Planting Seeds of Dreams

I received three seed catalogs in the mail just days after Christmas. Seed companies know what they are doing riding the coattails of the season. Still fresh in our memories are the faces of children with their toys under the tree. They are planting in our heads the seeds of dreams.

Photograph from eBay

Seed catalogs have rooted themselves into the furrow plowed by the dream catalog of childhood:The Sears Roebuck Christmas Catalog. Unlike Clement Moore, of sugar plums we never dreamed. We dreamed of toys. Toy in the Sears Wish Book. We revered that dream filled catalog like a sacred magical book. Every page was fingered hundreds, maybe, thousands of times before our eyes closed the night before Christmas. The pages were dogeared. The photographs circled. They were by our sides until we dropped off to sleep.

Photo from eBay

Photo from eBay

Of all the toys we chose, our families purchased just a few. If any. This time around we are the ones making the purchases. We can purchase as many seed packets as we can afford. Seeds that may never see the light of day, breathe fresh air or feel warm damp soil. For it is not the flowers and vegetables that are being sold. Seeds, desires and dreams of flowers and vegetables are what these catalogs are selling.

As before, I'll carry these catalogs with me to work. I will take them to the toilet. I will take them to bed. Soon, it will be time to decide which seeds to order from circled photographs on those dogeared pages. Then stacks of seed packets will spill across my kitchen table. Packets containing potential flowers and vegetables that may grow in my garden. Maybe, they will just remain beautiful seeds of dreams.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

My Golden Grail

I had a goal to be rich before I was sixteen years old and famous soon after.  Another of my goals was to be a great photographer.  If all else failed I set a goal to win the lottery.  Crap, I wasn't setting goals!  I wasn't planning!  I was wishing!

In the mean time I have been living.  My life has been revealed to me as a poem; each stanza a surprise.  It has been an adventure.  You might call me Odysseus or Percival or Skywalker but I don't think I would answer you, if you did.

Odysseus

Percival

Skywalker about to start his adventure

As things turned out, I wasn't rich when I turned sixteen.  Nor was I famous soon after.  I stopped playing the lottery.  I still have a goal of becoming a great photographer.  I'm not sure how that will fit into my life before the last line is written.  

Nikon

As for now, I am off to London for 10 days to visit my eldest princess and her new prince.  A grand adventure.  I've planned to bring my camera.  I wish I could stay longer to look for the golden grail.   My goal is to slay my dragon "Thou-shalt" with the spirit of my lion "I will."


I wonder if I am more the Don Quixote type?

Don Quijote de la Mancha Joaquin Garcia Donaire  in Philadelphia

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved