From the Edge of Darkness 18: We Balance On The Knife's Edge

Charley Freiberg photo

We balance on the knife’s edge.

We balance on the knife’s edge, and the view up here is astounding. 

Autumn quivers and preens as she delicately edges towards winter. Winter struts and wobbles as he edges towards us.

We balance on the knife’s edge; on one side, the rocky fall, mossy and glorious; on the other, a sea of fallen glorious leaves, piled up over invisible earth gone sere and hard and cracked with pits.

Winds buffet us; the sea waves crash about us. We balance. We balance.

Eleven – more – dead, shot by a man who fell over the edge, a man burdened by guns he had no problem buying, a man whose mind became filled with the howling winds.

The air about us is foetid; our eyes are misted with it. Pipe bombs, poison, fly through the air, land at our feet. Someones fell off the edge of sanity. Someones turned anger and fear into spew. Someones became lost and tumbled over, losing their finger-tip grip on the sharp edge. Someones hurled horror as they fell.

We balance on the knife’s edge.

We balance on the knife’s edge and the edge becomes sharper, narrower, harder to stay upright upon. Words rain down on our heads; words sharpen the edge. Words with one meaning on one side, with another on the other. Words that twist our senses into a nightmare so we doubt the reality of what we see and hear. Words that push against our balance, slip our toes off the edge, loosen the grip of those holding on, barely, by their fingertips.

We balance on the knife’s edge and we can’t see safe haven, we don’t know who to trust. We balance; we wobble. How long until we fall?

I am afraid of that man with the gun strapped to his thigh and his hoary righteous certainty. I am afraid of that mother with the gun in her purse and her anxious, hyper-sensitized determination. I am afraid of that person spewing warped ideas, warped words, warped emotions. I’m afraid of that person who sees a path to his own richness and fame along this narrow edge we balance upon. I’m afraid because they have no idea they’re sleepwalking and can’t split reality from their encompassing dream.

If we fall the fall will be spectacular. As we fall, we will think we’re glorious, flying and untouchable. If we fall we will slice off our tethers. If we fall – when we fall – if we fall – when we fall – 

If we fall there will be no one left to catch us. We will plunge into the unknown. The knife’s edge will have become too thin to balance upon. If we fall – when we fall – if we fall –

We’ve turned away our neighbors who are falling, pushed them over into the abyss, children ripped from arms, souls wailing. We’ve turned our backs on neighbors who are going about their common business, putting our feet out, trying to trip them. We’ve hurled mudballs; we’ve dragged slime from swamps long past and formed it into masks, into earplugs, into mouthpieces that bend our meaning, bend all meaning, and so adorned, we face our neighbors and smile – leer – grimace - show our teeth.

We balance on the knife’s edge. We gather weapons, animosity, corruption, betrayals, exhaustion, ennui, heart-sickness, hard-heartedness, fear, spooks and bogeymen, monsters in closets, frustration, confusion, misdirection, anger, wounds long tended like precious jewels, chips long carried on shoulders grown irritable, smoke and mirrors, lies in enticing make-up, lies that enervate, lies that harden our backbone and dispel flexibility, lies that excite, lies that destroy, lies that dance about us in pretty dresses: alluring, luring, captivating. We carry it all on our backs, balance it in our minds. 

We wobble. Winter’s coming, with its frost, ice and sleet, hail and slippery slopes, its pounding, pressing winds.

We balance on the knife’s edge. The view up here is astounding. 

(Publication pending in the Concord Monitor.)

Ghost Houses

Crow; Clare McCarthy photo

Back in the dark ages, when I was newly hatched from college, I – and several hundred other under-30’s working in the publishing industry – lived in the Peterborough area. Most of us were poorly paid, so we lived in all sorts of interesting places: converted horse stalls, old-fashioned boarding houses, sublets of old houses, apartments entered by climbing several sets of stairs in a barn, apartments with bathrooms large enough to hold a party in and apartments with bathrooms that closely resembled an outhouse –all sorts of places.

Most of the seriously adult people who lived in Peterborough didn’t think of it as a particularly haunted place – well, let me take that back. Peterborough, we understood, was one of those places where retired spooks – of the government kind – were safe-housed; but I’m referring here to the non-corporeal kind of spooks. 

One old house in which I rented a room from a 20-something who was subletting the place was filled with interesting artwork the real renters had collected from all over the world. The collection included different tribes’ objects of power, which came with their own resident spirits, which apparently took a dislike to me. I only stayed there briefly because I was woken over and over nightly by – I don’t know what; and because whenever I walked through the kitchen, cupboard doors popped open and inanimate objects launched themselves at me, which made preparing a meal problematic. I got pretty good at catching unexpected flying objects before I moved.

This ghost story, however, is about the house a colleague rented from owners who were away for several years on an anthropological journey. The anthropologists would come and go, gone usually for several years at a time; and they’d filled their house with all sorts of interesting objects, including death masks which hung on the stairway wall. The house itself had started life, a century before, as a slaughterhouse. It was abandoned when the farmer owner hung himself from one of the rafters, sat empty and desolate for a time, and then was converted into a very groovy ‘70’s house, complete with kitchen/dining room open to the rafters, lots of rough barn boards, a catwalk leading from open stairway to a large sitting room and a bedroom on the upper floor, and a sometimes fruit-fly-haunted composting toilet.

My colleague, The Writer, and I spent a fair amount of time there, talking about writing, editing, work friends, men, animals, what we expected our lives to become, and trying out recipes. We mostly sat in the kitchen, drinking tea or working at the big table; for some reason we weren’t drawn to the upstairs sitting room, and The Writer finally had to take down the death masks and pack them away before she was comfortable sleeping upstairs. 

We found we easily lost track of our conversations the longer we spent in the kitchen: a constantly moving energy was there, which was easy to get lost in if we weren’t paying attention. We’d look up and realize that many minutes had passed, and we had been – elsewhere. The Writer believed the energy of the hundreds of animals who had passed through the space on their last journey was stuck there, still milling about.

We knew the place was haunted. The Writer often woke in the middle of the night to music playing on the radio in the kitchen. Down the stairs she’d go, to turn off the radio; an hour or so later, it would be on again. Even unplugging the radio didn’t guarantee a quiet night - somehow it would be plugged in and playing after midnight. 

When we could no longer stand the constant motion we saw out of the corners of our eyes in the kitchen, going upstairs to the sitting room became more alluring. Each time we crossed the catwalk, however, I’d see some dark object swing down at me from the rafters above, and I’d duck. I never got hit, and didn’t say anything because I assumed The Writer truly had bats in her belfry, a matter too delicate to discuss. But eventually she asked, “Do you know you always duck at the same place whenever we come up here?” “I know!” I said. “You must have bats in here or a bird got in. Something keeps swooping down at me when we cross the catwalk.”

“Actually,” she said, “where you duck is the exact spot the owners told me the old farmer hung himself from the rafters.”

Huh.

Jekyll Beach Faces; Bonnie Lewis photo

We were young, and I’d only recently left the house that tossed kitchen items at me, so we laughed and didn’t think much more about it. Spooks? We weren’t scared of invisible spooks! Even ones that turned on dance music in the middle of the night!

One night The Writer had a party, inviting all the other folks who labored for slave wages at the magazine where we worked. Her sitting room was a great space for a party. I arrived a little late, ducked my way along the catwalk, and reaching the big room, noticed that The Writer’s father and a friend of his were also at the party. The old gents were sitting on a bench at the far side of the room, chatting quietly and watching our goings-on. I caught their eyes, smiled and nodded, and they smiled and nodded back.

It was a nice party, the food was great, the conversation was entertaining, there was flirting and laughing. Eventually it grew late, and we all started for home. 

“Great party!” I said to The Writer, as we headed downstairs. “I didn’t know your dad was visiting. Who’s the other gent, your uncle?”

The Writer looked at me oddly. “My father’s not here,” she said. 

“Oh; are those old guys neighbors, then?”

“What guys, exactly, are you talking about?” The Writer asked.

“The ones sitting on the bench,” I said. “I figured they didn’t join in because they didn’t want to dampen the young folks’ fun. Will you introduce me before I go?” I was feeling strangely confused.

The Writer stared at me. “There weren’t any old guys sitting on the bench,” she said, after a moment.

 We went back upstairs and peered into the room from the doorway. “Those guys,” I said quietly, not wanting to point. 

“There are no guys there, Deb” The Writer said. 

“They’re waving at us,” I said.

“Okaaay,” The Writer said. “Time to go home!”

“This is too weird,” I said. “Do you want to come with me?”

The Writer hesitated, then said, “I don’t see them. I’ll be okay.”

So I went out to my car, half-convinced my friend was playing a trick on me. I was part-way home when I heard an old guy voice from the back seat, “Are we nearly there yet?” In my rear-view mirror, all I could see was empty air in the darkness. 

But that’s another story.

Published 28 October 2018 in the Concord Monitor as “A Groovy Kind of Haunting.”

Get Up!

Last week's bounty; Deb Marshall photo

“Get up!” The Husband said. “You’ve got to look out the window and see this!” 

Tired; hard night. It hailed and then it snowed. I was awake when the snow started. What’s so important to look at? Did we get more than a dusting? I don’t have my glasses on.

“Just get up; I’ve got to call the police,” he said, bounding back downstairs.

Huh. Snow doesn’t require a call to the police. So I reluctantly found my glasses and went downstairs. And there – in the field, next to the garden, or what was left of it after last night’s weather – were two horses dressed in blankies, rolling about in the snow and dashing about the field and through my garden beds and skittering with every blow of the wind, which was a lot of skittering. These horses were clearly having the time of their lives, but no one in the nearby owns horses, that we’re aware of; though there are a few fainting goats and a donkey down the street.

The Husband called the local police, then headed out with big carrots from our garden to try to keep the horses away from the road. I called the vet to see if they knew anyone who might be missing some horses. Then I put clothes on and headed out with more carrots. By this time the town cop had arrived, and he and the Husband had followed the horses into the neighbors’ yard, and then down the road.

By the time I got there, horses and cop and husband were out of sight, but the daughter of the woman whose horses they were showed up, and we headed into the next neighbor’s yard together. Her mom’s car was parked on the side of the road. In a few minutes Husband and cop returned up – Mom was going home with the horses, on foot. Daughter told me that one of the horses, who we’ve seen from a distance a few times coming down Kimpton Brook Road with rider, is in love with the donkey down the road. We figure when they got loose, the happy horses  took their usual route to visit the donkey, and by the time they made a side-trip down our driveway they were already headed home for breakfast, though they were perfectly happy to accept the carrots the Husband offered.

Giant hoof-prints in my raised beds aside, the horses caused less damage than the damned chipmunks have, and continue to, cause. Currently they’re digging up flower bulbs almost as soon as I plant them. They aren’t eating them, just tossing them onto the ground where they’ll get frost-bitten or freeze and be ruined if I don’t find them quickly enough and replant them. Not really interested in planting these bulbs more than once, and so far I’ve planted about half of them twice. Cussing the whole time.

This morning, my weirdly still-green and lush asparagus ferns were lying flat on the ground. I have a very bad feeling that the damned chipmunks have been gnawing on their roots. I’m going to be furious if there are no asparagus next spring because the damned chipmunks ate the roots. Someone told me they knew someone whose apple trees were completely stripped of apples this fall by the damned chipmunks – you see the apples balanced on branches up in pine, and maple, and beech trees when walking through the woods.

One of the most interesting things that developed over the last gardening season actually started last fall, when I put a largish clay pot on the floor near a window in the room we call the chapel (because it has one stained glass window), near the woodstove. I must have immediately forgotten why it was there, tho’ I continued to throw water at it from time to time because it had sprouted one single stalk of what looked like really interesting grass, or a grain of some sort. I decided I wanted to see how the thing would develop; and eventually I planted cat grass in the pot for the Furry People’s use. Come summer, I put it outdoors on the wart with the rest of the plants that summer outdoors, and was disappointed when it didn’t develop a seed head or any other interesting thing; and in fact, it turned yellow and kind of dwindled.

When I got ready to put empty pots away for the winter I upturned it to dump the soil into the compost bin, and a big chunk of something fell out. Thinking it might be a damned chipmunk, I gingerly fished it out and brushed it off and discovered it was, in truth, a big ginger root! I’d grown a lovely large ginger root without remembering planting it! So I put the soil back in the pot, broke off the two nubs that were starting to sprout again, planted them in the pot, and put the pot back in the chapel near the woodstove, and I’ll be really interested to find out what’s in there next fall at about this time.

What I found in the pot; Deb Marshall photo

The garden’s pretty much done for the winter. I’ve still got 15 pavers still to place, and 15 bricks, and there’s a bale of hay and a bag of cedar to spread before they freeze – one in the raspberry bed, where I just finished cutting out the spent canes, the other to fill in spots where the cover wore thin over the summer. I’m waiting for some perennials to arrive, and I hope they come soon and I’m not trying to plant them in a snowstorm into frozen ground; and I’m replanting the bulbs the chipmunks toss out. 

The marjoram and sage and bee balm and hostas have been cut back, and there’re still a handful of other plants that need to have spent foliage cut back when I have time on the weekend. But the season’s turned again, and we’re effectively in very late fall - we even fired up the woodstove, yesterday. The only real thing happening in the garden is the spoiled vegetation rotting away in the compost bins, which, after two weeks of hard work, are filled with rotting stuff that needs to be changed into something useful.

Time to do as much for our country. In just about 2 weeks, it’ll be time to vote. Voting’s the way we yank out the old, rotting stuff in our country and toss it in the compost bins, while planting new bulbs to flourish and invigorate us and make our hearts sing after a long, hard winter. Be a good farmer and toss out the old stuff with vigor, even though it’s hard work and it can take awhile before we see results. Otherwise, all we’ll have in our country is a miasma of rotting, nasty stuff that’s not good for us, and we’ll slowly rot away and die. 

Remember to vote; and remember, we’re all Witnesses.

For the blog.

Getting ready for what's coming; Deb Marshall photo

O! Autumn Comes...

There once was a path; frost took it away!

O! Autumn comes on purple feet

With falling scarlet tresses,

She dazzles us with bronze and gold

Upon her dancing dresses;

Sometimes she smiles in warm delight

Sometimes she blows and sighs

And other times she draws in tight

Tears flowing, as she cries.

O! Autumn longs for Summer’s touch,

Who left her lone and cold;

And yet she hurries along the path

Towards bold raw Winter’s hold;

But while she tarries, before she marries,

Fall glories do unfold

We breathe in deeply her marvels sweetly:

Englamoured by her craft.

Pre-frost flowers

You can tell this is a poem because it starts with O!; I’m making fun of poems from earlier centuries, when O! would set you up to expect an emotional, overburdened poem from the quivering sensitive poet’s spiritually rendered heart.  The last line does rhyme, barely, with “path,” but by the time you get there, your ear won’t hear it. Now you know.

Kinda like my brain won’t hear the truth: we had our first, killing frost 2 nights ago, and it laid waste to the nasturtiums, and beans, and glorious morning glories. You can again see my compost bins, and now they’re filled with, rather than swamped by, morning glory vines. I can see right into the center of the garden now, including the empty bed that the damned chipmunks cleared of parsnips overnight the night before the frost. They must have had a big party, because the next day I pulled the last 5 roots and dug through the bed, finding nary a one of even partially consumed roots, of the dozens that had filled it anon. And now I know.

Pre-frost Love Lies Bleeding

Yes, anon’s a misuse of another poetic-like word, so when you read the above paragraph, pronounce “damned chipmunks” as “dam-ned chipmunks,” pretend anon means recently instead of soon, and that you’re wearing a long dress and silk shawl or a morning coat and silken ascot, are standing by a rain-swept very long window with a small book of poetry in your hand, as you sigh at the spiritual insights and pain of the poet. After such near-total destruction, verbal as well as chipmunkal, we might as well make hash of the rest.

Sigh. I like parsnips, but I LOVE wintered-over parsnips. Last year the mice got ‘em and I got none; this year the chipmunks have broken my heart. I have one small patch of parsnips still flourishing in the raised bed near the house, and I’m hoping against likelihood that the damned chipmunks don’t find it. So far all they’ve done in that bed is steal bites out of tomatoes and hollow out a couple of giant, ripening peppers, but they haven’t done any tunneling there, so maybe, maybe, maybe… Just let me add that if you’ve never eaten an over-wintered parsnip, you’ve never really tasted the glories of parsnip. It’s like a different vegetable, and you can’t imagine what happens to it after spending a frozen winter below ground.

The last gladiolas

 

What amazes me most is that the cosmos, some of it, and the calendula, all of it, and the Love Lies Bleeding, and the anemones and dahlias and raspberries and a few of the potted plants, including the passion flower, survived the frost, which tipped even the pepper plants nearest the house which I’d covered with remay (a woven garden cloth) against the frost. 

During the day I’d gathered masses of nasturtiums and all the other garden flowers, along with the last hydrangea and hibiscus and okra blossoms, and a big vase of the darkly-purple-leaved scarlet Love Lies Bleeding that got planted late and so has only begun to bleed and hasn’t laid down yet; and all the potential gladiola flower stalks, which I’m not sure will develop and bloom in a vase, but we’ll see. The dining table is covered with flowers, now, and I can’t see the Husband over them when he sits opposite me. Catman thinks I’ve brought him an herbaceous feast.

The catnip, by the way, is still flourishing in the garden, and spreading new babies everywhere. Talk about annoying.

The new Harvest Person at the dog park in Enfield.

 

There is something satisfying about cleaning out the garden, piling the armloads and mounds of finished plants into the compost bins, praising them for their summer bounty and wishing them well in their new journey. It’s rained more than it’s been sunny during these two weeks of my vacation, so the going’s been slow but steady work. As I go, I’ve been planting a few spring bulbs, cussing the chipmunks as I do, fingers crossed that they won’t munch them as little else remains in the garden, and hoping they go to their winter dens and stay put soon. I’ve put down more pavers and bricks in the wet, and cut down scarlet runner vines in the wet, finding, as always, huge pods of lovely beans that I couldn’t see amongst the masses of twisted and twined vines. I’m still not entirely finished; the fava beans don’t mind cool weather, though it’s getting colder enough that they aren’t doing much very fast and I’ll probably yank them out soon. I’ve wrested the remains of the last two rows of carrots from the chipmunks, finding half of them half-eaten; there are still celeriac plants to pull, and a giant artichoke plant that hasn’t bloomed but looks large and healthy yet; and the flowers that avoided the frost, and the two pepper plants near the house, still loaded with little peppers. 

Inside, the Christmas cactuses are setting blooms. Does anyone have a Christmas cactus that actually blooms near Christmas? Mine always burst into bloom around Hallowe’en. The bay and kaffir lime and tender hibiscus are trying to get used to cramped quarters, again, and I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to bring the old passion flower vine in or let it go and start over with a baby. Right now it’s out – I’m hoping its 3 buds will bloom before I have to make the decision or a freeze makes it for me.

One of my butternuts has already become soup, a full basket of winter squashes and pumpkins – the latter bought from another grower, thanks to the damned chipmunks who tunneled under my pumpkin plant and killed it – as they did my poppy plants – just as it was getting ready to bloom. Are you sensing a theme, here? – resides under the dining room table. The onions and potatoes, both of which matured early this year, are already half gone. But the smaller freezer is filled with bags and bags of tomatoes, beans, corn, beets, and peppers. I’ve never seen so many peppers, nor so many on one plant, nor such tall pepper plants – a couple reached 4 feet! 

Some of the squashes under the table

It was a strange and truly weird growing season. My asparagus – until this year, three or four spindly stalks that somehow moved from a long-gone bed 10 feet away to the end of the new bed where I grow scarlet runner beans – this year have become a small multitude, and produced a bush of fern that still is beautifully green and lush. The fall raspberries started mid-summer, stopped, and now are producing incredible numbers of flowers and keeping the bees, which are very slow in the cold air, busy busy busy.  The peach tree half died. The apples were mealy and horrid. My pear produced, for the first time, a dozen or so pears. The scarlet runner beans made roots that were as big around, and longer in stretch, than my carrots, which (when not gnawed on) were huge. And one whole bed of carrots produced flowers, instead of carrots – pretty much a genetic impossibility, carrots being biennials. The largest sunflowers were at least a month before their time, and okra blooming in mid-October in NH? Unheard of. Ditto the small summer squashes that I finally ended a few days ago.

Can't get much more gorgeous!

Today is another very cold, wet day – too cold to brave the garden. My feet are frosty, and I turned the heat up to 63, this morning. I’m going to try to stay in and sew buttons that fell off months ago back on, and hem a pair of pants I’ve had for a year and never worn.

Ticks are back – I’ve pulled three off Catman in the last week. Squooshed the nasty pests and flushed them down the toilet. Too bad we can’t as easily rid ourselves of the horrible, pathology-spreading pest infecting the White House and his cohorts in the Administration and Legislature. Don’t forget to vote. We're all Witnesses.

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall

October 15, 2018

Below: Two views of a very haunted house in Enfield, October 2018.