A Convergence
of Convergences:
A Contest.
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For more information
about this contest,
click here.
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An Addendum
to the Foregoing,
and a Visitor
Challenge.
By Lawrence Weschler
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Some of you will recall the last entry, from Walter Murch, that uncannily clear-cut Swedish forest photographed (no Photoshop!) from above
and W.S. Merwin's marvelously apt prose poem "Unchopping a Tree."
For some reason, though, Thanksgiving weekend set me to thinking once again of our
dear late master Donald Barthelme (for more on Barthelme, see Winner No. 7), and specifically this time of an extended passage from his story "Departures," which would have made just as good a gloss on that Swedish forest photo, to wit:
From Donald Barthelme's short story "Departures," originally published in his luminous 1973 collection Sadness and later included in his posthumous collection Forty Stories:
My grandfather once fell in love with a dryad—a wood nymph who lives in trees and to whom trees are sacred and who dances around trees clad in fine leaf-green tutu and who carries a great silver-shining ax to whack anybody who does any kind of thing inimical to the well-being and mental health of trees. My grandfather was at that time in the lumber business.
It was during the Great War. He'd got an order for a million board feet of one-by-ten of the very poorest quality, to make barracks out of for the soldiers. The specifications
called for the dark red sap to be running off it in buckets and for the warp on it to be like
the tops of waves in a distressed sea and for the knotholes in it to be the size of an
intelligent man's head for the cold wind to whistle through and toughen up the (as they
were then called) doughboys.
My grandfather headed for East Texas. He had the timber rights to ten thousand acres
there, Southern yellow pine of the loblolly family. It was third-growth scrub and slash
and shoddy—just the thing for soldiers. Couldn't be beat. So he and his men set up
operations and first crack out of the box they were surrounded by threescore of lovely
dryads and hamadryads all clad in fine leaf-green tutus and waving great silver-shining
axes.
"Well now," my grandfather said to the head dryad, "wait a while, wait a while,
somebody could get hurt."
"That is for sure," says the girl, and she shifts her ax from her left hand to her right hand.
"I thought you dryads were indigenous to oak," says my grandfather, "this here is pine."
"Some like the ancient tall-standing many-branched oak," says the girl, "and some the
white-slim birch, and some take what they can get, and you will look mighty funny
without any legs on you."
"Can we negotiate," says my grandfather, "it's for the War, and you are the loveliest
thing I ever did see, and what is your name?"
"Megwind," says the girl, "and also Sophie. I am Sophie in the night and Megwind in the day and I make fine whistling ax-music night or day and without legs for walking your
life's journey will be a pitiable one."
"Well Sophie," says my grandfather, "let us sit down under this tree here and open a
bottle of this fine rotgut here and talk the thing over like reasonable human beings."
"Do not use my night-name in the light of day," says the girl, "and I am not a human
being and there is nothing to talk over and what type of rotgut is it you have there?"
"It is Teamster's Early Grave," says my grandfather, "and you'll cover many a mile
before you find the beat of it."
"I will have one cupful," says the girl, "and my sisters will each have one cupful, and
then we will dance around this tree while you still have legs for dancing and then you
will go away and your men also."
"Drink up," says my grandfather, "and know that of all the women I have interfered with in my time you are the absolute top woman."
"I am not a woman," says Megwind, "I am a spirit, although the form of the thing is
misleading I will admit."
"Wait a while," says my grandfather, "you mean that no type of mutual interference
between us of a physical nature is possible?"
"That is a thing I could do," says the girl, "if I chose."
"Do you choose?" asks my grandfather, "and have another wallop."
"That is a thing I will do," says the girl, and she has another wallop.
"And a kiss," says my grandfather, "would that be possible do you think?"
"That is a thing I could do," says the dryad, "you are not the least prepossessing of men
and men have been scarce in these parts in these years, the trees being as you see mostly
scrub, slash, and shoddy."
"Megwind," says my grandfather, "you are beautiful."
"You are taken with my form which I admit is beautiful," says the girl, "but know that
this form you see is not necessary but contingent, sometimes I am a fine brown-speckled
egg and sometimes I am an escape of steam from a hole in the ground and sometimes I
am an armadillo."
"That is amazing," says my grandfather, "a shape-shifter are you."
"That is a thing I could do," says Megwind, "if I choose."
"Tell me," says my grandfather, "could you change yourself into one million board feet of one-by-ten of the very poorest quality neatly stacked in railroad cars on a siding
outside of Fort Riley, Kansas?"
"That is a thing I could do," says the girl, "but I do not see the beauty of it."
"The beauty of it," says my grandfather, "is two cents a board foot."
"What is the quid pro quo?" asks the girl.
"You mean spirits engage in haggle?" asks my grandfather.
"Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing, that is a law of life," says the girl.
"The quid pro quo," says my grandfather, "is that me and my men will leave this here scrub, slash, and shoddy standing. All you have to do is to be made into barracks for the soldiers and after the War you will be torn down and can fly away home."
"Agreed," says the dryad, "but what about this interference of a physical nature you
mentioned earlier? For the sun is falling down and soon I will be Sophie and human men
have been scarce in these parts for ever so damn long."
"Sophie," says my grandfather, "you are as lovely as light and let me just fetch another
bottle from the truck and I will be at your service."
This is not really how it went. I am fantasizing. Actually, he just plain cut down the
trees.
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See what I mean? (For the full story online, click here.)
OK. So now for the Visitor Challenge. Anybody have any idea what to make of the
following Convergence, which simply came spilling out of a recent New York
Times Book Review?
Colin Powell and Muhammad Ali
Send in glosses, and next time, for a change, we'll post some of your responses.
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WINNERS.
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1. Evolving, Evolved by Charlie Hopper
2. Primal Forces, Basic Colors by Andy Hunter
3. The End of the Beginning by Holly Dunsworth
Intermezzo by Lawrence Weschler
4. This Is Not an Ad by Jimmy Chen
5. Catskills Vagina by Dan Clem
6. The Antipodes by Chris Zic
7. Self-Made Constriction by Sam Gaskin
8. We Are the Son by Danny Erker
9. Painfully Unaware by Dan Park
10. Gutshot by Jason Torchinsky
Weschler's Second Interlude
11. Love and War by Kim Wood
12. Inside and Out There by Lena Webb
13. The March by Emily Marvosh
14. Feminine Divine Triptych by Margit Christenson
15. Time's Deliberate Convergence by Steve Denyszyn
16. A Rousseau/Hirshfield Convergence by Adam Webb
Beirut/Warsaw by Lawrence Weschler
17. Clothesline Raising Over Carlisle, Indiana by Charlie Hopper
Carnival of Convergences
Weschler's Fourth Interlude
Aftersquib to the Foregoing
18. Pelvises All the Way Down by John Peter Rickgauer
19. Ovary Night? by Maya Muñoz
20. Christ in Space by Jonathan Shipley
A Pair of Convergences Off of Tina Barney
Another Carnival of Convergences
21. Moral Confusion: Iraq, Munich, and Vietnam by Donald Rumsfeld
22. Seeing the Tree for the Forest by Walter Murch
An Addendum to the Foregoing, and a Visitor Challenge
23, 24, and 25. Far Out by Michael Benson, Brian Christian, and Walter Murch
26. Jewish Bunk Beds by Monica S. Bland
Those Damn Swedish Trees, Take 3: Convergence of the Blogs
27. Degenerate Boogie-Woogie by Lisa Lee
Carnival of Convergences No. 3
28. Sand and Moon by Alison Cornyn
Actaeon: An Ovidian Impromptu by Lawrence Weschler
29 and 30. Hoods and Veils by Vero Testa and Lauren Redniss
The Onion/Bickle Convergence by Lawrence Weschler
31. The Lone Figure Against the Armored Swarm by Michele Siegel
32. Muscle and Flow by Benjamin R. Cohen
An Addendum to the Foregoing: Cities, Brains, Orchestras by Lawrence Weschler
Saint and Princess by Lawrence Weschler
Beauty Queen and Baghdad Hummer by Lawrence Weschler
Carnival of Convergences No. 4
Laughing, Clapping, Constantly Forgetting: A Trill of Readerly Associations by Lawrence Weschler
33. Lithographica by R.A. Villanueva
34. Papal Fire (Papa Lux) by Nick Feia
Addendum to "Laughing, Clapping ..." and, More Specifically, to the Stalinist-Applause Anecdote by Lawrence Weschler
35. Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths by Sarah Daegling
36. Black and White and in Color by Walter Murch
Carnival of Convergences No. 5
Lee Friedlander's Visionary Trees: An Addendum to the Last Chapters of Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler
37. Shipwrecked Desperation by Charles Mudede via Matt Haber
38. Life Forms by Ariel Winter
MORE ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT RISES
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