guarden (n.) a deeply personal, guarded sanctuary composed of symbols, memories, and meanings that hold deep significance to an individual. This quasi-sacred space often serves as a source of beauty, purpose, and emotional grounding in their life.
(a portmanteau of English “guard” and “garden,” which share a common etymological root.)
Behind a high wall, without gaps, without gates, without ladders, I have grown a garden. A garden of flowers and butterflies of all colors, birds of all songs. Few know of my garden. Those that know, cannot see it without gaps, without gates, without ladders. Birds that could sing about it are fettered by awe and cannot fly out. Sometimes, a flower reflects in my pupil, but blackness does not reflect colors, so naturally, it escapes even those who know. I don’t blame them. There might be even more beautiful gardens within them, of which I will never know.
Have I grown a garden? That’s saying too much! The garden grew itself. From seeds sown by hundreds of fleeting glances and smiles, watered by dozens of unfinished conversations. Nurtured by unfulfilled late night dreams. Fleeting, unfinished, unfulfilled? Could it be a tragic garden? Sometimes, especially at the end of the day, there’s something sad about it, but then a butterfly, a memory of a few sentences, lands on the back of my hand, and only beauty and a smile remain.
My garden is impossible, like an Escher drawing. A high wall stands on its perimeter, yet somehow does not enclose it. As a result, my garden is everywhere. Flowers overgrow railings and doorknobs. Stubbornly they grow out of walls and roads. Running, I have to be careful not to step on them. Birds flock to my shoulders. Some are Kundera’s birds of chance. I cannot count them. Others, seemingly non-accidental, rest after long migrations. I feed them hope. I give away my hope to them! Sometimes I catch them hiding it inside the corollas of daffodils. Hope is hard to get rid of. Hope is like aphids or weeds! (yet without it I am a flame without the light)
Some time ago, I felt that beauty was overwhelming the garden. Birds began to sing over each other, and flower pigments began to blend into black, as if on the palette of some clumsy painter. I felt that I had to take something from the garden outside. To weave bird songs and flower colors into melodies. I began to scatter seeds of flowers and hope on top of the wall, hoping that the birds and the blossoming would be noticed there. Even if only by those who know. This was the beginning of the end of my garden.
My garden is a complex and fragile ecosystem, and I don’t know what’s happening to it. Sometimes I think that stealing a few bird songs and flower seeds has thrown it out of its precarious balance. Sometimes a simpler truth just dawns on me, that everything that lives must die. The garden is dying, and there’s nothing I can do about it. In moments when I forget about my helplessness, I water it with tears. Salt accelerates the inevitable. Flowers wither on railings and doorknobs. I step on them while running. In rare moments when I thrash around in resistance, I scare the birds off my shoulders. Hungry, without regular bites of hope, they eat the most beautiful butterflies. It reminds me of the words of a song: “Saying farewell, I shoo away the butterflies, Entwined with fluttering in my fingers (…) Saying farewell, I close my eyes, To remember you better” my most beautiful of gardens.
Third Woods 