On Beauty & the Wasteland - v.2 /issue 5 - Connect-the-Dots

  

On Beauty & the Wasteland

V.2 / issue 5

Connect-the-Dots

The finest of flakes are beginning to fall. I can see them in relief against the dark blue spruce trees towering over our neighborhood of modest ranch homes. Brownie cat is lying on my lap. Phosphor bird is lying on Brownie. I am lying on my couch alternately looking at and through a large picture window. Fungus gnats, living and dead, decorate the window, which I can sometimes see as silhouettes against the white winter sky. 

Fungus gnats infest my house plants. I’m afraid I will lose those who are tempermental about water like my ferns and violets. Unfortunately, my bird won’t eat the gnats, showing no interest. Perhaps I am lounging here in wait for the next hatching? Do fungus gnats hatch? 

I have taken to standing on the couch in front of the window, stooping, bending, to better see their black bodies and clear wings maybe a ¼ inch long. When I find one, I crush it under my finger. They don’t fly away like houseflies. They sit there, still, as their neighbors and kin are crushed to death by a mysterious menace playing connect-the-dots with their lives.

The internet informs me that adult fungus gnats are merely a nuisance plant pest, though their larvae can cause damage, eating the plants’ root and mycorrhizal fungal systems. Scanning the window pane for new black spots feels similar to the way my fingers sometimes trace my heel calluses for prime picking locations. I notice a slight pleasurable buzzing in my legs as I consider plant ecology, symbiosis, predation, and what wisdom this infestation offers. 

I have been getting headaches these last few days. I am exhausting and annoying myself with my murder obsession. Their death scenes resemble booger smears on my glass. I spray down the window once or twice a day to wipe away the evidence. 

The snowflakes are larger now, blowing east to west. I am surprised to see a woman across the street shoveling her northern sidewalk. The sun tends to my southern sidewalk for me. “Thank you, sun,” I find myself saying aloud even though we have an ambivalent relationship as he beams too brightly too much of the time for my taste. I prefer dappled sun. There are few trees here in this high desert where I have found myself planted. 

Closing my eyes longingly, I remember one of my favorite trees, an old cottonwood in a nearby park whose base divides into 3 trunks just past the exit from the earth. These trifurcated trunks form the gift of a magic throne facing the agricultural run-off moving east through the Oligarchy Ditch. I sit here, feeling her shade, her dampness, her verticality and depth, watching the ducks pass nearby. I feel the tree imprint upon me as though when I arrive I am pixelated tv static and through being together, or remembering being together, I become a dancing pointillist painting. 

Some days when I visit, this tree has nails hammered into her, latches, metal hinges like new piercings. Sometimes she is decorated with crushed beer cans, the remains of fast food picnics, forgotten clothing, an artificial flower sprouting red from her newer shoots. 

One day, I discover a tangle of jewelry. As I sit on the tree throne, my hands work at the knots, eyes resting closed, cheek leaning against the coarse bark, breathing, patient. Slowly, very slowly, the knots loosen, releasing various strands of beads. I adorn the tree, as though I’m weaving them into her willowy hair. The beads and branches blow in the breeze, and I feel dancing delight. One complete strand, I keep back for myself, for my own adornment. 

The next time I visit the tree, the necklaces are gone. I find loose beads scattered on the ground from busted strands. My heart feels heavy. I sit down, sniffing and nuzzling against the craggy bark, like a rough hand cradling my face. I feel as though I have been hovering, not quite touching the ground, and I can feel myself becoming heavy, leaning my weight on this tree, watering this tree with my tears. 

Breathing deeply, I open my wet eyes feeling the weight of my animal companions and glance up at the picture window. I smile to myself as I notice that a jumping spider has joined us, peering out from the upper west corner of the frame.