Seeds

I have been thinking about seeds lately.

I was surprised when I opened the pack of carrot seeds and saw just how tiny they were. A splinter you would barely notice if it were in your thumb.

The distance from splinter to something I would need a knife to chop into circles for my chicken soup was a journey my brain struggled to traverse. I eat carrots. To get a taste of an average-sized carrot I get at the market, I have to bite down, hard.

A seed carries the promise of the carrot. If I eat the seed, what am I actually eating? An idea? Potential? A little black speck that later I will have to use floss to rediscover because the seed went and planted itself between my molars?

Is the seed sitting in the pack at the hardware store just aching to bust out? Or is it dormant, sleeping, unaware?

What happens when a seed is given soil, water, light?

I got a growing kit: an in-house greenhouse. It comes with a heating mat, a plastic bottom and a see-through plastic top to keep in the moisture.

I got this stuff, only I didn’t know seedlings needed special light. I thought the light I live by in my house would be enough.

Those seeds did not grow.

I watched a few Youtube videos and learned about the importance of fluorescent or LED lights when growing plants. I went back to the hardware store dressed like a criminal, mask and gloves on. I was the seedling bandit, out in the world determined to grow something, even if it killed me. (I know, I know, or someone else. Hence the gloves and mask.)

The seed is delicately pushed into the dark, and if the conditions are right, if the ph of the soil is good for the seed and if there is not too much or too little water, and if the temperature stays well above freezing, the seed will reach for the light.

We were also once seeds, seeds that were burrowed into a mother earth, seeds that did this unimaginable thing: they became something entirely different.

Us.

Can you imagine if the next time you went out all you saw were sperms walking around with shoes and clothes and a baseball cap on? You’d be surrounded by martians looking for home! (Granted, really, really, really tiny martians, but whatever, this is all for fun. Just go with it.)

What if this virus, this time we are asked to stay at home, is a new darkness? What if we are invited to be still and to germinate and to see who we really are when we let ourselves reach for the light?

What was not true in your old life?

If you knew your self was reaching for the purest light imaginable, what would it contain? What is pure to you? What is good? What matters?

I had the sense this morning as I was out planting seeds, that I may need to learn how to grow what I eat.

That could either be a terrifying thought or wildly liberating.

What if we’re all just a bunch of sperm fighting to get home so we can become our dreams?

Hahahaha.

I need to get out and be with people.