Do you hear…? (1/2)

My brook is like fine red wine

from Navarre

it is the artery

that runs from a river I can't translate

to the sea

…

In April the wine turns to gold

and the burgundy shadows sound

like fish planning to spawn

like green seeds

…

It once ran red

drunken and wet, as if

repeating it all

until the end

~ KNM, Burgundy Brook

‘Just a minute’ said a voice in the weeds,

so I stood still

in the day’s exquisite early morning light

and so I didn’t crush with my great feet 

any small or unusual thing just happening to pass by

where I was passing by

~ Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early 

The assimilation between the book and the human body reaches its apogee in the worldwide phenomenon of book burial... The ritualized disposal of sacred texts suggests a profound connection between the book and the body. This is not only a matter of sacred transference but also a deep metaphor of the idea of writing conveying contents in terms of human subjectivity.

~ Brian Cummings, Bibliophobia

I rechecked the short video I’d made a month earlier, so I’d know exactly where to look when I returned to retrieve the cloth book I’d made following a pair of extremely creative fabric artists-slash-stitchers who had filmed the process and their experiences. As a lover of books from the time I could sit in a lap, I just had to try it, needing to ‘read’ the effects of time on human-created matter like cloth, lace, and thread. Along with the sparse inked words inserted as an afterthought. 

With the plan to recover the little book of vintage linen and embroidery thread, scraps of fabric from when my mother was young (and alive), I braved the descent to Mere Brook, whose name is still a mystery, to bring my creation into the sunlight again, to examine it. My eyes? An intense, almost maniacal focus on how heat, wind, moisture, and current had ‘written’ on the pages sewn by me and delivered into the sandy, temporary grave.

What happened - because the best-laid plans of people often go astray - is described below. Submerged in my search as I was, the brook circling suggestively around my boot-clad legs, my memory of the hour, no two, hours, I spent out out of time, is hardly linear. Please understand…….

This time of year there are leaves everywhere, from those still on branches to those covering lawns and in between, in the air. They are mostly yellow, with a good portion of red. Brown sits voraciously on the edges. Leaves are important to this story. Walking downhill is treacherous; making it to the water is an accomplishment. 

The water, stream, brook, or even creek curls continuously, sculpting the sands beneath it like dunes in a desert. A dampened image of lost pyramids comes to mind. I step cautiously, respectfully into the sparkling liquid, testing its depth. Less than a foot, maybe, but alive enough to affect one’s balance if she’s not careful. Thus movement slows down, quickly, in preparation for deeper areas.

I realize I’ve progressed from slow stitching, which is a serious artistic movement, to slow shoveling. It’s required, because shoveling sand is never easy, especially under water. Everything clouds up and must settle again in order to inspect the bed to see if the buried treasure (??) has been revealed. 

Nothing appeared.

Then, after standing and staring at the empty, watery grave-that-wasn’t, I realized that the shore had retreated, which made me wonder why, which led me to think of the variety of weather we’d had in the past month. A hot spell, ground hard and compact; torrential rains, stream rises, doubles in strength; cooler nights, trees beginning to shed, conceal, sigh for the warmer summer.

My frustration turned to anger at Mere Brook for not behaving, but then I looked around, knowing it was my fault for not taking into account where I’d chosen to place something I’d made, forgetting to ask permission and expressing gratitude to the land, as I understand native peoples do. Good imperialist that I was, I’d just bulled my way down to the stream that I ‘own’ as part of the bit of land I purchased a number of years ago. I planted my flag, well, book, and left, expecting to have it returned to me.

That was not the plan of the water. How fast was the current, anyway? Where does it start and where does it come out? Why have I never traced it on a map, but only saw the part that belonged to me? 

Oh, I was persistent in my search, shifting, shoveling sand until my right shoulder was very painful. I waited persistently, too, for things to settle. So many times it seemed like the book had emerged from hiding and was there, under the ripples, waiting to be held in my cold hands. So many times it was a mirage, wishful thinking, and nothing more than a yellow leaf, which when beneath the surface, with light filtering through branches onto its earth or underside, mimics fabric perfectly. The insect holes in the leaves ironically resembled script, or stitches, and I had put both in my buried book.

The moment of truth was when I knew there were too many things taking place between the banks and the bed of the stream, and that they were occurring in languages I didn’t know. There was no Spanish or Portuguese or Galician, just a wordless, pageless story of which I was not, nor could ever be, the author. This was reinforced by two other things. One there was no other sound for the entire time I was surrounded by the high banks of the stream. A loud car or a truck could have rumbled by, but it didn’t. Birds could have been singing, but they weren’t. Branches could have creaked in the breeze, but no. The only sound I detected was the wafting down of leaves, faint as a kitten’s purr.

I wanted to cry, thinking of how my book was gone, how I’d had high hopes for it, as if it had been my child. (Maybe it had been? ) I’d put time into creating the idea, following other artists, assembling materials that meant something to me. Mere Brook understood none of that. It understood, and understands, its water, its sand, its trees with their leaves, and something that is its source, plus something that leads it to perish - or be revived - in the sea.

Nuestras vidas son los ríos

que van a dar en la mar,

que es el morir;

[Our lives are the rivers

that end up in the sea,

which is death;]

~ Jorge Manrique (+1479), Coplas por la muerte de su padre [Verses on the Death of his father]

This is where Part 1 of this story ends, because Part 2 needs a separate telling. The time I spent buried halfway to my knees in sand reminded me of Ozymandias and I knew I need more time to unravel the text - Shelley’s and Borges’ as well as mine - so please consider reading the continuation, which follows very shortly. However, here are some references that might help:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, …

Wrote Shelley in 1819.

In 1936, Borges published Los dos reyes y los dos laberintos [The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths], which is also relevant to what happened during my time in Mere Brook.

 Luego le desató las ligaduras y lo abandonó en mitad del desierto, donde murió de hambre y de sed. La gloria sea con Aquél que no muere. 

[Then he undid his bonds and abandoned him in the middle of the desert , where he died of hunger and thirst. Glory to the One who doesn’t die.]

Both, as you can see, wrote about power and its futility. That is the first part of what I learned when I went to look for my book: even you can be trying to rule the world which you have no right to rule.

The second part is even better. 

Do you hear…? (1/2)