Good morning. You wait at the curb. You wait for the corn to be ready. The corn is not ready. The corn does not know yet that it is corn. You hold the sign and you do not lower it.
You have been thinking about this since Friday — you can tell, the way you keep coming back to the kitchen window. So here is the thinking. You know how some mornings you eat your cereal and you do not look at the box, you only look out the window past the box at the yard? And how some mornings you look at the box, and you read everything on it, every word, even the parts you have read for years? Both mornings are mornings. The box does not mind.
You may have the box this morning. The back of it. Plant where you like. The grain takes the time the grain takes. The waiting is yours to do, and it is a good kind of work.
HEY KIDS! Click any empty plot to plant the selected grain. Wait quietly. Click a grown plant to put it in your bowl. The waiting is the whole game.
you cannot rush the corn. the corn would not respect you for it.
You do not get to plant a thing and then own when it grows. You plant the thing and you let it grow when it grows. This is true also of corn, of children, of mornings, of the moment when a stranger decides to wave back.
— from Post 14, Linden & 4th
| Patience | 14 g |
| Quiet | 9 g |
| Sun on the table | 2 cups |
| Listening | 1 svg |
| Hurry | 0 g |
| The feeling of having done something on purpose | 1 svg |
| Looking up | as needed |
% Daily Value based on a 24-hour day, give or take a nap.
Press the sign when you forget what to do. The sign remembers.
Click the stamp to read another box.
today's box, fresh from the pantry.
scanned at the curb · do not lick · made in a kitchen that also makes weather
illustrations by Margot, age 4 ½ (the sun in the corner is hers). recipes adapted from your grandmother. waiting handled in-house. test kitchen: the kitchen.
if the box arrives damaged, sit with it anyway. boxes are like that sometimes.
And then you read the rest. You are the keeper of the crossing between the seed and the bowl. There is no other keeper. The bowl is yours. The seed is yours. The waiting is yours. The sun on the table is also yours, briefly, before the cat walks through it.
Stop. Look both ways. Cross when the corn is ready.
| Current Mood: | philosophical · a little hungry |
| Current Music: | the kettle · the dog in 2B · a kid practicing scales next door |
| Tags: | cereal · the curb · mornings · patience · post 14 · things on the back |
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