This beautiful yellow flower, the bloom of the narrow leafed ground cherry (Physalis angustifolia), is not usually viewed from an angle that reveals the delicate purple interior. It hangs down to the ground, like a bell, hiding its pistil and stamen from larger creatures like ourselves. But its bloom must be found, for it spreads with a steady patience across the edge zone between trimmed landscape and wild hammock, amongst other weedy grasses and invasive herbs. It appears from above to have built a flower too big for its stalk, but its success does not indicate that there is any mistake here, that cells should have been smaller in one place and larger in another. One pauses and takes the delicate bloom in their hand and gently turns it skyward and sees the patterns made inside, some code for ground ants or flying insects, who seem to always find the stopping point and fertilize the plant. This angle from the ground itself, the view from an ant plain, as it were, reveals the inside of this bloom and behind it the chinese lantern-like pod that accrues when the flower has been pollinated, waiting patiently with seed protected inside its own weather balloon. When this annual stalk falls to the ground, or extends it stalk long enough to pull itself over, a new generation will be planted. It is called a rhizome, but I suspect that the structure of its body and seed pods only make it appear as such. That the new sprouting apparent at its joints are not roots from the same, but the result of these delicate seed pods' natural reaction to the self planting taking place. This is the season of ground cherry blooming, the first of the year, to be followed by another mid-fall - the season of beauty facing downward and life sprouting up. Their charming attactive appearance bothers no one, and so they do not get classified as weeds, though they are most definitely a disturbed land species. They are out in abundance this week.And I think back to the way in which war and violence and power and lies are tossed about and reinforced and played like an old victrola upon our otherwise sensitive consciousness. Our abstract world, our abstracted selves, not really living, barely even thinking any more. These electronic codes, having nothing at all to do with the ant plain or the smell of the air outside today or the movement of our bowels or the rhythm of what is called life. We embrace the images of lies, the stylistic falsity of reflective self-congratulation. We do not want to want to be enamoured of these constructions and yet we are, persistently. You there, reading this here, these words, a stream out of this consciousness sitting next to a device whose presence seems remarkable and yet has caused even more abstraction, and thus is not leaving a mark at all. The written word is the choicest of relics, but the means that you get to it counts. A flat screen lit from behind has all the ethical qualities of murder, in fact. Or maybe, manslaughter, for your intentions are not evil, and your goals are not bad, it is merely the outcomes. But, and I plead for attention to this point, those outcomes can only result from your own practiced inattention. Inattention to the place where you are, always. Inattention to the subtle connection, the human labor and suffering and the life trying to be lived out just past the margin of your awareness. Let today be an awake day. Let our murderous past be a lesson. Let our own conscience and not our ego and not our greed and not the shallow toss-away reasoning of the abstract market society, our own conscience, our best guide. Do listen. It knows. It can view the world from the ant's plain and see the delicate interior and understand the higher truths that our flippant desires for nothingness force us to overlook. I pray for your strength in this pursuit. And for the salvaging of your inner life. I pray for peace, as only it can be manifest - the delicate purple patterns painted inside the narrow leafed ground cherry on a warm Saturday afternoon.
