Cuttings
A severed stem produces new roots
Lately I’ve been feeling like burning it all down. All the work building a public facing me. I really am as cranky as all that. As cynical and solitary as an old beat poet shouting about the bomb and drinking themselves to death while dreaming beautiful words strung together with dharma and mist. In my dream I’m painting in my underwear in the middle of the night in my shabby room under the stars.
We went out for a nice dinner to celebrate my birthday. It’s not a major year but for the first time I feel the years piled on and weighing me down. At the next table an older couple was having dinner and we overheard that it was the mans birthday too. I wondered if he was my age. He couldn’t be surely. The poet Gary Snyder was also born on my day - he just turned 94. After toasting him as himself and again as his fictional self (Japhy Rider from Kerouac’s Dharma Bums), we wondered if we would ever see Big Sur again. Was it possible this recent storm and the major road slip-out it caused would allow Nature to finally reclaim one of her masterpieces. That led us to reminisce about the birthday we spent at Big Sur and the dinner we had at Deetjens. We lingered late and only one other couple remained in the restaurant. They were visiting from Brazil and also celebrating a birthday. It seemed miraculous to be sitting in such a remote, magical place with an unknown star twin. I’m not sure why the shared birthday with the man at the next table didn’t have the same effect.
We are finally ready to begin work on our new garden. I went back to our old house for some cuttings. The garden appeared overgrown and neglected but still lovely in that way we become when we aren’t looking. I cut a twig from the Datura. When we first lived together in San Francisco we were so young and garden ignorant. We had just moved into a studio/living space in a rough neighborhood of trains and winos straight out of Kerouac’s October in the Railroad Earth. We inherited a big, cloistered backyard with uncharacteristically good weather. The previous tenants had planted a high wall of night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle spilled over the garage door into the back alley. On our rambles around town we began to notice an exotic little tree with an intoxicating fragrance and hanging flowers so white and pendulous we named it Virgin P*ssy. One evening we walked past a beautiful old home with a lovely specimen growing in the yard. There was a woman tending the garden and we asked her what the plant was. She called it Datura and snapped off a branch advising us to root it in water and simply stick it in the ground.
Datura, commonly known as thornapple, moon flower, hell's bells, devil's trumpet, devil's weed, jimson weed, locoweed, and devil's cucumber is poisonous in it’s root and seed and lauded for its hallucinatory properties. Its been used in rituals sacred and profane for its ability to expand the mind and aid in spiritual visions. Magical properties are also reputed. In Haiti it is rumored to be a key ingredient in the potion used in the making of zombies and early European legend it was recorded as a main component of witches flying compounds. Although generally considered unlucky and inappropriate for garden use our twig quickly grew into a small tree whose roots eventually grew into the sewage pipe giving it all the nutrients it needed to thrive. When we moved out 12 years later it was almost as tall as the house.
Many hybridized garden variety Daturas have been developed over the years with yellow and pink flowers and tidier garden habits. Still poisonous but somehow house broken. My cutting is from a yellow Datura we planted outside our kitchen window near the bird feeder. It became a favorite perch of the Oak Titmouse and the Black Capped Chickadee who would choose their seed from the feeder, hold it on the Datura branch and pound it with their beak until it yielded it’s delectable center. I like to think the branch imparted a mild hallucinogenic reward and that’s why they did it over and over again. No birds were present when I went back for my cuttings. The Datura was flowering but the feeder was gone and the birdbath was dry. The new residents of our old place didn’t seem to notice that the birds weren’t there anymore.
Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
More fun facts about Datura
Deetjens - Just in case Highway 1 into Big Sur opens again
hilarymosbergart.com just because
Photos ©Hilary Mosberg 2024
Wow, beautiful writing. Thank you Hilary! Can’t wait for more…whenever it appears.