Spunk Cabbage 1
I have come into the garden to move for an hour. I am clear about that. I have brought sacking and a bucket which, when inverted, I will sit on. I am prepared. I have brought my black notebook and a pen that, I discover immediately, doesn't work well. The ink doesn't flow properly. I don't want to go back in and get another one. That can't be in line with the idea of just moving in the garden for an hour.
But I haven't finished my intention. It is to move with the spunk cabbage. I spotted it earlier, looking fantastic.
Lysichiton americanus appears early in the year in its native North America and its roots are food for bears, who eat it after hibernating as a laxative or cathartic. Because it is an invasive alien, the Royal Horticultural Society "strongly recommends gardeners not to grow it, and consequently do not provide advice on how to cultivate it".
Tschhhhhk. Somehow that seems petty. Or worse, in an age of asylum seekers and walls.
Actually, it is called skunk cabbage because of its thick, flat smell, but I have never felt able to call it that.
But I haven't finished my intention. It is to move with the spunk cabbage. I spotted it earlier, looking fantastic.
Lysichiton americanus appears early in the year in its native North America and its roots are food for bears, who eat it after hibernating as a laxative or cathartic. Because it is an invasive alien, the Royal Horticultural Society "strongly recommends gardeners not to grow it, and consequently do not provide advice on how to cultivate it".
Tschhhhhk. Somehow that seems petty. Or worse, in an age of asylum seekers and walls.
Actually, it is called skunk cabbage because of its thick, flat smell, but I have never felt able to call it that.
Spunk Cabbage 2
I move fairly directly towards the pond where the spunk cabbage grows. I am following my line. I have clear intentionality. But there is no spontaneity. I am following a pre-decision to go to the pond. On the way, I see yellow. I only see yellow. The garden is all yellow at this time of year.
[Actually there is lady's smock and flowering quince which are white and red respectively. But I only really notice the yellow.] I wonder about all this yellow. It seems to populate the garden, filling it up, staking its claim, taking over. I wonder if it's no coincidence that yellow flowers cluster at this time of year like diamond merchants in Antwerp or carpet sellers in a souk: maximising their chances of getting noticed. From above, the garden must seem like a splash of custard, calling custard-loving insects from all quarters.
[Actually there is lady's smock and flowering quince which are white and red respectively. But I only really notice the yellow.] I wonder about all this yellow. It seems to populate the garden, filling it up, staking its claim, taking over. I wonder if it's no coincidence that yellow flowers cluster at this time of year like diamond merchants in Antwerp or carpet sellers in a souk: maximising their chances of getting noticed. From above, the garden must seem like a splash of custard, calling custard-loving insects from all quarters.
Spunk Cabbage 3
But, as I start to look, I realise that it's absurd to say the garden's yellow. There are multiple yellows: butters and creams and lemons and bananas and, yes, custard and they shade and fade and nuance/nuage into one another, until you cannot tell what's yellow after all.
Spunk Cabbage 4
Actually, I remember, I didn't just come to move with spunk cabbage. I came to move with spunk cabbage and desire. My project is desire [and sex]. Not spunk cabbage. And yellows seem like a range of good colours for desire. Yellows are so bright and so full of the 'look at me' edge of desire. Yellows embody the desire to be seen. The desire to be found beautiful. The desire to be desired.
Spunk cabbage surely wants to be seen. But before I get there, there is this kingcup. So much to notice about it: those veins like creases on a palm; the blemishes and insects and rotten bits of petal; the wedged, chiselled ends of the central bit. If the male pollen is on the yellow anthers gathered around, then the chiselled central bits must be the top of the female ovaries. Later I look them up and remember they're called stigma.
Spunk cabbage surely wants to be seen. But before I get there, there is this kingcup. So much to notice about it: those veins like creases on a palm; the blemishes and insects and rotten bits of petal; the wedged, chiselled ends of the central bit. If the male pollen is on the yellow anthers gathered around, then the chiselled central bits must be the top of the female ovaries. Later I look them up and remember they're called stigma.
When I looked up stigma. This is what I got. 16 shapes of stigma, ranging from hands to stools to beaks to ferns. But none of them chiselled like my manly kingcup (because surely chiselled is a manly word? I would never say that a woman had a chiselled face. But what's a woman these days? What's a chisel? And what's a cultural bias?). I want to add chiselled to the other 16. But, since these are mostly listed in Spanish for some reason, I must know the Spanish for chiselled. It is cincelado. And here we go. How hard it is to simply move with spunk cabbage (or even to get to spunk cabbage) and desire, when one can so easily fall into the Spanish chiselling of a kingcup stigma. This is distraction in a nutshell.
Spunk Cabbage 5
Well, I am getting there. I see him (it has become a boy, jack-the-lad) out of the corner of my eye and try no to focus on him too directly. I eye him casually across the dance floor.
Look:
Look:
Isn't he something? Or something else?
I walk along by the wall and move around the back of him. Obviously he has a back and a front. Here is his back. Up close where I squat, admiring him:
I walk along by the wall and move around the back of him. Obviously he has a back and a front. Here is his back. Up close where I squat, admiring him:
I can't tell you how this yellow feels between my finger tips. I'll try. It's unexpectedly thick. Rubbery, like some human flesh. Flexible. It invites me to tear it or bite it. Like some human flesh. Oh, here we go. Now that desire arises. That tearing, biting desire. Where did it come from? I was so gently with this flower and violence has arisen. Surely I didn't conjure it up. Surely it was conjured up between me and spunk cabbage in this garden? But the conjuring was outside of my awareness. Surely I am not to blame for the violent turn that my desire has taken? Or am I? I am the only one who could change anything. Spunk cabbage can't stop being provocative. So I must stop being provoked. But how?
Spunk Cabbage 6
Now I'm in close, my attention has been drawn right in on spunk cabbage. I notice nothing else. Well, there is the smell. It hangs on the air, not unpleasant, rich, like someone else after sex.
Youth metaphors come, of course. The stalky boy metaphors that exercised Miss Padget. But far from her lusty enthusiasm, I just feel deeply weary. I sit beside the flower, head in my hands, unable to move really, except to minimise discomfort (mine).
The over-ironed creases, the indecently green tip to the spathe, the cockyness of the spadix - all these things would normally breathe into me, inspire me to think and write something salacious. But I want to sleep in the face of this:
The over-ironed creases, the indecently green tip to the spathe, the cockyness of the spadix - all these things would normally breathe into me, inspire me to think and write something salacious. But I want to sleep in the face of this:
Spunk Cabbage 7
I do have thoughts. Perhaps it's the smell? Perhaps it's because there is nothing for me to do. There is no art today. No artisaning even. Nature has done all the work and I am sitting on an upturned bucket trying to admire and move, but feeling intensely drowsy.
I drop my book and the hopeless pen falls into the mud. I am on the edge of sleep. A cool, grey afternoon in late Brexit. I am as sleepy as an old man. I am an old man... lulled by an alien and the need to do nothing.
This beast draws me in though. Perhaps there is a hypnotising that is designed for flies but is working on me because I am attuned to the wavelength of flies this afternoon? Perhaps the undiluted butteriness is inviting me to join it? This reminds me of something. Ah. The desire to let go. The desire to sleep. That's a very concave sort of desire. It's not the absence of a desire to be awake but a positive desire to be numb. It reminds me of drifting away in an opium den in Calcutta in 1974. It reminds me of the lotus eaters.
I drop my book and the hopeless pen falls into the mud. I am on the edge of sleep. A cool, grey afternoon in late Brexit. I am as sleepy as an old man. I am an old man... lulled by an alien and the need to do nothing.
This beast draws me in though. Perhaps there is a hypnotising that is designed for flies but is working on me because I am attuned to the wavelength of flies this afternoon? Perhaps the undiluted butteriness is inviting me to join it? This reminds me of something. Ah. The desire to let go. The desire to sleep. That's a very concave sort of desire. It's not the absence of a desire to be awake but a positive desire to be numb. It reminds me of drifting away in an opium den in Calcutta in 1974. It reminds me of the lotus eaters.
Spunk Cabbage 8
My desire for numbness, for oblivion, for sleep is broken eventually by the clatter of woodpecker, churl of kestrel and the constant complaint of blackbird - nature's complaining antidote to drowsy numbness. Convex desire triggered again by the resentful tone of other beings.
Vexing awake -- and remembering to move -- my attention is caught by the next spunk cabbage, rolled up tight as an ice-cream cone...
Vexing awake -- and remembering to move -- my attention is caught by the next spunk cabbage, rolled up tight as an ice-cream cone...
...a neighbouring spadix, lascivious in canna white...
...a leaf stalk stubbed out like a cigar...
...a sheathless mare's tail, brazen, unveiled...
...a slight opening with inquisitive ivy...
...a pussy coming into focus, revealing itself to be abristle with anthers, more boxing glove than pussy...
...and spilling its pussy pollen on my sleeve shamelessly...