Life, Death, And All The Trimmings
When a curled, dried leaf hits the street, it doesn’t stay. Wind scrapes it to the wall of a gutter where it gets matted by rain runoff. It’s not going anywhere, but it’s not alone. All its partners on the tree above are shed, too, then raked up together and stuffed into black plastic bags. The time spend sewn to a tree where the stem meets the branch is a flash compared to the harvested, dark state. Separation is always painful.
The first time I heard the theory plants feel pain, I was a child. It was a ludicrous, laughable idea. We were visiting my grandmother. She kept a radio on her back porch permanently tuned to NPR. One of the stories claimed research demonstrated grass cries out in pain when mowed. I don’t recall any of the science behind the theory, probably because I thought about all the times I’d stand in the garage with my dad after he mowed our lawn. Our garage refrigerator was stocked with orange Gatorade. After mowing, he’d take a swig from a glass bottle and offer some to me while Charlie Rich crackled on his wheezy old AM radio. Did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world? Meanwhile, agony outside.
The lawn, freshly mowed, bled green juice that left deepening stains on his canvas shoes. Was she crying? Tell her I need my baby… My dad twisted the cap back onto the bottles, week after week through summers I remember mostly through photos and songs I seek out.
Years later, I mowed my grandmother’s lawn with her old-fashioned push mower. It was Easter Sunday and I was old enough to wear high heels. They punctured the ground, aerating roots with Payless Shoe Source beige leatherette spikes. She asked and I couldn’t say no to my dear grandmother. When the spinning blades spit back the juicy grass onto my feet, I thought it was funny and odd. After Easter dinner, I drove back to my dorm in the city 30 miles away and she had a groomed expanse of lawn to admire for a week. I cleaned my shoes.
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There is a field of study called “plant neurobiology.” While everyone had a chuckle over screaming grass, serious scientists investigated sophisticated chemical processes that occur in plants. It’s obvious—even to a grateful, swilling child in a dirty garage—plants react to sun, water, heat, and damage. I watched my parents grow tomatoes and large bushes of mint. They’d pluck fat caterpillars off the tomatoes and I’d pluck mint leaves and chew them when the mood struck. An article in The New Yorker entitled “The Intelligent Plant”, explored plant neurobiology. One of the boldest statements was this: “Its proponents believe that we must stop regarding plants as passive objects—the mute, immobile furniture of our world—and begin to treat them as protagonists in their own dramas, highly skilled in the ways of contending in nature.” The article points out nobody believes plants feel emotions or have even a rudimentary brain. But they have the sophistication of being fated to live an entire life in one immutable space, save for people in floppy hats with spades and ceramic pots:
“Indeed, many of the most impressive capabilities of plants can be traced to their unique existential predicament as beings rooted to the ground and therefore unable to pick up and move when they need something or when conditions turn unfavorable. The “sessile life style,” as plant biologists term it, calls for an extensive and nuanced understanding of one’s immediate environment, since the plant has to find everything it needs, and has to defend itself, while remaining fixed in place.”
The tree in our front yard can’t lift its brown skirt and amble to the the other side of the street where it would get more sun. It has a certain latitude in certain soil on a certain street in a certain city. The only thing that’s not certain are the people in the house. They decide life, death, and all the trimmings.
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Recently, researchers at the University of Missouri have discovered plants can hear themselves being devoured by herbivores. The plant they studied is in the mustard family. It produces oils that are toxic to pests when consumed in high quantities. The plant only releases these oils when it “hears” the vibrations produced by chewing. Wind vibrations didn’t cause the same release of the toxic oils. Somehow, the plant is able to differentiate between a dangerous vibration and a neutral vibration. I’m no plant expert, but this would only seem to happen while it was still rooted. Once harvested, a plant wouldn’t have the network of veins running through stems down into roots. It’s safe to say when a salad is Caesar, there is no assassination. Et tu, hungry lady?
The researchers are hoping if plants can hear, a whole world of possibilities could open. One of the researchers, Rex Cocroft, was quoted saying, “Could sound be played out to plants in a field causing them to respond in a beneficial way? Sure, it’s very speculative, but it’s also something that could happen in the future,” he adds.
Maybe plants could grow bigger and heartier with the right stimuli. What if growth didn’t have to depend on fertilizers and chemicals, the whims of clouds and the sun? What if the wheeze of a song or the soft words exchanged between people were enough to inspire growth in something bound by roots, living la vida sessile?
I grew. I’m no tender shoot or craggy weed, but in my own way I’m bound to a place and time, too. I’ve been planted here and now and feel tugs on my soul, sometimes painful. I like to think I can tell the difference between a simple, stroking wind and the bite of something bound to devour me, feeling vibrations deep, deep down. I launch defenses. I let things drop.
They spin down, but they don’t matter. They scrape the street and then, silence.
The fruit I bear? That’s a different story. The best chance I have to bear good fruit is listen to a song that started long before there was light.
The Dog Who Watches TV
We have a three-year-old male dog. Because he was a rescue from an animal shelter, nobody knows exactly what breeds contributed to his mixed nuttiness. He has a medium build, like a spaniel, but the broad chest of a doberman. He has floppy ears like a beagle, but is fluffy like an Irish setter. 90% of his coat is white with a few black splotches. He was always a typical dog—friendly, goofy, loveably dense, always hungry. His singular goal in life seemed to be catching squirrels. Not only do they invade his slice of the world, I imagined he told himself they taste like furry, tasseled, ambulatory prime rib roasts. If only he could catch one. The yard would be safe. The belly would be full.
But lately, he has changed hobbies. He used to watch squirrels obsessively. Now he watches TV.
It started with a screening of Babe. The kids put it on one summer afternoon. The sheepdogs caught his eye, and then the other farm animals. We laughed as our dog barked at the movie star dogs, sheep, and pig on the screen. He seemed extremely disturbed an entire farm was pinned to our wall like one of those window-things delicious squirrels live beyond. Quickly, he grew bored and found other ways to occupy his time, like chewing socks.
I never realized how many animal-oriented movies we owned until the dog started paying more and more attention. Charlotte’s Web, Mouse Hunt, Stuart Little, Milo and Otis, Chicken Run, and many others caught his eye. He’d bark and watch and bark some more. Then, he began to just steadily watch the action without commentary. More than once, I accused the kids of putting on a movie just because it had animals and they wanted the dog to watch, too. They’d feign surprise.
One night, my husband and I were watching Jeopardy. We weren’t alone. Our dog was watching, too. He watched an entire episode. It was a little disturbing. We kept calling his name. He’d look back and then return to his program. I almost expected him to fetch a TV tray and use his little paws to heat a microwave salisbury steak. He knew all the answers but when he goes to take the online audition test, he will fail spectacularly.
Yesterday, after school, the kids and the dog watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. He watched silently until Sally—little sweet blonde Sally—came on screen. He barked and barked at her. When the scene would change, he’d stop. A minute later, Sally was back, this time weighing whether or not to join Linus in the pumpkin patch.
Bark bark bark!
Snoopy did nothing for him. Lucy, yawn. That blockhead, Charlie Brown, didn’t raise any fur.
Sally was evil. He jumped up on his back legs. I thought for sure he was going to launch himself at the VIZIO so we put him outside, away from Sally. He stood at the back door barking to come back inside. We waited until Lucy pulled off Charlie Brown’s shoes and tucked him into bed to allow our dog to rejoin the viewing party. By then, no Sally. Our TV was safe and so was she.
Was it her voice? Her horn-like hair? The color of her dress? Of maybe it goes a little deeper for our super-smart dog: Sally wanted to be with Linus so badly, she agreed to join him in the pumpkin patch on Halloween night. This meant sacrificing trick-or-treating and a party. She wasn’t a believer in the Great Pumpkin, but she believed in him. Sally pinned her hopes that a cute face wouldn’t lead her astray. Her night would be redeemed by his belief in something great. Linus was a false prophet, a cultist determined to be at the right place at the right time, saved by sincerity. Of course, his patch was the most sincere. Don’t we all think our patch is a sincere patch, if not the most sincere?
I’ve solved it! Our dog can’t tolerate misguided stabs at finding meaning.
Wait. Why is he barking at me?
Flappers, Philosophers, and Narrowing Eyes
I went through a F. Scott Fitzgerald phase in my late teens and early twenties. It was evident to me I had been born in the wrong decade. This opinion wasn’t based on a hatred of the present. It was based on the dresses and haircuts of the past. If I had a time machine which could carry me back to the Roaring Twenties, it would have been fueled solely on a burning desire to give my then-flat chest the glory it was due. Flappers were described as boyishly built, but with faces like roses. They had swinging hair, bobbed short. For balance, strands of pearls hung long and low over rows of nervous fringe. Once a Flapper began to dance, each string leapt to full attention. In animals, we see this with porcupines and hedgehogs.
Flappers wore furs and smoked and drove men crazy. I could do two of those things.
One of the Fitzgerald stories that has stayed with me for decades is Bernice Bobs Her Hair. It’s about the subtle bullying that goes on between girls. Nobody throws punches, but psychological warfare can be just as vicious, calculating, and destructive. Bernice is the naive, plain, timid cousin of classic Flapper It Girl, Marjorie, who is queen of the swirling social scene of rich, bored kids. When boring Bernice arrives for a lengthy visit, Marjorie is forced to drag her along.
One night, Marjorie complains about her burdensome cousin to her mother as Bernice lurks in the hall. She overhears the conversation and is hurt and indignant. The next morning, she confronts Marjorie, who is shockingly unapologetic. Bernice invokes the virtues of decency and kindness, to which Marjorie retorts “Oh, please don’t quote Little Women!’ cried Marjorie impatiently. “That’s out of style.”
Bernice continues to be shocked by Marjorie’s rejection of meek femininity. But when Marjorie offers to makeover Bernice from head to toe, teaching her the ways of a social queen bee, Bernice accepts. It works well. In fact, it works too well. The story closes with an act of revenge I wasn’t expecting. Maybe that’s why I loved the story so much when I first read it?
I was Bernice when I began the story.
I was the new Bernice when I shut the book.
Leading up to the revolutionary act of revenge, Fitzgerald wrote: “And some last energy rose up in Bernice, for she clinched her hands under the white cloth, and there was a curious narrowing of her eyes that Marjorie remarked on to some one long afterward.”
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A curious narrowing of her eyes.
We start with wide eyes, with wonder. Life whittles the wideness down into slits. Less gets in and the edges harden. Skepticism is birthed and Little Women is trashed as inane. Sometimes, this happens organically as a side-effect of aging, of seeing and feeling too much. But in the case of Bernice, it was a person’s influence that caused her fists to clench and her eyes to narrow. She probably would have stayed on the same trajectory of a meek, naive girl clinging to old fashioned ways. Either Marjorie birthed a monster or she birthed her saving grace when she undertook the project of improving Bernice. We don’t know, except for the fact Marjorie told someone about Bernice’s narrowed eyes long after.
She knew what she wrought.
Do I know what I’ve done?
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For a year, I’ve been trying to convince my teenaged daughter to read Bernice Bobs Her Hair. It struck me as a good idea because she, too, is shy and unsure of herself. Plus, I figured she’d like to branch out a bit from dystopian teenagers fighting mazes and shrill authority figures. It’s at the point it’s a joke. I’ll poke my head in her room and bark, Bernice! She rolls her eyes and reiterates how boring it sounds.
She’s never been a queen bee but doesn’t have obvious aspirations to join more rarified air at her high school. She’s happiest in the art room or singing. And here I sit, being such a Marjorie. I could help her change, but why? Why am I worried about her social maneuvering when she seems happy enough? How does a Bernice turn into a Marjorie in less than two decades?
I’m not sure I want to notice the narrowing of her eyes, especially if it’s in response to something I’ve done or said or foisted on her. Putting a copy of The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald in her room could be dangerous business. Of course, she put a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road on my nightstand.
“Read it!” she ordered.
I think I’m going to tiptoe back into her room one day when she at school, find Fitzgerald, and remove him.
I feel my eyes opening.
The Gossamer Castaway
One morning, while it was dark and too early to rouse the family with lights, I tiptoed down the stairs thinking only of coffee. When I reached the bottom, my face felt a tickle. I reached to investigate and my arm felt a tickle. Overnight, a spider built a web in a disastrous location for all of us. Everywhere my arms batted, I felt web and with each sensation my shudder grew. The hapless spider caught a flailing, giant, leaping human. I shook my hair and danced around imagining it was riding me like a wee cowgirl.
Like asters and mums and pumpkin spice-everything, I’ve long associated spider invasions with impending autumn. I’ve wondered if science backs up my amateurish observations collected over the years. Beginning every late August, our front porch is inundated with creepies. Webs spring up overnight. Their builders lurk in corners monitoring the situation with eight eyes, each. Nothing gets past them, except us.
I lightly researched if my observation about spiders was true. My theory is they seek warmth and extra food as autumn and winter approach. Their presence is a sign to heed. Eight eyes and eight legs must itch with instinct none of us can begin to understand. Most of the articles I read claim the increase of spiders near or inside homes this time of year is purely coincidental. Spiders hatch earlier in the summer. When they hatch, they release silky balloons to carry them through the air on breezes. They are specks. When a breeze is stopped by a house or porch or barn, the tiny spider stops, too. She shrugs her legs. Where she lands is where she lives, and grows, and grows.
The same silk that she fashioned into a sail becomes her sole mechanism of survival. It’s like a shipwrecked crew turning the broken bits of a decimated ship into huts, or in Gilligan’s case, a pool table. In one form, the castaways were conveyed to a place. Using the wreckage, survivors cobble another form together. It’s admirable.
But I still want to tear down their webs. They are messy and full of gnats and smaller bugs. Some of them are so newly-caught, they thrash. Those who don’t move will be drained by the spider when the spider is ready, picking her way across the strands to eat.
I’m afraid to tear down webs.
I’m afraid they’ll spring at me like fanged ninjas. They’ll scuttle over me. I’m afraid of those dusty corners littered with death. I’m especially afraid of messy, chaotic webs because that’s the kind black widows build. But those are exactly the spiders you need to eliminate. They are such efficient killers, they don’t need elegance to catch their meals. That comes later, when she scurries into light and you spot her perched behind your porch light. She takes your breath away, this black orb with dancing legs.
You stare at her. You calculate your distance. You wonder how close you can get. You wonder how close you must get to the slight nightmares that seemed so small when blown to your door, unnoticed.
The Woman Squatting in the Sky
The zookeeper was holding a young alligator like a football. She had his tense body tucked under her arm and held his head in her palm. Her other hand rested on his back. He was perfectly still when she began to share alligator facts with a small crowd that gathered around to learn. She related basic alligator facts, like where they live, their size, what they like to eat. Then, she shared a bit about their skin. Not only is it thick and an excellent defense against predators, alligator coloring provides additional protection.
She asked kids what an alligator might look like from the air. It is darker and mottled, like the top of murky water glinting in the sun or leafy swampy woods. He would be very difficult to see from a bird of prey’s point of view. Likewise, a predator low in the water would look up to a pale underbelly and find it indiscernible against the light of the sky. From the top and from the bottom, an alligator is a master of disguise. But what about when meeting one head on? That’s why it has a strong whipping tail and rows of razor sharp teeth set in a spring-like jaw. The zookeeper concluded her talk and put the alligator back into a long dark green Coleman cooler, creating a perfect scenario where through a series of mishaps, the cooler gets switched with someone’s picnic.
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The ballroom on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea could easily be lit by volunteer sardines and herring. I read about them and other invisible fish in a New York Times article called A World of Creatures That Hide in the Open. They are the disco balls of the undersea world. NYT writer Kenneth Chang:
“The silvery sides of fish like herring and sardines are systems of mirrors: They reflect the downwelling light, much the way a part of the sky is sometimes reflected by a glass skyscraper and blends into the rest of the sky. Thus, a predator from below would see the blue water, not a fish, swimming above.”
The article states a researcher named Eric Denton discovered the mirrors covering fish are vertical, enhancing the effect. I have one of these vertical mirrors on the back of my bathroom door and it enhances nothing. There are days I wish it could cause me to disappear for a bit. Given an ocean under a dome of blue sky, the elongated mirrors on certain fish enhance survival.
Along with mirrored fish, oceans are packed with translucent creatures. A Duke professor named Dr. Sonke Johnsen noted 20 to 90 percent of light went filtered through a variety of sealife. “You could read a book through these animals,” he said. I wonder if anyone has tried to read a book through the lens of another creature’s body? If so, I wish I knew what book it was. Moby Dick, maybe? Jaws? The Old Man and the Sea? Personally, I’d read Life of Pi.
Some fish are gifted with counterillumination, which is a glow produced by chemicals the animal aims down through lenses and mirrors. These are different from the tiled herring and sardines, in that the light is self-generated and in perfect balance with the surroundings.
Of course, none of these methods are flawless. While their biology protects them well, it can betray them, too. When a transparent animal eats, the food doesn’t magically disappear. It is suspended in the stomach and bowels for all the sea to see. It’s like Wonder Woman in her completely pointless invisible jet. You can’t see the jet. You see a woman squatting in the sky.
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What passes over me and below me? What is lurking in the dregs of the dark seeping waters I tread? Raptors circle circle circle above. My spirit is set with a series of reflectors and mottling, yet scars and the ostentatious coloring of mistakes I foolishly cling to threaten to wreck my hiding places. Anything garish attracts unwanted attention. I try to deploy camouflage on my own. I try to be very, very still. But I get hungry and distracted. I turn my head and it’s too late. I’ve been spotted.
I flash out when trouble nears, praying I’ll catch my ever-shining Father’s reflection. Trouble flees, or at least feels quizzical. Where did she go? Let’s wait, trouble says. She will get hungry again. We’ll be able to see what’s inside then and only then.