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.
Goldenrod is blooming heavy with pollen. Tall clumps grow vigorously around the far end of the shaded bench I am sitting on. More long stems with drooping leaves lean towards the unprotected trashcan only a yard away. I am looking at the river through a gap in the trees from Wicket Street. The water is glassy over toward the far bank and textured under the shadow of massive clouds, like vanilla ice cream scooped and stacked up further down stream. The dogwoods are dropping leaves and the branch over my head looks scorched. It is nearly ten, later than I usually go out, and already hot in the high morning sun. Warm wind comes off the water and blows an empty slate blue plastic bag up the steep bank from the road. It catches on a twig in the wind-whipped Kentucky coffee tree below me. The shopping bag looks for a moment like a garment hanging from its shoulder strap among the remaining dark brown leathery seedpods, until the plastic twists unmistakably, becoming trash. A succession of low flying jets whistles and roars over the river heading north to the airport runway, echoing under low cloud approaching from the west. Cloud has been rolling in all summer dropping enough rain to leave puddles in the street, and drip from the azaleas along our path. Enough to drench your shirtsleeves brushing past but there’s little sign of moisture on the ground still hard and cracked. Another jet circles higher up, its engines whine, as if in frustration at having to wait. The power of internal combustion and spinning turbines disturbs air and water. A speedboat thunders into view and throbs as it moves further up stream and as it grows fainter the wake moves a large mat of detritus undulating at the river’s edge where it could have been mistaken for solid ground. The noise abates long enough for a blue jay to screech into the pre-industrial quiet, followed by the buzz of a distant chain-saw ripping through rings of history. If following loud noise, the quiet lasts long enough, it often turns out to be alive with a softer range of sounds. In this case it is an exhalation close by, more exhaust you might say, and a step falling on the patch of gravel around the bench and then a gentle sigh.
“Oh, finally some relief!”
Diddlie sits down next to me.
“Didn’t see me, did you?”
“No, lost in thought I guess.”
“I have been walking as fast as I can for exercise … feel like I’m burning up.”
“Hope you don’t have a fever Diddlie.”
“No, just not used to doing all this walking.”
“You might try going before the sun rises above the tree line.”
“The humidity is just as bad.”
“Exercise will add years to your life.”
“I feel half dead.”
“I am still reading the blog you know.”
“Oh are you?”
“Let’s see now. You are digging up the past, old gossip and stuff. Piling up questions, right?”
“Yes, I am getting more and more interested in my neighbors and I’ve been here long enough to gain their confidence.”
“How can you remember all those conversations word for word?”
“I mean its kind of creepy to think Fred is listening like some one hidden behind the bedroom curtain, and keeping track of it all.”
“But I am in plain sight!”
“What you’re doing is an invasion of privacy!”
“You don’t have to read it if you find it offensive.”
“No one is reading it!”
“You just said you are.”
“That doesn’t count because I know you.”
“That the moral issue is eavesdropping, not readership.”
“The moral is … I mean, like I said before, what you are doing is voyeurism. Isn’t that kind of trashy?”
“I don’t think telling stories is voyeurism.”
“The way you tell this story is, though. Why is that so interesting to you?”
“I find it interesting that we are able to put together lots of different conversations with the same person over time and not get mixed up.”
“That’s called ‘getting to know you’.”
“That’s it. All these disparate experiences are categorized automatically. They easily come together Diddlie and become ‘you’ in my mind.”
“So when you recognize me you recognize yourself.”
“Yes in a way some part of me becomes a straw you.”
“So you think I am doing that too?”
“Kind of a me, me, me, thing.”
“No, you are the center of interest in this case, not me.”
“Well, yes in one way, but not really because you are making it all up. So it’s all you.”
“Yes the blogger is listening to things I make up.”
“It’s not believable.”
“No, it is a conceit, you have to suspend disbelief.”
“I thought your blog was supposed to be real!”
“It is in other respects.”
“You’re a good listener Fred, but why write it down. I mean gossip is gossip. It’s fun to tell and it can get exciting to hear but then who cares after that?”
“I don’t know if any one cares but I do want to ask you about your days with the Prestige U. crowd.”
“Oh more hot gossip huh! I am not sure I want to be a part of this thing.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the moral issue!”
“Which is?”
“Fred I have been trying to say it ever since I sat down. So tell me again. What are you doing?”
“The blog records many conversations. All of them are fragments of some larger picture or story that emerges over time.”
“It is too fragmented. Too many characters, and so little development I’ve forgotten who many of them are. There are too many starting points that don’t fit together.”
“Some things will come together out of the past.”
“Out of the past, what do you mean out of the past?”
“I mean Fred asks people to reminisce.”
“So okay, and every one’s memories will differ.”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds like more fragmentation. How are you going to bring it all together?”
“In a way similar to putting all the experiences I have being with you together to make sense of who you are.”
“So you can’t explain it.”
“No I don’t know how the brain works or how the mind puts all my different experiences over time in one place which make up my sense of you at this moment.”
“So, are you interested in people or is the blog some kind of experiment in brain science or something?”
“No Diddlie, there is no science in it. People tell the blogger stories. Perhaps it is gossip. Whatever it is, there are differences in people’s memories of the same thing, and that is interesting.”
“That happens. Witnesses to an event often describe it differently.”
“Yes seeing is selective.”
“So is hearing.”
“It is, and that’s part of what the blog is about.”
“I hate to tell you this Fred, but I fell asleep reading your blog.” The low clouds are now overhead darkening the water. They look like smudges against towering white clouds above them. Freshening wind dislodges the plastic bag from its twig and blows dust in my eyes. “Maybe I was just tired though.”
“I hope it isn’t that boring!”
“Sorry Fred, but there it is. So go on, what were you saying?”
“I am really talking about perception Diddlie, not gossip. Also there is what people choose to say, and choose to leave out.”
“Oh so you’re looking for lies and deception and selective memories. You sound like a detective!”
“That’s part of it, but the blog is a series on conversations. I want you, well any reader, to apreciate the value of conversation.”
“What is so special about conversation? It goes on all the time and has been for generations.”
“Yes it has, but I think a lot of conversation deteriorates when contest and conflict become too pronounced. Instead of drawing one another out in give and take, the participants do battle!”
“So people fight, so what?”
“The point is to see what conversation reveals. It broadens perception. One senses conversational pressure in the play of emotion but it doesn’t break out into coercion. That ruins everything.”
“Fights are revealing too”
“Yes of course it is always revealing to see when some one gets defensive.”
“It depends on whether you take things personally or not.”
“Right, and what leads one to take personally something that is not intended that way?”
“If you take it personally, I guess you sense a threat or something.”
“Yes one looses detachment.”
“Well you can’t live in your head all the time. I keep telling you that!”
“So you do.”
“You think we are broadening our perception now?”
“Yes in as much as we communicate.”
I look up after rubbing the dust out of my eyes. “Diddlie, where are you?”
Getting up and looking around I still can’t see her. A jogger disappears around the corner further down Wicket Street. The big clouds are passing over fast and a toad is revealed by a sunburst sitting in the shade of a fallen hickory branch.
