If Thoughts Can Counter War
Then let me think of the fairy homes.
If thoughts can counter war, then let me think of the fairy homes in the public gardens at Fairchild
the tiny, colorful doorways inviting us in as we meander a broken world,
calling to the innocent—the idealist—in all of us, mostly buried, run over, worn down.
Tiny ladders climb to a draping limb of live oak, alive and reaching, beyond which iguanas lazily sun on stone walls beside a lake.
All that once-upon-a-time that could be now.
Let me sit to rest with you beside the tiny blue door, out of reach of cynicism and brutality. You take the chair, purple and painted with flowers. I have missed you.
If thoughts can counter war, let us build our home in a magic forest.
Let us make offerings to peace.
For every heart corrupted, let us find a tiny door among the acceptance of ferns.
The door is there.
I think in time of war and death, it’s a holy role to hold open the door to the recognition of beauty. Some of us, a special few, can occupy both spaces at once. Can hold grief in their hearts as well as love. The force that loves murder and chaos is powerful but cannot stand against hearts that can still apprehend and uphold beauty. You’re an inspiration to the rest of us, Janisse. When I read something like this, i feel I can rise from despair and hold my heart open enough to pray.
Do you remember forts or hideaways you created as a younger person before you realized that the saplings you might have chopped down to support the roof structure covered with pine branches of your fantasy hideaway probably belonged to an owner that was going to be pissed off when they found those little saplings gone? I remember that owner knocking on my parent’s front door and asking if he could speak with the red headed young man that his neighbor had seen walking through his wood lot. As Maud Gaud once said, “If you don’t have red hair, you don’t know what trouble is.”
That was an early lesson in property rights and repayment for what was really a youthful thoughtless transgression. The owner asked me if I had been the person who chopped down his saplings and stripped the pine branches off his young pine tress then built a nice little lean-to fort on his land? My mother stood there remembering how I’d used her fingernail polish remover to clean-up my pitch stained hands earlier that day and probably wondered if I was going to try and lie my way out of this new mess. I confessed.
We walked back to the owner’s woodlot together, and he explained to me how he had planted those trees several years ago to create a new woodlot, and then he asked me how I thought that I might “Make this situation right.” I ended up working for that property owner doing various chores after school,and on weekends “until the owner was satisfied that we were square.” Many years later, my Mom sent me the owner’s obit with a note attached, “Remember Mr. Hapgood? He was a good neighbor.”
Often, I’ll walk down the alley past our building wall and see a new piece of spray painted graffiti there. I’ll curse, and then realize that the spray-painter might be an aspiring artist who does not have a place to express themselves. I realize that I can telephone Clean Machine to power wash the spray paint away. But, I had chopped down living trees that disappeared forever, so just lighten-up. Thanks for that recurring lesson, Mr. Hapgood. He did not call the police, and I learned something that occasionally recurs.