Gardens: Red
Feb. 5th, 2020 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jkatkinaThis is the first entry in a set of visualization documentations. I've recently returned to an old interest in internal symbology and subconscious spaces. There is a particular guided meditation sequence I've been using now and then at night to explore internal landscapes.
The conceit of this meditation is a series of gardens meant to represent the chakras. I don't personally subscribe to the spirituality inherent in things like chakras, but I find the structure in plumbing internal landsapces to be useful and interesting.
Red
This is a space that evokes (but does not reflect) my childhood home and the garden my father keeps there.
The gate is old wrought metal, simple, painted with many layers of red paint that have flaked over time, but are repaired with care. It latches with a simple metal gate-latch where you press a little tab to raise a piece and let the gate swing either in or out. The gate attaches to a a ribcage-height stone wall made of many grouted-together pieces of grey stone.
The garden itself is made of two lobes, like a venn diagram that overlaps about a quarter of the way.
The first lobe, immediately upon entering, leads into a walking maze made of low plants and cobblestone. You could step over the plant borders, but it's about the walk. The configuration of this maze changes -- I think based on a nexus of how opaque I'm feeling that day (more complex maze), and how much stuff I feel like I need to get done (simpler maze, to move forward more quickly). When I first explored this space, the plants were undefined and small. I have since re-planted them to be berry shrubs, tomatoes, peas, trellis flowers, carrots, and other food-producing greenery. Sometimes the maze is very simple and the more finicky food-producers (endlessly the tomatoes need attention) are in tidy rows in the middle of this lobe of the garden. When they're here, they're easy to tend and weed and I apprecate the gesture.
Between the two lobes are the tool shed and the compost bin. The garden is a Venn diagram, but the fence around it is shaped like an elongated circle, like a hockey rink, and in the spots in the middle but where the Venn diagram isn't, on the left (on approach) is the tool shed, and on the right (on approach) is the compost bin.
The compost bin is chicken wire and wooden posts, with a slanted lid, and it is very big. This is where I put all the things I can't use: painful things, old grudges, memories that really have no business endlessly replaying. (I am a firm believer that you can get good out of anything, and that the compost bin is the way to do this.) I stir it on occasion, and check it to make sure it's moist, and occasionally take stuff out to fertilize the maze, but mostly it sits and beautifully rots.
The tool shed I haven't looked at much. It's old, bleached pine, like the structures on my grandparents' ranch, but it's sturdy. I haven't gone in here often -- sometimes for a hose or a trowel, but not often. The interior is dusty but tidy, with no light: only what streams in through the cracks on the grey-brown walls, or in through the open door. On occasion, Evan has been sitting on a bench on the maze-facing outside of the tool shed.
The second lobe of the garden is the orchard. This is less visually defined, but has more of an emotional presence. The trees on the left are familial relationships; the trees on the right are non-familial relationships. Between all the trees there is grass, and around the borders I've tried to plant rasbperry bushes, but they haven't taken yet. I think fruit grows on some of these trees, mainly sweet, round, red-and-green apples.
To be honest, I spend most of my time with the maze when I'm in the red garden. The orchard makes me sad. There are a lot of stumps, and a lot of old trees that are still very small. The right side is pretty sparse ill-maintained. (But for interest's sake, I've been prepping a space on the left to plant a new tree next to TL's. The spot is beautiful: there is a soft, open space for it, it's ringed by the rest of the family trees, and the sun touches the ground there.)
The egress of the garden is another gate, hazier, greyer, leading to a gravel path up the base of a mountain. Next time, orange.
The conceit of this meditation is a series of gardens meant to represent the chakras. I don't personally subscribe to the spirituality inherent in things like chakras, but I find the structure in plumbing internal landsapces to be useful and interesting.
Red
This is a space that evokes (but does not reflect) my childhood home and the garden my father keeps there.
The gate is old wrought metal, simple, painted with many layers of red paint that have flaked over time, but are repaired with care. It latches with a simple metal gate-latch where you press a little tab to raise a piece and let the gate swing either in or out. The gate attaches to a a ribcage-height stone wall made of many grouted-together pieces of grey stone.
The garden itself is made of two lobes, like a venn diagram that overlaps about a quarter of the way.
The first lobe, immediately upon entering, leads into a walking maze made of low plants and cobblestone. You could step over the plant borders, but it's about the walk. The configuration of this maze changes -- I think based on a nexus of how opaque I'm feeling that day (more complex maze), and how much stuff I feel like I need to get done (simpler maze, to move forward more quickly). When I first explored this space, the plants were undefined and small. I have since re-planted them to be berry shrubs, tomatoes, peas, trellis flowers, carrots, and other food-producing greenery. Sometimes the maze is very simple and the more finicky food-producers (endlessly the tomatoes need attention) are in tidy rows in the middle of this lobe of the garden. When they're here, they're easy to tend and weed and I apprecate the gesture.
Between the two lobes are the tool shed and the compost bin. The garden is a Venn diagram, but the fence around it is shaped like an elongated circle, like a hockey rink, and in the spots in the middle but where the Venn diagram isn't, on the left (on approach) is the tool shed, and on the right (on approach) is the compost bin.
The compost bin is chicken wire and wooden posts, with a slanted lid, and it is very big. This is where I put all the things I can't use: painful things, old grudges, memories that really have no business endlessly replaying. (I am a firm believer that you can get good out of anything, and that the compost bin is the way to do this.) I stir it on occasion, and check it to make sure it's moist, and occasionally take stuff out to fertilize the maze, but mostly it sits and beautifully rots.
The tool shed I haven't looked at much. It's old, bleached pine, like the structures on my grandparents' ranch, but it's sturdy. I haven't gone in here often -- sometimes for a hose or a trowel, but not often. The interior is dusty but tidy, with no light: only what streams in through the cracks on the grey-brown walls, or in through the open door. On occasion, Evan has been sitting on a bench on the maze-facing outside of the tool shed.
The second lobe of the garden is the orchard. This is less visually defined, but has more of an emotional presence. The trees on the left are familial relationships; the trees on the right are non-familial relationships. Between all the trees there is grass, and around the borders I've tried to plant rasbperry bushes, but they haven't taken yet. I think fruit grows on some of these trees, mainly sweet, round, red-and-green apples.
To be honest, I spend most of my time with the maze when I'm in the red garden. The orchard makes me sad. There are a lot of stumps, and a lot of old trees that are still very small. The right side is pretty sparse ill-maintained. (But for interest's sake, I've been prepping a space on the left to plant a new tree next to TL's. The spot is beautiful: there is a soft, open space for it, it's ringed by the rest of the family trees, and the sun touches the ground there.)
The egress of the garden is another gate, hazier, greyer, leading to a gravel path up the base of a mountain. Next time, orange.
