Kaleidoscopes & Pattern-tending
Gemini lessons on communication, learning, and recognizing patterns.
Today while I was nannying, I picked up a stray kaleidoscope one of the kids had left laying about. The two siblings I was tasked with taking care of were busy, one next to a pile of crayons furiously drawing in their notebook, the other rocking in an easy chair singing along to a new favorite song.
The family golden retriever who fancied themself a lapdog despite their size had found a cozy spot, body half sprawled across my lap and thereby impeding me from getting up and going anywhere.
The house was momentarily calm and the kaleidoscope was within arms reach. I picked it up, and with a delicate pinch twisted the rotating bottom instantly falling under its trance inducing spell.
I watched with one eye closed as flowerlike shapes shifted into stars then into diamonds, and then back again, over and over, each time similar to a time before, and yet still different and new.
Patterns. Shifting patterns that come back around but in different versions of themselves.
Patterns, I think to myself, turning the end with more gusto. Patterns….
If I should die tomorrow,
and I don’t get a chance to show it,
know that I loved you very deeply
and in every minute of our time.
If I should die tomorrow,
and I don’t get a chance to thank you
know how much you helped me grow
and shaped who I came to be.
If I should die tomorrow,
and don’t get a chance to say I’m sorry,
know that you meant so very much,
and I hope the wound I caused will heal.
If I should die tomorrow,
and I don’t get a chance to say I love you,
know that I’m proud of all you’ve done
and all you passed along to me.
-from me to you, 2024
Gemini season. Late Spring. Mutable, and therefore a season of transition. But the youthful energy of spring fills Gemini season with a frenetic movement and unbounded curiosity. Like the three year old constantly asking why? Third House-ruled Gemini is a season of childlike wonder and a flurry of ideas.
If we look to the garden, late Spring is the time when the flowers are in full bloom enticing the pollinators to not only feast but to pass on pollen that will ensure their continued blooms. The creatures of the garden understand the necessity of this cycle, and are busy showing us how to be reciprocal members of this planet. A lesson I see many a passer-by miss, those who are consumed by blue light reflecting screens as they walk briskly, head down and shoulders hunched towards whatever coffee shop or errand they are going to.
Never minding to dilly-dally, to stop and ask the flowers how they are doing. Never minding to stop and watch the bastion of bees buzzing in the night blooming cactus that only blooms this time of year.
I’ve been watching them every night & every morning when the blooms are in their fullest.
The bees, not the passers-by. Well, the bees I watch intentionally, the passers-by I just happen to notice as I sit in wonder about how the bees must feel dipping and diving into the giant nectar filled blooms.
They are consumed by the abundance of nectar, and I wonder if they realize or know the importance of their feeding frenzy, how important it is to help the cycle of abundance continue.
It makes me wonder what we are consumed by, and what cycles our own personal and collective feeding frenzies help to reproduce and continue. What do I consume. What am I consumed by? I ask myself.
For now it is the buzzing of the bees, but I know that at some point later, I too will be partially consumed by the blue-glow of a screen that I scoff at.
This time of year, the season before the wheel of the year turns into summer, is a time of endings that offer new starts. A time when new ideas and daily practices are ready to be ritualized and written into our daily rhythms. A time where we wonder within and aloud so that we may learn what our world is wondering too.
There is a reason the bees buzz, if only we’d listen.
5 June 2024
Jupiter Conjunct Mercury in Gemini
Out in the garden.
I’ve begun to really find my rhythm in the garden. The consistency of the visit makes it more easeful to tend to. An obvious statement, I know, but as an often all-or-nothing, do-it-now-or-do-it-never, interested-driven brain, consistency is a lesson I am still developing. A muscle I’ve been strengthening. And I can feel the rhythm becoming more easeful, a sign that new patterns can be overlaid upon them.
Soon. All in good time.
Time is relative so they say, but it is also powerful, and I am learning to harness the power of time in ways my daydream prone mind hasn’t always been well versed in.
Pay Attention
Be Astonished
Tell About It
Mary Oliver’s rules for living a life are now painted in pinkish purple on the wood box containing the Hellebores. It is the entrance to the garden and it now bears a challenge to all who enter, myself included: notice, be curious, share.
I look over to the growing corn, truly mesmerized that although yesterday there was only one silky poof of corn there are now two. They are not even close to being ready for the picking, and yet the fact that they exist is success, is evidence of growth.
I beam in pride.
I’ve never grown corn by myself before. Naturally, I was excited to learn how it would grow especially in my little urban neighborhood, under a flight path, and notorious for aphids, whiteflies, and bold and hungry city squirrels.
The starts I bought from the garden store. I decided I’d try from seed once I could grow from a start. A test run so to speak. If I could grow successful corn from a start, perhaps one day I’ll try from seed. And if I can grow from seed, perhaps one day I’ll be able to save the seeds.
And then I’ll be able to tend to the whole cycle.
What a dream, what a skill, what a gift that would be. To understand the cycle, the pattern, and be able to tend to it full circle.
But for now, baby steps. Let’s see if I can tend to this part of the process. To this part of the pattern.
And so, I pay attention.
Just a few weeks ago, one solitary grainy green flower tip started to peek out from between the long leaves of the corn stalks, inching out a little more each day until the top of the corn was in full bloom and ready for wind pollination. Corn, like all things on this Earth, requires support from outside elements and creatures to help it grow and thrive.
The two little tufts of silk on the lanky stalk signal growing baby corn are ready to catch the pollen from the flowers above. In order to do this, however, they will require a little help from the breeze.
It is in fact the breeze that catches my attention by suddenly twirling the pink and periwinkle pinwheel staked into the Hellebores bed. Pay Attention.
I take a deep breath in as the pinwheel spins, it’s pink and light blue petals blending into purple as it does. I watch as it picks up speed and then begins to slow, turning from its blended purple into an ombré then finally with a full stop revealing once more each individual petal hue. The mighty wind has paused for the moment, stilling the pinwheel and reminding me of the many parts that make up a whole.
Patterns of color. Patterns of life.
Patterns.
I turn back to the corn bed.
To be honest, I don’t know how this year's corn harvest will do. Already the stalks seem much too thin and lanky, and I’m certain that it is because I planted them far too close together. Plants, like humans, need their space to grow. A lesson I am constantly learning about myself and the world.
But that’s part of the process. Mistakes are opportunities to problem solve and grow. To be astonished.
After all, from the corn stalks to human hearts, as beings of the Garden Planet we are all meant to grow just as we are all meant to die.
I turn to go back inside the apartment, and upon my exit pass once more by the Hellebores grazing the leaves with my finger tips as I take my leave. Tell About It.
I often worry that I’ll die before I’ve said or done what I wanted to say/do. A very human feeling, I suppose. I mean, I don’t think I’m quite alone in that feeling. Am I? But that worry has been nagging at my brain for a while, inviting me to pull at that particular string of anxiety and find a new purpose for it. To weave the stories and questions I feel deeply but am still learning how to communicate. To try to put into poems or song or painting or prose the things that I am paying attention to and am astonished by.
And so I am wondering:
What does today want tomorrow to be? What can today learn from yesterday? What parts of yesterday do we want a part of tomorrow? What parts of yesterday are ready to be composted for tomorrow’s new growth? What will I tell about? Who is listening?
11 June 2024
Moon in Leo
Mars Day
Today I killed a bug…I didn’t mean to. In fact,I was attempting to do the very opposite. I had spotted a new bug friend speeding on many spindly legs through the kitchen, and I instinctively jumped up to ransack my cabinet for a good jar.
Now, as a general rule on house beasties: spiders I don’t mind in the house, cockroaches are definitely put back outside to where they can serve their purpose as decomposers away from the inside of the apartment, and spindly legged beasties such as these generally get scooped up in a cup and put somewhere outside in the garden where they will most certainly find better snacks than my kitchen, at least for a bug.
As such, I had my jar and a piece of spare cardboard at the ready to gently transport this visitor to a place that wasn’t my kitchen. I watched as it scuttled near a box of beans we’d just been delivered. My partner’s new bean club subscription that they was very excited about. Thus, I had to be careful.
I tiptoed towards the bean box and set my makeshift lid down in order to slide it aside to reveal where I suspected the bug to be hiding.
And just as I lugged the legumes sideways… I accidentally squished the little beastie in the process.
I looked at the splat, instantly horrified at what I’d done, feeling guiltier by the second as I watched the little legs that had still managed to stick up in the air twitch. Twitch until they didn’t anymore and I knew… they were gone.
It was an accident!!! I scream whispered to the bug. To the room. To the rats who watched suspiciously from their enclosure as I carefully scraped the insect up with the cardboard previously intended to be a protection.
I’m sorry little bug! I should have been more careful! I whispered this time just to the bug. Now I’ve learned I must be more careful.
I shook my head in shame.
I walked out to the garden, holding the makeshift cardboard funeral pyre with care as I gently placed the bug into the Hellebore bed.
I’m sorry little bug. I said again, more solemnly this time, suddenly more acutely aware of the delicacy of life.
May you now help the flowers grow. And when I die, may I help them grow too.
I sat near the Hellebores for a moment, saying another silent prayer in honor of the insect, a last promise to take more care and intention in my actions.
Lessons in caution and care come in different forms. Some are easy lessons, some are not so easy. And then there are all the lessons in between.
These lessons that make up what it means to live a life, so long as we pay attention.
This season taught me a lot about how I communicate and how I wish to communicate. It brought reflections on how I show up in the world, and how I want to show up in the world. As the spring melts into summer, I am practicing updated forms of communication, putting new patterns into praxis to see if they serve me and my community better.
Love,
Cait