The Center of Everything

—02.23.2000—

Patricia called me on the morning of the 21st to tell me that she’d be back that afternoon at 2pm, not today as planned. (Jack would come back in another couple of weeks.) That put me in high gear for the morning, turning mountains of dirty dishes into gleaming ones, scooping up chips and splits from the garden where I’d been chopping wood, erasing rings from the tub, and cat food stains from the patio floor.

I managed all of this with some time to spare and I decided to walk out to the forgotten fields, hidden behind stonewalls and high hedges to find some daffodils and narcissi for the house. A surprising number of flowers still show up for work even though the plots on which they were once cultivated have long since been left fallow. They grow sporadically like weeds among what appears to be the new cash crop: thorns, bramble and prairie grass. All of the wild things now claim the place for themselves, growing over what once was, like a fairy tale.

I picked my way through the waist deep underbrush, holding the extraordinarily long-stemmed narcissi high overhead and headed back to the house with my fragrant prize, leaving many more to be discovered by some other storybook character following their intuition through a hole in the hedge.

That afternoon I went to pick Patricia up in the buggy, a little four-wheeled ATV workhorse. I (and it) sped across the smooth, flat banks of the sandbar, swerving around sandy crevices and dips, me grinning widely. On the far side of the bar I planted the throttle as the buggy dug in and growled up the slope, fighting to maintain its momentum as the sand went soft. The trick lay in having enough speed to make it to the stone embankment on the other side without going fast enough to bottom out the suspension upon reaching it. Having managed this, I coaxed the little ATV up the rocky track and then down to the quay.

Patricia had brought back with her, among other things, another plant (whose name now escapes me) and two furry, old gentlemen named Gus and Max, both long-standing friends of the family. After a few romps and rolls (canis domesticus) they packed themselves into the front seat of the buggy, with Patricia and I, for the ride back to Gugh. Max sat on my lap near the steering wheel and Gus lay with his head on the floor next to the accelerator. Later on Patricia showed me their “holiday snaps.” So classic: there they were laying on the sand, swimming with sticks in their mouths, and smiling in the beach grass. The best one, if only for its ubiquity in so many photo albums, showed the two old boys looking out over the water, serene, and silhouetted against a fading sky by a yellow-orange sunset. I haven’t seen many doggy holiday snaps, but these were priceless.

Patricia asked if I wanted to spend one more night on Gugh on account of her early arrival and I gladly accepted the offer. We took the dogs for a lap of the island, she talked about lichen and seabirds and I tried to get her to tell stories about her late-sixties sailing adventure. She obliged, though she felt she could, “bore for England'' recounting them. I disagreed--how could emergency chocolate supplies and go-go dancing in South Africa ever be boring?

After a while we happened across the barrow at the top of the island wherein still laid the remains of my flower offering from a week and a half earlier—surprising after all of that wind. “That’s odd,” she said with a hint of I wonder what kind of crazy person would have left flowers in a 1000-year-old grave. Self-consciously I explained that I’d wanted to give the island a gift on my arrival. “So you wanted to give the island a gift?”

“Well, yeah, you know...” I was caught in the middle of my superstition and fantastic ideas. Even so, I think that walking behind me, Patricia was smiling.

And so we went, over the little hills and the hibernating heather. The two furry gentlemen led the way. Dinner found her trying to convince me (again) of the virtues of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and me refusing to relinquish my skepticism of pop psychology. I fell asleep on the couch at 10pm, still reading articles from the Genesis intentional community proposal about Native American philosophy and Malaysian tribal dream interpretation.

In the morning, over tea, she told me that Emma, a masseuse from St. Mary’s, would be working on St. Agnes tomorrow (which is today as I write) and staying at her house that evening. Perhaps I’d like to drop by for dinner and a massage? No contest. Within a few hours I was back on Gugh.

The whole idea of traveling to another town for a day’s work and then having to spend the night there seems so two-hundred-years-ago. Seriously, when was the last time that sort of thing happened? “Well, we can put you up in the back room. Wouldn’t want you traveling at night and having the wolves spook your horses.” Do wolves spook horses? Probably? I don’t even know.

There is something so appealing about it. It’s a chance for a person’s professional veneer to fade away and reveal more of themselves. I was curious to meet a new face, and besides I hadn’t had a massage in ages. Around 4pm I made my way back across the sandbar, my early arrival necessitated by the incoming tide.

Emma was already there and well into her cup of tea. We all chatted while Patricia prepared the chicken. Around 6:00pm, after tea had given way to Australian Shiraz, Emma asked if we should get started. I said, “Sure” and it was decided that the kitchen table was as good a place as any. We cleared it off and added an extra leaf. Patricia layed down a sleeping bag and a towel. The dogs came in and layed in front of the stove. I took off my shirt, got on the table and Emma got to work.

So there was I lying in the middle of the kitchen among the lemon zest and half empty wine bottles, smelling rosemary oil on my shoulders and sizzling, roasting chicken in the old stove, while the kinks in my shoulders (a joint venture between my laptop, Barclays Bank, and my own anxieties) were methodically, rhythmically reduced to nothing. When she gently pulled on my hair (to relieve tension in the scalp) and put her hands on my head (as a healing gesture) I felt a far-away-so-close feeling that distorted time. It felt like that moment was the center of everything.