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.
A stream flows from the north at the bottom of the hill on Bails Lane. It is hidden in shadow of the early morning sun, as I walk down hill towards Oval Street. Some one is working in a yard on the opposite slope. I see a big G, on the back of a yellow hoodie as it appears through a gap in the shrubs. The last three weeks of Fauxmont’s rain crosses under the road at the bottom. I walk over and watch translucent twists splashing among rocks eroded from the clay on the south side.
“Oh, I am trying to get this done before any one comes along.”
“Well, I haven’t seen any one but a fox and a lone cicada on a fence post, so far.”
Diddlie is working in the front yard of a vacant house. The ‘G’ Stands for Glamour College, her alma mater. She is filling a number-ten size can, all shiny with 18 ribs and eight glue spots where its label was attached. She doesn’t look up as I get nearer, but notices me even so.
“What are you doing out so early, Fred?
“Getting my morning exercise.”
“It’s not even six yet.”
“No, it is best to get out before the crowd if possible, but after dawn.”
“Well you didn’t see me doing this.”
“No, as a matter of fact I can’t see you from here when you move behind that bush.”
“You better get out of the middle of the road. People are going to work now and they speed up this hill.”
Walking over to the side of the lot, I find the house is hidden by a huge patch of goldenrod. It grows tall, behind thick hollies and some cedars smothered in Virginia creeper and wisteria.
“It is way too early for this goldenrod to be in bloom.”
“That’s why you can’t see it.”
“No, except I notice you picked some.”
Diddlie is gathering a bunch of long stems, all cut to the same length.
“Fred, you can write about this in your blog, but no one will believe it.”
“She disappears into goldenrod taller than she.”
“Why not?”
“Like you said, this stuff doesn’t bloom in May.”
The flowers on top of the plants wave as she speaks, moving through and cutting selected stems.
“Climate change might have brought it out earlier than usual.”
“Well, okay, put that in if you want.”
“Are you reading it?”
She comes out of the thicket as if coming out of a maze.
“Sometimes.”
“I see.”
Her hoodie is a little too big. She keeps pulling up the sleeves, which gradually fall down over her hands as she works.
“I have been gathering this at every opportunity ever since Stuart died.”
“In memory of him you mean?”
“Mr. Dodgson left me childless, with a house, a parrot and a white rabbit.”
“Mr. Liddell must be very old for a rabbit!”
“He is not the original Liddell. That was George.
“Oh, how old was he when you lost him?”
“About twelve I think. He lived on lettuce, kale and hay with mint for treats.”
She winds string around her collected stems, from a small plastic bag marked SnazE on the ground at her feet. She cuts it off with small scissors from a side pocket of her jeans and ties it. The bundle fits precisely into the empty can standing on a flagstone.
“That will be my hundredth can!”
“What do you buy in such bulk?”
“I don’t buy it.”
“Did someone give it to you?”
“Yes, my friend gives me these empties when she cooks her church’s charity lunches. It probably had tomatoes in it.”
Mr. Liddell is sitting inside his extensive sack-like net, which pushes his ears down but gives him some freedom of movement. He nibbles weeds under some spring shoots of Japanese honeysuckle. He walks deeper in among the stalks, but the net snags on a twig as he drags it behind. The twig is lodged among the young shoots. He starts nibbling the net. A bluejay shrieks from a branch in the Viburnums growing at the corner of the house.
“I think Mr. Liddell is gnawing through his net.”
“He can’t. It is a rabbit proof metallic thing.”
Mr. Liddell stops nibbling and turns towards me, blinks and remains still, as if waiting to disappear. Diddlie waves some of the blossoms, admiring the rich yellow.
“How about this yellow glow.”
I sneeze.
“Very bright.”
“The glow of sentience.”
“It is?”
“Can’t you feel it? That’s’ why it makes you sneeze you know.”
“I thought the pollen irritated my nose.”
Physiologically it is called ‘sternutation’, a semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs.”
“You sound like a text book!”
“Stuart told me all about it.”
“About what?”
“About that, and ‘pneuma’, ancient Greek word for both, breath, and soul.”
“You mean you collect golden rod to make yourself sneeze?”
“No, it is the yellow. It has the sun in it, the same energy we embody.”
“Couldn’t you say that of any yellow flower?”
“Well, you could, but that’s because you don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“You are just thinking of color. I mean your soul, your flower, your breath, your voice vibrating in the air, your words in print, in sight.”
“Did. you are a mystic!”
“You didn’t know that did you!”
“Not until now.”
“Stuart knew many things.”
Diddlie starts deeper into the overgrown lot, leaving Mr. Liddell behind, and her can full of flowers. I follow her around the corner of the house past the Viburnums and through a tunnel of wisteria growing up over two smothered cedars, which have turned light brown for lack of light.
She stoops when we come out and picks a long stalk from a plant in the gravely ground, with two leaves at the bottom. We seem to be crossing an overgrown driveway.
“Here Fred, Lyre Leaf Sage”
She hands me a long stem with lyre shaped leaves at the bottom and some small blue flowers at the top.
“Thanks.”
“You are not supposed to be here. This is where I go to get away from you!”
“You do? Well, I better take off.”
“You can’t yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am making you up.”
“In a way … but I am making you up too.”
“So, I am leading you up the garden path?”
“You call this a path?”
“Well I keep telling you your blog has no structure!”
“Yes, you have mentioned it.”
“I mean I am turning the tables on you in your narrative.”
“You are?”
“You have to ask me for explanations here.”
“Well, I find you hard to understand.”
“So now you know what it is like.”
“What it is like?”
“You don’t know what to write until you think of me!”
“I sometimes don’t know what to write even when I do think of you.”
“Well, you better get thinking or all this will stop.”
“It won’t stop because the story extends beyond what is said in the blog.”
“You don’t know what that is. I mean that is a mystery even you can’t claim to solve.”
“I make no claims.”
“Fred, every story is like a loop of string.”
“How’s that?’
“It only goes so far then ends when the plot is tied up, so to speak.”
“Well, every story ends somewhere or there’d be no point to it.”
“That’s it. Is your blog endless? Maybe that’s the problem!”
“Its bound to end some time. I won’t live for ever.”
“Look, there are countless pieces of string and no one has ever put them all together.”
“No, that is impossible.”
“All stories start in the yellow and when you hear them told, they go back in.”
“Oh, you mean the unconscious!”
“I don’t use that kind of jargon.”
“Okay, I don’t follow you there, Did …
“That’s because I am beyond you in the yellow!”
“Well, that’s one way of putting it. Sometimes I have to wait”
“You have to wait for me!”
She waves her lyre leaf sage flower.
“This is my herbal song.”
“I can’t hear anything.”
The sun is high enough to sparkle in the stream along the property line at the bottom of the hill. We stand on the cracked cement of a moss-covered patio. There’s a steep drop off at one end, so we can see over the lichens growing on the north side of the roof below, and down towards the stream.
“Of course not! You can’t hear unutterable thoughts.”
“No, but they occur.”
“Oh don’t they just!”
“You said it was your song.”
“I am not singing though.”
“You mean that stalk your holding is singing?”
“Have you followed me into a dead end on this overgrown lot with its vacant house?”
“You tell me Did.”
“So what now?”
“Yes … I’ll stand here for a while …”
