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Best Laid Plans

the far fields tw

The Far Fields painting by Nolan Winkler

To accomplish your task, you must have a clear intention of what you wish to accomplish. You’ve probably heard those words or a close variant multiple times in your life. I know I have. Seems obvious, and yet I wonder if we might also truthfully say: to accomplish your task, you need only go forth with the intention of doing something and the universe will provide you with myriad opportunities to accomplish all sorts of things, and by accomplish we mean have a neato experience that may result in a tangible something like an apple pie or a pile of money or a new car, or may not result in a physically tangible something but might provide you with a valuable insight or change of heart.

Going forth with a willingness to participate in the dance of life is the primary plot device of most Sufi tales, and the recurring message of those tales is that God, the universe, is waiting for us to take action so she can react to our actions in the manner of a brilliant improvisational dance partner. No wonder I love Sufi tales.

For instance, this morning after a long bout of rewriting the latest magnum opus, I had the very clear intention of going out to the orchard to cut down a huge shrub that overshadows two of my apple trees and is growing so fast that by next year the cutting down will be a Herculean task rather than a couple hours of hard work if I do the cutting down this year.

So I get my most excellent Japanese pole saw, my most excellent Japanese loppers, my razor-sharp Japanese hand clippers, and sally forth to the orchard to peruse the massive shrub and plan the excision. The day is sunny, our first such day in nearly a week, the coastal fog heavy of late, and I am feeling strong and ready, my tools sharp, my intention clear.

I approach the shrub and discover that the several three-inches-in-diameter trunks I wish to cut are on the outside of our deer fence adjacent to the nameless dirt and gravel lane that services three of our neighbor’s houses, none of those houses visible from our house.

So I exit the orchard through a gate in the deer fence and head down the nameless lane where in the distance I espy my neighbor Dave stretching a tape measure across the dirt and gravel track. I walk fifty feet beyond the shrub I intend to cut down, greet Dave, and learn he is building a fence along his property line and wants to make sure he is siting the fence far enough back from the lane.

We agree he’s doing a boffo job, his siting perfecto, and I look back the way I came and see a massive blob of redwood boughs sticking out from a gang of redwoods on our property, the blob hanging way too low over the lane, an obstacle to large delivery trucks, and I am reminded I’ve been intending to have this blob of boughs removed for several years now, but assumed I could not do the job myself because the boughs are attached to the trunks of the redwoods higher than I thought I and my hand tools could reach.

But today, for some reason, armed with my most excellent pole saw that can be extended to twenty-feet in length, and with Dave’s encouragement, I decide to attack the blob. A few cuts along, Dave departs for the golf course, and I realize I could use the help of my marvelous pole lopper, which I fetch. After an hour of sawing and lopping, I have excised the blob and created a great mass of fallen boughs now blocking the lane.

At which moment, unbidden, Marcia arrives and helps me haul the boughs to our driveway for dismemberment into kindling for our wood stove and green waste for the county compost pile. Whilst hauling the boughs, Marcia studies the lane and discerns three large manzanita branches emanating from our property and invading the air space quite low over the lane and threatening telephone wires. So I decapitate those branches and whilst decapitating them discover the Doug Fir I noted growing amidst the manzanita two years ago that was then a scrawny six-feet-tall and is now a robust eighteen-feet-tall and promising to be thirty-feet-tall next year. So I cut the fir down, too.

Following a water and snack break, I spend a couple hours converting the redwood boughs and fir tree into kindling and green waste, and as of this writing the troublesome shrub is still standing.

One Sufi-tale ending to this story might be that at dusk, in search of huckleberries, I return to the orchard and hear the most beautiful singing I have ever heard. I look around the orchard to discover the source of the song, and there in the shrub I intended to cut down is a large nest made of many small redwood boughs, and in the nest are three golden baby birds singing like angels, newly hatched golden baby angel birds who never would have hatched from their eggs had I carried out my intention to cut down the shrub.

As I listen to the angelic singing, I realize Dave was not really Dave, but a spirit being disguised as Dave sent to protect the eggs of the golden birds, and I also discover that when lopping the redwood boughs, I unknowingly lopped in half a terrible dark-skinned viper that might have one day killed me or Marcia or both of us, and surely would have eaten the eggs containing the golden birds. I eventually make a really cool belt out of the viper’s skin.

Another possible Sufi-tale ending might be that I return to the orchard the next day to cut down the troublesome shrub and find a powerful goddess disguised as an old woman sitting in the shade of the shrub. Grateful for the shade and plums and blackberries she’s helped herself to, she grants me three wishes. I choose wisely and my wishes set in motion a swift reversal of global warming and human over-population, while ushering in a renaissance in literature and cinema.

Even so, I still plan to cut the troublesome shrub down because I want my apple trees to thrive. But I’ll wait a few days to do the deed, which will give the baby golden angel birds time to fledge and fly away.

behold the blue, tw

Behold the Blue painting by Nolan Winkler