Jersey

"Unpretty," TLC? More like... ungrammatical.

This zing?... Untimely!

ZING.

...

So today's sort of been a "garden" day, for some reason or another. In one of my classes we had an in-depth lecture about traditional Japanese gardens from which I took precious little other than they aren't traditional and barely Japanese. Then I went to watch Peter Greenaway's The Draughtman's Contract (still a great film even on a second viewing, which is my way of saying I HAVE SEEN MANY FILMS YOU HAVEN'T, SOME MORE THAN ONCE) in which the characters spend an awful lot of time discussing gardens, their meaning, and the general preference over wives thereof.

So... what's the deal? Every now and then something like this happens where, throughout a given day, I will be bombarded with certain concepts or even words and I will think to myself, "Mackles, you sweet motherfuckler, this means something. You need to get to work on this. It's a sign, Mackillicutty. It's a fucklering, fucking sign."

So... gardening?

Honestly, without even getting into the whole "it's a sign" thing, I've been slipping really easily lately into the realm of the inspired, or at least it's been extremely easy lately to inspire me, and I started thinking that our backyard here is kind of drab, really a lot larger than a hedge and general brickwork arrangement gives it the appearance of, and generally not very utilitarian or aesthetically pleasing. I mean, it's a fine backyard, there's really nothing wrong with it, but so much more could be done with it, and it could be done so much better. The way it is now could so easily be changed into something really, if not remarkable, than at least much more pleasing to the eye.

Also, wheat! My conviction that I should make bread from scratch which struck me some months ago has thankfully not fallen by the wayside of my memory like so many fleeting fancies before it (Fancy That would make an excellent title for a gay sitcom and/or an upscale redecorating program. Must talk to Tyler about moving ahead with this). Therefore, before the first frost is on the ground (here is So Cal, we call it "Shit, I need to close a window.") I need to plant my patch of wheat since November is plantin' season. I wonder how I will incorporate the yielding land to the aesthetic land, and whether my skill at gardening, which I hold in such high regard, will be able to meld the two into some kind of supergarden or, as I call it, the Ubergarten, capable of both rendering sustenance and providing visual, kinetic pleasure.

I... don't think... there's a way...

to make gardening sound cool.

...

There was once a warlike king who, in his rise to power, stormed through a remote and wild village, inhabited by hunters and trappers. Among them was a most beautiful young woman, and rather than dispatch her or throw her to the men (for she was far too beautiful to part from after having first laid eyes on her) he kept her as his own and, furthermore, married her, making this village girl the queen of a quickly growing military empire.

The King, in an effort to please his new bride after having destroyed her village in his passing and most likely slaughtered her entire family, built her the most beautiful palace in all the land, a true testament to their growing prestige as, his army on the warpath, land upon land was conquered. He built this glittering stronghold for her, and she was pleased with her husbands gift, never really minding all that much about her family to begin with, come to that. She would spend hours just roaming the halls of the miraculous, lavish palace, gazing at its beauty and looking out of its many windows at the beautiful surrounding hillsides.

The king, happy his wife was so pleased with his wedding gift, noticed this behavior and, surmising her gazing to be her longing for her previous connection to the outside world, decided to once again construct a gift for his wife the likes of which the world had never seen before.

He came to her one day, staring out the window as she so often did, and explained to her that he planned to build her a garden. And not just any garden, but a garden the beauty of which would be known throughout all the world and throughout all of time. A garden to be remembered in the ages and a garden to be seen in life. A destination worthy of pilgrimage, of lifelong meditation, of simply appreciation and symbolic of only his love for her, his queen. He would build her this garden because, as she quickly confirmed after explaining his suspicions, she missed her closeness to the natural world she had grown up so very near to, and he would give her the most glorious garden the world had ever seen.

A plot of land was picked adjoining the castle, and the king and queen set about designing the garden. However, as they tried to decide how the garden itself should actually look, it quickly became apparent that neither of them could agree upon any one thing the garden should encompass. The king, having grown to power through a lifetime of military servitude and only maintaining that power through the respect for and further maintenance of that very military, preferred rationality, order, and geometry. The hand of man overpowering and exerting force over the wild, that was the king's chosen aesthetic. The queen, having been raised in a small village and having been taught from childhood how to commune with the earth, preferred the ordered chaos nature provided. Let the trees grow where they may, we'll scatter berry bush seeds, not plant them. Allow the garden to grow free and untended, allow the glory of nature to be shown by the only gardener truly fit to wield that medium, nature herself. The unplanned, the natural, the organic, the power and quiet beauty that was nature, these were the queen's preferences.

Neither of them wanted to concede, and they argued long and loudly about how the garden should actually look until it was the day before their first anniversary and still the plot of ground set aside for the garden had not been touched. That night, they had been arguing heatedly over the placement and shape of the main garden path, a feature that would dictate all other areas of the garden as they were to be extrapolated and built upon the unifying concept of the walkway.

"My king," said the queen, exasperated and ready to attempt a bargain, "The symbol your men carry on their shields and the symbol of your strength for the whole of your career has been the bull, and our stables overflow with them, horns and hooves. They show your strength, your commitedness, your fury in battle. They are still, however, creatures of nature, and are therefore subject to the whims of the great Earth mother. Tomorrow, let us take your finest steer out to one end of the garden plot. We shall release him, watch his progress, and wherever he goes until he leaves the grounds, there shall we lay our path. What say you, husband?"

The king thought long and hard. Finally, a tight, resigned smile on his lips, he agreed to his wife's ultimatum.

The next day the royal couple met at the castlemost border of the garden plot while servants nearby tended to the king's finest bull, a huge, black, shimmering hulk of an animal, which they brushed and fed apples to mollify its obvious foul temperament.

The Queen, enjoying the spectacle, looked to her husband who, impatiently, waved to her that she should get the thing underway. She ordered the animal released and, with a quickness belying fear for their safety, the servants quickly scattered away from the bull, who stood in place a moment longer, chewing on an apple and deciding for himself to finish before attending to any other matters.

The king, watching the bull standing there, slowly chewing its snack, walked over to the servant holding the bag, took an apple for himself, and walked to the border of the garden plot on which they now waited for the bull's trespass. He favored his wife with a smile, which contained a smugness that, in turn, earned him a look of confusion from the queen, and placed the apple squarely on the border of the property, precisely on the midpoint of that particular side.

The bull, having finished his apple and deciding to move onto other business, then decided that business should be very much like the business he'd become used to attending and headed straight for the apple the king had set on the ground. He picked it up off the ground in his teeth and began to chew on it noisily.

The king, another apple already in his hand and the servant with the rest following dutifully behind him, walked ten paces into the garden plot, perfectly perpendicular to the border, and put down the apple he was holding. And, of course, when the bull was finished, it was business as usual. He walked, positively trotted, to the next delicious treat awaiting him.

The king continued this way until he had led the bull in a perfectly straight line across the entire plot of land, and when he was done, the bull back in his pen and the queen accepting her husband's desire for order, the main path had been planned...

Perfectly bisecting the plot into two halves with one straight line.

The Moral of the Story:

Don't fuck with the king.

...

So, today officially marks the anniversary of writing in this journal. I've been "blogginatin," as the kids call it, for a whole year now, and I have to say I truly enjoy it. If nothing else, I feel a lot more comfortable with my own writing, or at least the process thereof. I've learned to trust myself and my gut instincts when it comes to putting to page whatever I want to write about, without concern about whether or not it's the right thing to put down. I'm more comfortable now than I ever was about the ideas that come from me and the amount of editing they must go under before being allowed out into the world. Of course, I don't think my confidence has been affected so much (as it's always been solid as a titanium-diamond-stainless-steel-kryptonite rock) as my ability to, almost subconsciously, do that editing work before the ideas even have a real chance to form into anything dangerous I'd need to think about to begin with.

So... I learned something.

Aren't we all proud of me.

PERSONALS:

To my... one... reader who's been with me the whole time; who, to this day, still tells me about the entries she reads and uses it as insight into my soul; who laughs at my stupid observations, acts concerned about my petty worries, and pretends not to mind my crippling flatulence...

There's just no one in the world I love as much as I do you. I don't know if this is the right forum for it, but I only ever used it to talk about whatever the hell I wanted to talk about, and using it to explain how very much you mean to me and how very much I need you every god damn second I can still breathe seems like a much better way. So today, on the anniversary of this ridiculous exercise, I don't want to do anything other than tell you, good enough once that it wouldn't take any more, that I love you with all of my little black heart.

Also, the fable the garden discussion.

And I farted just now, typing.

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...We can talk about that later.

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Is kryptonite known for its hardness? Maybe it's brittle. I wonder what it registers on the ol' Mohs hardness scale.

...

Update: I used spellcheck for the first time on eBlogger, and the malfunctioning dinothesaurus told me that not only was the word "motherfuckler" supposed to be the word "motorbike," but in order to stem any suspcions that it may just be trying to come to any conclusion at all over such a made up word, it suggested that the mispelling of "anythign" was probably me trying to type the word "antigen."

HOW DO YOU COME TO ANTIGEN BEFORE YOU SWITCH THE LAST TWO LETTERS, HAL?! YOU GOD-DAMNED MOTORBIKE!!