Oak & Ivy

"Parasitical"-the word is an interesting one. It suggests the image of "the obvious or univocal reading" as the mighty, masculine oak or ash, rooted in the solid ground, endangered by the insidious twining around it of ivy, English or maybe poison, somehow feminine, secondary, defective, or dependent, a clinging vine, able to live in no other way but by drawing the life sap of its host, cutting off its light and air.

(J. Hillis Miller, “The Critic as Host” 1977)

“Wyatt, you are an oak.” (Doc Holliday to Wyatt Earp, Tombstone, 1993)

I.

My friend, the oak, is not about to fall. In winter, not exactly skeletal, but showing strength and weakness at once.  A confidence that knows that soon birdsong, leaf, & bloom will return: the coming alive, again. And then, again, go. Meanwhile, he is content to stand alone. To let wind mock before it sings the branches that will not break. Then there is the temptation to give in to winter dreams. Does the oak dream? Does he consider the lady cardinal, hiding red with brown, as she flirts, with fickle foot & sleek song, all the while knowing he cannot compete with the red of early bloom and the ashy snow? Not to mention the blue flashes of spring, the guest beside the grain, the ivy in the hedgerow.

II.

In Old French:

          As in Camus:

“L'Hôte” implies

          A doubling;

Host is Guest;

Guest is Host.

The double bonds of hospitality:

                       Greet, eat, ask, answer, switch.

Story for story; performance per performance.

Tell you mine: show me yours.


              Remember: welcome the stranger; 
                                 speed the parting guest.


              Beware: some guests don't know how to go.

III.

In these numbered hostels that we borrow, guesting, we host them daily, performing the stories, the truth & the fictions. We remain open (before, during, after) to their apathy as well as their neediness. A place of lodging, even slumber, though the sitting uncomfortable, and the stories compelling—these travelers don’t always accept our strange currency, the best guest/host gift we have to give.

But they are the secrets that we keep that ghost these halls, these rooms, comme des hôtes des bois.

IV.

Respectability. That's what did it. I found out some time ago that it's idleness breeds all our virtues, our most bearable qualities--contemplation, equableness, laziness, letting other people alone; good digestion mental and physical: the wisdom to concentrate on fleshly pleasures--eating and evacuating and fornication and sitting in the sun--than which there is nothing better, nothing to match, nothing else in all this world but to live for the short time you are loaned breath, to be alive and know it--oh, yes, she taught me that; she has marked me too forever--nothing, nothing.
[The Wild Palms, William Faulkner, 1939]

V.

What host of virtue, spent

nights without sleep, wondering which branch

might be the one to send the whole house finally crashing?

What truthful prayer: < nada y pues nada>>

might make it all clear once and for all:

I’ve staked nothing upon nothing and have nothing to show?

What guest of pleasure, tempting,

might arrive singing: <<There is a Balm…>>

suggesting that giving in is not giving up?

The difference between health & sickness,

fidelity & infidelity, enemy & friend, lost & found,

is felt by walking that thin line of a fragile faithfulness.

VI.

As a reminder of friendship Whitman twined a switch of live-oak with New Orleans’ moss, sitting it on a bookcase, in memory of the loved ones miles away. How much like ivy our attachments keep a hold on us. How much like ghosts, our smallest unrealized desires hang around our old haunts.

My friend, who fears God and seeks Glory, rises as an oak among us—a new string of ivy climbing slowly but steadily to some inevitable end.