The Subversive Act of Savoring Life in The Matrix

...Mom...and eating Purple Things

It started with the Purple Berries. I hadn’t gone to get them. I had headed to the bottom of High Street here in Glastonbury to get one more loaf of bread from Baker in a Beanie. I still had two slices left from last week, and with just a week to go here before I leave, I wanted more.

But when I arrived, Baker in a Beanie and his fermented, organic, made-by-hand loaves that I had to slice myself and that tasted like the whole wheat homemade bread we made just a few times when I grew up… that Mom let me knead and we left in a wooden bowl in the sun to rise after we spread a bit of butter on top and left a damp, white kitchen towel over it and later, punched it down again. Finally, like a well-lived life, after all the kneading, kneading, kneading, it came hot out of the oven after filling our tiny house with soothing smell-feelings that spoke silent words like “care” “soft” and “magic”. When it was just cool enough, we sliced it with a big serrated knife and I slathered a slice in butter…

The loaf from Baker in a Beanie reminded me of that. I would cut it with a large knife I found in a drawer here that seemed up to the task, toast it, and let golden ghee melt into the crevices which dripped over the sides in glistening drops of gold and onto my plate. At that point, the ghee was mixed with raw honey I had already added, which slowed the process a bit as honey, like some kinds of love, moves more slowly than ghee, even when it is melted. I never left anything behind on the plate. I used my finger to sop up the honey and ghee as I gazed at the plains of Sommerset below, surrounding the once-island of Glastonbury.

It was just me in the kitchen usually. Me and a slice of bread. All alone. Savoring.

So of course I made a special trip to get another loaf before I left. But he wasn’t there this week. I looked around at the other stands to be sure and asked one of the other vendors. “No, he’s not here this week,” he said. “Maybe next…”

“Well, maybe he is at the Glastonbury Music Festival this week…,” I mused as I took it in stride along with all the other things that come with life and its uncertainty.

I hadn’t planned to get anything else, but an image came to mind of Black Currants. I had found them in the market the week before and tried them for the first time in my life. Black Currants also remind me of my childhood… up to then, they existed only in my imagination through the images I carried from stories I read so very long ago. That is until last week, when we became friends.

They were slightly both bitter and sweet…tangy is the best word I have except there is not a word for the unique note of a berry, is there? They’re all different. Even ones from the same plant, if you take your time tasting them and their various expressions of ripeness and sunlight transformed into another kind of edible light. The currants were firm on the outside and popped in my mouth like little bundled presents of joy. My herbalist friend told me once that bitter things are good for cleansing. I told myself the note of bitter sweetness and the deep black color must be good for me.

So, as I remembered those currants, I headed towards the other stands across the road a block away, where the organic produce stand was. Delight surged through my body as I noticed there were even more kinds of berries this week.

I spied three types of round berries this time. Golden tiny ones that seemed to glow with an inner light. And bright red ones, equally vibrant and small. Then there were heaps of the black currants. Baskets and baskets of them…all picked by hand. A deep purple velvety black. “What are these?” I asked, as I pointed at the translucent gold and bright red berries.

“Those are currants too,” responded the man behind the table.

I noticed some blackberries as well, just a couple packages were left.

I had seen them starting to grow on the hedges. Tiny green beads, with flower petals drifting away from them. People told me they would be free for the picking and I had mourned that I would not be here to feast on them. They still had a long way to go before they would be ready.

“Are these local?” I asked (there were only a few baskets of them left).

“Oh yes,” said the thin farm stand man in front of me. “They’re from Paddington Farm.”

I think he saw my quizzical look as he continued, “They grew them in the greenhouse of course. It’s still too early for blackberries.”

“Can you put them somewhere for me?” I asked, unable to hold the growing baskets of berries I now planned to purchase.

(and at this point, the locals were starting to observe me with some amusement and interest I think…as it must be rare for someone in England to actually squirt bits of excitement out the way the new-to-this-but-left-America-a-few-years-ago-and-yes-I-grew-up-in-California-not-a-valley-girl-anymore was doing).

He put the blackberries nearby on a square plastic table, one of the small spots unoccupied by produce.

Then one tiny box of blueberries caught my eye. It was the only one left.

“Are these local too?” I asked.

“Yes, and organic, like everything here,” he replied.

(I handed the blueberries to him to add to the table and wondered how many berries I could eat in a week?)

The currents were hard to decide on. They were so beautiful and I was sure I couldn’t eat three baskets. “Can I try these?” I asked, as I pointed to the gold and bright red ones.

“Sure,” he said.

So I picked a tiny golden berry out of the basket, my first ever, about the size of 1/3 of a pea, and popped it into my mouth. It burst just like the black ones did, but this time less tangy and more sweet. The red one was similar, but unique of course…less tangy than the velvety black ones, not as sweet as the golden.

By now it was clear that the other locals shopping at the stand had become interested in the spurting-with-delight American and were half listening. Little British words were muttered here and there like tiny, soft musical notes.

“Me, I get the black ones. They’re me favorite.”

“Me as well. Always the black ones for me.”

And I was starting to agree. They had been wonderful last week, piled on top of yogurt along with the local red strawberries grown in a nearby town called Cheddar…where there are caves and of course, cheese.

I looked at the pile of berries I was accumulating. One carton of blackberries, one of blueberries… “If I get the black ones, they will all be purple,” I said wistfully and mostly to myself as I looked at the thin farmer-salesman across from me.

(I was remembering another thing I had read somewhere. Something that had always made sense to me. The something was to eat a rainbow of colors…a rainbow of food would provide a spectrum of nutrients. And a rainbow of colors on my plate…well, it was fun to eat like that. As I looked at the three baskets of berries, my mind plucked the thought out of my neural network and poked me with it, which it does for its entertainment and to remind me that it likes to be in charge of things. I was ready to choose the red or gold ones when the salesman spoke in response to the thought I had just voiced out loud…).

“Maybe your body needs purple things?” he said.

And that tiny thread of belief that I held like a rule-of-life, which said that it is always good to do so-and-so, the thought that was about the thickness of a spider web, popped, just like the red berry.

Oh my.

Maybe my body did want purple things?

And instead of making decisions from my mind, I decided to listen to him. Because I did want those tangy black ones again.

I handed him a purple carton of them.

Now, you might think I would be done. I mean, I only had a week left here and there were three baskets of berries on the little white table already.

But I wasn’t finished yet.

There was also only one basket left of Gooseberries. I had passed them up the week before after trying them. They took tartness to another level. Last week someone told me they did get sweeter over time. These looked a little less green…so I asked to try them again.

“I always cook them,” said a woman next to me (as now I had succeeded in engaging a number of other shoppers in my berry-quest).

The farmer/salesman did the same thing he had done the week before. He squinched up his nose in disdain. “I can’t stand the things,” he said.

They were a translucent yellow/green with tiny hairs on them and little stripes, still clinging to their withered buds and stems. I knew I didn’t want to cook them. With his permission, I took one and tried it.

It was still very tart and I told myself there was no way raw Gooseberries were anything but cleansing and detoxing. I wondered what might happen when I ate them?

“Well, why not find out?” I told my mind that I had been ignoring for the last few minutes. It harrumphed at me as I bought them too.

Another woman checked me out and packed each basket in a little paper bag which she stacked carefully in the backpack I had with me.

I went straight home with the delicate little items and decided to wash them right away.

As I poured them out one at a time into the big red colander in front of me, I savored their beauty once again. It was fun to wash them in the cool, sparkling water, each little basket separately.

Their unique colors stood out against the red colander like tiny pieces of art. I admired them and chortled inwardly with delight.

I put them back in their little baskets, each in its own tiny paper bag…and later, had them for dinner.

It wasn’t a dinner most people would eat, and I reminded myself that I am not “most people” and like to color outside the lines. Plus, I couldn’t wait to start eating them…so I got out my Strawberry Kiefer yogurt, my organic, crunchy soaked and then dried walnuts I found in a store here, and all the berries. I sprinkled a few of each on top along with some leftover strawberries I still had. Dinner was ready and I couldn’t just eat it.

Instead I paused in the kitchen and got my cell phone out. All the gifts in that bowl deserved a little photo shoot.

My cell phone spoke for a few minutes, “click, click, click,” she said.

And you know what I think now? I think the bowl, the yogurt, the berries, and even the cow, felt the love coming from me.

I know that sounds strange.

But it is something I am learning.

That when I savor things, I am loving them. And things love me back.

Dave, the gardener at the Chalice Well Garden, and the garden itself have been teaching me that…I had never quite seen it and felt it before.

But despite not knowing what I was doing, I have spent time savoring more and more lately here in Glastonbury. Savoring has always been a part of my personality, but here as I have slowed down, the gift of time has allowed it to shine more.

I have been taking photos of food, coffees in coffee shops, and restaurant scenes for years. There is something about it that is so beautiful, that even though I tell myself it is silly to take so many photos of things I eat, I do it anyway.

I remembered the pizza I made back in 2011. I was in our newly remodeled kitchen in Cardiff by the Sea. And I just couldn’t eat. We were getting a divorce and I was in the midst of what I later learned people call and experience as “The Divorce Diet”. It was hard to eat. I was only able to finish a tiny slice of the pizza. But I had one of my sons take a photo of me with it because that tiny pizza was beautiful and I wanted to document it.

I had the slimmest body I had had in years in that pizza moment…the kind of body I thought at the time, looked pretty. But I got there through the misery of the divorce diet.

And despite that, my smile was real. I was savoring the beauty of food even when I couldn’t eat much of it.

Now, as I walk through the Chalice Well Garden, I am learning to savor even more. Now my savoring is becoming more conscious. There is a sensuality to it that has nothing to do with sensuality in the way I am used to thinking of it.

I know now that the garden is a living, very aware being…collectively and individually in each tiny delicate plant and giant, powerful tree.

Dave, the gardener, told me that sitting in a garden and doing “nothing” is underrated. And now that I have tried it, I have to agree.

While I sit on a bench and do “nothing” the garden, and God through and in it, talks to me. I note down things I hear and something in me slows down so much more than ever before. The plants have a glow I have never seen. I watch shadows dance on the ground in patterns of light that look like ripples on a pond. But light dances everywhere. It dances in the leaves of the trees. In the gardener’s eyes, and on the tiny, fragile petals of the white flower next to me.

Sometimes I pause and take out my cell phone, always in airplane mode, and let her speak and dance with the images as she sings, “click, click, click.”

I tell her I will need them.

I tell myself that maybe sometime, despite the challenge I find drawing presents, I will take time to draw some of it? When I draw or paint, time slows down. My right brain gets to rest as my left kicks in. And I need time to draw. A photo gives me that…

“Click, click, click.”

I also know even if I never draw it, I am slowing down for the photo. My cell phone and I savor something together for a moment, which at times, I revisit.

Often now, I stop and touch things and notice the sensation against my skin. I run my hand slowly along the bark of a tree, both smooth and rough in places and notice the folds of it which remind me of my own skin. I touch the folds with care and take it in…its beautiful skin…so different and yet so similar to my own body.

I let plants flow softly through my fingers as I admire them. Now I know, that they feel it and that they too, are taking me in as well.

I press my face into blossoms to see if they have a scent and often, when I do and their mystical, often subtle fragrance flows through my soul, I see things I might have missed, like a tiny insect with transparent lacy wings.

I love to feel rose petals cup my face as I lean into so many blossoms at once…enough to cover my cheeks…enough to love me more than I have imagined being loved. The scent of rose wafts its way into my heart and softens the edges a bit. The places that have learned to be hard. To be careful. To be busy.

To stand and put one’s face in a heap of rose blossoms and just breathe…is a disruptive act.

As is this…a photo in which I zoom in, that shows my own tree wrinkles I am told by the Matrix not to love, on a face that is busy softening over time into rose petal folds that I also am learning despite what I am told, to savor.

There are news feeds to read. There are wars going on. The economy is tanking, or inflating…and “people are suffering!!!!” says the Matrix to me. “How can you spend time like this?” it says. “What are you doing?!!!! How are you contributing?”

Or it tells me what I write here is not enough. That I could do better. That I shouldn’t be spending so much time smelling roses. That I should spend more time editing, or just quit. “Why don’t you just quit?” it says.

And sometimes my mind listens and for a moment, I feel worthless, I feel uncertainty…but it doesn’t last. Because the Matrix is a lie and I know I am living in a dream.

And I tell it that writing too can be fun, if I let it. It slows things like thoughts down. It allows me to offer a gift out to the universe in some way that I know I am here for.

The only thing that matters here is love and one way to experience it is through savoring.

Right now asI am typing this to you, I just had the last slice of that bread I described. There are no other guests at my Air B&B. I have a station called “Quiet Music for Reading” playing on Spotify on my phone. There is a still-slightly warm cup of coffee with raw sugar (even though my mind tells me any sugar other than honey is bad) and a splash of almond/coconut milk in it.

I am thinking about savoring here that goes beyond even gardens and berries and rose petals. Some things have been hard for me to savor and take in.

Last night, I spoke to my mom.

She has been in the hospital.

She took a fall.

Mom is 82. Her bones break easily.

This time she didn’t break anything.

“Maybe it was heatstroke?” she says.

Mom didn’t let Dad tell anyone about her trip to the hospital until a few days later.

Through my lens, I think Mom finds it hard to receive care. And also, I know she doesn’t want to be told what to do by anyone in the family who may want to offer their gifts or opinions. And Dad feels a sense of control and care in keeping the news close as mom has asked in order to respect Mom’s wishes. And perhaps, Dad too finds it hard to receive. For I imagine, Mom’s increasing fragility along with his own, has to be hard to manage at times.

When it comes to my family, I feel savoring and receiving care is a disruptive act.

Every flower I love, every plant I speak too, every moment I allow myself to BE and feel the divine field in which I exist and am able to love myself more in the midst of the Matrix, changes things. I hope it changes things for them.

This morning I learned Mom had a 109 degree temperature when she arrived in the emergency room. My sister, a doctor, told her she had never seen such a thing. A day later Mom informed me it was actually 107.

Mom is frail.

There may be a surgery coming up soon to care for her heart and Mom hasn’t decided. She likes to avoid hospitals. She tells me she knows what they are like. She used to work in them. She tells me it was tiring to be there and be poked and prodded.

Then she begins. She begins to tell me things she likes to say, that she has told me before many times. She carries a poem with her. She has already sent it to me.

Here it is:

Desiderata-Words for Life:

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

— Max Ehrmann, 1927

I have brushed Mom’s poem off over the years. I haven’t really been able to savor it. Over the years, my parents have had strong opinions about things. They love to express their ideas to me. There is a lot of talking on their parts and not always a sense of savoring… So I react by tuning them out.

And I know, when it comes to my parents, I want to learn to savor things.

Mom mentioned without mentioning that when she collapsed it was the morning.

Dad makes breakfast now.

She likes to list all the reasons she finds Dad special. The house he built with her. The furniture he designed and built out of things he found at garage sales. How he does all the cooking now and how he brings her coffee in bed.

And when Dad called out to tell her breakfast was ready one morning, and didn’t see her, he headed into his office, where he likes to trade commodities. I think it may have been a few more hours before he became concerned.

Mom said something about being married sixty years and wondering, wishing I think, that Dad might have felt that she was there in need of help. But he didn’t, and I think he couldn’t.

It is not that he wouldn’t have wanted to…

But savoring life and people takes some vulnerability. It takes time. It takes allowing things that have been shut down for good reason.

For good reason.

I think of my mom.

I woke up last night at 2:30 am. She would have been back from seeing the doctor in California by then where it is eight hours earlier.

I didn’t call.

But I thought of her.

She told me, the night before, that she and Dad had gone to a weekly meeting at a park in Temecula with their friend.

She said there was a woman on a hill playing a guitar and singing.

The woman came down to see my parents and Mom gave her the poem, the poem I above.

She took the folded poem from Mom and Mom was so happy.

Mom, in that moment, felt received.

The woman played a song for them on her guitar. Mom said she teaches yoga in Temecula. Then she went up the hill and came back with two dandelion flowers, one for each of them.

“You know Terra, you can eat them,” Mom told me.

I do know.

My mind whispered to me that eating dandelions from a public park might not be the best idea and I patted my mind on the head as I so often do now.

I see that woman and those dandelions as a gift for Mom. I imagine she felt like I do when I put my face in a bouquet of roses hanging in the garden here.

I find it beautiful that a woman with a guitar who could see the gift in two elderly souls in a park, early one Sunday morning. That she loved the poem and that now, I too have slowed down enough to take it in.

Tears come to my eyes as I savor it all.

Mom may have surgery soon.

I don’t know.

A valve in her heart needs replacing.

But I read they can do it with general anesthetic…

And I also know that Mom is tired and she is getting older. Life has not always been easy. She loves working outside in her garden and more and more, she stays in bed recovering from the latest fall, surrounded by books she loves to read.

If anyone wants to learn about Advaita Vedanta, Mom is happy to offer her pearls of wisdom. If anyone can receive a poem…about life…well, Mom probably has one with her.

So, “Savor things…” I tell myself. “Keep savoring, Terra.”

I have a flight booked now.

To Crete.

In a week.

For two days I sat at my computer and did my best to not allow anxiety to run the show as I looked at where I will go from here. My cuticles suffered. It is one symptom of uncertainty for me.

And I reached a point where I remembered what the garden has been teaching me and I asked a question:

“Terra, what feels easy?”

That is when I saw the flight to Crete out of a nearby airport. Then I found a place to stay.

I booked a one way ticket and a room for two weeks.

I could fly to the US instead.

I am considering it.

And I don’t think Mom would like it.

There is a reason she doesn’t tell people about things.

It really is hard for her to receive.

And I get that.

Sometimes it has been hard for me too.

So one dandelion flower handed to each of my elderly parents is much more of a big deal than it may seem.

And me, walking through a garden despite what life tells me, and talking to plants there…well, that matters too.

I think Mom feels it.

“Terra, you know when you called, at just the right time, when Miko-Cat had just passed away?”

“Yes Mom, I remember.”

“Well, Terra, somehow you knew to call right then. Remember? Your dad cried when she passed Terra. I saw a few tears on his cheeks. He doesn’t usually cry… I wonder how you knew when to call…?”

I imagine Mom wants to be savored, to be resonated with.

We all do, don’t we?

We just have to hold our own hearts with care, and compassion, and let ourselves be awed by berries and phone calls and dandelions…

At least, that is what I feel in this moment.

I asked Dave, who calls himself “Just a Gardener", as he sat on a bench next to me, why, when he asked the garden what plant I needed, it led him to a Sweet Cicely plant that was so scraggly. What did it mean? I had been contemplating it ever since. Was the garden trying to show me that life is fleeting?

“Oh that’s easy Terra,” he replied. “The garden took me to that plant so you could love it.”

“You see, I had to transplant it. I didn’t want to, but I had to move it. And it has been struggling a little bit…”

When Dave left, I walked back to the Sweet Cicely plant. It is hidden a bit now by plants that are thriving around it. But Dave had put a sign near it so I could find it.

I had visited it a few times already. I had touched its leaves and noted their softness… Now, I talked to it. I told it how beautiful it was. I loved it like my Grandma taught me to do…with a fuchsia plant in her garden. I removed a few dead stalks from around it and set them nearby.

The Matrix, the Lucid Dream we are in, will tell you what to do and how you should do things. Regardless of how you or others feel about it.

To Savor is a disruptive event.

It breaks one’s heart open.

It lets the love in.

I imagine the Matrix is afraid of it.

*After I finished writing this I walked across the street to the garden where a lovely man who works there named Anthony said, “Wait just a minute Terra. I have something for you.”

He didn’t know I had written any of this.

Anthony handed me a piece of paper with some poems on it.

“This is for you,” he said with a smile. “I would love to read you the first one.” And he did.

“Don’t ever forget,” I remind myself, “that this life is certainly akin to The Matrix and I am here to learn from it and receive its gifts.”

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse.

Some years, muscadel
faces down frost;

green thrives;

the crops don’t fail.

Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss;

sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

—Sheenagh Pugh

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