Club mosses consist of four genera, worldwide. Three of these occur within North America - Lycopodium, Selaginella and Isoetes. They used to be grouped taxonomically with ferns and horsetails as vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. Now it's recognized that they represent three completely separate lines of evolution, and were genetically distinct 350 million years ago.
There has always been a magical world inside mosses for me. When I was relatively small, my grandfather, a bonsai fanatic and grower, befriended another bonsai grower in upstate New York. Family legend has it that they met when my grandfather wrote a letter to the local bonsai newsletter contradicting the purists who recommended that only certain plants were appropriate for bonsai. My grandfather wrote that he could make a bonsai out of pigweed, if he wanted to, and in fact had done.
I don't know who got in touch with whom initially, but Bernie apparently agreed about the pigweed, and a fast friendship was made over it.
All club mosses have small leaves with single veins that are more or less spirally arranged or in opposite pairs. The spores are either in cones, or in the base of the leaves - the leaf axil.
My parents also became fast friends with Bernie and his family - and any time my mother went to visit, I wanted to go along. Often I was the only kid there - my sister was far more engrossed in her book.
My game was to wander among Bernie's bonsais. His were much larger and more complicated than my grandparents. The pots were often two or three feet across, and the trees as tall. There were rocks, pools, and elaborate mosses - every bonsai was an entire forest. In my over-fertile imagination, I shrank down, and lived with gnomes and fairies within this magical miniature world. I could keep myself entertained within the bonsais for hours on end.
Lycopodium obscurum, or ground pine, is my most familiar club moss. It grows abundantly in the northeast, and is all over Northern Ontario. It's found in moist, acidic woodlands. The branching is tree-like, with the main divisions having both large and small branches.
I spent a good portion of my childhood in the mixed pine forest of North Ontario. A significant amount of it was spent crawling around in the woods hunting down my cousins in games of hand grenade or kick the can, so I often had a rodent's eye view of the undergrowth. I remember studying the ground pine, miniature pine trees, at the scale of a Thumbelina sized girl - three inches tall.
Spores from one of the Lycopodia were apparently used to produce a flame in Victorian theater. A cloud of the spores produced a bright, rapid flame, but with little heat. This flash, among other things, was used to imitate lightning.
The Lycopodia are also used medicinally. They vary in use, medicinal qualities including diuretic, purgative, aphrodisiac, emetic and cathartic.
I probably don't lie on the ground studying mosses often enough these days, but I do own a book, Mosses, Lichens and Ferns of Northeast North America. I'm as likely to carry this book along into the woods as any, which probably makes me a nerd. One sign of the true plant geek is the patience to memorize names like Lycopodium obscurum, polystichum munitum, Blechnum spicant, Tayloria lingulata. Digging far enough down into plant taxonomy, you start to recogize the Greek and Latin words that are hidden within the plant names.
The name of the Lycopodium comes from Greek lukos, for wolf, and podos, foot. The branch tip apparently resembles a wolf's foot to the somewhat fanciful imagination of a taxonomist. Obscura if from Latin, dark, shady or obscured.
Shady wolf's foot. Who knew those miniature worlds I spent so much time exploring, contained in addition so much poetry?
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Friday, November 01, 2002
Day of the Dead
The day of the dead. The day that the barrier between the spirit world and the world of the living is the thinnest.
Ten years ago, November 29, 1992, the son of two of my closest friends was killed in a drunk driving accident. I was 28, he was 22. He was a passenger. He was named after my father, Malcolm, Mac for short. His parents and my parents had been close friends since before I was born.
I don't think any of us knew how serious a problem he had with alcohol. I had known him much better as a kid, than as a young man, and I think I still saw him through my growing up eyes: he was the first baby I ever got to take care of, the first one younger than me.
We are welcoming in the dead today. My new housemate is definitely a pagan, so we are having a group of friends to dinner. We've asked everyone to bring a dish that they associated with someone they've lost. It took me so long to figure out what to cook - I don't know why, because the person who is most recently lost to me is my mother, and she taught me how to cook. The problem was not that I could not think of anything to associate with her, but that there is all too much.
I am honoring three of my dead. Mac, my mother, and my grandmother. When I think about the day of the dead, and about honoring the spirits, I get the image of a crowd, gathering around the doorway, wanting to be invited in, hoping they have not been forgotten. All four of my grandparents. Other friends. Other ancestors, who I know only from pictures and family history. Other friends....children.
We live in a culture that wants to pretend that death doesn't exist. You have to sign a piece of paper to STOP doctors from taking "heroic measures" to keep you alive. This is odd to me - do the doctors really think ultimately that they can prevent it? How? And why?
But in a way, it feels right to sit here, and think about the dead. Not good, but right.
These three people are still a part of my life. Their dying was, and is, a part of my life. Mac's death was a huge catalyst for me to reconsider the choices I was making, and to some extent it put me on a new path. I wish it hadn't taken that big a jolt to get me to pay attention, but there it is. My mother and grandmother were probably two of the most influential people in my life, in many other ways, mostly good, but a few bad. They were both amazingly hospitable, generous, loving. My grandmother had a mean streak, and I see it in myself once in a while. My mother at times was not good for standing up for what she needed, for taking care of herself instead of everyone else; and I see it in myself once in a while. Mac struggled with his place, with his role within this overachieving family - he was a bit of a rebel...
I see it in myself, once in a while.
So I'm cooking a cherry pie, and creating altars in my head for each person. The cherry pie is for Helen. At this time of year, my mother used to turn into the Holiday Mom from Hell - she loved holidays, and pretty much from thanksgiving until boxing day she was going full speed and then some. Her altar includes a silver spoon - how I hated polishing all that damn silverware for the Thanksgiving table. It also includes two watercolors, one of hers, one of mine. Some flowers - I think my love of plants jumped whole from her head into mine, like Minerva from the head of Zeus. A teapot, of her making. In our house, love is taken up in tea cups.
Mac's altar is harder. When I think of him, I first think of the summer at the lake, when he was about 7, so I would have been 13. He lived in a complete fantasy world, wearing a superman t-shirt every day, and morphing from Superman to Spiderman to Spiderfrog over the course of the summer. As I remember, he wouldn't answer to his own name, only to the proper superhero form of address. A comic book, preferably old and well-thumbed. A bag full of balsam fir needles. He loved our cabins, in Ontario, and the smell of the needles can instantly transport me there.
I cannot imagine a worse loss than the death of a child. My grandmother died at 94; she was mourned, but her memorial was also a wake, a true celebration of an amazing life. My mother died at 61 - a life truncated, but she had packed an enormous amount of living into those 61 years. I grieve, for my loss, but not for hers.
But 22. 22 years old. How can I not rage against this loss, against a life that he was not allowed to finish? That realistically, he was barely allowed to begin? I imagine what he would be doing now, at 32. Of the places he would have been, the experiences we might have shared, of the things we might talk about. This is the death I still don't understand. Not a death I can honor - I can honor his life, but not his death. I still rage against the cruel unfairness of it, of the blow to his parents, the hole that can never be filled. Children should bury their parents, not vice versa......
So much of who and what i am is taken up with these people, these ancestors, my dead. I refuse to take this stiff-upper-lip New Englander stance that we won't talk about them, that I won't continue to mourn them, laugh at their foibles, cry at my missing them, have conversations with them.
I don't know who W.H. Auden wrote Funeral Blues for. It's a favorite poem of mine, and I think expresses perfectly the light that goes out in the world when you lose someone precious to you. I'm glad he wrote it. I'm not sad and mournful today, but reflective. One wonderful line in the poem is I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. But in a way love does last forever, at least beyond death. As long as I am alive, my love for these people, my life twined with theirs, will be alive. The pieces of who they are are carried inside, and will be passed along to Tessie, and then whoever she in turn loves.
Maybe as long as love is passed along in teacups, it can last forever.
Ten years ago, November 29, 1992, the son of two of my closest friends was killed in a drunk driving accident. I was 28, he was 22. He was a passenger. He was named after my father, Malcolm, Mac for short. His parents and my parents had been close friends since before I was born.
I don't think any of us knew how serious a problem he had with alcohol. I had known him much better as a kid, than as a young man, and I think I still saw him through my growing up eyes: he was the first baby I ever got to take care of, the first one younger than me.
We are welcoming in the dead today. My new housemate is definitely a pagan, so we are having a group of friends to dinner. We've asked everyone to bring a dish that they associated with someone they've lost. It took me so long to figure out what to cook - I don't know why, because the person who is most recently lost to me is my mother, and she taught me how to cook. The problem was not that I could not think of anything to associate with her, but that there is all too much.
I am honoring three of my dead. Mac, my mother, and my grandmother. When I think about the day of the dead, and about honoring the spirits, I get the image of a crowd, gathering around the doorway, wanting to be invited in, hoping they have not been forgotten. All four of my grandparents. Other friends. Other ancestors, who I know only from pictures and family history. Other friends....children.
We live in a culture that wants to pretend that death doesn't exist. You have to sign a piece of paper to STOP doctors from taking "heroic measures" to keep you alive. This is odd to me - do the doctors really think ultimately that they can prevent it? How? And why?
But in a way, it feels right to sit here, and think about the dead. Not good, but right.
These three people are still a part of my life. Their dying was, and is, a part of my life. Mac's death was a huge catalyst for me to reconsider the choices I was making, and to some extent it put me on a new path. I wish it hadn't taken that big a jolt to get me to pay attention, but there it is. My mother and grandmother were probably two of the most influential people in my life, in many other ways, mostly good, but a few bad. They were both amazingly hospitable, generous, loving. My grandmother had a mean streak, and I see it in myself once in a while. My mother at times was not good for standing up for what she needed, for taking care of herself instead of everyone else; and I see it in myself once in a while. Mac struggled with his place, with his role within this overachieving family - he was a bit of a rebel...
I see it in myself, once in a while.
So I'm cooking a cherry pie, and creating altars in my head for each person. The cherry pie is for Helen. At this time of year, my mother used to turn into the Holiday Mom from Hell - she loved holidays, and pretty much from thanksgiving until boxing day she was going full speed and then some. Her altar includes a silver spoon - how I hated polishing all that damn silverware for the Thanksgiving table. It also includes two watercolors, one of hers, one of mine. Some flowers - I think my love of plants jumped whole from her head into mine, like Minerva from the head of Zeus. A teapot, of her making. In our house, love is taken up in tea cups.
Mac's altar is harder. When I think of him, I first think of the summer at the lake, when he was about 7, so I would have been 13. He lived in a complete fantasy world, wearing a superman t-shirt every day, and morphing from Superman to Spiderman to Spiderfrog over the course of the summer. As I remember, he wouldn't answer to his own name, only to the proper superhero form of address. A comic book, preferably old and well-thumbed. A bag full of balsam fir needles. He loved our cabins, in Ontario, and the smell of the needles can instantly transport me there.
I cannot imagine a worse loss than the death of a child. My grandmother died at 94; she was mourned, but her memorial was also a wake, a true celebration of an amazing life. My mother died at 61 - a life truncated, but she had packed an enormous amount of living into those 61 years. I grieve, for my loss, but not for hers.
But 22. 22 years old. How can I not rage against this loss, against a life that he was not allowed to finish? That realistically, he was barely allowed to begin? I imagine what he would be doing now, at 32. Of the places he would have been, the experiences we might have shared, of the things we might talk about. This is the death I still don't understand. Not a death I can honor - I can honor his life, but not his death. I still rage against the cruel unfairness of it, of the blow to his parents, the hole that can never be filled. Children should bury their parents, not vice versa......
My grandmother, Katy. Can you tell I live in a matrilineal family? A china cup, with a saucer. I like my tea in a mug, preferably holding about 20 ounces, very strong with milk and sugar, but she liked hers in a delicate china cup. I wonder how many hours of our lives we spent together, drinking tea, talking. More fir needles. She kept coming up to our cabins until she was 92, and I remember taking her on a three day camping trip when she had to be at least 80. I want to be able to chop wood, with an axe, when I'm that age, so I have a good example. A scrap of wood, to remind me of this. A baby quilt. I remember her nimble fingers helping me to make doll dresses, tiny quilts and seams.
So much of who and what i am is taken up with these people, these ancestors, my dead. I refuse to take this stiff-upper-lip New Englander stance that we won't talk about them, that I won't continue to mourn them, laugh at their foibles, cry at my missing them, have conversations with them.
I don't know who W.H. Auden wrote Funeral Blues for. It's a favorite poem of mine, and I think expresses perfectly the light that goes out in the world when you lose someone precious to you. I'm glad he wrote it. I'm not sad and mournful today, but reflective. One wonderful line in the poem is I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. But in a way love does last forever, at least beyond death. As long as I am alive, my love for these people, my life twined with theirs, will be alive. The pieces of who they are are carried inside, and will be passed along to Tessie, and then whoever she in turn loves.
Maybe as long as love is passed along in teacups, it can last forever.
Wednesday, May 22, 2002
It was just a crush
A letter I won’t send.
Dear,
Yes, I knew you were attracted to me, I just managed to ignore it. It would not be useful, at any level, to pursue.
I’m older than you are. You have that ease of freshness and youth and breezing through a charmed life that always tastes like magic]to me. A boy, in the way that boys are attractive to me, and men aren’t. I know the pain an impulsive choice could lead to. Would lead to.
Yes, I knew you wanted me. I knew that you would not make any move toward me. I knew that if anyone would cross that electrical divide, it would be me. But I would not. I will not. I touched your hand, once, and a spark jumped across. That’s when I knew our poses, relaxed and friendly, were just poses. That in spite of that, I would not follow you up the stairs.
But in my imagination, something else happened. In my imagination, I walked across that divide. The first thing I noticed was your hands, narrow, with long fingers. Expressive. I always notice hands. So different from my hands, which are square and sturdy, craftsman’s hands, that hold all the work that I do. Mine, that carry and schlep and wash and dig and clench, and also, when not too tired, that try to bring music from the body of a guitar or a mandolin. When not too tired and careworn, or worn of spirit and soul. Music takes a little bit of energy, and so often now I have none. I sing, even with no energy left, I sing. I learn the blues. But to play as well, so often now there is not enough of me, right now, to play.
In my imagination, those hands started to touch me. Just snuck across the divide, and stroked my arm. And we both pretended it wasn’t happening, and kept chatting, with most of our senses focussed on that hand. My skin tingles, even thinking about it now.
But then my hand reached over, and wove it’s own fingers into yours. That’s when we stopped talking, and eyes took over. So blue, like falling into the sky in a wheat field.
Then I reached across and touched your hair. Those curls, so different from my own straight darkness, I want to rub my face in those curls.
I imagine the hands, then starting to explore in other ways. Tentatively at first. We still haven’t kissed, although when you were talking, I did think about the shape of your mouth, and the shape of your words. Wanting to kiss you. Wanting you. Those hands reach over to the side of my neck, and stroke down, running across my collarbone. How did you know? How did you know so easily, so well, how to touch so that I burn like fire? Those hands……..
A button undone. Two. Skin, revealed. A question in the eyes. We should not do this, but soon it will be too late to turn back. I feel the tug of war, the fight we both are fighting in our heads. Suddenly grins split apart, almost simultaneously. Laughs.
Another choice. Again, my imagination takes two paths, one in knowing that I will not, would not follow you. The other, that I would, and in my mind, I do. We take hands, and I follow you up the stairs.
It seems so quiet, it is so late, here, the smell of eucalyptus filters through the open window. I rub my cheek against yours, roughness of a day of beard against my smoothness.
You take my hair out. Most of the day, it is wrapped, or braided, under control, out of my way. Today, as I write this, its still wet from the morning, from having to throw it into a bun, and having no time for anything else.
In love, my hair takes on a life all of its own. The only time I really like it long. I’ve only recently realized how much it is a measure of my emotions – tight back, I’m trying to concentrate. Don’t bother me, I’m working. Braided once it is convenient, and symbolizes me in efficiency. No nonsense. In two braids, and wrapped over the top of my head, it symbolizes my playful self, my kid side, playing in the woods. But loose, it becomes something else. Silky, it wraps down around us, enclosing us in another layer of darkness. You reach up, and start to run your fingers through it. I close my eyes, to better feel that sensation. Heaven. You pull me down toward you. Wrapped in a cocoon of silk, we finally kiss. It jolts through me, turning from this soft sensuousness to raw desire, in one moment so sharp it is almost painful. We are together, surrounded in the dark by the crowded space that is bursting with too many things, the stuff of my life, the paintings, the books, the sketchbooks piled to the ceiling. We are together, and it feels right.
I won’t write the rest of the story here. But yes, I knew. And I know, and you will never, how many times this has replayed in my head. I get a lot of mileage out of fantasy, now, since that’s mostly where my love life lives. I don’t mind a lot of the time, I’m not sure I have time for a lover. I would want time for you.
I would want so much time, freedom, emancipation from all the cares that weigh me down. Time to stand in a garden and watch our tomatoes grow. Time to stay up late, letting our minds wander where they will. Time for silly word play, sharing the flavor of the language that we love to mess with. Time to make love, so slowly, by a campfire, with a sky spilling with stars overhead. To grin at each other’s sillyness, and yes, I would cook you dinner. I would cook you many dinners. I want that time. Time, which so often feels like there is much too little of.
You are a dreamer. I see those dreams leap out of you, so many. You remind me of myself. I want to see you make those dreams come true. I want to be a part of making them come true, and I can, but not in the way that I want. Or that, at least at this moment, that I want.
This then, is a crush. I call it that, knowing it is more, but that is all I will name it. A crush. It will pass, with all likelyhood. But for now I will enjoy the flush, the flow of energy, the spark it adds to my day. A glint in my eye, a rosy cheek, a flush rising over my breastbone as I think about you. About your hands.
About your hand, that I touched. Once.
Dear,
Yes, I knew you were attracted to me, I just managed to ignore it. It would not be useful, at any level, to pursue.
I’m older than you are. You have that ease of freshness and youth and breezing through a charmed life that always tastes like magic]to me. A boy, in the way that boys are attractive to me, and men aren’t. I know the pain an impulsive choice could lead to. Would lead to.
Yes, I knew you wanted me. I knew that you would not make any move toward me. I knew that if anyone would cross that electrical divide, it would be me. But I would not. I will not. I touched your hand, once, and a spark jumped across. That’s when I knew our poses, relaxed and friendly, were just poses. That in spite of that, I would not follow you up the stairs.
But in my imagination, something else happened. In my imagination, I walked across that divide. The first thing I noticed was your hands, narrow, with long fingers. Expressive. I always notice hands. So different from my hands, which are square and sturdy, craftsman’s hands, that hold all the work that I do. Mine, that carry and schlep and wash and dig and clench, and also, when not too tired, that try to bring music from the body of a guitar or a mandolin. When not too tired and careworn, or worn of spirit and soul. Music takes a little bit of energy, and so often now I have none. I sing, even with no energy left, I sing. I learn the blues. But to play as well, so often now there is not enough of me, right now, to play.
In my imagination, those hands started to touch me. Just snuck across the divide, and stroked my arm. And we both pretended it wasn’t happening, and kept chatting, with most of our senses focussed on that hand. My skin tingles, even thinking about it now.
But then my hand reached over, and wove it’s own fingers into yours. That’s when we stopped talking, and eyes took over. So blue, like falling into the sky in a wheat field.
Then I reached across and touched your hair. Those curls, so different from my own straight darkness, I want to rub my face in those curls.
I imagine the hands, then starting to explore in other ways. Tentatively at first. We still haven’t kissed, although when you were talking, I did think about the shape of your mouth, and the shape of your words. Wanting to kiss you. Wanting you. Those hands reach over to the side of my neck, and stroke down, running across my collarbone. How did you know? How did you know so easily, so well, how to touch so that I burn like fire? Those hands……..
A button undone. Two. Skin, revealed. A question in the eyes. We should not do this, but soon it will be too late to turn back. I feel the tug of war, the fight we both are fighting in our heads. Suddenly grins split apart, almost simultaneously. Laughs.
Another choice. Again, my imagination takes two paths, one in knowing that I will not, would not follow you. The other, that I would, and in my mind, I do. We take hands, and I follow you up the stairs.
It seems so quiet, it is so late, here, the smell of eucalyptus filters through the open window. I rub my cheek against yours, roughness of a day of beard against my smoothness.
You take my hair out. Most of the day, it is wrapped, or braided, under control, out of my way. Today, as I write this, its still wet from the morning, from having to throw it into a bun, and having no time for anything else.
In love, my hair takes on a life all of its own. The only time I really like it long. I’ve only recently realized how much it is a measure of my emotions – tight back, I’m trying to concentrate. Don’t bother me, I’m working. Braided once it is convenient, and symbolizes me in efficiency. No nonsense. In two braids, and wrapped over the top of my head, it symbolizes my playful self, my kid side, playing in the woods. But loose, it becomes something else. Silky, it wraps down around us, enclosing us in another layer of darkness. You reach up, and start to run your fingers through it. I close my eyes, to better feel that sensation. Heaven. You pull me down toward you. Wrapped in a cocoon of silk, we finally kiss. It jolts through me, turning from this soft sensuousness to raw desire, in one moment so sharp it is almost painful. We are together, surrounded in the dark by the crowded space that is bursting with too many things, the stuff of my life, the paintings, the books, the sketchbooks piled to the ceiling. We are together, and it feels right.
I won’t write the rest of the story here. But yes, I knew. And I know, and you will never, how many times this has replayed in my head. I get a lot of mileage out of fantasy, now, since that’s mostly where my love life lives. I don’t mind a lot of the time, I’m not sure I have time for a lover. I would want time for you.
I would want so much time, freedom, emancipation from all the cares that weigh me down. Time to stand in a garden and watch our tomatoes grow. Time to stay up late, letting our minds wander where they will. Time for silly word play, sharing the flavor of the language that we love to mess with. Time to make love, so slowly, by a campfire, with a sky spilling with stars overhead. To grin at each other’s sillyness, and yes, I would cook you dinner. I would cook you many dinners. I want that time. Time, which so often feels like there is much too little of.
You are a dreamer. I see those dreams leap out of you, so many. You remind me of myself. I want to see you make those dreams come true. I want to be a part of making them come true, and I can, but not in the way that I want. Or that, at least at this moment, that I want.
This then, is a crush. I call it that, knowing it is more, but that is all I will name it. A crush. It will pass, with all likelyhood. But for now I will enjoy the flush, the flow of energy, the spark it adds to my day. A glint in my eye, a rosy cheek, a flush rising over my breastbone as I think about you. About your hands.
About your hand, that I touched. Once.
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