Garden Tourism

Deirdre wasn’t born fully clothed in battle armour like her sister, but her shield of fortune cookie fortunes did have a fringe of snakes. On Mount Helicon, while she was picking bluebells and red poppies, she came across Melpomene, Melpomene with her crown of leaves, the tragedy mask in one hand, and a bloody knife in the other. Even though Melpomene’s eight sisters were on the other side of Helicon, the appearance of Muses must be treated as a graceful fiction, it’s an ordinary practice to introduce some mythological person. Melpomene is a significant name and therefore fictitious, yet the narrator is forced to season its matter with romantic episodes. We can tell many a feigned tale to look like the truth, says February. On the other hand, if Melpomene was a fiction, we should expect her to be detailed at length and not noticed allusively and rather obscurely, becoming a mere echo.

Imagine Deirdre imagining the hill gardens, the Byzantine gardens, the Persian gardens, tea gardens. A small Mary garden. Imagine the Titans and Junos and Saturns and Apollos standing like alluring white sentinels in the rocket garden. Imagine the water follies with their mechanical singing birds and puppet theatres, war gardens, a bog garden, a Shakespeare garden. There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays, says Ophelia. I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end, she says. Of course there’s a walled paradise garden with a pond and figs and pomegranates to eat as you walk. Little gardens of Eden. Eat the world. It’s a good omen when the water of the Blue Dragon carries away all the flowering bathing suits and Dada biscuits towards the white tiger, says Deirdre’s sister. But in the dream they were bees! shouts The Book of Dreams and Ghosts. Zerzura, the oasis of little birds in the Sahara, and full of treasure, is hard to find, the garden of the Hesperides where the gods became immortal, impossible. Remember La Canela, the Valley of Ceylon Cinnamon, east of Quito? Three thousand one hundred and forty of the four thousand two hundred and twenty men died, looking for it. I don’t know what happened to the horses. They built a boat.

Image: Totoya Hokkei-Kintarô referees a match between a rooster and an angry ghost, first in the series Mountain after Mountain.

And there is Deirdre in the garden full of the follies pretending to be little castles and Roman ruins and, go right ahead, you can feed the ornamental hermit. And there is the ha-ha between Deirdre and the fields full of futures and the moon will shine brighter in the Garden of Earthly Delights, a panorama of a murderous paradise lost. Happy birthday, Deirdre!

Jeroen van Aken tells a story:

On the outside you can see the creation of earth on the third day, just before the creation of the sun and moon. Simple, impermeable darkness, and a little homunculus in the corner with a tiara on his head. Open the doors and read from left to right.

And there is the pond like a hole in the ground with birds and unnameable creatures crawling from it, mostly eating each other. A fantastical bird with his beak full of teeth eating a frog, a cat walking away with a dead rat. A tiny unicorn with a fish body in the water, a heron with three heads on the rim. And another pond, still more freakish things crawling onto the rocks, a bizarre and carnivorous pink fountain in the middle, an owl peaking from a hole in the fountain’s stomach. A hengy hut with countless swallows spiralling through its jumbly seed-pod tower. The reluctant Eve handed over to Adam by a mouldy God and and …

Crowded by joyous colours and pale naked humans, a handful of them soot black. One, for instance, carrying an enormous black mussel with someone inside, another holding a giant fish while riding a lion. Quite a few sitting in whimsical plants or engorged fruit. All in all, for a place teeming with all manner of phantasmagoria, not much is really going on. But.

Suddenly a dark and torturous hellscape where the dinky people are mostly being devoured or impaled by monstrous animals and contraptions in a variety of nightmarish ways. Ecstasy and weirdness and horror. Not quite as unbridled as you would expect.

Batrachomyomachia, the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, is a comic epic, a parody of the Iliad, a collection of countless leaves with the arms of an armchair. Quercus palustris means oak of marshes.

And in the middle of it all, Alatyr, father of all stones, the axis mundi, the centre of the world, full of sacred letters, with the four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Gorias in the east, Finias, in the south, Murias in the west, and Falias in the north, says June. Virginia Woolf heard birds singing in Greek, she says. Mag Mell beneath the ocean achieved, only through death or glory, a hedonistic and pleasurable paradise. Sharks biting alligators, seven hundred boulders and eight tormented rocks covered with gold leaf, millions of the nameless and discarded, all meant to be seen from above.

And the rose letters write a Dear Johnny letter to Deirdre: Cave hortum, beware the garden. Are we supposed to say the name of Felicitas? We are not supposed to say the name of Felicitas, since she neither pretends to have met Ambrose  Amaran Athanasios nor to have sung in any but an impromptu, local festival. Read what is here! How could reading a letter harm you? At a later time her bones were removed to La Mortola and the whole story is full of miraculous elements.

And there is Yggdrasil, an immense Norse ash tree, with Odin hanging by his neck from one of the branches. Around it exists everything, including the nine worlds, says November. And there is Norse Gjöll, a river that separates the living from the dead, crossed by the sifting bridge, which consequently also separates the living from the dead. Niflheim means world of cold, November says. And Zaphiel the snake curls around the lucky lemon tree with all the thorns hiding behind the lucky leaves and he, Zaphiel, points to the gate and the dirt road out of Eden. Bear country. Balaclava sunset. A poetical contest at the funeral games of Amphidamas. Paintball’s Coming Home is the last track on Voyage to the Bottom of the Road by Half Man Half Biscuit. And there is a single hand opening and the torn and empty wrapper of the very delicious tiny chocolate falls lightly and unevenly and everything ever known is gone. Just gone. I don’t want to be an angel, says Deirdre, touching the ground.

And her sword arm aches in the cold until the holes in the ground call us and we go home.

Cloudcuckooland

Aristophanes tells a story:

The clouds, the birds and the frogs he says. Olisthirós suddenly sits up in bed while his son remains blissfully asleep. Olisthirós has thought of a plan. He will attend the gesture ballet at Cabaret Voltaire and learn how to turn inferior arguments into winning arguments. Imagine nineteen fifteen! He goes back to sleep, happy. Four moons drift in the dark sky outside. Little Famine Moon. Hungry Moon. Dying Moon. They are harder times moons. Halfmoon Olekūlua is the most challenging moon though. Fishing is poor but the loquat trees are heavy with little golden fruit.
At the dada soirée a mechanised man in his clockwork makeup shows Olisthirós a minuscule imprint of a flea’s foot in wax while Socrates appears overhead, wafted in a basket at the end of a rope. He hands Olisthirós a tin of Angelinthesuncallsthelittlebirdiesuntohims. Cat’s pajamas! says Olisthirós and The Clouds arrive singing majestically. Putting aside their cloud-like costumes, the chorus declares that this is the author’s most vivid play. The chorus then resumes its appearance as clouds, promising divine favours if the audience takes care of the thunder and lightning and the semantic cacophony. If they thoroughly stir up the slime, the fishing gets better. The meaning of language has no meaning, says Gorgias. I’m not joking! poetics-minus-the-meter, language without dignity, xa xa xa … (two pages missing) the effect of speech on the soul has the same effect as drugs on the body, he says, some words cause pain, others joy, some stir the audience to cretinization and absurdity (five pages missing) In defence of Palamedes, says Gorgias, logos is a positive instrument, Palamedes created the alphabet, armour … What logos? sings the chorus. Odysseus never forgave Palamedes for ruining his attempt to stay out of the Trojan War and soon after Odysseus drowned Palamedes during a fishing expedition. Gorgias insists that Palamedes lacked a motive. A great knocking ensues backstage. It’s me, Sophocles! What’s the matter? Have you ever looked up and seen a cloud resembling ghosts, women, deities, paradise trees, the Dada Almanac? The morning of the orange feast of the man-bird day?
sesame-cake, myrtle berries, poppies and mint, word salad
Socrates returns to the stage in a huff as Superior Argument accepts his inevitable defeat to Inferior Argument and Olisthirós goes home delirious. The Clouds step forward to address the audience a second time, demanding to be awarded first place in the festival of drawings made by people who cannot draw, in return for which they promise good rains. Cicadas sing for a month or two. Clacky marionettes with their barbed wire slinky tutus and spinning top skirts are pursued offstage and the chorus, with nothing to celebrate, quietly departs. A failed ricochet, a Not Haunted sign, the innocence of Helen, a vanilla bean, Iris the daughter of Zeus, Aristophanes’ olive wreath, a little flask of oil and a baby are left sitting there, blinking in the flickering torch light.

Everybody retires to Tyche’s bower to chew on a mandrake root that will transform them into birds. Fidelio and Omid soon emerge laughing at each other’s unconvincing resemblance to birds and after discussion, they name the city Cloudcuckooland and teach it to build high walls. The birds of the chorus step forward announcing solemnly that in the existentialist theatre of the absurd the structure is typically a round shape. The theme of incomprehensibility is coupled with the inadequacy of language, and the characters are lost and floating. The ultimate conclusion, silence.
To that we say: Halcyon days, a lucky break! The Greek word here is also the name of a little bird (unknown translator) Aristophanes learned about birds from eating them. Oh dear! From whom did he take them? From whom?
First messenger, a bird: Guernica. Unconscionable. I want nothing.
Second messenger, also a bird: Audience will decide for themselves.
Nightingale, formerly Procne: Where are your feathers? They have fallen off, says Fidelio. What sort of bird is this? ‘Tis a bird that has lost his head. My head hurts, he says.
Another set of unwelcome visitors arrives as advertised, singing, and the Greek kabuki waxes incoherently as the poetic mood takes hold of it (about six stanzas illegible) By words the mind is winged. Have you one word to say for yourselves? Leave at least three windows for birds. Another choral song follows.
Prometheus arrives next, with an umbrella, attempting not to be seen from the heavens because Zeus is looking for him. Fidelio sends all of them packing and negotiates until Zeus surrenders both his sceptre and his girlfriend. And Zeus cuts Arke’s wings off at a party in Bombay and threw her into the river. The four rivers are Dahisar, Poisar, Oshiwara and Mith. Bombay has forgotten that it has four rivers.
The festive gathering departs amid the strains of the ides of March. My dear bird, lose no time, I beg.

As the next act opens, Xanthias and Dionysus argue over what kind of jokes Xanthias can use to open the play. To find a reliable path to Hades, Dionysus seeks advice from half-brother Heracles, who had been there before to retrieve hellhound Cerberus. Dionysus shows up at Heracles’ doorstep dressed in a lion-hide, carrying a club, and when Dionysus asks about the quickest road to Hades, Heracles says: hang yourself, drink poison or jump off a tower. Dionysus opts for the longer journey across a lake, which Heracles himself had taken. Disguised as Heracles, over his usual delicate bright yellow robe and beautiful red lady boots full of bows and ribbons, he wears the lion skin, dragging the club behind him. At last Dionysus arrives at the lake, and Charon ferries him across. Xanthias, being a slave, is not allowed in the boat, and has to walk around, while Dionysus is made to help row. This is the point of the first choral interlude, sung by the eponymous chorus of frogs, the only scene in which frogs feature in the play. We sing as we swim, roll home through the marshes and bogs. Embrace the fig tree! Their croaking annoys Dionysus greatly. At the shore Dionysus meets up with Xanthias, who pretends seeing the monstrous spectre of Empousa. Empousa with one leg of copper and one donkey leg, her removable eyes, and a wreath of flames around her head, eating her lovers and their children. Is Empousa a vampire? What do you mean vampire? It wouldn’t matter if she was a vampire, would it? A second chorus of tripping spirits of the Dionysian poppy wine mystics appears, swinging voodoo bullroarers, staggering ecstatically with their Dionysus gait. One pretends to ride a leopard. Liknitos Dionysos, florid and gay, of nymphs the blossom bright (about three stanzas illegible) they chant behind their Dionysian masks with the wild corkscrew beards and bunches of grapes on the head, eyes glittering behind the eye holes, lips and teeth moving in the happy mouth gashes. Except some of them are wearing the wrong masks, looking unexpectedly calm and serious, others have wide open, lamenting mouths and tall anguished foreheads. There’s a crying young woman with short braids flaring where they are tied. Another inexplicably with a large shouting mouth, angry frown and floppy beagle ears.

Members of the chorus keep pouring onto the stage and start spilling over the euripus into the audience and and (one line illegible) their masks are patchy geometric jumbles of twine and jaggedy box bits, a blue square replacing an eye here and gappy popcorn teeth there, primordial frayed hessian hair. A few having abandoned any effort at resembling faces, just square slabs with only the most rudimentary cube eyes and slot mouths. One with a single Ndebele motive replacing all the facial features, another seems to be a crude depiction of a robot face. A paper bag with eye holes, a long-beaked plague mask. A creepy Halloween doll face … Aristophanes drops the empty Dionysian cup and it breaks into nine pieces, and he aims a wavering horned hand at the shard with half a large staring eye on it before stumbling and sitting down heavily. Are wolves to be spared? he mutters. They belong to the same family as my wife. Lioness on the cheese-grater … burn down the gate or I’ll hit you in the mouth with a sandal, and he laughs so hard he almost chokes, and starts crying instead. A war-weary farmer flies to heaven on a monstrous drunk flamingo to search for Eirēnē, the lost goddess of peace, only to discover that the God of War has buried her in a pit, Aristophanes sobs, another proof that the text of Homer has reached us in a corrupted form. Nobody ever knows what the fuck is going on. Do you have a good memory?
The next encounter is with Aeacus, who mistakes Dionysus for Heracles due to the lion-hide, still angry about Heracles’ theft of his dog Cerberus. He likes honey cakes you know, says Aeacus, and threatens to have Dionysus tormented by the hounds of the river of wailing, and by Echidna, the irresistible flesh-eating woman with her beautiful long hair and hideous snake body, and by the gorgons with their stubby wings and snake hair and long tongues lolling from hungry tusks (translation unreliable) while a plague of dragons flies off with all the Aeginetans and Zeus changes a line of ants into men as fast as he can to replace them. If Aeacus knew that his great-grandson would be inside the Trojan horse he might’ve (one page missing) Terrified, Dionysus trades clothes with Xanthias. A maid then arrives and is happy to see Heracles. She invites him to a feast with the virgin dancing girls, and Dionysus quickly wants to trade back the clothes. But then Dionysus, back in the Heracles lion-skin, encounters more people angry at Heracles, and so he makes Xanthias trade a third time.
When Aeacus returns to confront the alleged Heracles, that is, Xanthias, Xanthias offers him his slave Dionysus for torturing to obtain the truth as to whether or not he really is a thief. The now petrified Dionysus tells the truth, that he is a god. After both Dionysus and Xanthias are whipped, Euripides produces verses that mention, in turn, the ship Argo, avant-garde persuasion, and a mace. A Folies Bergère funeral procession, each reveller with a Sabazios hand on a stick, enters stage left. Each hand waves at sky father god with the blood and fried potatoes and days, retro-futurist baby-robot faces and cubist dance bells on their fingertips and a pine cone on each thumb, a snake around each wrist, a lightning bolt on the back of the hands, a leafless branch, the giant fennel, a bunch of vine-leaves, and the Mounted Heros. Aeschylus responds with the beautiful river Spercheios, calm as a mirror, death, two crashed chariots and two dead charioteers.

The next life is waiting

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Wilna Panagos’ work has appeared in Otoliths, three Medusa’s Laugh Press anthologies, Former People and Hobo Camp Review‘s Ten Year Anniversary Anthology, among others. She lives in South Africa and her Facebook alter ego is here.