American Purgatorio Read Online Free
have control is to cut things off. So thatâs what I did.
I waited until Patty had gone and then I kneeled alone in the dappled afternoon shade of the maple tree, examining the various botanical structures that were starting to appear in the garden around me. I looked at my rhododendron, standing against the fence, its buds preparing to flower. Despite the dogs, the daffodils and tulips were breaking through the porous earth. Green tips were sprouting on a pair of blueberry bushes. And because I loved the garden, and because the solace it brought was, in my mind, contrasted to the non-solace in my body, I held the pruning clippers in my hand, not like a surgeon, but I felt like a surgeon, examining a patient for signs of morbidity, looking to cure all forms of disease and death.
This is what Iâm calling pride. I believed, along with a million other things, that I could control what the world was doing, and in my garden the world was beginning to grow. And it wasnât that I didnât want growth, I did, I wanted it, I wanted my garden to live and prosper, and thatâs why I held the clippers. To save something. To be rid of pain and fear, which was my pain and my fear, and although I anthropomorphized the dumb green garden, it was my own dull gnawing that was gnawing me. That was what I wanted to cut. But since I couldnât cut that, I turned to my plants, first the obviously dead branches, the ones that snapped because the life was gone, and then the partially dead, and then the ones that were alive now but that, at some point later, would be dead. And since everything, at some point later, would be dead, I had my work cut out.
And Iâm calling it pride because I believed, not only that the eradication of the bad could happen, but that I could make it happen. That I could fit the world into my particular need, which, at the moment, was a need to cleanse some thing in me, some emotion in me, and yes, I was willing to adjust to the world, but I also wanted the world to adjust to me. I wanted the reality of that moment to leave my body, to float away like a breeze-blown vapor.
Thatâs when I started cutting. And in this effort to soothe myself and rid myself of what I thought I needed to be rid of, I got carried away. The garden was my world, and to save it I began cutting, and the cutting led to more cutting, and I got lost in the cutting, bud after bud, leaf and twig and blossom fallingânot like seeds, because they were dead nowâbut falling on the ground as I moved from rose to hydrangea to lilac, mindlessly and frantically cutting, so completely involved in the act of cutting, so absorbed in the belief in the beneficence of cutting, that I pruned to death every plant I ever cared about.
I was oddly methodical as I strode from plant to plant, from peony to camellia to forsythia, so numbed by the frenzy that was whirling around inside of me that I didnât notice what I was doing. Until afterward. Thatâs when I saw that my carefully nurtured garden had been reduced in a matter of minutes to unliving stalks. Thatâs when, exhausted and sweating, I sat on a step leading down from the deck and rolled for myself a thin tobacco cigarette. Because I wasnât a smoker, after about the second puff I got lightheaded, and was just rubbing the butt in the dirt when the telephone rang. Iâd been letting the phone ring since Anne had gone, but this timeâsomething about the combination of dizziness and exhaustion and surpriseâI forgot to let it keep ringing. I ran into the house to answer, and the next thing I knew I was holding the phone. Mike See, an old hockey buddy whoâd apparently called before, was calling now, telling me about this car that was for sale.
4.
I didnât need a car. I already had a car, and I told Mike I had a car, a maroon car, but he kept going on about what a deal this car was and how cheap it was, and as he kept talking I began to
I waited until Patty had gone and then I kneeled alone in the dappled afternoon shade of the maple tree, examining the various botanical structures that were starting to appear in the garden around me. I looked at my rhododendron, standing against the fence, its buds preparing to flower. Despite the dogs, the daffodils and tulips were breaking through the porous earth. Green tips were sprouting on a pair of blueberry bushes. And because I loved the garden, and because the solace it brought was, in my mind, contrasted to the non-solace in my body, I held the pruning clippers in my hand, not like a surgeon, but I felt like a surgeon, examining a patient for signs of morbidity, looking to cure all forms of disease and death.
This is what Iâm calling pride. I believed, along with a million other things, that I could control what the world was doing, and in my garden the world was beginning to grow. And it wasnât that I didnât want growth, I did, I wanted it, I wanted my garden to live and prosper, and thatâs why I held the clippers. To save something. To be rid of pain and fear, which was my pain and my fear, and although I anthropomorphized the dumb green garden, it was my own dull gnawing that was gnawing me. That was what I wanted to cut. But since I couldnât cut that, I turned to my plants, first the obviously dead branches, the ones that snapped because the life was gone, and then the partially dead, and then the ones that were alive now but that, at some point later, would be dead. And since everything, at some point later, would be dead, I had my work cut out.
And Iâm calling it pride because I believed, not only that the eradication of the bad could happen, but that I could make it happen. That I could fit the world into my particular need, which, at the moment, was a need to cleanse some thing in me, some emotion in me, and yes, I was willing to adjust to the world, but I also wanted the world to adjust to me. I wanted the reality of that moment to leave my body, to float away like a breeze-blown vapor.
Thatâs when I started cutting. And in this effort to soothe myself and rid myself of what I thought I needed to be rid of, I got carried away. The garden was my world, and to save it I began cutting, and the cutting led to more cutting, and I got lost in the cutting, bud after bud, leaf and twig and blossom fallingânot like seeds, because they were dead nowâbut falling on the ground as I moved from rose to hydrangea to lilac, mindlessly and frantically cutting, so completely involved in the act of cutting, so absorbed in the belief in the beneficence of cutting, that I pruned to death every plant I ever cared about.
I was oddly methodical as I strode from plant to plant, from peony to camellia to forsythia, so numbed by the frenzy that was whirling around inside of me that I didnât notice what I was doing. Until afterward. Thatâs when I saw that my carefully nurtured garden had been reduced in a matter of minutes to unliving stalks. Thatâs when, exhausted and sweating, I sat on a step leading down from the deck and rolled for myself a thin tobacco cigarette. Because I wasnât a smoker, after about the second puff I got lightheaded, and was just rubbing the butt in the dirt when the telephone rang. Iâd been letting the phone ring since Anne had gone, but this timeâsomething about the combination of dizziness and exhaustion and surpriseâI forgot to let it keep ringing. I ran into the house to answer, and the next thing I knew I was holding the phone. Mike See, an old hockey buddy whoâd apparently called before, was calling now, telling me about this car that was for sale.
4.
I didnât need a car. I already had a car, and I told Mike I had a car, a maroon car, but he kept going on about what a deal this car was and how cheap it was, and as he kept talking I began to
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