I just filed my 457th consecutive weekly Bismarck Tribune newspaper column, from my new office at Bismarck State College. As of July 1, I have left the Dakota Institute of the Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation and taken on additional responsibilities at BSC, where I am inflatedly called a Distinguished Scholar of the Humanities. Its because I could not spell r-e-f-u-g-e-e. Writing is a bit like dreaming. You think you are in control, but I find that that is not really so. You sit down in front of a blank screen, fingers poised over the keyboard, and after a few false starts, words start to coalesce into phrases, then sentences, finally paragraphs and an argument about some theme or other. I have been musing about todays theme for a couple of months, but I had no idea last night, as I lingered on my deck with my favorite person in the world, or this morning, when I stood in the shower cursing myself for staying up so late, what I would write today. After 456 previous Wednesdays, I had the idea that I would be able to write something--though the day may come when the turnip is just a fibrous wad without any juice in it whatsoever. I woke up to a dream this a.m. From my bedroom I can see my garden, which gives me a deep sense of joy. I like to look out at it, to see if I can see the rogue pheasant (male) that gork-gork-gorks every morning, in replacement for the Meadowlark that used to grace my prairie before Bismarck ate my prairie. I like to see if the corn looks taller, if the tomatoes have strained up against gravity in their cages, if it possibly rained a little in the night. My dream was of Mohammad Ali in a late fight. He was knocked down to the mat by a superior opponent, but his face was still the face of the angry young man who knocked out Sunny Liston. He was so surprised that he had been knocked to the floor. It was as if he realized that he was mortal for the first time, that he could not maintain his magic dance forever, that someone who was less of a dancer and a wit than he had a stronger punch, that the universe is radically unfair, and that our illusions have to be pummeled out of us. I take dreams seriously. But I have also become a dangerous suburban industrialists. I resisted the urge to use Roundup on my Canadian thistle, even though my best gardening friend said, just do it! After a couple of years of lackluster trimming, I finally figured out that my weed whacker is a truly serious gardening tool. For an accumulated time of about nine hours now, I have mowed down everything I dont like in my garden, including some tall grass prairie near my ponderosa pines. A certain industrial lust sets in when you get into a weed whacker rhythm and you start to fell bushes and small trees, and to wonder if you could slice the axel off of your SUV with the right plastic cord. The other night I dreamed that I started to weed whack a few of my compatriots. They came tumbling down like characters in Homers Iliad: He fell thunderously, and his armor clattered about him. It was pretty heady in my dream, and a little disturbing, too. If only life were so simple. Now my cucumber plants are clear of weeds, and my Jefferson garden is looking almost as if the master himself were puttering about in the cool of the evening. My Sheila Schafer tree is flourishing. The potato plants are sprouting, and if all 30 tomato plants survive my whackery, Im going to have to borrow Jims deeply flawed but wonderful juicer come late September. It is such a privilege to have the opportunity to write a weekly newspaper column. I am immensely grateful to the Bismarck Tribune, and to my readers, for it has brought me joys and disciplines that I did not know I had. I cannot wait to make gazpacho soup. csj
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 16:07:03 +0000
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