It's been amazing having a garden in central London. It's been so amazing in fact that I even got next door to agree to let me dig up their garden and plant veg in it. Planting and then eating it has been a bit of a thing I never expected when becoming a homeowner. I thought buying a home was all about the equity, but I'd forgotten I could simply enjoy just living in it.
Living, I suppose is the optimum word here, as I've been watching the Rhubarb grow. Not quite like watching paint dry, as the seed forms and you beat off the snails, then leaves form and you knock out the snails, until finally it grows into an adult plant and you do a Mexican dance on the heads of the snails. I've no problem with this dance of the snails physically or ethically. I was once a vegetarian as my ex-girlfriend was one, but when we split up I thought, 'Hang on, small fish are eaten by bigger fish and bigger fish are eaten by even bigger fish', Woody Allen said, "It's like the whole worlds a huge restaurant"! So, I figured I'm part of the food chain, and the snails just get in the way of the rhubarb.
However, at the bottom of the garden was a Victorian pond. I removed the pond with hammer and sweat only to discover at the end of the destruction; a frog looking at me, and it made me feel guilty. So I put the frog in a bucket and on the passenger seat of my Citroen and drove it two miles down the road to the local stream. When I got back my girlfriend said in her Italian accent, "Where is the frog"? When I explained what happened to it she said, "What, why didn't we eat it, you dance on the snails but the frog doesn't become lunch"? Good point, being the last in the food chain on most of the planets surface I have the power of choice to end the living, and the Rhubarb is witness to that.
However, recently my aunt made her choice, and killed herself.
She was 56 years old and she took a substance were only just finding out was something she accessed off the Internet. Her death was quite a shock although something I'd thought might happen, but not in such a calculated way.
It made me think of the Rhubarb.
As I watched the Rhubarb getting bigger day by day even though the snails devoured parts of it, I reasoned, it wants to live, and it fucking goes for it like the sun will not rise the following day.
It made me realise that even with the dark days in my mind that happen from time to time, suicide is not painless. As I sat in the back of that shit church watching her body descend into fire I saw that to everyone around this end of the living, their is no glorious end; it's just a shotgun in the mouth like Cobain or a bottle in the hand like Winehouse, and those who loved that person can't see why they didn't want to grow like the sun will never rise again.
Once I've seen this sun rise it doesn’t make me self righteous as I understand those in the throws of death cant see a way out and the only way to end this pain is to seek any kind of peace, even if that peace means death. One of my friends found peace in football and is now a devoted Arsenal fan, I say I'm happy for her but that she should have chosen a much better team like Wigan FC, even though the league doesn't reflect this. Aside from the team choice I see she wants to live, and like the Rhubarb she's fucking going for it.
http://www.timothyfoster.co.uk
