Tag: florida

The Decomposition of Eden

       I want to show you this place, behind banyans and honey-suckle.  Backed into a mess of uncharacteristically sultry vinestreesgrassleaves, its wide open mouth gapes, screaming at us to enter and laughing with our delight at the same time.  It is submerged further than friendly waving palms, because it knows that everyone will settle for that idea of tropical. But not us.  As we kick through the grassy blades, mosquitoes splash out of the ground like water, as if we were full-grown children, splashing through puddles of winged humidity.  But we are not children, and our intentions are not innocent.  The fertility of decay seeps into our nostrils and seems to fill our heads with life.  Crooked vines and banyan roots hang down on all sides of us, lightning striking the ground.  The light is just right now, at dusk, to stab the canopy with a flaming sword of sunshine, orange and opening, pricking a gurgle of water.  The river runs past us, the father of the Euphrates, and you are surprised it is there, in hushed hiding.  You notice the fruit immediately, a flurry of fructifying vegetation.  Mangoes, oranges, papayas, and star fruit stretch out, seemingly seeping nectar just for us.  We eat: they are not forbidden.

I want to show you this place, which is not without its threats.  As the light begins to dim, the vines begin to slither.  They reach for us while we look the other way and hiss at us when we turn around to catch them.  They crisscross, making spun spider webs of foliage, and we have to be careful not to walk into them.  This can only be accomplished by finding a verdant seat.  There are no thistles or thorns, nothing to prickle our feet and grip our clothes, but we do not notice this absence.  We shed the coats of skins we have been wearing for so long. The bugs gather round, hesitating, spying, folding into flurries.  The mosquitoes attach themselves to your skin, and I realize I am jealous of the way they are clinging to you.  The trees swell, transformed and concealed by the checkerboard gleam descending on their branches and leaves.  It is difficult to tell in this glow which of the flowers are honeysuckle and which are angel’s trumpets.  It’s a risky mistake  to make, but the honeysuckle is tempting.

I want to show you this place where it seems like we could be alone.  It is a room of suspended banyan root walls and a tent covering of leaves.   The thick of tree trunks closes like an envelope, keeping people from reading us.  We cannot see anyone through these walls and ceilings, so no one can see us, we reason.  The horseflies come close to spy on us, coming out slowly from behind leaves and up from resting places in untouched grass.  They flood in quietly, undulating, making sure we do not hear them before continuing closer to our breathing bubble.  They tiptoed the whole way, I am sure.  We did not notice them.  To sit inside, our heads and shoulders framed by these viney gums, is to understand how our ancestors could think that they had found a place even God could not see them.  His many eyes, kaleidoscoped like the flies’, can’t be felt by tingling flesh, like the eyes of humans.  We pull blankets of leaves over our nakedness anyway.  It has become habit, by now, to cover up and blaming fingers protrude oppositely from each of us when we have a stab at the reasons for it.

I wanted to show you this place to end the arguments and it happens soon enough.  It does not take much time until we no longer realize that we are naked, and ashamed blamed digits fall to our sides.   It has become too moderate for the mosquitoes, and they give up for the night, following the sun’s example.  The grass cools the bruises on our heels and we become snake-like and god-like at once.  More snake-like looking, squirming in earth with our belly doomed to the dirt.  But we are close enough that our ribs melt together, every other rib of yours falling between two ribs of mine, and like that, we sleep.

I want to show you this place, where we can fall asleep rib to rib, where we are fooled into believing that horseflies and God cannot see us, where the honeysuckle and angel’s trumpets get muddled, and where deterioration is the formula to renew life.