Well-wrought, David.
«The monument is a monument to its own forgetting. And it receives meaning only when there is no-one there to give it meaning. It is the rock you hold in your hand, the one you will never reach. Only the mirror always shows the right time. When the rock mirrors itself it is not out of vanity. The mirror reveals everything, the rock nothing. As rock and mirror is that which you most crave to know.» Tor Ulven, 1995.
Yours,
Torgeir F.
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Fra: david ritchie
Sendt: søndag 20. februar 2022 kl. 20:06
Emne: [lit-ideas] Hereabouts
The crows were late. Usually in the stretch from our house to the school I pass three pairs and a widow or widower, but today they were all off somewhere, a conference, or possibly a funeral. I can imagine that. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the lives of all we have eaten this past week.” Maybe that’s what they do every Sunday, arriving in our neck of the woods about the same time as the Tai Chi people. Their absence and the absence of blasted leaf blowers and other forms of pollution allowed me to hear other birds, of which we have an increasing population now that it’s time once again to prune the roses.
I do enjoy a good disease puzzle. I open the New York Times magazine, find another poem that doesn’t appeal, switch to the book review where I always admire the portrait of whoever is being interviewed about what they read. Sometimes it’s not more than a few colored lines. I keep thinking, “I could do that.” But I can’t, and so on I read the disease of the week. Actually I don’t know how often the column runs, but it’s like a T.V. murder mystery—a puzzle which you know will be solved. This week’s is particularly good, a man who couldn’t walk because…well I’ll let you read it yourself.
Mimo has been attacking the wooden fence not, as one might imagine in an effort to escape. She’s done quite some damage with her beak. I confronted her.
“Thought I’d try something new. Keeps life interesting. Everyone needs a hobby.”
Me, “Why are you pecking at the fence? Should I be harvesting more weeds for you?”
“That would be nice. I do like a nice weed.”
“But?”
Mimo, “Not why I peck at the fence. At first I was drawn to the moss, yes. But then I heard birds attacking trees and thought, ‘why not give that a try?’ Beats taking up golf.”
“Curling would be less damaging.”
“What’s curling?”
“You simply see what kinds of shape your body can adopt. The cats and dogs do it.”
“Curling, eh?”
“Oh yes. Easier on the beak.”
Now we reach the more difficult part of the tale. A true craftsman, someone who knows how writing is best constructed, would do the foreshadowing better. I’m more of a bodger, which is a less widely known word than I thought. Central to my existence, bodging. The crows at the outset here, case in point.
“Death,” I said, like some guy who has been doing long-distance running and is expecting dripping and bread for dinner. With strong tea and an “I’m backing Britain” t shirt that shrank first time you washed it. Kitchen sink drama. Very melo.
Mimo said, “I want words with you about the staleness of the seeds you’ve been scattering.”
Even when she moved her head from one side to t’other, we were not seeing eye to eye. For the drama to be something out of the early 1960s we lacked only set dressing and wardrobe; we had the lighting--bleak, with fog.
“I didn’t mention the subject casually,” I said. “Someone just died while I was playing tennis.. on the court.”
“Right,” she said, as if death were nothing to a chicken.
“Never met the bloke. New to the three of us. Well one bloke knew enough to suggest he’d be good. And he was. Pleasant too. Excellent set. Got to 6-6, almost.”
“What’s tennis?”
How to explain tennis to a chicken? I said she should stipulate the facts and just imagine that four of us were in one place for a common purpose.
“Avoiding crows?”
“If that allows you to imagine the situation, yes. We were indoors, avoiding crows.”
“And?”
“To play well you have to focus on the ball. I saw him miss it, and then my eye lingered on an odd motion. Like a man suddenly noticing that his shoelace was untied, he collapsed gently to the ground. There was no bounce of head, nothing to indicate that his mind had lost control of his body.”
“And?”
“I ran to get help, called for a defibrillator, shouted to dial 911. We put him on his side so that when he vomited his airway remained clear. He breathed loudly, snorted almost, like a horse, which I thought a good sign. Maybe not. Maybe that was him not breathing, just his lungs emptying? The machine arrived. The wonder of it is that you need only follow instructions; it tells you what to do, when to stand back, when there’ll be a shock.”
“Birds of prey in the trees?”
“Electricity to his heart. Three times. Then the paramedics arrived, took over. We’d called his wife. They asked to speak with her. ‘He’s had a cardiac event.’”
“An event?”
“They have to say something. And it takes time to take in what’s happening.”
“And?”
“Half an hour after he missed the shot, they gave up, called his wife. They erected a screen around the body, lying there dead on the ad side."
We were there again on Saturday. Used the same balls. Two of us not in our right minds, but we played well anyway. Tennis is like that. And life.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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