Murmuration

a tale from a long time ago

What if…

…I’d done some research and had a thorough vision aside from wanting a ‘natural’ life, bread baking, and planting food?

I didn’t know gardening, although I’d heard that it was best to plant when the moon is in Cancer. With my visions of a simple life, in 1972, I followed my friends west.

Radin Badrnia’s print, The Well Of Sadness is like ideas (I shouldn’t use like—my copy editor took issue with my use of the word. Even when used correctly I balk and question my capacity to write well at all.) Anyway, in the picture it seems (like?) as though ten thousand birds are escaping through the back of someone’s head, swooping and soaring. It is a murmuration of inspiration that thins out as it rises.

For a long time (it felt long in those late teen days)—a year perhaps—I longed to get my hands dirty, live in the mountains (I’d never seen mountains except in pictures), and be one with nature. There was nothing obviously wrong with my life. My sister even told me, “Your only problem is you don’t have any [problems].” Regardless, I wanted out and away from my (I search for adjectives: hysterical, unpredictable, really fucking angry) mother (I didn’t know and she didn’t tell that she was bleeding pretty much to death). Still, I was seventeen and all I wanted was to join my friends in something like a commune. I say “something” because in reality it was mostly horny boys that drank too much, dug a square of dirt, and didn’t buy seeds in time (the moon by now being in Leo). There was Steve, a draft dodger with a bleeding ulcer, cherubic Bev who sat naked by the river with her flute, Susie who played guitar and sang yellow is the colour, and the brothers, Bob and Jimmy. And me, with my big skirts hauling spring water and baking bread.

Photo by Sonja Wilkinson on Unsplash

My idea, my murmuration, thinned out as the days went by. But they were sunny, greening days full of promise, even when the boys came back drunk from town and fell in the river.

I didn’t know planting or carpentry but I learned the mechanics of a wood cook stove—how to remove the lids to boil water faster, to slide soup pots to the front to simmer, that cedar was best for kindling, and that birch burns slow and hot. But I wanted so much more. It was a simple, uncomplicated life (something I long for now) but it was generally fruitless and frustrating.

We slept on the floor in a row of mattresses: Jimmy (Susie’s boyfriend), Susie, me, and Bob (my boyfriend). One night, Bob (I thought it was Bob) rolled me over in the dark and made love to me. In the first flush of dawn light, Jimmy flashed me a grin. I told Susie what happened which was a good thing because when she found out Jimmy had given her gonorrhea, it answered a question I had about my nether region.

Anyway, my uncle came to get me. Not a rescue or an intervention—not on the surface, at least. The summer before I’d requested a month in his New York brownstone (The Village!) to write my novel. (Yes, you’ve done the math—I was sixteen.) That summer his stepdaughter was in residence so he’d had to decline. I went off to Quebec instead and wrote that forgettable book in a garret (a small pension room with a small wooden desk) in the old part of town (cobblestones, caleches, etc.). The story was about an innocent girl from South Carolina (I’d never been) named Whisper who, through her kindness et al was able to tame her unbridled, vaguely evil, cousin, Georgia. I don’t remember the juicy details of Georgia’s transgressions—a little selfish, maybe.

So that summer of my ersatz back-to-the-land escapade, Uncle Bob called my father to invite me to New York. My father told him I lived in Harper Valley (Crescent Valley—my father liked a good joke.).

My Wall Street banker uncle enlisted the RCMP to track me down. The following day he flew into that small airport sporting a three-piece suit complete with watch and chain. I’d stayed at a friend’s lower in the valley so I could meet him in the morning to bring him up to the cabin. To get to the cabin one had to cross the river, now a bit of a rager due to spring melt off the mountain. The bridge had been washed away (see above—boys falling drunk in river) so clothesline had been strung across the river over a fallen tree. The tree bounced as it was still rooted on one side, and its tip didn’t make it all the way to the far bank, so one had to jump.

My uncle in his vest with its watch and chain stood bouncing on the tree trunk in the middle of the river, one hand gripping the clothesline, the other gripping his briefcase. (When I tell this story I picture him in a bowler hat but I don’t think he owned one.) He’d frozen as the tree bounced him and the river ran wild beneath. I reached across and took his briefcase. “Jump,” I urged and he sort of did.

When we arrived at the cabin Jimmy followed us in. Bev went by with her pink skin and her flute. Susie wasn’t there but Jimmy had procured a dark-haired beauty. I introduced my uncle Bob to my boyfriend Bob who’d just woken up with a pretty blonde he’d found in town.

Uncle Bob snapped open his briefcase and said, “Who’d like a martini?”

Jimmy downed the last of his coffee and held out his mug.

With drinks poured into various vessels, Uncle Bob and I went out to survey the meadow, the upturned would-be garden, and the green, green valley below. Birds indeed were singing and Bev’s flute music lifted through the sunny morning air. The dark-haired woman passed by us on her way to fetch water at the spring. She wore only a smile.

Uncle Bob hitched a thumb into his vest pocket and lifted his tumbler of warm gin and vermouth. “If I bought a piece of land such as this, do you think I could also have women like this?” (I’m sure he said like in there somewhere.)

I could almost see the images swooping out the back of his head. Thinning, of course, as they rose. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that wasn’t how it worked.

But what did I know? Maybe it did and he could. (He never did.)

Soon, I would be in New York City in my long cotton dresses talking to beautiful gay men on the Morton Street Pier.

But that’s another story.