by Evan Dara
Mostly, its an acknowledgment. A wan recognition that what every one of them does affects me here. Every single one of them, everywhere, in every expression. And so I say to them, wherever they are: here does not need to be here, to be here.
Action at a distance. Entanglement. Alas – nonlocality. Still, its nice: They still are here. They are always here.
And they are welcome. They don’t eat much. Don’t disturb the neighbors. Go light on the non-renewables. It’s no difficulty at all. So, let me offer them comfort.
—I mean, I get up and brush and throw on housepants, and have my coffee and, eight minutes later, sit down to steel-cut oatmeal with date flakes then put off getting to the desk as long as possible but end up landing on the swivel chair within max three minutes anyway, then turn on my Apple. And I skim my mails then read the ones I think I have to read then start monitoring what’s happening on the exchanges. And I grow my apricots and take out the kayak and Citizens Bank is still on College Street and People’s United in Anderburg Square. And I ask you, what exactly is different—?
—Jeezus, you know … Green Hills Power, and the company handling waste removal, our local concerns – both just announced their third quarters, and both have reported record profits. Yup. In statements that’re, like, bursting with pride. And they said they’re on track for record years. Shoot, I mean – well, sure: they’ve got all of six people still working for them, everyone else was promoted to the shitcan, and of course they got real good excuses, the town’s gotta be kept spic and span and all the lights firing just in case anyone actually looks in here … And sure, you know, works pretty good, wish I could also be, something they didn’t quite announce, a government protectorate—
—OK. Last trip in. Have to get a waterproof tarpaulin, or, if I can’t, plastic sheeting. Strong enough to protect a car, or a tent. It’s an excuse. I can live with it.
Decided to walk. Start up Buell Street, left onto Winooski. Chilly but bright. Leafless trees reaching for more leaves. Single cars moving, some parked. Shops open, OK few. Streets, sidewalks immaculate. One, two discarded papers, max. Still chafes on the pavement, though. Still shoes. Turn again, go.
Then stop. Corner of Bank and St. Paul. See. A woman in a beige belted coat. The brown-beard man waiting for the walk sign. That kid by the mechanical rockinghorse in front of A Single Pebble, the Chinese restaurant. The three policemen. All of them: crying. Standing in place weeping, openly or subtly. No mistaking it. Stiffness, single hands hiding eyes, face-glitter, movement slowed. And it really is everyone: Both car-drivers turning through the empty T-juncture. The jumpsuit man up the pole, working on electricity. A maybe thirty-year-old mom wearing a fur-fringed hood, pushing a pram. A woman bent over a counter, waiting for customers in Solomon’s cleaners. All of them. Crying.
I fall into myself. I physically take a step back, reason unknown. I cover my brow. Tears start, spurt, then don’t. Crimping eye-pinches, but no flow. I am dry. I have no more tears left. A spasm, then the memory of the spasm. I don’t know any of these people. They are bodies along a Street. They communicate.
I return to structure, fold my Kleenex away. Get past ice breeze in nose. Can look around. The T intersection is cleared. The pram is farther down Bank Street. The policemen are gabbling. The brown beard does not quake. No one is crying any more. They’re going about their business. Efficient. Affectless. Integrated. Spontaneous, normal, functioning movement. It never happened.
—And what I heard is, Trungpa was selected by the DL himself to be an emissary to the rest of the world, after the invasion in 1959. At first Trungpa fled to India, leading a small band of monks over the Himalayas, covering the huge distances walking and on horseback. No food, infinite distance – nothing to them. Then, soon, Trungpa moved to England, then to Scotland, then to the US, where, of course, he did his lustrous work, teaching, putting out books, setting up schools and dozens upon dozens of meditation centers, in cities and more cities around the world. Much of everything we have here now is a direct resuit of Trungpa’s decades of efforts, spreading and deepening awareness of Tibetan illumination and practice, wicking the lamp of inner light. The Dalai Lama sent him forth, because His Holiness understood that the tradition could no longer continue as it was. It would move to its next level, it would be transformed. There was simply no chance for the tradition to exist where it had been, the Chinese would see to that, land-Tibet had ceased, damn but His Holiness saw, surely through tears but he saw, that the land was not necessary for the teachings and the tradition to continue, that they could continue landlessly, in a new and hopefully reinvigorated form – all around the world! And so we, here, wherever we are, are the beneficiaries, the harvesters, of this lyric majesty, receivers, here, wherever that is, of this great good. It was an instance of non-attachment almost beyond comprehension, magnificent in every detail, and as I bow to my root lama, so I bow to this crazy wisdom—
—Man. Someone should write about this.
Come on!
Why bother—
—And you know I’ve walked down Pine Street what, five hundred times? Five thousand times? Shopping, strolling, hooking up with amigos, running errands, getting my hair done at The Men’s Room – Lennie there was great – every kinda thing. Five thousand times down this very, very block. So OK, today I’m out on Pine cause I gotta pick up my dry cleaning, yeah it’s too much plastic but it’s the last time, and like holy shit now hunh? There, next to Stray Cat, the flower place. Look at it, right there: this old rust-brown Victorian-style house, with a wooden porch out front and a round tower with windows, and it’s not a commercial place at all, it’s just a normal residential house on the Street where it always must have been. And it’s almost touching Stray Cat and right next to where Renzo’s used to be, it’s right between them, and I was in both those shops uncountable numbers of times and I’ve walked right here on this Street even more times than that and I swear to you I have never seen that Victorian stack before. Never. Not once. Never noticed it or a thing about it. Wasn’t even there. And I highly doubt the building just went up. The developers aren’t that stupid.
So yeesh, you know. House, welcome. Glad to meet you. Well, for the time being.
But then, you know, the question becomes: What else do I see/notsee? What gets through? And if I do notsee something, do I also in some way see it? And, yow, when I see whatever, what the hell am I notseeing …? Where does it go? Does that determine my fate, even my definition, my notseeing my notseeing …?
Hm. Funny that I only notice the house today, now that, evidently, no one’s living in it. There are pots on the porch with rope hoyas and little cornplant-type trees that are still green, and horizontal blinds in the windows that are still clean, and there’s a seven-stick candelabra on the inner windowsill and a dog basket with a superbly soiled plaid cushion over in the exterior east corner. I’d bet people were in there til just recently, though it’s pretty clear that’s no longer the case. House is dark in that kinda way. Has a stillness that says they aren’t just out for smokes. Maybe they worked at the University.
It’s like my Red Sox cap. I once used to wear one, pretty regularly, just kinda liked it. Visor forward, you don’t have to ask. When I had it on, I couldn’t feel it at all. It was like it had disappeared. But the second I took the cap off, I felt it all around my head. That’s when it came back: when it wasn’t there. When the cap was gone it felt like my whole scalp was glowing. Like suddenly the cap had weight, like I had been given a halo.
Point is, the folks driving by, like on Route 89 or whatever, when they look – or don’t look – at A-burg—
—Man, on Center Street … Couldn’t believe it …
Wandering, walking around just like that, looking and sniffing. As if they owned the place …
Dogs, wild ones, single ones. Then a whole pack of them. Then wolves, one after another, circulating all up and down there, in the Friday sun …
Going up to windows, snouting into trashcans,
scuttling them over, front-pawing food plastics, passing as easily as nothing through the alleys and driveways. Humping, just out in the open there. On our streets.
This what we keep the streets so effing clean for …?
Shit. Probably treat this place better than we did.
—But the town …
A-burg …
It …
Is …?
Has the town left with its people?
—Sante Fe. San Diego. San Francisco. Austin …
That’s what I heard.
Ports of call. Destinations. Homes.
But come on.
Are they really going anywhere …? Is the movement actually conducting them away …?
Do they really expect to get to someplace different …?
Come on—
—And so I—
—And so, what.
—What?.
—What is there to—
—What can I, except—
—Goodbye, Libby—
—Bye, Libby—!
—And say goodbye to Sam—
—Hey, Sam … Good—!
—And Pittsky—
—Pittsky—!
—Good—
—Goodbye—
—And Mané—
—But what I’m—
—[with tears] Goodbye, Mané—
—But what I’m trying to say—
—And Steven—
—[with tears] Steven—
—What I’m trying to say is—
—[with tears]—
X
Persimmoned leaves – sapless, crinkled, sinew-showing – snap-detach and hitch invisible breezes down to lawns, to sidewalks, to tar roads, joining beds of predecessors. Grubs and chafers gnaw into soils gone granuly, resistant, loamy, shouldering the earth entire as the season’s coverlet. Ground papers – ATM receipts, cigarette foils, face-down flyers – flash incongruous colors, brightnesses, as they sit, or stir. Ripped stalks gather in interstices, at the bases of verticals, and tremble.
Telephone poles and electricity towers petition the sun. Benches, wood, iron, and stone, give comfort to newsprint splats and butterfly-folded coffee cups. Carol walks behind a large brown paper bag, holding canned soups and potatoes and still, conceivably, recyclable. A gumsplotch blackens on fallow tarmac, losing boot-tread traces as it, ineluctably, stiffens.
Drooping spleenwort fronds tickle the ticklable side-parts of Marcus Carter’s neck, easily finding the electric spots within his collar. He builds the potsoil base to hold the living arc higher, so it will sail – not course – above the Blue Moon phlox he has planted underneath. The fronds hold form, and immediately yield a supplement: stipples of rhomboid light upon the lower foliage.
Perfect, Marcus says to himself.
He’s building a conservatory for the Utsens – not, of course, a conventional one, but, if the term may be permitted, an exterior conservatory: a self-contained enjambment of deciduous plants, claypots, and curved-line ceramics that will establish, via slight but significant differentials of sun distribution, thermal insulation, and modulated humidity, a kind of micro-microclimate that will endure the scornful winter. That will develop and thrive even during the harsh.
He’s sure the Utsens will love it. They share his yearning for innovative estheticism, and, with just over six-point-two acres, are big beneficiaries of his need to indulge, continually, this generative preference. No question, they will delight in this inward-looking, bowerlike altar of reds, burgundies, blades, and ruffs. Whenever they happen to see it.
Marcus has been with them for nearly four years, and it’s been – no reason to skirt it – a dream laboratory. Like when he built the latticework arch, threaded with roses and clematis, upon the guest-house entrance door, extending its shelterly welcome into a shaded embrace. Like when he layered half a truck of blue gritstones around the west-yard Tamarack grove, adding rise, setting the bloodroots off, handing close viewers step textures and rewarding, complementing sound.
This is the richness of landscape architecture, he thinks, the particular grace of his profession. Mark nature with mind, so to make nature speak itself. Make a choreography of flux, with exacting plans for its unplannable movements. Show how the eternal creates the contingent, and vice versa. Harmonize Plato and Aristotle. The hard-won humanist tradition in landscape arrangement, dreamt by Brueghel and Lorrain, exploded by Le Nôtre, brought to ripeness by Kent and Brown, still has more to say about the source of the beauty we create being the beauty we are.
And it would continue to say so tomorrow. Ten to four, and, OK, time to wrap. Marcus stands from the reseeding he’s doing, pulls up the worktowel he’s been kneeling on, pulls off his nitrile gloves, and heads to the shed. There he scrubs hands and face and changes clothes, putting off his hot shower until he gets home.
Another great thing about the Utsen gig: it’s walking distance. He enjoys the large, bounder-y steps brought on when he descends from Hill Section; they re-energize him for town, especially now, with evening falling early. It’s quiet, with little wind from the lake, and surprisingly warm: must be near fifty. Crossing Maple Street, he continues walking in the middle of the road, past the growing density of commercial buildings. He had never liked the step-up transition to step-narrow sidewalks, before.
The glow from C. Ruggles adds pepper to his stride: the familiar rose-and-orange neons, one shining Coors, the other Bud, their diffused reflection on the lozenged, upswinging metal doors in the pavement out front. He stops before the pub’s entrance, receives a light-smear on his navy parka.
The door’s aluminum-strip pull-handle still works. The door’s squawk and retort also function nicely. Inside, Marcus stops. He scans the stools, tables, sparks, and shadows, the sawdust floor; puts his fists on his hips. He twists. Even at the bar, Timmy is not there; must have stepped away. Marcus heads home.
—
The first cooking happens on the turntable. Marcus prefers this antiquated, ridiculous technology. Whenever he can, he buys audiophile pressings of albums he loves, 180 gram where possible, appreciating the hefty physicality of the vinyl, the lovely, large-scale covers, the velour warmth of analogue sound. Hearing a CD was, for him, like his first contact with freeze-dried coffee. The point was not brittleness. But he’s been forced to sip from many CDs: the economies of jazz makes vinyl reissues rare. Never, though, will he go iPod: there’s only so much compression a man can take.
He cues up Julie London and heads the few steps into his open kitchen. It’s 6 p.m.-ish and, already, dark. The fire-rings from his burners supplement the shaded bulb overhead as he prepares his corn, his mung beans, his potatoes, his pumpkin. While they cook, he gets the day’s fresh rye-cornmeal bread from the drop-box, places two thick slices in his toaster oven, sets it to warm.
He sits down to supper. The meal, wrangled slowly, is pleasing and fortifying, as is Mary Stallings, now on the stereo. He cleans up and cleans away to her solvent contralto.
That night, in bed, clouded in down comforters, he masturbates to mental images of Laura Linney, in all sorts of postures. The wipe-cloth, taken from the not-top drawer by his bed, is returned there. He reads two pages of The Very Clever Crocodile before going to sleep. His sleep is restful, opulent.
—
He awakes in darkness, every year more unwelcome, and remains unlit until in place for first pissing. He slathers on his thick terry robe, and his choice to keep his house’s heat off until he returns, evenings, after his job, feels virtuous. And while his morning arrival at the Utsens is not monitored, he prides himself on responsibility: he does not dawdle in beginning the day.
Within minutes he is at the sink. He degrits his eyes, brushes, shaves, moves in close for nosework. When dressed, he returns to the mirror and applies aloe vera gel to the slicks of sebborheic dermatitis around his eyelids and -brows, rubbing with his right-hand middle finger while counting, slowly, to three. Then he takes his fat-gap tortoiseshell comb and works his hair agai
nst its grain. His forehead now juts deeper on the left than on the right, and he needs to reverse forty years of part-training. For months he had made whimsy from this ritual, but now it’s just boring: his hair, under however much lotion, will resist three times, slopping back to bangs. Then it will accept its assignment and stay in (unnatural) place; only a few re-tweakings will be needed during the day. It is a thing to howl about, asymmetry.
Work is very fine this Wednesday. Mornings begin with maintenance: today, under welling sunshine, he continues trimming the south-corner Royal Empress, to better showcase the sweet white violets that he had added, as highlighter, some weeks before. He finds a few more places where the walkway to the gazebo, a lilt in flagstone, would profit from the Canterbury spar highlights he’d begun laying in around the yard. The spar had taken five weeks, and two hundred phone calls, to import: worth it. Near noon, a rasp, and he’s surprised to see a dark car nosing up the driveway gravel. When it stops, he’s even more surprised to see Mrs. Utsen step out, followed by her husband, then by a girl in a Sherpa hat, who, he assumes, is a daughter.
Mrs. Utsen looks around, sees Marcus, smiles, and waves a black-gloved hand, while her husband and the probable daughter make for the house. Marcus, remaining kneeling by his tiarella bed, smiles and waves back. When Mrs. Utsen turns towards the residence, Marcus returns to work.
At 2:12 p.m., Marcus, after a quicklunch, is snipping branches from a hawthorn shrub found by gypsy moths when Mrs. Utsen is also there.
Marcus, hello, she says.
Hey, Mrs. Utsen, Marcus says. Welcome back.
Thank you, Mrs. Utsen says. Listen, she says, then goes on to say that the grounds are looking terrifically good, as is he. And that they’re glad the winter has been mild. And that the family has decided to spend some time in the house, in part for skiing. They’d heard there was snow on Stowe Mountain. It’s about forty minutes north.