Sunday, April 05, 2009

Hymenoptera--Pollinators--Small Things

When I was up at my brother's place (which used to be my parents' place), a wasp bit me.  Becky had become distracted pulling weeds (and there are always more), and I had finished riding my mom's horse (because mine died while I was in med school). I was dirty anyway and weed-pulling looked like something to do.  A big patch of Johnson grass (it's amazing how the botanical names of childhood return like familiar strangers) waved in the middle of the lavender and poppies that bloomed every year since our 90 year old neighbor had them in her yard (before her elderly son shot her and her sister and then himself--I keep the newspaper clipping in a small diary with flowers on the front).  I told Becky I should get gloves (Pop had soft fancy leather ones he only wore occasionally because they were from his only son who had died of skin cancer just before Pop's 75th birthday).  But I thought I could just pull one up and then get gloves (though the ones with my name on them in black Sharpie ink were in San Diego).  I had barely reached down toward the root when I felt a pain on the fourth finger of my right hand.  A wasp flew out of the clump of grass (just as upset as I was).  My finger went numb and I doubled over for a moment as Colin got home from his job interview and Becky got me ice in a zip-lock bag.  Small Things.

The bees love the flowers in my Mom's front yard.  I felt a little worried walking home barefoot from the high school track today but the grass was so soft and the track so gritty and the pavement so hard.  The bees in the midfield buzzed around the clover as they had in our field as kids.  My brothers used to run as fast as they could to the creek at the end of the field so that the bees wouldn't sting them.  If you move your foot fast enough they don't have time to see you coming.  It worked for them most of the time.  I'd scamper through on the balls of my feet only thinking that less surface area exposed would be best.  That worked most of the time also.  Our feet used to be thick with callouses and strong with un-shoed use.  Small Things.

I finished reading "The God of Small Things" two days ago.  It has "study questions" at the end.  One about why Arundhati Roy ended it the way she did.  The story line is a swirl between present and past, very non-linear--at least in a chronological fashion, but if you redefine the line, it can become linear as well.  It rises between tragedy of reality and figurative reality where the twins, who are "we", read words sdrawkcab (backwards) and worry about their mom loving them a little less and feel the cold feet of their grandfather's moth on her heart.  There are mantras in the book that climax toward the end which is the middle of an hour glass--the narrow part where sand squeezes through.  It is the reaching down of the figurative to meet the reaching up of the literal.  In the middle of Small Things like spider I rescued from the bathtub after I returned from two weeks of vacation and wasps and bees and moths and grains of sand.  Small Things.


"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."   --Arundhati Roy

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