Unreality

There are a lot of things I don't really like about winter. There is one thing I do like about winter though. In the winter, the farm is just a seed. It is just a seed farm, tucked away sleeping in my head. Its tiny, hard, and still, like a perfectly compressed spring. It does not

move or change. I can roll the whole farm around in my head in the winter. I can poke it and toss it and hold it up to look at it, and it is always there, shining and hard like nothing ever happened. Because nothing does happen on my seed farm. It is all promise. All idea. All possibility. But no performance. No transformation. No warmth. It is bursting with promise, but it never bursts, it just sits there pregnant.

It is the opposite of my summer farm. My summer farm is not nearly as neat as my seed-farm. The summer farm has all kinds of wild branches and vibrant colors and lucious aromas. It dances and streches and changes and unfolds. It is different from one day to the next. Each day you must check on it like you check on the daffodils in the spring. Each day you go and look at that swollen bud to see if any yellow is leaking out yet because each day it is different. Every day the performance of the summer farm draws you out and bathes you in newness.

Not so with my winter farm. You can carry it with you all the time. And you can put down the seed farm and pick it up again later and it is just the same as it was. Its tidy, with nothing unexpected popping up. It is so small and hard nothing can damage it either. The high tunnels on my seed farm have never been blown away. The tools are always in their place. The grass is always freshly cut.

The seed-farm is a secret pleasure. Eventually it spoils though. Then you long for it to sprout. When the sun returns, all hard things melt, and the tiny hard seed becomes flesh to save me from my icy fantasies.

The only perfect farm is the farm in my head.

Joel