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Starting
Point Sharpened blade hidden in the garden
By MARJORIE KOWALSKI
COLE
Our Lords Candle is the common
name for a yucca plant that resembles nothing so much as a great ball of swords
-- several hundred two-foot blades forming a half-globe of sharp, serrated
edges. This ball of swords protects a central stalk the size of a mop handle,
which is surmounted by a foamy white bloom. That stalk adds little or nothing
to the plants startling beauty. The noteworthy fact -- or as
childrens writer Margaret Wise Brown might have said, the important
thing -- about Our Lords Candle, Yucca whipplei, is its
bristling armor.
To discover a huge ball of kitchen knives in a wildflower meadow
is a shock. In the Santa Ana Botanical Garden in Claremont, Calif., Our
Lords Candle offers a philosophy of life completely different from its
neighbors, wild iris and the delicate poppy. Perhaps plants do not exist to
offer a philosophy of life, but I would say theres no harm in being open
to meaning in a botanical garden or wild desert just as in a church or library.
Whoever named the plant was on the lookout for meaning.
At the same time, the sharp blades are an antidote to foolish
mental meanderings. Say what you like, you cant deny that this plant
counters the delicate hospitality of the open poppy with a reality that would
stop Don Quixote in his tracks. I touched the tip of a blade; it instantly drew
blood, and in withdrawing my hand, I was scratched by the adjacent edges.
In her poem Cut, Sylvia Plath writes of her
astonishment when a kitchen knife takes off the tip of her thumb, and Out
of a gap/A million soldiers run,/Redcoats, every one. She is now suddenly
aware that there is commerce between her inner world and the outer reality.
Plath immediately bandages her wound with a dozen metaphoric interpretations.
With customary boldness and even ruthlessness, she thinks of everything: war,
suicide, the Ku Klux Klan. What is inside, blood, has become visible, and with
it, the human history of spilling blood.
Wandering through the Botanical Garden, I caught a glimpse of the
same reality, the same unity. Inside and outside are temporary divisions,
temporary separations. It was suddenly obvious that humankind did not invent
the sharpened blade. Nor did we invent this blood that spills. The world was
here first. The green pastures contain pain-causing yucca blades: Why? Is there
a clue in the man-given name, Our Lords Candle? Of course, it could
amount to nothing more than a description of the way the plant looks, with its
frothy mop head rising like a candle from the ball of swords.
The names of natural things -- plants, topographic features,
beasts -- often reflect the feelings or beliefs of the donor. A name might be
descriptive, whimsical, ironic -- or it might come from a dark place of fear
and insecurity. Many names reflect a need to control, or reflect
dissatisfaction with lack of control. Names might suggest how comfortable the
donor is in his or her surroundings. Sometimes the names given to natural
phenomena suggest a sense of awe, or wonder, or a pleasing simplicity of
response.
Each time we begin the process of naming a thing or an experience,
of telling a story, we are offered the temptation to direct someone elses
thinking. We are offered the chance to express the best of ourselves or the
opposite. We have power with the words we choose each day. We can use language
to separate things or to connect them.
Inuit storytellers on Alaskas coast used a thin storyknife
to cut pictures in the sand, to help the narrative along. Language itself is a
storyknife, separating the foreground from the backdrop, presuming to cut the
good from the evil and the pure from the impure, telling us where to look.
Telling us what to see. As we separate the good from the bad, the worthy from
the worthless, we are using a tool as dangerous as the atom itself. We are
using the storyknife; we are using language.
How desperately, then, we need reminders that wisdom and meaning
underlie our efforts. Wisdom was here first, before Adam wandered out of the
clay pointing at things and giving them names. Wisdom, love, a creative spirit
preceded the arrival of scholars and poets. A friend recently joined me in
perusing a field guide to birds. I love puffins, she said
passionately. They are so well designed. She calls herself an
atheist, and she is very quick to call upon reason and hard work as her sole
guides to living, but her language sometimes reflects a sense of wonder, a
degree of faith that softens her opinions.
The blades of the yucca penetrate the dangerous complacency of the
daydreamer, the arrogance of those who think theyve seen it all. For that
reason alone, I find the common name astonishingly apt. Its pale green blades
catch and hold the light and offer a hundred gradations of color. This
impressive armor, not made by human hands, allows us to be shocked. It reminds
us to look for God in the details.
Even if Im not always certain, I like to proceed on the
faith that God was here first, that his creation contains clues to its meaning.
This faith steadies me; it is also a useful discipline for a writer. Wake up
and look outward, be open to surprise. Otherwise, as I choose descriptive
language, I might be projecting meaning into the environment, blinding myself
to its wonders. Id rather not do that. Id rather that meaning
flowed both ways.
Marjorie Kowalski Cole writes from Ester, Alaska. Her e-mail
address is marjoriekc@yahoo.com
National Catholic Reporter, January 19,
2001
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