Technical Difficulties

I’ve been looking at a photograph of one of my favorite flowers, a dandelion. I let them grow where they will, because they are good for wishes, and medicinal, and edible, and invariably bright. They make me smile.

And they grow all over the world, these bold marauders. The photo in front of me was taken on the outskirts of Tokyo & is captioned “second mutated dandelion found”

The dandelion in the photo has a stem that seems curiously thickened. The flower is—well, it seems twisted, multiplied, as if it had begun as one blossom and then became, in its struggle, eight or nine. They are crimped, these joined, changed flowers.

The man who put the photo up for all to see, well, he’s alarmed. He lives in Tokyo. News is shut down as to what the levels of radiation are, what’s happening. He sends this photo out into the world, a small link.

It’s not much different than here, when you think on it. There are those minute stories—some debris hitting land in the north. Not much else. If anyone is checking radiation—well, they aren’t saying.

These are the days of spring in which really all I want to do is sink my hands into the earth, to mull over gardens, to adore the first roses and the fleeting lilac, to try to grow a bit of food. I want to drowse and dream in the sunlight like my cats and watch the ferns unfurl. I don’t want to be bothered. Voltaire knew my heart, yes, I want to cultivate my garden and pretend all is well, all is safe, no one is hurt, hungry, jailed, despairing.

The flowers are so beautiful. I love the yellow dandelions, seeding here and there, growing through gravel, unstoppable.

Spring brings the river floods and the flood of travelers. Some with books, some with dogs, all with hope or desperation, all with stories. Some of the stories are pretty and some far from it.

And I think of what I know and what I don’t know. The facts, the current events—these sift away, lost in the winds of springtime.

There were dandelions at the edge of the Boboli gardens decades ago when I heard, belatedly, of deaths in my home country. There were dandelions at the edge of almost every grave I’ve visited, and every place I’ve wandered, with children, with lovers, with my hurting heart.

I’ve always made wishes. Just a breath. Out to the universe.

Connection is an odd thing. It’s been on my mind as I’ve come from gardens & distractions, since in these odd days I can see a Tokyo dandelion in a second, or talk to a friend in Europe or in Palestine—but these weeks, the connection has been frail.

Technical difficulties. Not like—oh look, the plant is drooping, water it. But—everything falls apart. I’ve been dealing with technicians and long distance advice and at last my dirt and ink stained hands and a calm, if snarly, mind.

What connects & disconnects, it would seem, is one fine pin. A little sharp point like the tip of my pen.

It’s like the old nursery rhyme in which a whole kingdom is lost because there’s not a handy nail.

And I thought—we each sometimes think how insignificant we are. How vast the world, how complex. How full of joy and heartbreak and dance and rebellion—and how do we fit? Why do we matter?

In this world of dandelions of Fukishima, who knows…you might be the connector. That one tiny, insignificant, absolutely important piece.

The universe just might spin around you, your perfect, imperfect, yearning being.

And maybe—if you are just a tiny pin in the great scheme of things—maybe angels are dancing there.