...But for three years I had roses and apologized to no one
My grandmother and grandfather live in one of those big, old brick houses that were built back in the days when everyone wore gloves and driveways were circular to accommodate the horses. The brick is deep red and choppy, with all sorts of irregular shapes jutting out at odd angles, to give the place "character."
Up the chimney on the west side of the house the wall is completely covered in ivy vines. They've worked their way into the brick over so many years and so securely they're practically structural. And there, just like the bats in the attic and the feral cats behind the carport, lives an almost indestructible colony of sparrows.
Sparrows aren't a nice bird. They're a bit drab, and they're highly territorial, and when push comes to shove they can be down right mean. They're brash--they don't spook quite as easily as other birds, and if you get close enough to disrupt them they really only fly far enough to give you the cold shoulder. That they might have been singled out in some great western text as the ultimate example of something small and insignificant--nonne duo passeres asse veneunt et unus ex illis non cadet super terram sine Patre vestro/ vestri autem et capilli capitis omnes numerati sunt/ nolite ergo timere multis passeribus meliores estis vos--has clearly never occurred to them.
They are small, and they are fearless, and they endure.
I wish I had their confidence.
And old-time friends & twilight plays
And starry nights, and sunny days
Come trooping up the misty ways
When my fire burns low.
Who could keep going in a straight line with so many stories, like feral siblings, separated and each running wild, chasing each other's tales?
-Zoë Wicomb, David's Story
The Wry-mouthed Sons of the Hostage married out of feuding and went from older Darkened lowlands to a New Darkness. Another family came from the city of the Cockle Shell Saint to another man's city by another bay. The Prudent Lovers wore those cockle shells in their shield and left a famine of potatoes ("apples of the ground" to the French) to get a piece of a Bigger Apple. A faction of the Strong fled as well, over the water to a City of Waters, a city to which I would return. Their children fought in the wars and found themselves in the West, where they merged and mingled and created me, Consecrated to God from the start.
I was raised a Child of the Sun, though we stole that lineage from the people who had hugged the banks of the river before us. I too was concrete all around a thundering of falls at my heart. I began in the East, amidst the servants of the Imperial metalworks. My mother Harvested their young until we lost the Dark Stranger's Honey Bee, and my father's Bright Fame lay in the microchips he kept in his sock drawer. After me they brought Strength and the Grace of God to our home, and we moved to the French Patriot's Lake which was always confused, like freedom fries, because he had the gall to be named Liberté. There, in the mists and the hills, I grew old, and planned my escape.
In brief respite I returned to the Land of Darkness, in the city of stone and rain that my line had not seen in three generations. I walked the stone streets and tasted the sour air, and lived at home for a short time. Never underestimate the blood which flows in the veins. We are not seperate from the distant past. Even if we can know it only vaguely, it shapes our nows with no permission from us.
But my time could not last, and I returned to the concrete, the falls, the mists and the hills. And I waited.
My true escape came soon enough, and I returned to another ancestral home, a newer one, a city of a Letter Writer and a companion of Water, to the dream of a Bishop who reminded the world of a city of rats. There I made myself in my own image, and spent the years.
And now I am in a new place again, this one of Older Wisdoms and a Farmer King. I came alone, but by the Grace of God will not remain that way. And that is all I can hope for.
Everything sounds so much prettier when you play with names...
