roots

i haven't been participating in the sunday scribblings lately because i've felt that i never had anything to contribute, i couldn't think of anything interesting to write. honestly, i started participating in memes to see if i could get more people reading iGoddess, to see if i could get people to think and imagine and grow to like my voice. i've since discovered that, unless you have tons of communities you belong to or you blog about a cat, the only way to get people to read what you write and actually respond to it is to leave comments on tons of blogs. well, i just don't have the time or energy.

here's where i would say, "well, then it's time i just get back to the roots of this blog." but...the focus has changed. and i've been true to that, i think. but sometimes i wonder at my reader response, my few and very loved and valued faithful readers, and how it reflects my life now with my few, but very loved and faithful family. perhaps the blog hordes just don't appreciate a rootless wonder gypsy wanderer?

most sunday scribblers have chosen to write about their own roots, where they come from, and where they are today. and as i sit and think about it, i have to wonder...

what do you do when you've mutated into a completely different plant than what your roots originally designed?

once upon a time i used to think that if i ever had to leave the house where i grew up (aka the house of oppression), i'd never go more than a few miles from the epicenter of my childhood. not that i liked my childhood, mind you, but in my case my roots had made it impossible for me to embrace the possibility of change. instead what happened was i was dragged, pretty much kicking and screaming, to the pacific northwest with a new baby and my white knight.

the knight error errant.


the memory makes me die laughing now, thank the Supreme Funk. now you'd have to drag me, kicking and screaming, away from portland. but it's not because of a panic at the thought of being dragged into the unknown. now the reluctance to leave stems from a deep and abiding love of having truly found my ideal climate.

my own eagerness to escape my abusive home made a cutting of me, clipped and taken far away from the mother plant. in my case, this was a Good Thing. five generations previous, my roots had taken a serious disease and it had spread throughout the root system to infect the entire plant as a whole, even though no one spoke of it and simply passed the sickness on to their budding little sprouts.

well, i was diseased, too. the cutting had the disease of the mother plant, after all. and while, for a while, i got worse, i've since discovered that my ideal climate doesn't foster such a disease, and it's being purged from my root system even as we speak.


i've put down my own roots now, i think. they're not going to ever be a fantastic root system, like some of the mightiest trees with their spreading roots to stabilize it and help it stand in the earth. nor am i like the amazing big-rooted springbeauty which is only a few inches tall but possesses a taproot that commonly reaches ten feet or more in length.


honestly, i think i'm more like salvia divinorum, the sage of the diviners. her roots are thin and spindly, spreading over just enough area to keep her stable, but the only way to propogate her is through cuttings. i flourished after i was cut from my mother plant. i've been uprooted a baker's dozen times in the span of only a few years, nine of which were in the last three years. yet i always sprout roots immediately and flourish as best i can. and if i don't, i uproot and transplant myself elsewhere. somewhere where the soil is rich and the sun warm, where love rains down upon me and i am sheltered from the worst of storms.

and even after the worst of storms, when the sun comes out, there are rainbows. how many people can say they grow in their ideal climate, whether possessed of enduring root structures or transplanted cuttings?