Earlier this week, I took a long drive to collect fresh Spring Water. This drive used to be easy, but the city closed the spring I’ve been gathering from for years. That spring was a beautiful 20 minute joyride from my house, never traffic, always lovely. Now I have to drive a good hour away, through busy trafficked highways and to wait in line while cars in front of me finished filling their jugs. Everything is always in flux, I’m reminded. The same way New York City keeps changing. Favorite shops and restaurants close, big banks or food establishment chains taking their place. One day soon before I was leaving NYC for what was supposed to be a two year graduate school adventure in Portland (spoiler, it’s now an eleven year and counting adventure!), my dear friend and I were lamenting these changes. Her mother - a long time resident of NYC and poet- told us that this is the way of the city. Of places. Of life. Everything is always changing. It is generally out of our control, yet we can try and see the incessant bits of beauty as they are- the essence of it remains even when the more comfortable-to-us layers of it are vanishing. Because New York City is very different than it was when she fell in love with it, but its magic still there and always will be if I want to return, she promised. Eleven years later and I’m still in Portland. In August it will be a full ten years since I opened my Etsy shop to share the first iteration of Roots & Crowns. And now, Portland is also a city that keeps changing before my eyes. So I try to keep the poet’s wisdom in my back pocket as new noisy tenants move into the rental home behind our beloved hedge. And when the high-rises go up on the east side streets we used to bicycle around during the sunrise of our love. And when we’re in traffic-more reminiscent of LA than the Portland I moved to-to get to urgent care, as I hold my bloody foot up with a paper towel in the passenger seat to keep the blood loss as minimal as possible. And even when I travel longer distances to collect fresh Spring Water to make the first batch of Rose Mist from the Roses in our garden.
On the drive I listen to an episode of On Being about biomimicry and how lessons from the natural world can help us during a crisis. When there’s a cut on the body, there’s a rush of activity to the site of the wound. The urgency is to get the opening to close with whatever cells possible. A scab. Scar tissue. This is not permanent, and the initial make up of the healing will break down to give way for the next phase. When there’s a fire on the landscape, one tiny spider that has nothing to do with the original landscape can arrive on the wind and be the catalyst for activity to bring a whole new range of life to the destruction. This is not permanent. There will be seedlings, then bushes, then trees, and each will give way for the next phase of healing. Biodiversity is critical. You won’t find healing of the body or landscape through monocropping or just one element of cells. For vitality to return we need the gifts of many.
As I listen to these reminders, my mind wanders to my growing overwhelm for social media during the last few years- but especially for the last several months. I consider the fact that during times of crisis there is a rush of activity to the site of the trauma to do everything in Life’s power to stop the bleeding and lay down some version of healing. It is not perfect. It may seem grotesque and awkward and jagged in the edges. It is not permanent. It takes a long time, but if you stick with it, it will give way to something more wholesome and sustainable. So I can trust my instincts for the beyond binary. I can trust my instincts to be distrusting of dogma. I can also keep reminding myself that healthy ecosystems require consistent adaptability and the ability of its inhabitants to weave their individual gifts into the fabric of reality as a whole. These times require a multitude of perspectives, approaches, intentions, and actions. If we plant a corn field where a food forest is critical, the wound won’t heal.
Roses are all roses, but they still strike me as a gorgeous metaphor of diversity. The fact that they grow in virtually all landscapes across the globe. They appear in art and literature and generations of romance throughout all cultures. Yet, there are infinite kinds of roses! There are climbing roses, full-bushed roses, roses that take over buildings, permeating the edges of the woods. There are roses with the spikiest thorns and roses with no thorns at all. There are fragrant roses- my god the endless array of fragrances! There are roses in such an endless array of fragrances and colors they would make any heart burst wide open. Fresh Rose petals are soft as a new baby’s skin, and sun-dried blooms will always be found at the side of the grave. They are present during dance recitals, love proposals, celebrations and holidays throughout life. Rose on skin, in food, to anoint, so enjoy, to honor, to remember, to come together with, to imagine.
As a young person, my awareness of Rose was limited to tired unscented grocery store roses that Shabbat guests brought for my mom. Or that synthetic “grandma”-y rose perfume some of the elders at synagogue wore. As I got older and learned to literally stop and smell the roses, a whole new world opened to me. And when I started learning about skincare and plant medicine, that world blossomed even bigger. There is a reason why my Rose Facial Serum has been a best-selling product since I started selling it. Rose works. If I made a roster of every potion I make for my shop, I know Rose is the most ubiquitous plant throughout the line. And this is the time of year when they really shine.
Roses are a teacher of resilience, and the ubiquity of love. Each winter, we cut the stalks heavy with rosehips way down. Each time this feels like a sacrifice. Short stubs poking up where bunches of blooms used to grow up as high as my forehead. And then they grow back. Healthier, fresh leaves, and dotted with buds. The first flush of Roses in late spring are magnificent! In quantity and strength of scent. When I was in my early 20’s in my “new age era,” I came across this quote about flowers in Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth:
One morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years... Much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of human beings developed, flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics... Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a “silent sermon” once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile... Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature.
This wisdom about flowers always brought the Rose to mind. Perhaps the most well-known and identified flower. And also Rose’s scent, familiar display of unfolding petals, culinary uses, even to bestow onto other humans as a name! And isn’t it true? Flowers are like the artists of the landscape. They exist for delight and beauty and to gently push metaphors into our hearts and minds to make better sense of the senseless. In that episode about biomimicry they spoke about a new discovery in science about our ability to literally create adaptive coding in our genes instead of fully morphing into something else. This is vital for our health as various species and as a planet. Specifically not to just overthrow our entire unique genetic makeup as we survive big changes. The Rose will not become a Dandelion. It still is a Rose, but it may create new phenotypes to survive certain conditions. In the podcast they wove the metaphor of this science of phenotypic plasticity with the creativity needed during the difficult times of our lives. If biodiversity is critical for healing and repair, so is leaving space for each of our gifts in a movement of change. Artists, musicians, poets, writers… we each have something to give to the connective tissue of a movement. If we’re all forced to be monocropped, there will be no healing.
So for Rose Week, I am calling up the Rose. The ancient volumes of metaphors Rose speaks to. With the protective thorns. The seasonal resilience. The ability to flower, bear fruit, be colorful, climb, sprawl, be a statement of beauty and love just for the heck of it. To be beautiful as a signal of the Good. A rose for you is to quiet the noise pollution all around us (and within our own minds!) and feel the softness of the petals against your skin. To really get down into it with your whole nose and attention and discern the fragrant notes. To drop some Essence onto your tongue. To mist it on your face. To adorn yourself in its oil. These are the moments of connection to the one thing that is always true. Perhaps it’s something like Love.