Episode #7: A Suitable Vessel For Magic
The hunt for the celandine buttercup
The Hunt For The Celandine Buttercup, 5/2/20
Now that you have gone I need help in your garden, and Mark is the man I call. He and I have twin heads of long silver hair the nearly the same length now. We stand under the shadows of the tree in your backyard, exactly where this photograph of you was taken, Nick. It’s a hot May, and the invasive, lush Celandine Buttercup has emerged around the base of the huge Katsura trunk. We assess the patch, which is lovely its first flush of deep green leaves and yellow flowers. This is what enticed you to ask for some seeds from a friend twenty years ago. But what kind of a friend would ever agree to giving you these seeds?! This year the Celandine has finally tunneled under the border in a great conspiracy of roots, and popped up in small bursts of yellow blossoms in the center of the lawn. Emergency.
Each Spring I watched you keep the Buttercup at bay inside the border made by the shade of the Katsura tree. Watching you in your shorts and garden hat and kneepads was one of my great pleasures. You pulling the Celandine stems up gently until the entire root emerged with most of the seeds still clinging to the fragile tendrils - did you know how closely I observed you? I saw how you combed the surrounding ground for any tiny round pellets which might have escaped before you dropped them pinging into a small copper vessel for a friend. Despite your dire warnings, your friend Richard was also lured by the Buttercup, as if it were a drug, and asked for seeds.
On those slow summer days I did what I could to help from my basket chair, swaying from your tree a few feet above. Reading aloud from one volume or another in your dog-eared, Carlos Castaneda collection, or from Hafiz, or whatever we were immersed in at the moment. Dropping thousands of words, as you gently knocked the seeds off the roots and into the pot. Our conversation never really stopped, did it? Time and space, life and death, and neuroses like yours and mine were our favorite subjects. You needing to keep the creative impulses in your soul at bay by repetitive tasks such as weeding, for fear your father might still ridicule you from beyond the grave. And me needing to keep it all, save it all, including you, which, by the way, I am doing right now. Another ping in the copper can. So there.
Mark shakes his head as I explain to him how you removed the Buttercup by hand. Stem by stem, I tell him, and he makes large round eyes. He refuses to believe it. It’s complex having him as our gardener now -I should probably say rich instead, like the soil in East Hampton - since you and Mark and I have grown up together in various twelve step programs. Remember his AA nickname used to be Fuckin’ Mark because he used the word Fuckin’ for everything? We know each other in ways others can’t, and for twenty five years. I can say anything to him. Anything. He gets it. A man of few words, but he is deep. And funny. And he lets me freak out.
And then he came to you as a psychotherapy patient and I saw how delighted you were. In the late summer afternoons I watched the two of you after your sessions, walking the garden, pointing and discussing plants. Lastly, he is beautiful, in a way we both admire, with his long flowing mane of silver hair and grizzled midwestern, outdoor face. It was unspoken that he is just the kind of man both of us would be attracted to. Voila, Nicholas. We have a triangle gardening relationship. Your Hydrangea ears must be burning. We talk about you a lot.
Today I am close to tears. I’ve called Mark over specifically to tell him that I am petrified. We can’t let the Buttercup have it’s way. I can actually feel your displeasure from the great beyond, Nick. I am afraid that we wont be able to handle the encroachment without your determination and copper can. This is urgent, I tell Mark. If we let the Buttercup just jump the border, it will swallow the whole yard. What is implied is that then the whole house will go to hell as well. And then me with it! Mark tries to soothe me with his even tone. He tells me we can handle it. It’s not a problem. But we both know there is no cure. There is only a tedious defense.
I knew how impressed you were by the plant’s ingenious survival tactics. You warned me about the Buttercup, and now I warn Mark. The only time the Buttercup can be pulled is when it has wilted and browned. If pulled at the wrong moment in its growth cycle the roots detonate like bombs, sending seeds shooting out in a fan underground. I add a hand gesture to punctuate. Mark’s eyes widen.
I am probably over-caffeinated. I tell Mark how weeding served as meditation for you. Yup, he nods. He knows all about the relief of getting your hands in the dirt. I tell him how this relentless repetitive activity kept your anxiety at bay, Nick. I told him about one of your favorite phrases from your Kabbalah study, that life was like a task without end, that could never be finished, but that neither could it be put down. Mark doesn’t mind the philosophy. I know he enjoys digging deep. You tried to write your story down your whole life, I tell Mark. But time ran out, I say to the air in front of me. Suddenly I’m angry, but am I more angry at you for leaving or for Time for taking you?
I know I’m getting breathless, and loud. I need to tell Mark how you were tricked, how this benign seeming survival strategy stole your years from you. I must be flailing my arms around. Tending to perfection, I reiterate, kept your genius buried. Your days were occupied with ironing, cleaning, tallying, shredding, weeding, rearranging every plant in the garden, beading me a glass curtain and then un-beading it to make it even better, and then leaving it undone. a bunch of beads in the top of a cardboard box. As usual, I over-tell Mark. And as usual he nods. He is patient. The repetition that kept you calm, also filled up the time that could have been spent doing what you knew you were meant to do. Mark doesn’t ask, but I tell him that what you were really meant to do was to write it all down!
But that’s just my opinion, I say after a loud silence. I ask him: What in the fuck do I know anyway? And we laugh. I don’t know anything. Besides which, it’s my obsession to spend my precious time on getting it all down on tape, on film, on paper, for the record, for posterity, or for something or other. So I am the one writing it all down, Nick. This is my word-weeding. I can’t keep up with the buttercup because there is a book that needs writing. I need someone to understand, and at this moment it is Mark. He nods. He does understand.
Reminder:
