Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
From Godmother Python’s Bestiary of Wonderful Flowers: Vice Gardens
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
The Vice Garden, as many gardeners know (and many more do not), is commonly found tucked into the corner of a temple or monastery’s vegetable plot.
Unlike the sections put on show to the inquisitive public, the Vice Garden is reserved strictly for the use of the monastic community. While the species commonly found here (e.g., the fameflower, the beauty bush; loosestrife; rue) may seem out of place in such a setting, the abbots have a purpose for everything.
Consider, for example, the fameflower (genus Talinum, numerous species). These plants bear small, star-shaped blossoms of a pleasant, if unassuming, lavender or pink. Their leaves are thick, fleshy, and, in some species, edible. The various cultivars of the fameflower have long been prized in certain kinds of “social magic,” mainly in spells intended to attract renown or to enhance personal prestige. (Effects that have largely, in the past, been handled through summoning demons; the herbal approach is considered more ecologically friendly, and avoids questions of exploitation.)
As one might expect, the cultivars found in Vice Gardens are of the less potent varieties. Most commonly, according to the closely-guarded gardening books of the Abbots (to which, nonetheless, Godmother Python has her methods of access), their flowers, when picked and eaten in salad, create the mere hallucinatory illusion of being famous and well-known.
The theory of the Abbots is this: once the vivid tactile fantasies — which include the usual accoutrements of fame, including its opportunities for sexual and chemical overindulgence — have run their course and worn off, their users will awaken having been reminded why they decided to retire from the world in the first place. The principle, as the informed reader will recognize, is that of aversion via over-indulgence.
There are, of course, some among the cynical who raise questions about the uses to which the fameflower is actually put. On the other hand, in line of defending the monks, one might mention a secondary use of the plant – one with, perhaps, more convincing benefits to a melancholic initiate. This takes the form of a salad composed from the plant’s leaves alone.
When consumed, it invokes no fantasies of overindulgence; no hallucinations tactile or otherwise. Instead, it has the mere and simple property of convincing the eater that — however isolated one’s cloister may be, on whatever far-flung mountaintop or spumey sea island — out there in the world, however far away, somebody, somewhere, knows your name.
Conjure Woman
Monday, March 16th, 2009
Mama made a leaf man the year Daddy ran off. She said a leaf man wouldn’t hold up well, but he’d last long enough. I didn’t want her to send anything after Daddy. Even though I was glad he was gone, and not just because Tom and I could get real private in his workshop. Mama didn’t know about what Daddy did, and she would have been real mad. Madder than she was.
Mama was particular about the leaves. Oak for strength, willow for passion, cane for flexibility, pecan for the mind. It’s important, she said, to get the right mix. Otherwise, leaf men won’t mind hardly at all. No more than real-life ones.
She didn’t let me watch, said I didn’t have the conjure spirit. She was right. I could never do some of that stuff you had to do. Hard enough to do what Tom wanted when we were alone together.
When it was done she led the leaf man to Daddy’s workshop. The creature wasn’t big. It was late in the year and I’d had trouble finding enough good leaves. If you use spoiled leaves the leaf man will be spoiled, she said. He was shaggy, leaves sticking out everyplace, but he moved like he had a purpose and meant to get to it.
Mama whispered in his ear. He leaned to the door like he was getting a scent, then made off down the road. That’s when I thought I should say something, even though Mama would find out about Tom and me. It was too late: the leaf man was gone, and I kept quiet.
When the Sheriff told us, I knew he suspected Mama, but he never charged her. I didn’t tell, just like I didn’t tell Mama about Tom. The way I screamed when the Sheriff told how Tom was found, and the look she gave me…she knew. Had sent her creation after Tom apurpose, never after Daddy. I hated her then, left home soon after. I had nightmares for years about how it must’ve been like, choking on leaves and them keeping on coming as the thing crawled down his throat. Tom pulling them out and out, but never fast enough.
Now she needs me; can’t talk or hardly move since the stroke. I sit by the bed, and the look she gives me now, I think we’re both wondering: do I still hate her?
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