AROMATUM

Jun 21, 2013

Silver Thread Spruce

It's a strange sensation driving over land that contains precious metals and semi-precious stones. Mountains dug and scraped and toppled and rocks chiseled and sorted and turned over and over to find what is valuable to us, what has use, what will hammer smooth or hold fast. Or even beyond any practical use, what will give us pleasure, what will delight us by virtue of its color, its shadowy gleam, its quiet sparkle-song.


Jun 5, 2013

Sage Officina

All of my houseplants have come together for a family reunion on my porch. They are the last things I will move in my transition out of my apartment, along with a few shampoo bottles and precious vinegars and oils. They look good together, my plants: the orphaned orchid I rescued five years ago from the Oberlin College greenhouse next to the aloe vera that was an offspring of my godmother Meme's; the glossy-leaved coffee tree hauled back across the Pacific by my intrepid parents settled in beside the jade I inherited from an old roommate who now lives in South America.


The sage is only a baby, planted in late April in an old feta tin from work that I filled to the brim with dirt. It's made quite a home inside this once-briny tin, and I am proud. I am remembering now a dream I had last night of being on an island in Greece lounging in the hot sun. There were herbs and flowers and tan people. Then suddenly the skies darkened and I was running for cover from a tornado that whipped across the now-Oklahoma land and I was diving in and out of storm cellars, down ladders where people waited below, their faces white with fear and yelling at me to close the hatch.