Bindflowers



Little Granddaughter says: 'What's that noise?'
Last week she said only: 'Noise!'
Language grows like shining mystical bindweed, crawls around everything, confines, illuminates, defines, shadows.
(She still makes those silent movie star faces though.)
'It's the A30,' Grandad says. 'Cars, brmmm brmmmm.'
'Oh, cars.'
Cars are soon forgotten. She finds a feather, and Dog has hair.
'Doggle got hair,' she informs. 'Hair.' She pulls her own strands, to demonstrate a connection.
'Dog has hair all over. It's called fur.' Granma can be pedantic too.
'Doggle fur. Teddy!'
Weeds are flowers that grow in places where they are not wanted. These words are not weeds: I think, language is a bindflower.
At the end of the green path, she launches the feather into a tree.
'Wheeee feather! Bye!' And having released it back into the wild, walks away up the stony path with the poise of a person who is greatly skilled.



Comments

  1. Suze29 June 2013 at 13:12

    She is beautiful, Lisa.

    Off to look up bindflower (to see where that language will take me.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Suze29 June 2013 at 13:15

    Perhaps of interest: http://www.osirisnet.net/docu/liseron/e_liseron.htm

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lisa Southard29 June 2013 at 23:53

    "Thus, the bindweed affirms itself as a vehicle of passage from one world to the other, in a form of horizontal transfer from the marsh towards the shore of the dead, which rises towards the sun, under the light of which it starts blooming..."
    It binds worlds together! Fertile stuff indeed! xx

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for reading my words- my chance to read yours here:

Popular posts from this blog

Yes!

Image
June’s weather has been issued in short spells: sunny-dry, sunny-drizzle, cloudy, downpour, rainbows, humid, might-rain-might-be-blowy. Washing is on the line to dry or to get an extra rinse. Roses bloom, and when I get a chance to check the polytunnel there are tomato plants rising, the strawberries and nasturtiums are zooming over the path, the lovage has doubled. When I get to the land, with Mr, Old Dog, and grandchildren 6 & 7 (aged 4 and 3 respectively) there are tracks through it. This is magic to all of us: we, the adults who instructed this progress and fully expected to see it, and the children to whom this is pure surprise. Knowledge is no impediment to murmuring ‘wow’ and savouring the press of our boots into bare earth as we wander up through the fickle mizzle. I see the levelled area which will become an outdoor kitchen: it’s mud and scraped nettle root and it makes my heart boom YES THIS IS IT! We walk to the top field to admire the yellow digger, the huge blue tra
Read more

The Silly Ones

Image
After six months or so of diary reports that make the speed of progress indelibly clear- slow, edging around various constraints, meshed with life in general, savoured, scary, and delightful- I am whittling reportage to (mainly, anyway, one must be wary of making rash promises) a series of snapshots from our land journey. I want to focus on the specifics of bringing a dream to life- I want to bring you, Dear Reader, closer to the process. I want to share. So come with me, and Mr, and our wonky arthritic but otherwise healthy-happy Dog, and feel free to chortle as we set up camp in the stable on a June night. The day has been glorious, summery, hot. The stable is cool, dusty underfoot. There is still a roll of dung in each corner, dried like cement. There are mouseholes, ratholes, old spiderwebs thick as ropes. There is sunlight sneaking through the gaps, there is a calmness here, there is birdsong and a swoop of wind through leaves. We fix our camping mattresses on top of the sofa
Read more

On Track

Image
  The grass track was supposed to be a fairly straight run from the top gate to the bottom gate. It had additional wiggles where the muddy spots had snagged a wheel. I will not miss digging the van out of muddy trouble, or pushing it. We rarely dared to drive uphill. The stone track gently curves to follow the land. It will need compacting before we call it a job done- but here we are, driving uphill, downhill, hearing the stone crunch, not quite believing what our ears and eyes are confirming. It’s a silly-hot day, we barely get any work done, and every job we do wanders back to the stone line and rechecks: yep, it’s here. We did dream it, but then we ordered all this stone and now it’s real. So, what next? Of course, there’s a list we can refer to, and subdivisions of lists depending on which segment of our project we deem to be the next practical step. So..? It’s easy to write lists. The first item usually starts ‘research…’ because we are edging along a tightrope here, a couple
Read more