stone windowsill, was a red geranium. My heart stopped, or maybe it jump-started. I saw those geraniums and I felt my wild call ring right out, into up there.

I saw them and I was nothing but double doors to spirit, to everything, blasted open, tilted up. I thought, “Why would you not believe in this thing? Why would you not believe in such a small thing like putting this hardy red plant in your house?” I had called for what I wanted, based on who I was. And Karen’s castle had given me a big blazing sign that said, Yes ma’am.

At camp I used to pick off the red flowers from the geranium and sneak into the bathroom and rub the petals on my lips, making lipstick, tasting the plant. Even as a little girl who got in lots of trouble, I picked this plant out and said, I like to use this for my own beauty.

I am a wild thing but I wanted a home. I am wild and I want to be that and to belong to the greater group and have everyone know that my wildness is nothing but a bit of my colors and has nothing to do with whether or not I can be trusted. A geranium is a wild thing. It is so wild you can hardly kill it. But it does not take over your house if you put it inside.

A geranium in every single window of a castle is a wink to me, even if it is just a plant to you, maybe even a plant in the wrong place. Sitting in a kitchen in Norway, over breakfast, my heart broke at the idea of someone thinking that the plant was in the wrong place. I talked about that heartbreak. I felt my heart clutch itself. It was breakfast and I didn’t want to cry. There was a handsome stranger sitting across from me.

But I am wild, and a tear fell right when I tried to open my mouth. My body will always show what my real inner situation is. My body will never let me lie. I was almost gasping. I realized I am wild but I do not want to be sent to the wilderness and I looked across at my friend and at the handsome stranger and I made up my religion right in front of their faces and I said the first line of my own holy book:

I believe that wildness belongs in people.

I believe that wildness belongs in the home. I believe this and so I belong in myself and in my home. My gods are inside of me first and foremost, and the mother of all of them is the wild one.



There has been a misunderstanding about wildness. Bring it in, bring it in, bring wildness in, and care for it.

Place a shell in your shower. Get a whole plant in there. Put a geranium in your kitchen. Stand in your space and howl out. Bring it in or go out and see it. Wildness is the mother, the first thing, not a lurking predator. Wildness is holy.

I am a geranium that is hardy and wild, but I want to sleep in a neat little pot. I belong in a castle that was built with the determination and ingenuity of a person who was deeply in love.

I feel the warmth vibrating through the centuries and that’s why it is hard to kill me even with a frost. I feel the warmth from the heart of a woman named Karen, three hundred years ago, who got everything she wanted, who brought these plants inside maybe, who brought wildness into the place her love built just for her.

He put her name over the doorway.





A Tender Thief

One time, my dog sneaked six licks of coffee from my mug. I caught him on the sixth and I’m certain that he would have gone all the way. But I did catch him on the sixth. After he’d had his coffee he went and he stretched out on the armchair and spent a long time by the window, and I thought, “At least he knows how to have coffee properly, even though he is a thief.”





Night Treats for Her

Most nights, I stand in the middle of the kitchen in the middle of the night, completely asleep. I stand there naked like Persephone wandering between worlds. I am holding a spoon in the air, gripping a small jam jar and digging through jelly to find berries, spooning dark red preserves into my little mouth. I drink half glasses of cold milk and stick my dreaming hands in the raisin jar. I do leave a trail. I eat upwards of seven cookies. I will throw the tinfoil off of the cake and drop the crinkled silver sheet onto the floor and assault the cake itself, carving into it with a spoon that is slick and sticky with jam. When I am in the supermarket, I slow down cautiously in the jam aisle. I don’t even eat toast or muffins, which is what jam is really for. I could stop buying the jam, but then what would happen? I don’t know what to do about what I seem to need, how much sweetness, how many treats. I cannot rest without waking as my deepest self, the woman who is wailing for what is not provided as a normal morsel during the day. My nighttime menu knows its loyal customer: I drool for scoops of dripping colors. I want to bite into the things that they say are too sweet to have just on their own. The heart part of me walks the night, sweet and scary, consuming the things that are delicious yet apparently too concentrated to be encountered alone, as themselves. But they match me. I need to prove to myself that there is an appetite for sweet things that are lonely in the night. In the bright light of the day, I select the jar of jam. “It’s for her,” I say to myself as I shiver with anticipation. I imagine the moon rising, the loss of control against the deeper desires, a naked still dreaming darling darting through the rooms, an appetite finally met, the top twisting off the jar that is waiting in the dark.





The Root: A Made-Up Myth

I want to be a part of a system of power that does not disgust me. I have to give myself many pep talks. I am not sure of what to do most of the time, but I do not want to do what I was doing before. I need a new story, please. I suppose I have to give it to myself.