The Ugly Abandonment of Mint

The ugly abandonment of mint appears to me to be a convenient topic for writing. Who has abandoned the mint? Why have they abandoned the mint? What is it to abandon something? And why abandon mint, and in such an ugly manner?  Can’t one abandon something in a way that is beautiful and full of grace? Why would one want to abandon something in such an unlovely and disagreeable way? Can that even be achieved, without being too theatrical? Perhaps it cannot be helped. Abandonment, by its nature, is ignoble. To abandon a plant is particularly ignoble, though not as ignoble as abandoning a family, a profession, or a life of piracy.

Mints are aromatic plants with leaves arranged in opposite pairs from oblong to lanceolate, often downy, with a serrated margin. They are widely distributed and hence make a good topic for conversation, public address, and poetry.

Has the mint in this circumstance truly been abandoned? Is this the kind of theatre I’m proposing? No. I have elected the mint to symbolize an imaginary, difficult situation of which the verdure and scent are engorged with the piquant capital of gimbalism. A gimbal is a device that allows something to incline freely, which is precisely what I have done with the mint. It is only difficult if one has chosen to make it difficult, which I have inclined to do. I have swiveled, in this instance, toward the difficult because the difficult is aromatic and wide.

One might also say the same of the wagon, or twill. What we often perceive as a bleeding ulcer proves to be an angel of prophetic taffeta.

Or maybe not, but please indulge me.

Let’s indulge one another.

Coffee is a dream of perception. The glockenspiel belt has the luster of a hockey rink. My jacket zipper smells of cajolery. If any of this sounds familiar, please give a shout, and I will hand you a napkin.

Debt and oil run the dynasty of finance. This we know. But poetry, like mint, is a different form of cement. Poetry is a fire nourished by solitude. I don’t know why I said cement. Cement has nothing to do with it. Cement has everything to do with it. There is providence in the fall of a sparrow, and cracks in the broad cement. Our fugues stupefy the presumptions of science. The sidewalk excites our interest because it’s garish and wet and full of gravity.

What can all this mean? It means basketball and Friday, ineffability and Tucson. Hasty Pudding and the national debt. As for the laundry, I suppose that I will have to do it eventually.

If I extend the paradigm of mint to include totems and bones I must find enough words to describe whitecaps and thread. I sense there are gloves and shirts in the suitcase. It whispers hospitality. I open it and yes, there are gloves and shirts in the suitcase. And underwear and socks and cologne. The implements for shaving and other tasks involving hygiene and the maintenance of human biology in a state of transition. I find a mass of brassieres wadded together, each embroidered with hummingbirds. The longest distance is not always the furthest. The best strategy is to provoke the least amount of humiliation. There is a great satisfaction in choosing and discarding rocks. As for the use of brassieres, I’m not a woman, but I know from past experience that they can make a pretty good slingshot.

There are so many things I’d like to throw into my brain, but the ocean isn’t one of them. My brain can accommodate only so much. If there is a better way to make macaroons, I will stumble upon it eventually, perhaps in my dreams, perhaps while doing the laundry.

There has been an increase in oaths lately, and creosote, which indicates writing and neon, and a certain desperation, a lovely desperation, a desperation fringed with fire and passion. Passion demands engagement. There can be no engagement with the divine without stanchions, matches, and at least one Cogswell chair. I have not yet fulfilled the thesis of my suitcase, but my arms are loaded with filmstrip, and my accordion wheezes like a horse. Narrative depends on principles of barometric pressure, not insulation. The lumber is famished for glory, and I plan to film this drama in conjunction with 85 reptiles, 52 mezzo-sopranos and a flexible, adjustable conjugation.

Otherwise, what’s the point? I will not abandon the mint. The mint has been introduced. It exists. It has odor and shape. I will not let it go. I will pursue it later, when the wind has settled, and the mirrors brood on their own reflections, revealing, when my face is thrust forward, the tissue along the base of my teeth. In other words, gum. Simple and plain: gum. Shakespeare had it, and so did Dante. Neither of whom, so far as I know, contemplated for even a second the terrible, appalling, ugly abandonment of mint.