Dappled Links
Since my post on native plants, I've delved deeper (ha) into gardening. I found a kindred spirit in this essay: Memory and Plants. Thomas Rainer's blog takes garden talk to a more literary level than most: "But the gardener understands the cruelty of April. The derivation of the word April can be traced as far back as Varro, where the etymology, omnia aperit, literally "it opens everything" may be a reference to the opening of flowers and trees . . . . For the last few weeks I have been a witness to the openings of seeds. Birth is an act of violence. These dry brown seeds burst into life, ripping off their skins, splitting cotyledons, thrusting root into ground and stem to sky. Sometimes I lean in, expecting to hear the cries and wails of these infants." I have been going back and reading his archives. Good stuff here, here, and here. I have been puzzled by my sudden interest in native plant gardening, but I realize it probably owes something to Hopkins and his adoration of inscape and "thisness," for instance: "The bluebells in your hand baffle you with their inscape, made to every sense. If you draw your fingers through them they are lodged and struggle with a shock of wet heads; the long stalks rub and click and flatten to a fan on one another like your fingers themselves would when you passed the palms hard across one another, making a brittle rub and jostle like the noise of a hurdle strained by leaning against; then there is the faint honey smell and in the mouth the sweet gum when you bite them."
From the TLS, Rediscovering Regina Derieva. A poet I'd never heard of, she was Russian, Jewish, and Catholic.
From Aeon, Freedom from Food. Much has been written about America's tormented relationship with food, but this article, and the other articles I've read about Soylent, attract comments from a subculture that has reduced our food anxieties to their most Gnostic roots: "For me, it's not the time taken, because I don't take that much care about eating, only over doing it, it's how disgusting eating is, considering the end result. It's just awful to have to continue eating to sustain this body, which disintegrates in the end anyway. OK, that's too negative, but I still find eating gross, and I over do it, substituting eating rather than addressing the things I need to address." Most people won't want to abandon food for a futuristic vitamin gruel, but most of us do harbor an unhealthy concept or two. Recently I've been battling the idea that no matter what I'm doing, I could be doing something more productive - if I'm blogging I could be doing the dishes, and if I'm doing the dishes I could be blogging. It's pernicious and "wasting" time on planning and cooking some elaborate recipe helps me be rid of it.
A book trailer for Heather King's new memoir. And here, more memories of her mother.