WITH FIRE
“The difference between the man who just cuts
lawns and a real gardener is in the touching,
he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not
have been there at all; the gardener will be there
a lifetime.”
Granger, quoting his father
in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Having lost its G bell some time ago, our doorbell is a stubbed toe charged with good intentions. The glottal stop is pandemonium, a premonition. Will the other shoe be our mailman, a neighbor, or a firetruck idling in the street?
The bell simmers behind thick cranial bone. Its faint colored sound is not so much heard as intuited, meaning get out the pen. Dishes in the kitchen must have been washed, dried, and put in their places. There will be a package.
Whilewe're waiting, the idling mind bemuses itself. A London cabbie appears, sitting by one of those rest stops established for him, a place painted racing green like my MG, for warmth and tea out of England's fog and damp. Cabbies are respected for “The Knowledge,” described as like an atlas of London implanted in your brain. It takes four or five years of study, memorization, trial runs over at least 320 routes that must be confirmed by a rigorous examination. Upon passing, some applicants have been known to break into tears of joy and relief. On that day, the entire mass of spaghetti pops into a vision of all one London. It's an enlightenment, of sorts.
Such craniums enclose uncanny streets that branch like willow roots, into autonomous districts of history, giving rise to lavish textures of guide book praise, golden sunsets, the Canterbury Tales. It would be science fiction to Shakespeare.
You've Got Mail! Sign for it. Scribble something for the U-2 spy plane that's arrived, bringing incredible detail. It saw a migration passing as though there were no bones at all, conjuring a grape arbor, gathering bits of moss and string for a nest to shelter airborne mist. Below were cities, counties, waterwheels and barber chairs that sent their emissary, a pair of flesh pink hands the size of Australia, reaching out of Kansas.
Crows danced the one note samba, and in their traditional places were the graduation rocks (Class Of . . .) wearing white and gray blotches from an overflight of native birds fleeing Nevada's blinding flash. Vitreous sands there will outlive yellow journalism.
The safari stopped, idling in the Piedmont, and looked through black mountain pines to the rising moon. London Bridge was falling down, but no one was there to sign for it.
Shakespeare sent his witches out looking for toil and trouble. Secrets of synthetic telepathy had slipped on by, which would have been good cover for them. But his theater wasn't carpeted, so things fell through the cracks. Washboard thimbles began a garish rhythm. (Witches exit stage left.) The alternate audience chants: Water Boarding Is Best! Bill closes the curtain.
There is some rustling. When the curtains open, the scene is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but it's a tight fit.
There's Buddy Bolden with his trumpet, having escaped all that jazz. Monkeys, mice, and men are dancing in the street, past glaring windows mistaken for ghosts that were, in fact, a blaze of glory.
A dust devil whirls off to nowhere.
Pickled profit in a jar, Tesla's brain celebrating America's exception, a radioactive requiem, tumbling church towers on that sunny afternoon were blessed at the convenience of nod. It was gravel, the usual gavel to gavel, the same as ever and ever, and forever right on out to a flock of geese flying the Devil's detail. And now it's been decoded -- milk cartons replace the annoyance of clattering milk bottles.
Without thinking very much, it played a roller coaster in the key of G, rattling down only to trundle back up, and the termites fighting tooth and nail for a place in that ancient wood. A joyous place to celebrate peeling paint.
At the top, waiting in line, were the tall cedars of Lebanon. Riders of the blue aurora, and they rang their trolley bell.
In the next moment, flying from some other space in time without stopping to explain how it got here ahead of schedule --
Splinters! in a rain of kindling, and it was anyone's coaster. LEDs going up clanking were not just playing bridge. Nor was the earth, screaming -- “I'm alive!”
So many layers get tucked away in sandwiches, chomped to smithereens. But just in the nick of time, pulling one out: Compost happens in spite of efforts to improve it.
To the delight of robin, who keeps an eye out for any additions, worms, the stub ends of tomatoes. It's not about salami and cheese.
The alternate sandwich seems to call for insulated gloves. In a lunchbox, perhaps, one of those new fangled ICBMs painted with graffiti might do it for https\\:armageddon.UN, or the New York Times.
A triple-deck whopper comes out on a tray carried high and stops abruptly by an iceberg to pluck refrigerator rungs, between commercials with crickets and tomatoes. And here comes this red nipple, tossed on the heap. Robin chirps, landing on a low branch next to the chair where I sit, peeling an orange. “Hello,” I say, remembering Pereira. Gardener of the lawn next door.
He'd been out there pulling up clover by hand. Of course we both know about broad leaf weed killer. So why? I asked.
Smiling, he had just looked up and said, “Because it's fun.”
