“Let It Grow” – Eric Clapton

Standing at the crossroads,
trying to read the signs,
to tell me which way I should go
to find the answer.

And all the time I know,
plant your love,
and let it grow.

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Once upon a time,
and maybe more than once,
there was a house at the Crossroads.
It wasn’t much of a house when you come right down to it
more of a way station, but a homey one. Let’s call it a cottage then.

A curtain of ivy drapes the northeast corner.  Otherwise, I’m challenged to say what’s growing around that cottage.  It’s a bit hazy and the trees, the shrubs, they seem to drift in and out of focus.  There is a gray slate flagstone path, well-worn, a clear welcome to travelers from any direction.  The solid, planked-wood door is painted carmine red and if that doesn’t give you pause, you’ll find the cast iron skeleton key is always under the woven mat. The lock clicks open with a small electrical snick to the fingertips, but the heavy latch lifts smooth and silent.

No one, to my knowledge anyway, actually lives here yet when I step inside this one room shelter, I hear distant shimmery guitar strains of Clapton’s “Let it Grow” every time.  (click the link above if you don’t know it!)  The scent is neither musty nor scrubbed clean. It’s a space with a breath. Occupied somehow.  But I never feel uninvited.  Instead I’m made to feel at home by the ready-to-light oil lamp with a small dish of strike-anywhere matches beside it on the fireplace mantle.  The generous stack of firewood and the large black kettle hanging in the firebox are friendly nods.

What else can I say?  I don’t understand, really, why this place exists, who it belongs to, who gets to use it?  I love the round, just-baked loaf of brown bread—its top thoughtfully scored—with a heavy plate of rustic cheeses and a scoop of deep yellow butter, often a wood bowl of fragrant red apples, all set out on the table.  Coffee and tea cannisters keep company with a few mismatched plates, cups, utensils on the stone counter by the hand pump sink. 

That worn old table and a couple sturdy chairs are drawn close to the fireplace. In the far corner sits a neat little bed dressed in modest quilts and pillows. Oval braided rugs have scattered themselves around on what seems to be a baked clay floor, always freshly swept. Each wall is graced by a dusky window of thick, wavy glass with four panes and a wide, unpainted sill to lean on.  

I especially like peeking into the tall curiosity cabinet, the small nightstand with half-hidden drawers, and those three mysterious niches set deep into the wall where you’d imagine a back door should be. Every time I find myself here, immersed once more in the arcane books, papers and curios, or awed by the hanging framed art—it’s all been replaced. As if there’s some hidden cache of archives and antiquities on circulating display.  

Most of all, it’s the tenor of the soundlessness that restores me, body and soul.  Like the muffled heartbeat of an ancient Black Forest, or the breath of the deepest, becalmed Sea. Or possibly the depths of the starriest sky you’ve never seen.  This is the very quietude that’s been banished—maybe not forever—by a human technology afflicting every atom of our world.

But this is a Once Upon a Time tale I’m sharing, an enchantment at our Crossroads.  Does the way station Cottage appear when we’ve let ourselves off the hook, so to speak, of feeling pressured to make a decision?  We do know that a few good Questions are far more valuable than no end of AI answers…

So, if you wake, or dream yourself once again standing at the Crossroads, trying to read the signs, check your pocket for the odd bean.  Perhaps you’ll plant your love and let it grow.  And mayhaps this gentle retreat at the interstices of dawn and dusk will resolve at your feet. Believe it, or not. Soften your gaze, look sideways past the black and the white—you will see that Magic is afoot!