We thought nothing of it when we saw it gathering moss before it slid, slipped, glided right away. We assumed ‘all potential’ meant an infinity of riches, something like magic. Not love and hate. Body and mind. But the good, the bad and the ugly. We knew nothing about moss either – its lack of vascularity, no real roots and veins for taking water to leaf and stem. Just hairs sucking damp air. Though it doesn’t go deep, it is astonishingly effective. Do we include it as a plant because it is green, or because inclusion is one of those words like ‘all potential’, or because it is from all potential? Yet we know to rake it off when it creeps too near the vegetables.
Don’t you think it was when we came to know it was a word that it slipped from our grasp? The picking it up and putting it up how we wanted it – set, standing alone – that sent it falling to the floor and fragmenting in the first place. We didn’t even notice the fall or the pieces. Now we’re obsessed with the pieces. Perhaps it was a young word or a young hearing.
We did notice it. The fall. And that’s fine. It should have been fine. It would have been fine had we not forgotten ‘apple’ after ‘apple’ after ‘apple’. Instead, we saw ‘apple’ and called it fruit. And said, ‘snake’ and labelled it: evil, raw power stripped bare and exposed. Exposed! Nakedness noticed. That’s the point. Thinkably resisting the right to cast off the old and be something other. Preferred patterns – the obliquity. Whatever’s in fashion. Nakedness notices. The very root spinning a web out of itself. In fear of itself.
You say we put the word back together as best we could. Though it’s still shaky. Perhaps we might canvas on what would make it stick. Possibly we might run a crash course on it. Perhaps we must. P’raps not. P’raps they’ll say it’s the nature of the word to slip and slide. Elude! Delude! Should we begin with a definition? Is this a wrong question? Right or wrong? Good or bad. Do you think? Pay attention! Before you drop it. Did you? Avoid the silence we will have to bear?
After we took a wrong turning, it was inevitable. Strolling with pink feet on soft grass we didn’t know we had a path, a choice, a chance. Now, with green feet we think it possible to turn, to stop, to back away. Or take the other path. Not this. Still too pink or green to see. Not neither. Back or forwards. Left or right. Not pink or green. Either. Night or day OK. We are up against the space. Now. End. Beginning.
Wendy Clayton
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