Next
The night I arrived home from London, my first stop was the garden, and a quick glance at the tomatoes and the bursting squash, remnant potatoes and assorted weeds...not to mention the California poppies run rampant. After that, something sagged in my spirit and there has not been a repeat visit. Until today, Saturday, 4 July, when I had another look. There is a point of garden engagement, some progression that makes the state of the vegetables, their physical supports, the diseases that threaten the crop and the weeds that offend the eye, all of this become so compelling that there's nothing to do but grab a trowel.
I can't remember how a human being ever got to this point, staring at the tomato crop. Cherry tomatoes are hanging in ripe array. The medium-sized Celebrity crop is moving from dark to light green. The big ones, their name long forgotten, are approaching huge. I stare at all of it, pull at a nominal weed which breaks off in my hand, the insidious root still grabbing at the earth. And I go inside. The tomatoes do not matter.
I wonder why they ever did. There was a time, doubtless the last growing season, when all this was exciting. The quadriplegic tilling the urban earth and making it fructify. The gopher mound bursting to the surface like a submarine periscope...and my landlord and I going at the enemy with every depth charge available at Menlo Hardware. The mysterious mowing down of lettuce and the revelation of the squirrel attack squad. The bitter rain of acorns upon the fertile ground. All of these things once constituted agrarian drama in my own backyard. And now I stare at the two raised vegetable beds as though they belong to someone else.
Barbara, my English cousin, gave me a book by Bruce Chatwin describing how Australian aborigines sing their world into existence. It is highly appealing, this cosmology, for it acknowledges that reality is a matter of perception and the product of active human will. The aborigine goes on his walkabout to ensure that creation will continue. It's a big job, and someone has to do it.
When there is a partner in the house, when the house itself relies on two human support columns, each leaning against the other, there is a structure. There is also a plan for the day, one for tomorrow, and probably a 10 year plan for the improvement of you, developed in secret and yet to be announced. Dinner and when it happens and what it comprises need not be a concern. What's the plan? Whatever the answer, there is someone to ask the question.
There's more to it than being single, for I have been single before, and this is like nothing yet experienced. It comes at me as a daily shock, how a human life can be uprooted and cast aside as easily as a weed. Leaving behind all these remnants. The Marlou shrine of photos has long since been dismantled on my dining table, but that leaves at least five portraits scattered in various rooms. And it leaves questions.
Marlou's toothbrush, why does it stare at me? The answer, get rid of it, never crosses my mind. The wooden expanse of closet doors in the bedroom approximates the shape of an old Cinemascope movie screen. I might as well buy some popcorn and sit and stare at the thing. Marlou's clothes hang inside, and despite my natural obliviousness, the thought of seeing the puffy orange blouse she often wore...well, creates the strangest sensations. Grab the hangar and hold the blouse in the liberating air, and maybe Marlou will fill it. Or let it remain in the closet hanging next to the other lifeless cloths and feel the ghostly absence.
My landlord's mother died at least 12 years ago, and he has never emptied or rented her apartment next door to mine. I used to find this borderline ghoulish. Now I can't blame him. Yet the removing of clothes no longer worn, the shifting of objects no longer needed, the placing of hands upon the saddest evidence of loss...it seems thineeds to be done. There's a ritual quality, like singing the world into existence or out of existence. In any case, Chatwin knew he was onto some essential truth with the aborigines. It's just that the prospect is a tiring one, singing my next life into existence. The next phase of life promises to be an even sadder one. But without active effort, it will be a paler one.
I can't remember how a human being ever got to this point, staring at the tomato crop. Cherry tomatoes are hanging in ripe array. The medium-sized Celebrity crop is moving from dark to light green. The big ones, their name long forgotten, are approaching huge. I stare at all of it, pull at a nominal weed which breaks off in my hand, the insidious root still grabbing at the earth. And I go inside. The tomatoes do not matter.
I wonder why they ever did. There was a time, doubtless the last growing season, when all this was exciting. The quadriplegic tilling the urban earth and making it fructify. The gopher mound bursting to the surface like a submarine periscope...and my landlord and I going at the enemy with every depth charge available at Menlo Hardware. The mysterious mowing down of lettuce and the revelation of the squirrel attack squad. The bitter rain of acorns upon the fertile ground. All of these things once constituted agrarian drama in my own backyard. And now I stare at the two raised vegetable beds as though they belong to someone else.
Barbara, my English cousin, gave me a book by Bruce Chatwin describing how Australian aborigines sing their world into existence. It is highly appealing, this cosmology, for it acknowledges that reality is a matter of perception and the product of active human will. The aborigine goes on his walkabout to ensure that creation will continue. It's a big job, and someone has to do it.
When there is a partner in the house, when the house itself relies on two human support columns, each leaning against the other, there is a structure. There is also a plan for the day, one for tomorrow, and probably a 10 year plan for the improvement of you, developed in secret and yet to be announced. Dinner and when it happens and what it comprises need not be a concern. What's the plan? Whatever the answer, there is someone to ask the question.
There's more to it than being single, for I have been single before, and this is like nothing yet experienced. It comes at me as a daily shock, how a human life can be uprooted and cast aside as easily as a weed. Leaving behind all these remnants. The Marlou shrine of photos has long since been dismantled on my dining table, but that leaves at least five portraits scattered in various rooms. And it leaves questions.
Marlou's toothbrush, why does it stare at me? The answer, get rid of it, never crosses my mind. The wooden expanse of closet doors in the bedroom approximates the shape of an old Cinemascope movie screen. I might as well buy some popcorn and sit and stare at the thing. Marlou's clothes hang inside, and despite my natural obliviousness, the thought of seeing the puffy orange blouse she often wore...well, creates the strangest sensations. Grab the hangar and hold the blouse in the liberating air, and maybe Marlou will fill it. Or let it remain in the closet hanging next to the other lifeless cloths and feel the ghostly absence.
My landlord's mother died at least 12 years ago, and he has never emptied or rented her apartment next door to mine. I used to find this borderline ghoulish. Now I can't blame him. Yet the removing of clothes no longer worn, the shifting of objects no longer needed, the placing of hands upon the saddest evidence of loss...it seems thineeds to be done. There's a ritual quality, like singing the world into existence or out of existence. In any case, Chatwin knew he was onto some essential truth with the aborigines. It's just that the prospect is a tiring one, singing my next life into existence. The next phase of life promises to be an even sadder one. But without active effort, it will be a paler one.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Next.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.paulbendix.com/MT-4.0-en/mt-tb.cgi/472
Leave a comment