I was talking to Grendel the other day (not that he was in a talkative mood since my wife and I spent the weekend at a luxury spa, and he spent it confined to quarters with a stacked bowl of dry food and plenty of water). Anyway, back at the spa, being an early riser, I spent the early (like first light) morning disturbing the fitful dozing of the night crew with well-timed coughs as I approached their stations. I finally settled by a small table with a view of a well-manicured gardenscape complete with a waterfall and a lawn cut shorter than my fingernails.
“Grendel,” I said, which was all the motivation he needed to curl up into a feline ball, wrapping his splendid, bushy tail around any identifiable cat parts and rendering himself into an amorphous black shadow.
“You should have been with us.”
A small green slit appeared from within the darkness and slowly blacked out. Here I must point out Grendel’s aversion to automobiles. When confined to one he sets up a keening that would be the envy of any Greek widow. That’s why we can’t take him along.
“There was a great garden that you would have loved to hunt. One green slit opened and fixed on me. I had him hooked.
It was just beyond first light, and the darkness was being squeezed out of the sky, and I noticed a steady rain falling; not the gully washers of the day before but the light steady rain that in New England can go on for days without pause. Just enough to keep you indoors; just enough to render the great outdoors close and intimate. Gone the blue skies, distant clouds, hillsides; just the immediate world, which as I said earlier was a proper English-like garden. The leaves vibrated with the cadence of the rain and the sound came through the windows hushed and insulated.
On a blue sky day you look up and around; today you looked down into the immediate.
How well the gardener’s hand sculpted this little patch.
I cranked the window just a bit and the tiny waterfall swelled into the room with its calming rush across the rocks placed almost as carefully as wind chimes. I can sit like that for moments that defy measurement. OK in this setting but distressing to my wife at lusty highway speeds on the interstate.
The iridescent green slit began to seal, as Grendel started to zone, himself.
A couple of strokes across his well burnished head brought him back to the immediate, as the green slits popped into full almonds.
In a way it’s a lot like a coral reef.
“What!?” he intoned with a single raised eyebrow, “Is a coral reef?”
It’s like the garden I just described but with a lot of fish everywhere.
Grendel sat up and leaned forward, “A garden of little fishes? Just flopping around”?
“Well no. They are swimming in the water. The coral reef is underwater.”
“You go underwater?”
He was shocked.
“Why would you do a thing like that?”
“We like to see things like that,” but I know I didn’t sound convincing to him.
“Hmmph,” he blew through his nose as he curled back up. He had a lot to think about.
But isn’t that the reason we go through all that trouble and expense?
It’s one thing to look at a picture, even a prize winning picture, but who can convey to a cat or even another person what lies beneath.
The panorama, the endless variations of coral and critters, color and form, size and shape, the ever changing kaleidoscope of the reefs call us back to gawk yet again at visions we were never designed to see, but have been fortunate enough to see through our technology.
In a week some of us will return to
But what the hell, we gotta try.
“Zzzzzzz.” Grendel was on his back, fast asleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment