Don’t you love the maps found in large shopping malls or office complexes? The first thing you see is the circle with the X inside it saying “You are here.”

“Oh,” you say, “This is where I am, so now I know which direction to turn to get to where I want to be.”

Without the knowledge of where you are, you can’t know how close or far away you are from your destination. Just so, it’s important to know where you are in the great scheme of things in life. This question presupposes that you know something about the big picture and something about your destination (destiny).

And within these questions: “Who am I?”

My mother always told me, “Just be yourself, and you’ll be fine.” But who is that self? And how do you find out?

Questions, questions. When you’re searching for truth, what you often find first are questions to be explored if not answered definitively. Your answers may change and grow from time to time.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. And behind that statement?

Well, that assumes you have a life to begin with. That means you have to live life first in order to examine it. If it is true that the unexamined life is not worth living, then it follows that the unlived life is also not worth examining.

Aspiring writers and actors are often told, “First, you have to live.” You have to have something to write about and experiences to draw upon.

Thoughtful and juicy questions may be one of the best ways to explore and examine your life to allow you to fully live and appreciate the life you have here and now, rather than wishing for some other place or some other life. This is what you have. Now is what you have. Here is what you have. Work with what you have.

If you’re in the here and now, just look about you. Be here. Be now. Describe what you see, feel, smell, taste, hear, touch. You’ll soon enough find plenty to think about and write about, plenty to ponder.

Formal writing prompts and jump-start quotations can also be brilliant food for thought. And why do they appeal to you? Because they’ve acted as an entrance into your own inner life. Something within you resonated with what you found in someone else’s experience.

Reading biographies, memoirs, autobiographies, and fiction can help you to explore your own life stories, both old and new. Can help you re-interpret your past stories to use them as building blocks for your new paths.

You learn that you are not alone in all the world. You no longer have to remain “a stranger in a strange land.” You can find at least one other story that is remarkably like your own. You learn that others have faced and surmounted the same challenges that you do. “The way is thoroughly known,” wrote Joseph Campbell. You are not the first to tread this path, to make this journey.

And those who have gone before you have left maps. They have pointed out the rocks, crevasses, mountains, dangerous swamps and quicksand. They can inspire you to a new level of living. By showing you what peace and happiness they have attained. They can teach you if you will read, listen, and be open to learning.

Be teachable.

Practice beginner’s mind at whatever stage you find yourself, and you may find that one or more “maps” buried in your library, bookstore, or Internet sites will both show you the big picture and say to you, “You are here.”

***

Great List of Personal Development Blogs:

From Gretchen Rubin’s post on her wonderful Happiness Project blog, I learned of a list of the top blogs in the personal development field. These are 65 of the most-read of blogs that offer regular, practical, and usable information. Check it out at:

http://www.pluginid.com/personal-development/

The weeds (mostly grass) are taller than many of the things I’ve planted and are in the process of reseeding themselves. Most everything looks puny or a little blighted. The potato plants simply shriveled up before blooming, the zucchini blossoms stay on the stem but don’t bear fruit, the basil looks a tad pale, and the cilantro has bolted, gone to seed, and turned a crispy brown. It looks pretty awful, I must say.

On the other hand, the coleus and other pots of annuals are doing well, and this morning’s perusal of the kitchen garden netted a double handful of bursting-with-sweetness cherry tomatoes (I gobbled them right off the vine), three little cucumbers, four fingerling potatoes, and all the sage, mint, and thyme I could hope for. So not so bad. The cucumbers will go in tonight’s salad, and I’ll boil the potatoes with sage and thyme.

Considering the small amount of time and energy I’ve put into the project, I’m still getting an inordinate amount of delight as I pull fists full of grass. I know that no chemicals have been used, so I won’t even have to peel the cukes.

Oh, I almost forgot: the best part is that I finally found a little patch of lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium album) to transplant, and I have my eye on a few other isolated plants that I’ll put with the rest. The unenlightened call them weeds, but I was raised on their spinach-like vitamins and minerals.

Taste of home, taste of spring and summer, taste of childhood, cutting greens on the way back from the asparagus bed.

Olive oil, garlic, sweet onions, herbs, four little potatoes, “a mess of greens,” and now I know what else is on the menu for later tonight.

As with most everything else in life, I suppose it’s all in how you look at it. We always have choices. I declare it all a roaring success, and that’s that.

Encouraged by the application of nutrients, the kitchen garden boasts tiny green tomatoes, one cucumber, greening parsley and basil, and a few baby peppers. 

Here in the United States, some consider this day a solemn time to contemplate the ideals upon which our country was founded. For many, it’s a day of barbeques, parties, marching bands, patriotic speeches, and trimmings of red, white, and blue.

As with most holidays, Frank and I like to spend this day alone together in blessed quiet with our books, journals, and Baroque music, preferably Bach.

But the thought of marching bands takes me back to scenes of childhood, to the times of the street fairs and parades of that village where I grew up. “Pop. 100″ read the signs at both ends of “town.”  Of course the many farm families for miles around came in to talk and trade, so the sidewalks hummed with activity.

That vibrant community no longer exists as such. A few houses remain, but not many, and most of the once-busy commercial enterprises pulled out or closed. The old-timers moved to larger towns with supermarkets, big-box stores, and gas stations.

And a community it was, a fairy-tale town, destined like Brigadoon to bloom a brief moment, then disappear. At least once a month we met at the school, which also served as a community center for boisterous sing-a-longs from The Golden Book of Favorite Songs.

Each of us would call out a favorite song in turn, and my mother would pound out a stirring introduction on the rattling piano to get us started. Rounds and songs with hand motions. Stephen F. Foster songs, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Flow Gently Sweet Afton, Oh Danny Boy, The Spanish Cavalier, and on and on late into the night.

For Independence Day, we often had a little marching band, contests of all sorts, and always lots of watermelon, home-cooked potato salad, baked beans, laughter, and camaraderie.

One year for our entry in the parade down Main Street, a few friends and I created a “marching tableau” of the famous painting, Spirit of ‘76, about the American Revolution by Archibald MacNeal Willard.

There was no fife, but I played “The Star Spangled Banner” on my flute and wore a ketchup-smeared “bandage” around my forehead, two friends played their drums, and someone behind us carried a flag with 13 stars.

The quiet village has all but disappeared, but the sweet memories remain. I raise my metaphorical glass to the spirit of community.

When I got out of work a little early, stopped by a garden center to pick up bee balm, Russian sage (such a heavenly scent), rudibeckia (in memory of my friend Becky), black sweet potato vines, artemesia, diantha, blue salvia, and hen and chickens. Most of these plants were distressed and half-priced, so I brought them home to heal.

My garden assistant planted them around the little mailbox garden by the road. He also worked 40 pounds of cow manure and compost into the soil of the kitchen garden.

July already, and still no big garden. As I look out at the field of mostly white clover that is the front yard, I begin to come to terms with the thought that the garden of my dreams is not yet to be. Why disturb the feng shui for now? I don’t deal well with heat and humidity. Perhaps a fall garden, perhaps a spring garden next spring, perhaps not at all.

One thing I do know for now is that I want to “master” the art and science of gardening in the two four by eight feet raised beds: the kitchen garden and the herb garden that has become mostly a sage garden.

The sage can be transplanted and new herbs planted. I do love to pick fresh herbs for cooking.

Today I’ll order earthworms (although I’ve dug up quite a few already) and study more about high Brix gardening. Feed the soil, feed the soil.

I love gardening for the concrete feel of dirt beneath my fingernails, watching things grow and bloom. Then there’s the metaphorical aspect.

Feed the soul, give it rain, rest, and the compost of adversity.Treat it with respect and reverence. Give the same to others’ souls, and live in harmony so far as possible with all beings.

So as the rain continues its inexorable course, I feed my soul by working and playing in the new Moleskine journal and making notes about this new life story and the seeds of the next. Next steps, and only a few at a time.

To gardens, rain, and sunshine everywhere. Let us welcome what comes. As Browning wrote, “Greet the unseen with a cheer.”

Then at the journal conference, I saw and examined several of them (Thanks guys!) and felt the heft and richness. And acid free!

Although I spend much of my time now journaling in computer programs, my introduction to journals and diaries was on paper. When I’m tired, stressed, or ill, I love to speak one of my favorite phrases: “This day is over” and retire to my bed with a beautiful journal and a favorite pen.

“So how do you pronounce “Moleskine?” I asked my friends.

Four syllables? Mole-a-skeen-a?

I was instantly catapulted back to age seven, eight, ten, swinging on the garden gate as my father staked tomato plants. He was telling me about one of his favorite novels: Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and how it changed his life at a young age.

It’s a well-known phenomenon that people who read widely but don’t hear words pronounced to them conjure up logical but incorrect pronunciations.

As he read about the character, Cosette, in Les Miserables, in his mind, he pronounced her name with two syllables. Then he encountered Hugo’s phrase, “He loved all three syllables of her name.” I remember his faraway sea-blue eyes focusing on the horizon.

Three syllables, how could that be? Then her name must be pronounced with three syllables. So what he assumed to be true all along was not true.

“And a door opened to me to a wider world,” he said. What else had he imagined or assumed to be true that was not?

So he began to think differently and study French and history and literature and philosophy and science and mathematics and everything else he could get his hands on. And he’d always wanted to visit those “faraway places with the strange-sounding names,” (and he did, eventually).

Thanks, Daddy, for reminding me of the richness of your legacy to me. I can never repay you, but I can follow in your footsteps and read and study and write and at least learn to pronounce “Moleskine” with four syllables.

Part of what I want to accomplish with this blog is to revisit the Edens of my childhood and remember the strengths, gifts, and trainings I received from my wonderful extended family, all of whom were dedicated gardeners, readers, and reciters of poetry.

On this Memorial Day here in the US, I think of all those who have died for our freedoms. May we never take them for granted. On this day, too, my mind takes me back to an old name for the day: Decoration Day, traditionally celebrated on May 31.

My grandparents grew both vegetables and flowers in a half-acre garden they worked every morning as soon as it was light enough to tell a weed from a petunia. They put on their gardening shoes and straw hats and set off across what used to be the croquet court to do the day’s work. Grandma picked the day’s vegetables and flowers, and after Grandpa ran the little garden tractor between the rows, he sliced out with his hoe the few weeds that dared to appear within the rows. After the work was done, he cleaned, sharpened, and polished the hoe before putting it back into the can of oil where it resided.

They planned all year for Decoration Day to have flowers blooming at the right time. Grandpa always planted lavender phlox to make sure it was in full glory. The blue and purple irises and pink peonies could always be depended upon to burst forth exactly in the last week of May. The peonies were always swarmed with ants. The (since disputed) theory was that somehow, the ants helped the peony buds to open.

Grandpa always got up early on Decoration Day to pick and arrange the flowers in carefully washed mayonnaise jars that had been saved throughout the year just for the occasion. The jars were filled with water and carefully arranged in boxes in the trunk of the car, along with a picnic lunch.

We set off for the country cemeteries where our forbears were buried: Prairie Chapel, Sunnyside, Laurel Oak, Ionia, Harmony, and Mount Olivet. As we placed the flowers on the graves, my grandparents (and great-grandparents when they were alive) told the old family stories, most of them humorous. Who did this, and who said that, what quirks so-and-so exhibited, who read Paradise Lost as he walked behind the mule that pulled the plow.

They day seemed always warm and humid, and I remember the sound of the prairie wind through the trees and tall grasses. How lonely it must have been to have lived in such isolated places with only horses for transportation to a small town miles away.

The saddest stop was Baby Fern’s grave, Great-grandmother Thomas’s first baby who died at six months. For a young farm couple, life was hard enough with all the plowing, building the house, cooking, canning, boiling and starching the laundry, drying the fruit under mesh on top of the hen house. Such energy they had all their lives.

On the way there and back on country roads we sang the old tunes we’d learned from The Golden Book of Favorite Songs, with Mama doing the harmony.

Back home in high spirits, tired but happy. Respects and homage properly paid. 

Time for napping. Time to think about the next day in a June garden. “What is so rare as a day in June? For then, if ever, come perfect days…”