have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… don’t search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

-r. m. rilke

when i walked into ian’s apartment on sunday, i felt home.  it was messy, full, creative.  i’ve never actually lived in a place like this (to be honest i would probably go crazy) but it is so comfortable to me.  i guess it’s those college days of sitting on floors while eating together, drinking tea, with plants growing all over the place and art work scattered about.  that feels like home.

i was reminded of that experience when i read this poem in The Sun today:

Lost Keys by Tony Hoagland

Holding a black wire coat hanger in his hand,
bending a loop in the tip with a pair of pliers,
my neighbor Mr. Alvarado is walking down his drive

without a shirt, pale winter fat hanging over his belt,
blue rings around his eyes.
He has come out like this on a February morning

to try to break into the car
his son has locked the keys inside
as the boy hovers in the background,

arms crossed over his chest, carefully watching
while pretending to be bored.
They are trying hard

not to make a scene
in the thin light of Sunday morning
while the next-door neighbors snore-

and they could call up the garage,
but Mr. Alvarado doesn’t want
to bring the experts in;

he wants to teach his son a thing
or two a man should know.
He is like the Eskimo dad

teaching his boy to fish:
threading the line of reindeer gut
through a needle eye in the antler bone,

standing silent over their personal
hole in the ice. Love

is the thing you
press your face against,
trying to figure out how

to get inside without breaking it.
Look, they are the proof:
working the tip of the wire

under the rubber seal of the window frame;
carefully sliding the loop
over and down

to snag the silver latch and open it.

mischon gave me a tea set for my 25th birthday (yes, i am 25 now!!! isn’t that fantastic?  i love it.).  so jess, kristi and i had a tea party with delicious morning glory muffins on sunday, amidst the most relaxing day of my most recent months.  beauty.

thursday was barefoot victory garden‘s first community meal and it was a success!  i never know what to expect with these things… but we had 30 people come!  it feels like a miracle whenever i am surrounded by people and garden together.  it’s such a deeply good thing.  i wish i had words.

and our first harvest: lettuce!

my friend kristi started urban sprouting, grand rapids’ first guerilla gardening initiative.  we had the first event after the community meal last week and it was also a success.  we were able to beautify the corner of a busy intersection with some GREEN, at night of course.