The ultimate plant fiction, that points toward beauty (see how the themes come together?), is the garden. Like a novel, for example, it is made of characters, put in place by an author, who then begin to exert their own agency, in a time register that is all their own, a remarkably nonhuman slowness.
And their rootedness marks them as particularly integrated placemakers, radically (if you will excuse the pun) different from anything known to animal ontology. A nearby fir tree, the tallest in Europe if I remember correctly, recently fell over, maybe as the result of a storm. The same day I read about its demise, I happened to read a quote from Saint Francis of Assisi, in which he warns against counting on trees for assistance because they, like all temporal beings, will die; only divine help is eternally dependable. I read the quote in Italian, and I cannot find (instantly) an English version at my fingertips, but the word in Italian, that indicates the tree’s death, is ‘seccare’, to dry out. It is a word that evokes a remarkable insight into the relation between plants and water: plants don’t die in the way that animals do - they dry out. I suppose some plants, including trees, rot in the way an animal’s body would (forgive the image), but it seems that plants, being both simpler in composition and closer to water in relation, in comarsion with animals, exhibit less transformation, and less trauma, in death. And while I suppose animals also eventually dry out, returning to dust seems to be easier for plants.
So this fictional garden, authored by a human being, offers a comfortable transition between humans and the globe they inhabit. I would think a poet would not like gardens for this reason - they interfere with the relation between writer and world. I suppose, however, that the garden itself is a kind of poem, or short story, or novel - do gardens have genres? - should the author choose to look at it that way. And why not, words are overrated. Whitman might have composed his work with real leaves of grass, rather than metaphorical ones.
And their rootedness marks them as particularly integrated placemakers, radically (if you will excuse the pun) different from anything known to animal ontology. A nearby fir tree, the tallest in Europe if I remember correctly, recently fell over, maybe as the result of a storm. The same day I read about its demise, I happened to read a quote from Saint Francis of Assisi, in which he warns against counting on trees for assistance because they, like all temporal beings, will die; only divine help is eternally dependable. I read the quote in Italian, and I cannot find (instantly) an English version at my fingertips, but the word in Italian, that indicates the tree’s death, is ‘seccare’, to dry out. It is a word that evokes a remarkable insight into the relation between plants and water: plants don’t die in the way that animals do - they dry out. I suppose some plants, including trees, rot in the way an animal’s body would (forgive the image), but it seems that plants, being both simpler in composition and closer to water in relation, in comarsion with animals, exhibit less transformation, and less trauma, in death. And while I suppose animals also eventually dry out, returning to dust seems to be easier for plants.
So this fictional garden, authored by a human being, offers a comfortable transition between humans and the globe they inhabit. I would think a poet would not like gardens for this reason - they interfere with the relation between writer and world. I suppose, however, that the garden itself is a kind of poem, or short story, or novel - do gardens have genres? - should the author choose to look at it that way. And why not, words are overrated. Whitman might have composed his work with real leaves of grass, rather than metaphorical ones.
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