Moss

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Moss Page 2

by Klaus Modick


  Admittedly, it is no longer ideal for me to swim that rapidly. As my physician has said, shaking his forefinger at me in mock-threatening fashion, just because we all came from the water in the beginning is no reason for me to meet my end there, as well. Or do I in my old age want to throw my lot in with the algae once again? Hence, swimming at a very leisurely pace, I pursue my solitary tracks through the lake, which even at high noon never looks blue, but, rather, always shimmers with a green hue. Its color derives from the trees that line the lake and are, in turn, mirrored in it, but even more from the ever-increasing mossiness of the sandy shoreline.

  There, as children, we hunted tadpoles, frogs, dragonflies, and the like. When I sit in the marsh grass on the embankment, which used to come up to my shoulders but now only reaches my waist, memories of these wanderings—and of the limitless adventures they brought—come vividly back to me. At the time we sought out not only ever new, as-yet-unknown shores of the lake but also this small, confined shoreline that, with its embankments and steep pits, held innumerable self-contained worlds, strange planets, deserts, jungles, wide savannas. After wandering here for hours, which were for us days, weeks, and years, we reappeared, overheated, red-faced, and confused by the reality of the family dinner table.

  There must be some deep-seated drive to repeat the life course—not in an aging, senile regression, but productively, in the form of a readiness to bring the experiences of childhood back to life again. But what are remembered experiences? What are stories? The drive to repeat seems to become stronger the more one feels one’s life slipping away. A circle completes itself. Beginnings come to an end. Knowledge terminates in experience, experience in memory, memory in narrated histories. The moss in which I take a rest from my swimming, and which oozes out through the gaps between my toes, assuming at this time of day the same temperature as the water and air, and the same temperature as my own body—the moss must be familiar with such processes, but also with the sense of futility that shadows this impulse to repeat, to relive the past.

  Moss is certainly an archaic plant. Seemingly self-sufficient and at rest, for ages it has exhausted itself in what I would call a heroic struggle to adapt to life on dry land; and now, ossified in its initial design, it is clearly no longer capable of carrying to the end the evolutionary process that was once set into play within it. If plants have a capacity for memory, not a conscious or mental memory, but, rather, a genetic one—and I have no doubt that they do—the memory of mosses would be the memory of their emergence, their descent from algae. Moss cannot completely sever all ties with its own seagoing past. Hence the evolution of algae into moss has completed a pseudocycle, returning, albeit modified and at a higher qualitative level, to its starting point.

  When I turn around and swim back to the other shore, smiling at my physician’s algae joke, I pause briefly in the middle of the lake to play the role of “dead man.” I take a deep breath, lie motionless in the water, and squint at the setting sun, which hangs as if impaled on the tips of the pine trees. I ask myself whether there is any difference between sinking and rising, between the development of roots and the evolution of wings, between knowledge and wonder, between being and consciousness. I find no answers precisely because I am looking. I exhale deeply, slowly furthering my tracks through the lake.

  AS FAR AS THE WORKING METHOD that I use for my publications is concerned, it is my habit to set out in shorthand, from all the material collected in the first notes and drafts, what seems to be connected in principle with my main theme, no matter how remotely. Like Leibniz, I hold analogy to be a key factor in scientific progress, and often the most unexpected insights have emerged from such analogical clues. In science, accidents can come to one’s aid only if one dismisses as irrelevant no observation, no impression—no matter how fleeting—and instead registers everything. As I now sift through and sort my first notes and excerpts for my Critique of Botanical Terminology, I realize that this time my strictly private, subjective perceptions, far from needing to be separated out from the treatise, are, in fact, central to the subject of the work.

  Normally, I remove any personal remarks with which I have allowed my notes to become overgrown during the preparation of the manuscript for dictation; or at the latest, they are eliminated during the dictation process itself. Sometimes one or another of these impressions may be used as a speculative footnote. But what I am putting on paper now certainly belongs to the Critique, since it seems to me necessary to reflect not only on the thing itself but also and even especially on my own reflections about this thing—reflections that, precisely because of their personal nature, already constitute a critique of terminology. Indeed, since arriving here, my tendency to record everything that has anything to do with the object of my inquiry, even if only incidentally, has asserted itself even more. I am unable to assess at present whether this way of proceeding will be conducive or detrimental to my project.

  Even my first pages, which I wanted to excise on account of their entirely private, diarylike quality, will have to remain where they are, because in certain respects they already get at the heart of my subject. Yet these pages also highlight the problem of method; at issue is an expansion of one’s focus to include second-order phenomena, or observations about acts of observing, where fixed points of reference can no longer be found. Before I get swallowed up completely in a defense of method, I want to use a banal example to demonstrate to what extent my topic must necessarily get away from me, sliding a priori past its apparent limits. To repeat myself, it is just this sliding past, this exceeding of boundaries, that in a peculiar manner constitutes the subject at hand.

  If one states that the cushion mosses of the order Grimmiales in the family Grimmiaceae, for example, fall within both the genus Grimmia and the genus Rhacomitrium, one has handled the classifications wholly correctly. But straightaway the floodgates to incomprehensible boundlessness, which botanical nomenclature should be able to dam up, are opened when one moves beyond the classification of mosses to their phenology. It would be reasonable to describe the cushion mosses of this taxonomic order as small-growing and appearing in a densely branched or grass-shaped arrangement, and to say that the Polster cushion mosses often present with a gray covering of hair; this covering results from the so-called glass hair, or colorless bristles, which crown the tips of each of the leaflets. One could then move on to the seasonal transformations of this moss’s appearance, to the peculiarities of its reproductive system, and so on and so forth. But such descriptions are already profoundly questionable and would be cast in different terms by different observers.

  If one now states further that these mosses, when it comes to their preferred habitat, like to cover rocks, cliffs, walls, and old roofs with thick cushions, the stone that one has thrown into the water of reality, in using such concepts, stirs up even more waves. For it is not just that the appearance of the moss changes in accordance with changes in its habitat but that, conversely, the appearance of a given environment is altered through its being inhabited by moss. Thus observations based on sensory stimuli, which the observer receives by coming into tactile contact with the moss, fall completely outside the purview of every abstract conceptual scheme.

  By the way, the most questionable phenomenon that remains to be discussed vis-à-vis this simple example involving the phenology of moss is its specific odor, which probably cannot be conceptually fixed at all. Generally speaking, the perception of smell is a phenomenon that throws into relief the phenomenalism of natural science; this emphasis on sensory stimuli as foundational is the reason why there is in science a strong theoretical consensus about terminology, but virtually no real knowledge. At least I myself have never heard any of my colleagues speak about (let alone give a lecture on) how the smell of moss may have awakened in him insights into its nature; and by the same token, no one talks about his relationship to moss, leaving aside other, more out-of-the-way things that have become associated with the moss’s smell. This anesthetizing o
f the space of scientific knowledge, which science imposes on itself, was brought home to me in a very vivid way yesterday.

  When my father had this house built around 1900, the roof was fully covered with thatch. Over the course of time, areas of the roof became damaged, and these were repaired, little by little, with red tile, early on for reasons of cost and later because one could scarcely find a thatch roofer able to make repairs. By the time of my arrival, I saw with great pleasure that gray cushion moss had almost completely covered over the sections of tile interspersed with the original roofing, and that in its color and its natural structure the moss had connected up harmoniously with the thatch.

  In the house, I discovered a note from my brother, in which he told me what to watch out for in using the house, where one turns on the water and the electricity, and other information of this sort. Because I have not lived in the house since my childhood, these tips were useful and necessary. My brother’s note ended with the announcement that in the next few days tradesmen that he had hired would come to the house to clean the moss off the roof tiles. This would be a favorable opportunity for the cleaning, given that I would now be living on-site for a while and could oversee the carrying out of the work. In contrast with my brother, who in this respect probably takes strongly after my father, I tend toward a certain laissezfaire in practical matters. What is more, I am of the opinion that nature should be left to its own devices, that we should allow it to exist in a certain symbiosis with the circumstances and spaces of our lives, and that we should fight against it only if it becomes truly threatening. But where is the limit? In any case, I did not wish to quarrel with my brother about this matter; I attached no real importance to it.

  All that changed in a quite painful way when the roofer appeared yesterday with his apprentice, took a look at the roof, and, in his taciturn manner, muttered in the broad Ammerland dialect something about the work’s being superfluous. But if the master, my brother, believed it needed to be done, that would always be all right by him. The two of them started on the work right away; as they did so, I set about arranging my notes at my writing desk. Above my head began the sound of scraping, brushing, and scratching, far away and quietly at first, without really disturbing me. But the longer it went on, the more jarringly and intrusively the sounds penetrated through the ceiling, as though they were aimed right at me. There are certain inconspicuous sounds that, once we notice them and begin to wait for them, take on the moment they arrive unusually disruptive, disproportionate dimensions. The best example is a dripping water faucet, whose tock, tock, tock can swell explosively if one spends sleepless nights listening, with bated breath, for its rhythm.

  It may be that a nervous irritability that always sets in when I begin a project made the whole situation more intense; but in any event, the noise from above grew so violent and threatening that I stood up from my writing table and, covering my ears, paced back and forth in the room. The more I tried to push the sound away, to evade it, the more mercilessly it bore down into my head, setting into motion vibrating oscillations that began to radiate throughout my entire body. I tried to concentrate, tried to distract myself with clear, logical thinking. In vain. I broke out in a sweat, and began to tremble in fear of a heart attack. In my agitation, I passed my hand again and again through my hair, as the scratching above seemed to take on the sound of a metallic rattle.

  Out of the pit of my stomach a feeling rose upward, reaching my throat; but before the tears could well up in my eyes, the memory returned of another flood of tears—tears I had cried when my father lured me to visit a barber just before my first day of school. I had not known what awaited me there; but as the rattle of the scissors gets closer to my ears, I am invaded by an uncontrolled fear. This fear is behind my impotent attempt to melt, under the nimble hands of the barber, into an endless stream of tears in order to save my streaming hair. Through my deafening howl penetrates the well-intentioned but brutal laugh of the barber and the stern voice of my father: “Don’t be a little girl!”

  Later, my mother takes care that my tears have all dried; but as she brushes her hand through my hair, through these sparse remains, there is in her touch a wordless sadness, which is only slightly mitigated by her effort to console me.

  I had stopped running my hand through my hair, because now the noise of the work being done on the roof sounded normal again. There was nothing there other than two roofers, scraping away the moss. I went outside to offer them both a cup of tea. By the time the sugar cube dissolved under the hot stream of tea, I had fully returned to myself. Would it bother them to leave off the work now, half-finished though it might be? I had realized that the moss, as a rootless, woodfree plant, could in no way damage the tiles. The head roofer stared at me in surprise.

  “First one way, then another. City slickers!”

  I insisted on paying him immediately, and gave him such an extraordinarily generous tip that the well-meaning incomprehension in the man’s eyes almost turned into distrust.

  “You would know best, Professor.”

  Shaking his head, he packed up his work tools and ladders. The apprentice wanted to sweep up the patches of moss that had fallen from the roof to the ground. I forbade him. When the engine noise of the roofers’ van was swallowed up by the trees protecting the house, I felt better.

  Could the correspondence between me and the moss on the roof that this incident created, or rather brought to the surface, be summarized in the botanist’s terse language? Perhaps in this manner: Although they are wood-free and rootless, mosses have an astounding ability to survive dry conditions during long periods of drought, only to revive again unexpectedly when new moisture arrives. A banal example—something that every first-year student learns. But we come to know something only if we have witnessed it, or perhaps only if we have lived it.

  Was this what I wanted to say? I am no longer certain.

  I AM WRITING DOWN THESE NOTES in fits and starts, in stark contrast with my usual habits. But the notes are dictated by no deadline; no audience, no publication, is awaiting their completion. And as the subject, the problem, becomes unclear to me via detached observation, where systematically controlled constraints emerge from a process of analysis; as the subject takes on dimensions the mere idea of which would have seemed unthinkable a short time ago, growing out past its former boundaries like a moss in the rain—as this process evolves, it seems to me as though I am not writing, but, rather, allowing the writing to happen. Or, more precisely, it seems as though I am allowing something other than me to write in and through me.

  This feeling, which amounts to a huge sense of relief, the relief of being delivered from all responsibility, came over me one morning. In a manner that was again contrary to my usual modus operandi, I started working on the manuscript even before breakfast, right after I woke up, almost during the waking process itself. The doubts of a fully awakened, scientific consciousness were still dimly cocooned in the reality of dreams, and while I used my pencil to write in shorthand, there lay in the movement of the hand, in the metallic scratching down of abstract signs, a memory reaching back to far earlier times. As though it had been archived in the muscles of my hand and the hectic nervousness of the stenographic script, a warm electrical current crept out of my memory into the breaking dawn.

  Year after year, the first day of our family holiday at the country house was dedicated to the same rituals. As soon as old Henschel had picked us up in the hackney carriage—as soon as the bags had been brought in through the entrance and Henschel made the drive back to Oldenburg with tip in hand—Mother went into the house with a local girl, whose name I strangely cannot remember (only her lavish reddish blond hair), to “clear the decks,” as my father used to call all cleaning work. He himself immediately began his “start-of-the-visit route,” which led from the Hennting farm past the forester’s place in Dringenburg and ended up at the tavern in Spohle. There, along with teachers and the local minister, he drank a toast—via small beers an
d schnapps—to the headmaster’s being once more on holiday with his family.

  And while my father swam along on the alcohol-saturated joys of country life, while Mother and the girl slathered the entire house with enormous amounts of Pine-Sol, my brother and I did what my father had declared to be our duty. The path leading up to and around the house, as well as the uncovered terrace on the south side, were then, just like today, paved with brown-red bricks, which had been baked in the Nethen brickworks. During the springtime rains, grasses, herbs, and mosses established themselves in the narrow joints of sand between the individual bricks; and where the rain spilled out from the gutters on the roof, these plants had already begun tentatively to grow over the joints and lay their green luster on top of the earthy red of the bricks. Every year upon our arrival at the house, my father used to rest his hands on his hips and to call out in mock outrage, “What is all this? The green stuff is getting thick again. Get after it! The wild growth must be stopped! Duty calls!”

  And he would press into Franz’s hand as well as my own a wire brush, mumble something along the lines of “completely” or “root and branch,” and take his leave, whistling as he marched off in the direction of the tavern in Spohle. Out of the house came the sounds of the women’s scouring and wiping as we got down on our knees and used the wire brushes to cut the grassy heads of hair and rip to pieces the pillows of moss.

 

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