The Blue Melon

Of Melon & Mule: A Memoir

I was amusing myself at a farmer's market while a dear friend of mine gathered into her sparsely shopped shopping basket fresh produce for her evening meal. She had been away the week before at a conference and still hadn't grounded yet from its glow of success. When I arrived at her apartment complex to pick her up she filled my head with all the wonderful comments people had said about her. Some of those wonderful things I had already conveyed. "Yes," she responded without hesitation, "but you are my girlfriend and you always say nice things. Will you help me," she quizzes in the same unhesitating way, "will you help me haul my trash to the refuse containers?" "How's come I feel like a____"A what? A mule?" She fills in the blank beautifully and I cannot help see once more why they loved her at that conference! A mule exactly.

But, someone else flew back on that plane and I wanted the old girlfriend back. So, this is how I started amusing myself at the market that day. That's how I began imagining in whatever way I could how she was not valuing me enough (which allowed me to feel reduced to something trashy, by the way...which allowed me, as you may be guessing, to go be with the workings of my own inner trash) and it was just then she proceeded to ask me to pick her out a fresh melon. (because I do that so well) "Not today", I told her. "Why not?" She responds in a voice an octave or two higher and a face mirroring similar disbelief. "I'm withholding my talents today. I don't want to be a beast of burden," I said. "I think that's a rock song," she affirms kindly as she picks through the melons. This is how 'mule' and 'melon' start belonging-together. Seems to be the way they always start working together; a way of collusion, letting me throw my talents into the trash with impunity.

I often take my friend to this farmer's market. She often takes her time shopping. So the sparsely shopped shopping basket is a regularly repeating motif requiring herculean effort on the part of my creative genius to accommodate patiently her timeframe (not to mention strong legs to navigate the three or four times around we'll have to go to fill that basket just enough.)

Poetry is made from everyday experiences seen through variegating inner hues. Everyday experiences like the ones encountered just now at the Farmer's Market with my friend deepen psyche. One holds up ones' hands and frames the scene, snaps the imaginal photo and then begins looking through what is there. One rule. Everything in the scene and seen belongs. Even if it seems like nonsense. Especially if it seems like nonsense. Something is holding itself together like this. It's made up of her and I and mules and melons and...well, made up out of all sorts of things. But, something else not there is saying itself through the shapes being shaped just so--something not so very together nor easily visible. What is this just-so-ness? Who is talking when this speaks?

I went home that day feeling a bit low. I got a card in the mail. A teeny tiny card. It was from my mother. She lives in another state and she was thanking me for the Mother's Day present I sent her. I had my husband hand deliver it. He happened to be in town on business. I suddenly began feeling progressively worse. Something about love, body, mother and absence crept in. One poetic rule. Everything belongs. That's when I sat down and wrote the poem. I wrote it, I thought, to cheer myself up (and dazzle my friend, too, no doubt!) Melon and mule. Poets see connections in slippery ways others won't easily see.

Actually, I have two poetic rules. The second one says, "Never censure." So now that the silly poem is here, I have to work with it. Feels pretty foolish to me. That's what The Fool is doing here. The feeling of fooling around and foolishness and the feeling poorly around a ground of specific absence come together and seem best expressed in Card Zero of the Tarot.

The Zero Card's inscription within the framing order of numerical value is marked with the valueless value assigned it. It weighs nothing-- floats. Is nothing--Phantom. Has no fixed center--Nowhere. Begins and ends nothing--Absence.

The Foolish Presence simply announces. That it is. And, what that is that it is, is not...and is now; is continuously without end and creates now what "now" looks like by re surfacing daily life with cthonic tonality.

The Archetypal Fool suggests images are exacting in their expressions of what they are as they so appear. We must soften in our sense of self to experience this because images are of the same subtle substances as dreams are made. They lead us to participate in our deeper likenesses whose languages are not teachable.