curios red ribbon as far back as he could remember he had his fingers in the dirt. his parents gave him a tiny patch of earth. he dug it with an edging shovel. his father gave him carrot seeds. he watched the rain soak the earth where he had pressed it flat. when the baby carrot leaves broke the surface it was cause for great rejoicing. he had learned a valuable life lesson. everything is made up of parts that connect to make a whole. the space, the effort, the materials, the motivation, the action, the waiting, the dependence, the sharing, the giving, the love. all of it occurring right in front of him. 140427 ... red ribbon he soon grew too many vegetables for the little plot to handle, so his dad gave him more space. he worked every chance he could muster and had so much produce that his dad helped him set up a stand. he made pockets full of cash right in front of his house. he did it year after year acquiring several regular customers. he set up shop at the town's farmer's market. many people loved the exotics he grew. he was an expert in melons, strawberries, and horseradish. he learned a great deal about dividing, rooting, and even cloning. he built a greenhouse out of old windows and a potting shed from old locust wood. he held seminars with goat cheese he had made himself and his own dandelion wine. he became an inspiration and an example to those who gardened. but, something inside him was not satisfied. he needed to go on from his place in the world and reach out for the other half of who he was, so he gave the burgeoning business to his brother. 140427 ... red ribbon i don't know how he found out about curios. he just showed up one day and i was the one who told him about the place, how it operated. he was excited and wanted to get started immediately. he had a truckload of compost and many kinds of seeds. the concept was simple. anyone was welcome. everybody was given a space like an individual cell in a beehive. there were walls, doors, ground, and open sky. the rest was up to the participant. you could bring what you wanted and make your space any possible way. it was an experiment to see what would happen when left to the mercy of its inhabitants. you grew your plants. you let others see them, eat them, exchange them. you helped each other. 140428 ... red ribbon i often saw the spark of the original fire in his eye. the concept of a twisty, tangly web forming intrigued him and he talked of many speculative possibilities. his first idea was to grow the things other people liked; peas, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, peppers. his fellow gardeners liked the stuff and many told him how fresh and tasty they were. he set up a booth outside his cell and others stopped by to exchange some of theirs for some of his. this is how curios worked and he was having a lot of fun meeting new people and making friends. i did find one thing strange. he never showed his real face when swapping with them. he wore a fox mask. 140429 ... red ribbon another day i saw him wearing a bird mask coming out of a new cell. "there's no rules about how many cells we can have, right?" he asked. i told him i didn't know of any rules in curios. i asked him what he was growing in there. "sunflowers." he said they were his favorite because they were a story if a story could be a thing of such completeness. "i just want to squeeze the plump seed in between my fingers," he told me. "you press them half a finger into the soil and when they come up it looks like they're wearing a little cap on their head." he brought some out for others to have. "the sun is here!" he sang, under the mask. he ran his hand across the tightly packed seeds inside the head of the flower, surrounded by the delicate yellow petals. "don't they look like people lined up watching the day unfold as if it was some kind of performance." i asked him if that was why he wore the bird mask. "sure," he said. "this is a stage. we're all players." 140430 ... red ribbon as time passed, he was maintaining several cells. i don't really know how he did it. he said it was only a quarter of what he did in his life and that this drink he made from green tea and 16 other ingredients, called dragon's blood gave him continuous energy. along with various flowers, he was growing fruit as well. he was inviting other participants into his cells and they often worked together on grafting projects and companion planting. he even made games and provided prizes. this went on for years. 140501 ... red ribbon days full of grazing nights full of sleep. there came a time at the close of the halcyon decade that i had to leave curios to gather stones and i wanted to go to him and tell him my plans of a temporary absence. i couldn't find him in any of his many cells. there were several others working in them, though. they said they hadn't seen him for a while and then went on with their own business, permitting each other the space they needed to explore who they were. i looked everywhere. several hours passed. finally, i found him in a ruined cell, set apart, nearly off the property. the rotting, wooden door was off its rusty hinges. there was grey mold on the walls and a stench of raw sewage. mildewed books sat in stacks. one whole wall was taken up by shelves of bird cages. all manner of birds created a cacophonous polyglot of song. he was sitting at a table cutting into a large purple onion. "check out the layers!" he yelled. he was wearing glasses that made him look like his eyes were two different sizes. i didn't know what to address first; what he said or what he looked like. 140502 ... red ribbon i just let him be who he was, without opposed restriction. i asked him what he was doing. "the law of physics dictates what i do," he said. "there is no free will. what i do is an act of randomness." he was using a microscope to look at genetically modified onion cells. carefully and meticulously, he inserted the contents from the slide to the onion he had sliced in half, right at its center, like a drop of water on the surface of a still pond. "i'm making a new onion that will taste like a sweet honeydew melon," he said. he smiled, and with the two different sized eyes he made me burst out a bright flash of laughter. "you're a mad scientist!" i said, clapping my hands like a school boy. 140503 ... red ribbon "ha! good one!" he called out. "i'm mad alright. we all are, actually. we are tossed to and fro, willy nilly, leaves tumbling head over heels, pushed by an invisible wind." he was busy. i don't know where he got his dna but it didn't belong to him. i asked him and he told me all about it and how thankful he was that it was available and offered for free. "we all see out of two different eyes. we see the obvious and the hidden. everyone is the same as me. we are all entitled to our version of the truth because there is no truth. it is an illusion. a figment of our imaginations. and then there is the third eye..." when he said this, i think it was with that eye that he looked at me. 140504 ... red ribbon he shook my hand. his palm was like sandpaper. cut onion was strong in the air and burned my eyes. "be careful," i said. "don't worry," he said. "these people get what i do here." and so i left him, a bit worried with what i'd find when i returned. 140505 ... red ribbon i called him on his cell phone after the first week. he didn't answer, so i heard this voice message greeting: "The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust." immediately i recognized it as "the rock" from t. s. eliot. later, after seven tries, he answered. i asked him if he was lonely. "no one is ever alone or by themselves," he answered. "all around us life desires to connect with us. once we discover which level or layer, we are one. all life is made from the same constitution." he coughed and then added. "turn over the rock and what do you find? maybe a nest of butterscotch ants. you never know unless you turn the rock over." 140506 ... red ribbon he began leaving me daily text messages: "be who you are. i am being who i am." 140508 ... red ribbon this day's one was from rilke... “most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.” 140509 ... red ribbon i texted him a smiley face. the following day i received this text: "make love, it's spring." i sent back, "right on." that was the final written text i got from him, although in two following consecutive days, he sent me these numbers. 1357531 and 35553. and then that was it. no more communication. 140510 ... red ribbon i had a dream that night that he was on a small boat in the middle of an empty sea and he suddenly crashed into a submerged rock. i woke very disturbed. i wonder if something happened to him. 140512 ... red ribbon the following night, i dreamt he was clinging to what was left of his boat. my throat was dry. i called him. he didn't answer, but there was a new message: "Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women—endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone." i had to look it up and discovered it was a from lydia davis. 140513 ... red ribbon and then that night, as the clouds slid over the moon like cool sheets in the humid night, i dreamt his dead body washed up on the shoreline. it was time to return to curios. 140514 ... red ribbon i rode my bike all the way there. 2468 miles. it took me a year. i made seven friends along the way. that is a completely different story. 140515 ... red ribbon curios_begin_again 140517 what's it to you? who go blather from