Making Meaning: translating in the story Garden

Image by Hasan

Making meaning
Translating in the Story Garden
by Hasan

Deep in the entrails of the liminal lands,
There is a knotted ball of string.
It rolls through the inner landscape of the mind
like Japanese Knotweed cast
against the side of Canary Wharf.
Down the hill it goes, wishing to unfurl.

There, and here, green is growing in the cracks,
Pushing outwards into edgelands (like berry brambles),
Pushing inwards into soil (like dandelion tap roots),
See the hands on the unfurling tree,
The bark rough and soft; dreamlike mugwort tea.
All the while frenetic corporate ants rush around the daisies
and kids rush through the gates of freedom -
poking around the plants  - weaving webs of imagineering.

As the construction of newbuilds rattle,
and the tea trembles in our once-full cups,
The young ones generate stories
of giant coral reefs feeding all the fish
in the shade of abundance,
Of the quince tree in a pot,
It's been moved around a lot!
Watered, pruned, almost dead,
Now fuzzy with life and fruit,
Brought back to life by many hands
of many colours
of many sizes
making light work.

STOP!
or pause.
Relax your shoulders and breathe.
Ask yourself: What is waving at you?

look around:
There is nothing tastier than the ripe red strawberry at full moon,
There is nothing sweeter than the nectar sipped by the hummingbird hawk moth,
There is nothing cooler than fresh lemon water
or sinking into balm of continuous river
curving through the valley of the undying land
cutting through the veins of the stories we tell
the stone of the categories we hold
and the bricks of the walls we build
a continuous river of making,
making clay
wet and soft and forming in the many hands into strange forms –
an elastic social technology -
strange creations of the spontaneous
sprouting seeds
slow-diving into common ground,
Adapting to the loamy soil and hug of mycelial thread,
Braiding waves of stories into sweetgrass and our deeper waters,
Coaxing out the gentle parts of us into day,
Dancing amongst the nonsensical nightlife of foolish wisdom and dreams.

In the concrete jungle of consensual visions and televisions:
“Where would a wild animal run to?”
A hare leaping high amongst the skyscrapers
A coot making a nest for migrants in the middle of the city
A nest made of anything, of everything
weaving in the mouldy calendula leaves,
the bolted sorrel planted by someone special,
A not-so-sacred sacred sycamore spiral of care
slowly composting the fabric of our lives
towards a new language, an old lore
of translation, of meaning, of making, making, making.

Image by Hasan

Image by Hasan

For more info about Roi Gal-Or https://www.roigalor.com/ and Emerson College https://emerson.org.uk/our-education-programme/

Notes from the Garden