Verdigris

Un peu verte sur gris-noir

You see, F.M.? Here is one that stayed green on the raft that the pot of Japanese Horsetail has become for the frogs.

I scared it, and the littler one, away feeding the fish a short time ago. But, I watched it, and it stayed the same color.

....

Gray on gray

Gray frog with beige stripe

You see? It is no coincidence. Right down to her (let us say) skin matching the color of the dirt and the bottoms of the Japanese Horsetail stalks (Fia ate the green tops off during her recent anxiety-causing grossesse nerveuse) and the stripe up her back to her nose and her tummy matching the bit off straw-colored grass mixed in where she is sitting on this gray summer day.

She could sit anywhere. She chose this particular place, where she feels safe.

The intelligence of nature.

....

Wild thing

There are those who just somehow seem to know how to make themselves disappear into the scenery. By instinct, or by design, they know who they are, and where they are best unseen.

These are the unhistrionic frogs. They might even be considered the shy frogs. Perhaps, the wise frogs.

There are the green ones. They know green. Green is their color. They wear it in leaves, whether of the suspended or of the floating kind, in feathery aquatic plants, in watery grasses and moss, or simply in one another.

Green

And then there are, perhaps my personal favorite for their marked lack of beauty and uncanny ability to find the plants that only Fia could make for them, the ones with no stalks, no leaves, nothing left of any color whatsoever, like themselves, the gray ones, who resemble spotted stones and chose backgrounds perfectly suited to their lack of color.

They are the unusual ones. They usually lie on the edges of the old stone farm sink my husband found in the bottom garden shortly after he moved into the house and hauled up to put in the fountain, complete with angels, which he removed and sunk to the depths of his new fish-pond-in-a-converted fountain (for photos, see the bottom slideshow in this post, "A la bourre"), until Fia got to the Japanese Horsetail in a fit of anxiety in her recent "grossesse nerveuse". Once she had finished with it, all that remained were the lower stalks, black, the dirt and the roots.

Perfect for the gray frogs.

Gray

And then, there are the ones who don't care. Who will flaunt it. Who can pose and work the camera. Who can wear the really bright colors and carry them off, while you know you look best in tailored or draped styles in black, brown, beiges and grays, and navy blue: a gray frog, recently blond.

Who will walk on the wild side.

Wild thing, you make my heart sing.

....

The natural order of things

Frog in a water lily flower

I see them along the bricks edging the fishpond-in-an-old-fountain, and on the moss mounded on the old stone farm sink. I see them clutching the edges of the water lily leaves, or sitting atop them, but until today, I had never seen one actually sitting inside the flower itself, resting lightly on the yellow pistils and stamens. This is a small frog of great vision and imagination; he sees possibilities where others see only pink.

Many days have passed this year when I have not written, and not even felt tempted to write. I have a short list of probable explanations:

1. Hours spent in the garden working without stop from February 27 through June 1.
2. Various computer malfunctions relating mostly to power supply and motherboard issues.
3. Numerous family dysfunctions relating mostly to inflated expectations in a blended family situation.
4. Hours spent working on my volunteer position as president of a non-profit association that runs a publicly funded daycare center with a social mission.
5. Fear of exposing my private reflections, having taken on a public role, and wondering if the fear is reasonable, or as inflated as my blended family expectations.

And the winner is, fear of exposing my private reflections, having taken on a public role, and wondering if the fear is reasonable, or as inflated as my blended family expectations!

Fear, as they tell you, makes for being stuck, and now that I have begun, I realize there are a million places, almost only places where I live in some level of perpetual fear: fear of another argument about what is really necessary in our home renovation (stuck), fear of another argument about how good is good enough in our home renovation (stuck), fear of spending money when I earn none (stuck), fear of heading out for a jog and finding that my back spasms and I can't suck in enough breath, having been inactive apart from gardening for -- oh -- a year (stuck), fear that I have been a terrible parent and a worse life partner, fear that fear that I have irreparable personality issues, fear that I really have no talent for anything and that I will be caught out, fear that for everything I have learned, I have learned nothing.

The only thing I don't fear is taking on a challenge, like becoming president of an association with an operating budget of 650,000 € and 13 employees, or ordering and installing a new motherboard for my laptop.

My husband would suggest, kindly, that this sounds just a little bit like depression, which is just so depressing (and confusing), really.

"Tu as besoin d'un projet. Le problème c'est que quand tu en as, tu vas à fond, mais quand tu n'en as pas, tu es comme ça." "Ca" meaning depressed. "Ca" meaning untethered and aimless.

"C'est pas vrai," I retort, but it's true. At least it seems true. So, what does it mean?

Projects make you feel like your life has purpose and structure, when they might really be a mask for their total absence. I long for two things. The first is to be able to feel as though I am sitting on a mountain top, or a very high hilltop, anyway, with a clear view out over the surrounding countryside, the countryside being "the meaning and purpose of life". The second is to be Solomon Grundy: Born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday Took ill on Thursday, Grew worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday. That was the end of Solomon Grundy.

I'd settle for the Sesame Street version of his week, too. At least there is order and purpose, activity and diligence, reductionist simplicity in it, even if at the end of the week he's still half dirty.

Anyway, I tell myself that when my computer is functioning properly again, which should be as soon as I install my reconditioned motherboard when it arrives, I will get my drawings for the house ready. We shall see.

That failing, I'd be my frogs. They don't have to feel guilty when they are between projects and doing nothing, or avoiding projects altogether. They can sit in the water lilies.

....

Pulp fiction

"If Jon-Jon Goulian did not exist," asserts novelist Benjamin Kunkel on the backflap of Goulian's book, "it would have been necessary to invent him."

And I might agree, if only for the color he achieves on the wall against which he is leaning, and his "hermit tendencies", were I not paralyzed psychologically by the weight of that statement. I mean, about how many people can you honestly say that, starting with yourself? Maybe one or two of your children, but I'll bet that's about it. It is certainly not how I have been feeling about myself, and if anyone said it about me, you could be nearly certain that they were worried about what I might do if they didn't.

This as been one of those times when writing is not an option, mostly because it is not possible, or seems impossible.

My garden? How much can you stand to hear about the digging of holes, the moving about of plants and the blossoming of the promise held in the sepals of the buds?

My life? How much can I say without getting in very big trouble? And I never have been very good at applying Anne Lamott's excellent advice, "Write as if your parents are dead." I'd need quite a few others to be dead, as well.

How does it feel to wake up in the morning knowing that if you did not actually already exist, Benjamin Kunkel would be feeling the need to make you? That you would be necessary to the improvement of his life?

My plants could honestly say that about me had they any form of consciousness we might recognize, my son would actually be required to, my dogs might even be thinking this already in their own doggy way, but I know my husband is telling stories when he says anything close to it, and as for his children, or most of them, the thought would never cross their minds, although every time my stepdaughter mounts a double-pony to ride, she ought to. She is the one, aided by her father, who can bring me to acting just about the way she does, while being completely aware of what I am doing, and wondering why I can't just stop.

I don't particularly care that it is undignified. The only person judging is someone whose opinion I already disagree with so fundamentally as to occasion the fit in the first place. Worse is that it worries the dogs to no end to see me like that. They imagine their world falling apart, and they are right. I have begun to understand the number one reason given in court for divorce: unreconcilable differences. There are, it happens, differences that do appear to be unreconcilable. It came to mind as a possibility when we entered our 9th year of having the same argument, without appreciable progress made by either party toward better understanding, or even understanding at all, of the other's position.

This might be indicative of an element of unreconcilable in our differences.

The next big question that appears is which is worse? Accepting them and find a way to live with them, or accepting the futility of it and moving on? This is why it is a terrible thing to have a wedding album made. You were happy, for a day. At least until his youngest son made it his business to stare all his hate and fear into you while you tried to be gay and dance at your reception, and you realized that no one was coming to his or your rescue. Nor ever would.

You were on your own.

This begged another question: can one hope to be happily married while not liking all of one's stepchildren very much? Jon-Jon Goulian probably knows the answer to that, and I don't have to invent him to find out. I have a rough idea of my own answer. It is no. Children take us to the realm of the visceral, the irrational, the animal and the ugly in us all. In every parent, there is a mother grizzly bear just waiting for you to not appreciate their children, deserved or not, and if I had one single piece of advice to offer anyone considering marrying someone with children, I'd say to make sure you love them at least as much as your intended spouse and include them in the wedding. If they refuse to attend, that's probably a bad sign, one that indicates that you ought to probably reconsider; it isn't likely going to be worth the upset, because even if they do chose to attend, they will probably reconsider sometime later on anyway, and you will be the first to know when they do.

In fact, their mother or father should probably also wish to join the celebration because if they hate you then, that isn't likely going to get better either, which brings me back to the stack of books on step parenting and loving being a step mother.

I have been accused of thinking that I have done everything right and that the problem lies outside me. Shouldn't it be obvious that I am willing to consider the possibility that I might be mistaken in my presumption when my bedside table is groaning under a weight of paperbacks explaining How to be a Happy Stepmum step by step?

[I just saw the pun. Forgive me. Actually, it should be included in the title and I get copyright.]

I might as well read How to be a Happy Architect (yes, it exists), for all the good that comes of reading how to be happy in what makes you miserable.

Please note that my husband's bedside table groans under the weight of his reading glasses (the kind that magnify and that you can get at your corner grocery store), Robert Ludlum novels and dust.

In all fairness, I have as much dust on mine.

But all this has been pointing in one direction: blogging is sometimes not appropriate. There are subjects that cannot be contained comfortably in a blog, or in anything nonfiction. The most difficult thing is to find yourself faced with the monolith of The Novel. The actual need to create characters who live your stories and express your pain, who make the discoveries you are afraid to and find the courage to act, when you cannot. Not when there are so many that are not worth the dust on their jackets, filling whole bookshelves and as quickly forgotten as the Chinese take-out eaten earlier in the night, leaving a trace of themselves, like the oiliness of the inside of your mouth and stomach, but nothing substantial until you go back to George Eliot and forget them altogether.

I would not want to read one of those novels publishers find publishable because they are airy and easily forgotten as you move onto the next one and the one after. I would not want to find that I had written one, wasted my time making meals that coat the tongue and cause regret, but The Sisyphus Journals has begun to feel like it is not the time, nor the place.

....

Still gardening, a lesson in French

The wisteria comes into blossom

I scared a few people. I said I might never be able to garden again, but I didn't really mean it. I was just sayin', you know, that I was suffering considerably from the intensity of the efforts to clean this garden up. Every year has had its all-consuming tasks, like attacking one particular area of the garden and trying to improve it, sometimes with some success, but more often ultimately disappointing. Live and learn, or garden and learn, has become my motto. You need a thick skin to garden, not only for the rose and Firethorn bushes, but to manage the disappointments when you don't really know what you are doing.

I'll let you in on a secret: some people actually go to school to learn how to design gardens, and others, if they are any good, got a much earlier start than I did at 41 years of age facing a garden gone totally to weed, suckers and overgrowth with no garden budget to speak of.

There was only one real option: DYI.

And, there was only one real "Y": me.

The other "Y" present had been around for a few years before I arrived in Moosesucks, and let's just say that that "Y" had not manifested a considerable energy or resolve faced with the great literary thematic device of Man versus Nature. So, I began "do"ing "it", and aside from the fear that I might possibly have wasted important years of my life to "go down in history" for something (my objective at 25, as I vainly cried into the telephone receiver to my stepfather once, as he far more than kindly and tolerantly listened to my grandiosity, was to be known to History, and it only just occurs to me that this might be my punishment prior to actual death), I did begin to learn, only far, far too slowly given the time gardens take to let you know if you are succeeding.

The other secret: Pain is no excuse not to get out there and finish your work. Neither is the flu.

Yes, we went to Morzine-Avoriaz for a few days of spring skiing last week, and I returned bien grippée. I am, it turns out, a sensitive and delicate creature. My shoulders, thighs and attitude are highly misleading. In the tourist bus that wound its way back down to Annemasse and the highway to the TGV station in Bellegarde, everyone complained of the ventilation.

I refuse, steadfastly, to complain of ventilation, except when it is utterly absent, as in the case of getting in behind the steering wheel and suffocating, which is a sign that my husband, the complainer in the case of air conditioning and ventilation of any sort, including windows left ouvertes once it is no longer anything but stifling hot outside (and even then at night... you never know what will get inside, carried on the non-existent drafts), has been the last to drive the car.

The ventilation system was on full blast.

"Droit dans la gueule," or "right his face", complained my husband, while a few others pulled their sweaters and jackets up to protect themselves from the drafts. "Je commence à avoir mal à la gorge." I feared the worst. It is unpleasant to travel with a mildly infected man. You'd think you need more than a TGV full of pediatrians on their way back from a medical congress.

La gueule is a word you must know if ever you come to France. It refers to the face, more specifically, as in the case of animals, to the mouth (la gueule du chien), and is used in several very important verbs and combined words, such as: gueuler, or "to yell at"; se faire engueuler, or "to be yelled at"; and dégueuler, or "to puke".

The last is, I should think, self-explanatory, given the meaning concerning dogs. Which brings to mind dégueulasse, or "disgusting" (not to be used in polite society, where it is better to stick to dégoûtant(e)).

Gorge is another interesting word in French, given that it refers to the throat, as in mal à la gorge, or sore throat, but it also extends all the way to bust of a woman. Let me explain. The item of feminine lingerie we call a "bra", short for a word that the grandmothers and even the mothers of women of a certain age (mine) knew, "brassière", and pronounced "bra-zeer", is commonly referred to as a soutien gorge, or a soutif for short (not to be used in elegant company, however).

How, I ask, did the French get there, when a brassière had a perfectly understandable meaning, as an item of clothing resembling a camisole with sleeves intended to support the poitrine, or a delicate way of referring to the breasts of a woman by merely referring to the part of the body that begins at the bottom of the neck and extends to the abdomen. We all know what women have there without having to say it. Like the *[redacted], or the part of the body where babies are until they are born, and once conception and implantation have been achieved.

Please go here next, sign and return to this blog. Thank you.

Actually, you'll have to settle for reading this since the http://www.incorporatemyuterus.com site launched by the Florida ACLU seems to be down temporarily. It's probably overwhelmed with visits, even at this early hour in the States. Which makes very very glad to be in France, where it is the same word, and everyone is very comfortable saying it, and where there are a zillion ways to refer to the male member, or the penis.

Did I upset anyone? We can just use the word "verge" (the first "e" being pronounced like "air"; I don't want anyone laughing at you) from now on. Please note that it is feminine, like "bite" (pronounced "beet", and a big no-no in polite society), but unlike "zizi" (pronounced "zee-zee", and perfectly appropriate when talking to young children about this part of the body). In its feminine form, "Zizie" is the name of Titeuf's little sister. Feel better?

Which sort of oddly, or even straightforwardly, given the activities of the insects and the bees and the flowers, as well as, surely, the birds (being far more discreet) at this time, brings me back to the garden with one last word on the ventilation system on the bus. It was while standing on the platform, waiting for the TGV that my gorge began to hurt, and now my poitrine is full of nastiness. Maybe I should start to be concerned about air-born bacteria in bus ventilation systems, or skiing after too much wine and too many late, elaborate dinners.

But, I digress. The soutien gorge is an exceptional case of French modesty in all matters sexual, it supports the "gorge", which in this case does not mean the "throat". No, I joke. The French never feel the necessity for excessive modesty in all things sexual. "Gorge" referred to the breasts in times gone by, as in gorges de miel, or this sublime phrase from Balzac's Lys, written in 1836 (page 25, according to this online dictionary, but I bet the rest is worth reading, too):

Je (...) fus complètement fasciné par une gorge chastement couverte d'une gaze, mais dont les globes azurés et d'une rondeur parfaite étaient douillettement couché dans des flots de dentelle.

I swoon, but I digress.

Ordinarily, I find it wrenching to leave the Alps and put my ski equipment away, but not after spring skiing, when I have work to complete in the garden, and the wisteria is poised to burst into glorious, airy violet bloom. Which is not to be missed. It happens fairly suddenly, and it only lasts a short moment in garden time. It repeats, but very weakly, later in the summer. And, while I was gone, the pink tulips opened.

I apologize in advance for my inability to edit not only my writing, but my photos.

Now, it's time to go out and clip the box hedge along the stairs before I finish the big viburnum and some kind of conifer hedge down in the bottom garden. That is the big job of the moment.

C'mon, Garden Dog and Rapide, on y va.

....

* u-t-e-r-u-s

Garden dog

Fia's sticks

Fia gardens, too. There's nothing I do that Fia can't do, too. Almost nothing; she doesn't drive, for example, and she waits patiently for me to feed her, rather than tearing into the very accessible pet food bags.

Good dog, Fia. Good dog.

She watches me for long stretches of time, stretched out in the shade of whatever tree, shrub or structure is available -- a recent discovery is the unwanted and unfortunate hollow under the big rhododendron I planted a few years back; at least is has a use, even if it represents a failure to plan for settling correctly --, and she learns what gardening involves and decides what parts of it are appropriate for her. It will not be surprising to anyone who knows and loves Labrador Retrievers that with all the pruning I have been doing this month, she had found her use: stick retrieval.

There were piles and piles of sticks that she watched me carry laboriously down to the burning pile, and she considered this. Sticks. Carrying. Sticks... carrying...

"I can do that!"

She didn't say it. I heard her think it.

And then I saw the consequence of her realization: sticks everywhere. Garden Dog was picking up the sticks out of my piles as a dog can, in her mouth, and carrying them up to the top terrace lawn, while I went on with my Edward Scissorhands imitation, cutting, cutting, cutting and making ever bigger piles of sticks that Fia busily diminished according to her abilities.

Naturally, given what one Labrador Retriever can carry in her mouth, I didn't notice until I staggered up the stairs to get a glass of water and found sticks littering the lawn, all the way from the stop of the stairs, along by the fish-pond-in-the-old-fountain, on to the steps to the French door and then strewn around the terracotta tile floor. Some were shredded, like McDonald's lettuce, only with more fiber.

Rapide's bed is full of shredded sticks at all times. Like having potato chip crumbs in your bed.

Thanks for the hand, Fia.

....