Welcome to USDA Zone 8

There is a big palm tree outside my front door. Not a sugar maple, not a red oak, not a gnarled old apple. A palm tree. It has three fibrous, serrated trunks and an arcing fountain of fronds that trail against the upper windows of the building next door. This is a foreign creature, citizen of a different vegetable nation. I feel I should show my passport before sitting in its rustling shade.

Beyond the palm is a fig tree. The figs don't look ripe to my New Englander's eye, but an obstreperous group of starlings seems to think they're worth an argument. I'll trust the birds; I don't know figs. Nor do I know bananas, whose lavender inflorescences thrust like rockets against the high brick walls of my courtyard. I brush past encroaching piper auritum, a black pepper cousin with strange white pipe-cleaner flowers. Its crushed leaves really do smell like root beer.

I've never seen any of these plants before. Their exotic architecture reminds me that I am very far from home. I am stunned by my good fortune. I unpack my botany texts and field guides, pour myself a sweet tea, and begin to learn this strange new botanical tongue. My passport's been stamped; I'm staying awhile. I have a big palm tree outside my front door.

the light according to palms

Everyone knows light influences mood. The grand lighting designer for this latitude must have set the mood to “euphoria,” because here I am staggering around sun-drunk and bedazzled, high as a kite on the startling light in this humble inland city. I knew it would be hotter here—and it is!--but I didn't think ten degrees of latitude would lend such intensity to the visible light. The only place I've seen this shattering white radiance is at the beach.

I've always marveled at the light near the shore, even the cold New England coast. It is so clear, so pure, so exhilarating that I want to eat it, and I know it will taste cool and tart and clean, like fine lemon sorbet. This Louisiana light is Tabasco-sauce light. It burns my bare shoulders and leaches all the color from my midday flowers, searing its way into my brain until I can hardly think.

On this flat, floodplain landscape, under this transcendent light, I feel all the time like I'm about to round a corner and find an ocean. The local paper mill adds to the illusion--its sulfurous emissions stink like a salt marsh at low tide. People here joke that it's the smell of money, but to me it truly smells like the sea. I can't shake the feeling that I'm perched on the glittering edge of a continent. This is liminal light. I am poised on the brink of wonder.

all y'all

I was given something precious recently, an unexpected boon. It's a syllable. A sugarplum of a syllable. Specifically, a syllable in my own name. Here in Louisiana, my formerly curt “Kim” sounds as if it tastes good, its lone vowel pulled like taffy into a leisurely extra beat.

As a lover of words, I am in love with these words around me. They ooze through the humid air, one eliding into another, more like songs than sentences . . . sometimes unintelligible. The vowels pause to sunbathe, and all the endings are soft. Demanding consonants are massaged into submission, oppressive prefixes and endings simply dropped. It's all about the flow, and the conversation lilts along to its own indulgent rhythm. I had to try it. It tastes like blossoms on my tongue.

In Louisiana, I am a woman called “Keee-yim.” I like her quite a lot.

tea in the garden at midnight

-->-->One teacup, blue-and-white. (One saucer. One willow ware plate.) Two chairs with baroque red curves. Three trunks of a sheltering palm tree. Four: the numerological equivalent of my new address. Five fingers of my open hand, where I trace the evolving lines of my palm. (That word palm again—I may be a bit obsessed.)
This is how I count, these days. The blessings follow one upon another, bright beads slipping off a silken thread. The drowsy heat, the ecstatic light. Exotic, erotic flowers, and trees I've never met. Crawfish and catfish and Tabasco on my tongue. Greetings sung out by strangers, who savor each elastic vowel as it lingers in the air between us.

Boundaries and borders and transitional zones are fecund places. Look to the edge of the forest, the edge of the sea. As I move through my own transitional zone, learning these new languages, counting these lightshot beads, everything, everything is illuminated. How do I merit such flamboyant gifts in the ordinary moments of my days? It begins to rain and I run to the window to see if gold coins are falling from the sky.

1,500 miles from home and I know I should be lonely. But here in the dark is this soft, soft air, a lingering caress. I sit alone in the garden at midnight and know myself beloved.

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thank you for sharing my journey.