It’s hard to sing with a caterpillar in your mouth

from the sea  (5) - Baubo’s bird ludes by freda karpf

Going back even further, you can connect her lineage to Baubo’s.  So strange really and who would have thought it so. But back when the hanging gardens of Baubo’s follies were amusing the fools on Eleusis, even back then the connection to Mrs. Scattergood existed, if only a shadow waiting for the fullness of her being to embody.  Journeys are complex and yet the arrival point, waking up to the present, is simple. You are there and there is no tangible past that can pull you back to another time and place.  Unless you have mischief in your back pocket and an old fart like Baubo jogging your memory and picking apart the lines of zig so that she could enjoy the lines of zag. 

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     Baubo was drawn to mischief. She didn’t always know what drew her but she was good at following that thread. She loved to watch the story unfold.  ‘So birds?’ she was thinking. And wondered if there were any rare birds brooding here.  That would protect Mrs. Scattergood’s land from development if that was ever an issue. That would mean her home was a home to others as well. That would mean, there is, as there always seems to be, more meaning than you know in the place you call home.

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     Just about the time these plovers were rocking in the sand building their cradles Baubo saw a wren, prolific little singer, singing along, one song after another. Never a full verse or chorus but a continuous shuffle of song parts until it picked up a piece of a caterpillar. Then it was trying to announce its catch. It’s hard to sing with a caterpillar in your mouth. Baubo can attest to that. There was a momentary silence. 

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     Baubo made claims about many things but every molecule of mischief, every shit and giggle, wasn’t going to be so transparent. One had to look a little harder than just suspecting. It was against all odds that plover eggs would survive the tide of overdevelopment, loose dogs and wild cats a’hunting.  Wasn’t it? Everyone wanted their return; wanted them to thrive. Hoped against the odds. But many knew it took more than hope. It took laws and even then it might take, a mechanic gone mad, someone like Barry, to forge plover’s eggs and bluff a would be buyer. ‘Wouldn’t that be special’, Baubo thought, for the moment, admiring someone as wicked as herself.

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     Back in Eleusis, that sacred land, the great ones and their friends enjoyed being stoned out of their minds and discovering new connections. That was the time when the universe exploded with stars and the ancients gave birth to rock candy and piñatas of philosophies. Until everyone split for a spice to make the soup just right.  Soulful times.  As you know, Plato predicted it, others have noted, the descent into the realm of the material world concurrently required the need for musicals and variety acts.  It is a difficult process putting on time’s skin. Once you zip up you’re forced to live half in sun and half in shadow.

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf