from
the sea (5) - Baubo’s bird ludes by freda karpf
She felt a fondness for
the woods, the weeds, the dry crackling grasses that winter winds brushed. She
enjoyed their sense of presence. She
acknowledged this to the trees, to herself.
She knew the trees were alive with thought, consciousness, whatever
blessed thing people think they have that is so much better then nature. She
knew and this world knew her back. It was
the same seamless seam that Mrs. Scattergood moved along. The slick in the
water that smoothed out in odd shapes with the run and ripples of the river
providing the frame.
~
Mercury came out of Eleusis with messages
for everyone. Forgetfulness drowns out immediacy and connection. Mercury, that
quicksilver being, was a love channel. Everything either swam up that river or
down. Nothing was impeded unless some fool damned it up and tried to secure all
the love for themselves. Monotheism, the
ruination of flow. Baubo and others
still worked all the connections.
~
Mrs. Scattergood had abandoned herself to
forgetfulness. If she had only stuck to
things she knew she would remember. She rarely did that. Her soups were a good
for instance. A recipe should be a plan. She read them. Studied them. Copied
them out. Created her shorthand to make them quick and easier to follow. The
same recipe brought into her being over and over again like a student studying
flash cards, just seeing the card sparks the memory. But does that last outside
the review of the cards? One could
allude to the study of the Talmud and be congruent with who Mrs. Scattergood
was. But this would only be a red herring. Not even the kind of herring Mrs.
Scattergood would eat; that being only creamed herring, that being mostly for
the sweet onions. But that sort of half on half off the tracks was just the
thing with her. She would learn these recipes until she felt fluent in them.
Once a part of her liquid memory she would change everything about them. Not
Navy beans but cannelloni beans. Not just any cannelloni beans but cannellini
runners. Salt pork, you say? A ham bone?
No, not just any ham bone but one that wasn’t preserved with nitrites.
Poisons. Such poisons. For that? Isn’t
smoking good enough?
~
The first year that Mrs. Scattergood quit
writing Telltale, she began to make soup. She had the aunt, the niece
Leah, and the old couple, the Gartens, all these characters waiting to be
brought to life again, abandoned. Nobody knew this. Only she knew this. It felt
a little crazy. The writer is now The Soupster. That is what gave her bones
comfort. She even headed home because of the call of the soup. This is what
happens when grief pays a call and life is not what it was. What it was is
forgotten amidst the hubbub of the soul stirrings and the confusion of history
crowding memories while the day rolls through its minutes.
~
Even if she didn’t know who she was, at
least Mrs. Scattergood could make soup.
The characters that she abandoned had been running their lives in her
head like a film for so long that when she went to write their story, she felt
she had already lived it. She got tired
of being a television screen for them.
As soon as she had decided that she couldn’t write the novel she made a
parallel decision that she could make soup.
She made variations on navy bean soup; every combination of every navy
bean soup recipe she read eventually reduced to their primary elements became
her generic Navy bean soup. Without the Navy beans, of course.
~
There are only so many ingredients one can
accommodate before you begin to realize that the act of making soup is a
blessing. Who really needs a recipe?
Soup is open to all. Nobody is
stopped at the door, or, the rim of the pot. Every kind of vegetable, fruit, or
meat is welcome. There are no barriers to what it can be and no hard line to
what it must remain. Soup gone to storage in the refrigerator one evening will
be tastier the next. Does not wisdom achieve the same outcome?
~
Just like Baubo, Mrs. Scattergood was
always speaking as if someone were there.
Most often they weren’t. As much
as she loved people, she was most often without them. She knows some things were going on. Things shaping up, taking a form that was one
of the benefits of the agreed upon world.
~
The world is becoming more and more
complex. No matter. The way through is simple. If you never had the road anyway, go with
what feels right.
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