Writing As A Form Of Blackberry Bramble

I was George Harrison once on TV and then I became anonymous for the sheer joy of it. This is a true story. I have a hundred complexions and a look. This is what I do in private I eat melon and go backward in time. I use subterfuge and lust to interrogate letter carriers. And then I sit back and sigh with a quiet desperation. Who am I without you by my side? Guilt lingers in the mind as if it were looking for a place to sit down. Everything here is true. My head is a barn. I sit down and milk words. Their meanings squirt into buckets. The wood smells of ulterior predicates. The light is fat as an adjective. And the words wag their instructions. This occurs at the end of a dream, as the world emerges, and the inundations are a shock to the understanding.

What do I think of Deadwood, South Dakota? I think it’s possible. Yes. Possible. Possible as a popsicle is possible. And drips. Deadwood drips. When it rains Deadwood drips. This includes roses and elms. Rhododendrons must be performed with plumes and pearls and all the incisions must be housebroken. I’ve been alive a long time and I still have no answers. But I do have dirt. 

We transplanted the hydrangea today. I shoveled around it, trying not to destroy too many roots. I was quite amazed at how long and thick and tough some of the roots were. K brought some pruning sheers and managed to sever one of the bigger ones. I rocked it back and forth to see how loose it was and if there were a way to work my hands under it and lift it out. K went and got a snow shovel and together we managed to get it out. The process felt like surgery. The plant needed to be transplanted because a crew were coming soon to jackhammer the walkway and remove a root from the sewer pipe. E and R dug a hole and filled it with compost and rich new dirt and water. We let the plant down slowly into its new home. Everything had felt so deliberate in making its transition the least traumatic. Like performing a coronary artery bypass grafting.

Writing feels that way sometimes. Like transplanting a vague idea into the rich dark soil of language. The idea may seem vague but there is often a surprising quantity of roots attached. The idea was being nourished but hadn’t blossomed yet. So that when it’s enveloped in words it blossoms. Unless, of course, the writing fails to connect with the idea and so nourish it. For example, I have an idea that velocity and blood are involved and that the plumbing is crucial as is the process, which should be round like a goblet filled with Madeira, and ring like crystal. This wasn’t my original idea, but here it is, an idea the language coughed up when I was looking elsewhere, trying to spot my idea. Language is tricky that way. It will take your idea and inflate it into a python, or quadrangle. It all depends on the humidity, wind direction, and syntax.

When I was George Harrison I liked to play the ukulele. But then I lapsed into anonymity and let go of Mr. Harrison like a balloon. It takes a real George Harrison to be a real George Harrison. Who, incidentally, liked to garden. I don’t. What I like about the wilderness is that it takes care of itself. It finds balance and sticks with it. This is why I’ve chosen the wilderness for my education. Wilderness is a bodhisattva. Ferns? Bodhisattvas. Oaks? Definitely bodhisattvas. Blackberry bramble? Blackberry bramble is blackberry bramble only blackberry bramble can be blackberry bramble. This entanglement, this confusion, is brought to you by blackberry bramble.