NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
There is a crow hidden somewhere in the magnolia above, calling to another perched on top of the utility pole I can see across the street. Magnolia makes two calls and Utility Pole makes three calls and Magnolia responds with two.
“Are you listening to those crows?”
“Yes but I don’t know what they’re saying.”
“They are blogging in crow.”
Diddlie must have come in the garden gate unnoticed. She spoke as she walked down the path towards me standing by the tree. Now she is next to me in her blue blazer with bright yellow goldenrod in her lapel and her gardening jeans hanging loosely around her boots.
“Hi, how you doing”? There is youthful sparkle in her eyes and her short wavy hair is thick, graying and bouncy, resisting the breeze.
“Fine, I’ve been blogging and came out for a breather.”
“We need to talk. Remember”? She drew out the sound of ‘remember’ portentously. “We do? What about?”
“Remember what I said the other day when you came by?”
“Yes you did say that. So what is it?”
“Well, do you have time right now?”
“Your time is my time Diddlie.”
“Yeah right; I’ll let that one pass for now. I’ve got other bones to pick with you. For one thing you didn’t tell me you were going online with the blog.”
“No, it is sooner than expected. A friend came by, and showed me how to set up a blog, so we went ahead, forgetting your request.”
“I’ve been reading what you put up. I am wondering why you didn’t let me see it all first; thought you had agreed to that. I am also wondering why you blog in the present tense?”
“So you found it already. Are you okay with it?”
“Yes it’s okay, but I would appreciate some advance notice before you expose me to the world.”
“We can talk about it next time.”
“Okay, but look, most stories happen in the past. I mean some one is talking about what happened. I mean the story-teller. What do you think you’re doing?”
“ I am writing like a crow, about what is going on now.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Why? by the time you say it, what you are talking about is past. Besides you are making it all up anyway.”
“This is a web log. People write to each other on the internet about what is going on as it happens.”
“They do?”
“Yes, look at Face Book’s “wall” or the comments we exchange.”
“Face book is real people talking to each other and showing their pictures and ids.”
“I mean it is multi media. Your blog isn’t like that.”
“No, but writing is the thing, the life of it. It’s not about something recalled by the bard.”
“You are talking about real life. Your blog is not real life. You’re doing fiction. That’s the category you chose. You know what is going to happen and what has already happened. It’s all in your head.”
No no, I don’t know what is going to happen. Well not exactly.”
“ ‘Not exactly’ don’t start that again. Come on! Who else but you can know?”
“I don’t have a collaborator so no one else knows, but the story builds on itself. Re-reading one bit leads to something else that would not have come up otherwise.”
“It is still all in you’re head.”
“Not when a reader reads it. Then it is in their head.”
“So what? If they can read, shouldn’t it be the same in both your head and the reader’s?”
“Up to a point.”
“Oh come on! What point? You write that there is a crow on the utility pole. What else is the reader going to think?”
“They are going to think of crow on a utility pole of course, but they are also bringing their own associations into the mental picture”.
“Sure, but they still have to follow your story”.
“The reader’s imagination brings it to life. A different form of life from what was in my head”.
“Okay, but that happens with traditional books with story tellers. What’s the difference?”
“I am writing a story, but writing as a reporter or commentator in the present. The narrator is in the midst of his own story.”
“What an ego! Do you mean you’re not telling the story, but you are the story?”
“I am only part of the story.”
“But you claim to be ‘reporting’.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re an observer, not a participant, right?”
“There’s no avoiding participation. Being in Fauxmont is to participate in life there.”
“But it is all just a fantasy of yours. You have put me here in your garden to talk about it.”
“Right.”
“You think standing here talking is advancing the story? What about all these other people you write about? What do they have to say about it?”
“You are the only on who has stepped out.”
“Out of what?”
“Out of the narrative.”
“What narrative?”
“The story of Fauxmont. You have started another separate narrative.”
“You don’t make a whole lot of sense. You know that?”
“What’s so hard to understand?”
“You say you are ‘writing’ me, like I am your invention. How obnoxious! Why are you questioning your own invention? Don’t you believe in it or something?”
“You are questioning me Diddlie.”
“That’s right and getting nowhere beyond your head. You have taken more than half my life and put it in the past, and I am still not satisfied with your explanation.”
“Sorry you are so upset about it Diddlie”.
“Sorry! You say you are sorry! You are doing it. You are making it up. You have put me in this position.”
“True enough.”
“So…Change it!”
“We have already been through this.”
“I know, and I am going to keep pestering you until I get some satisfaction.”
The phone is ringing in my pocket. Diddlie has turned away. It is Liberty Trip asking if I would be interested in going out to Prestige U. campus with her to meet some of her band members. Diddlie has wandered behind a holy, a movement only faintly visible through the thick foliage. By the time arrangements with Liberty are settled, Diddlie has gone.
