He drove his Honda Odyssey so slowly
thru the Fairfax intersection,
it was as if he was taking pious instruction
from a page of the Book of Ditherotomy.
I was a kindergarten dropout so I had low social skills. Desperate for a playmate, I decided to visit a little girl down the road, even when she was a year younger than me, and not in my class. I was young, perhaps five-going-on-six, and I want to play with my neighbor down the road. But I didn’t know what to bring, so I loaded up two shopping bags with my most precious toys. Stephanie, who graduated from kindergarten, met me at the end of her driveway, the halfway mark. The bags must’ve been heavy as I had set them down to catch my breath. Her father said something under his breath, I didn’t understand his remark, but it was probably a derogatory aside, probably something about being a young bag lady in training. Les Stone was overly protective of Stephanie, who was a year younger than me, a year and two days to be exact. I was so pleased to finally have a playmate my age. Billy Joe Bianchi was two years older than me, and didn’t want to play with girls. His sister, Cottie moved away when Joe and Irene divorced. So I lived alone at the end of the road. I was willing to put up with shame, for I did feel shame—as I knew on some level Stephanie’s father was making fun of me. He always thought I was a bad influence on her because I had no visible parents, only a grandmother. But Steph and I became inseparable blood sisters. I don’t remember what was in the bags. If I were to peek inside those two bags now, they were the kind with rolled twine handles—like the ones from Macy’s, not grocery store bags. One bag was filled with doll parts and doll clothes. The other held my art supplies. A watercolor set, crayons, a coloring book, and the treasured detritus of childhood. A china tea set, with pieces missing, a rag doll, and other oddities. Hoarding began at an early age. I learn to compartmentalize, to categorize my belongings as it seems that I was always on the run. Of course I was, the break-up of family, my grandfather’s death, selling the city house, the aunts in the uncles scattered. My mother‘s marriage falling apart at the seams, my father‘s disappearance into the neck of the bottle. I arrived at the house at the end of the road with bags that I never unpacked—eventually evolving into the go-bag of today, a necessity during a time of wildfires. I began early, isolating parts of myself. Baggage, excavating my past.
2/17/22 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick
The design had a crest and a big silver trophy bowl at mid-handle—like the classical trophies filled with champagne and red roses that race horses won—perhaps a depiction of the Grecian urn filled with fruit, but it was so worn, it was hard to tell. If the crest had an initial, it too was worn away.
Once this cutlery was part of a matched set that graced a linen tablecloth in some genteel hotel. Probably pinched by someone, then later lost, or set free. It looks as if the spoon was used as a hand tool to tighten the baling wire along the fence line. Sounds like something I might have done long ago. Or maybe it tossed out in a paper napkin, into the fireplace, after evening tea with Irish sodabread, and dumped in the garden along with the ashes, and later hung on the fence like a trophy, or a wind chime. You must admit, finding a bent teaspoon hanging from an old fenceline is in want of some sort of explanation.
Was it a piece of cutlery from the original owner, a railroad man, who kept his silver in a hidey-hole beneath the kitchen floor that was later to become my bedroom? Much of our worn silverware came from that hidey-hole and we continued to use it through the generations even when most of the silver had long since worn off the bottom of the cutlery, imparting an acrid brassy taste in your mouth if you ate homemade blackberry jam right off the spoon with your tea.
I straightened out the old spoon as best I could to read the manufacturer’s mark. Initials and the words Pure Silverplate, as if you’d be fooled into thinking it was solid silver, and then you’d have to pinch it to augment your income. As we stood there catching our breath and contemplating its age, we heard a shuffling sound in the shrubbery below the embankment.
Thinking it was a deer or dog, I peered over the edge to find a porker, somebody’s pet pig. She was heavily furred with black with brown and russet splotches—perhaps denoting some Russian wild boar ancestry. When she heard me, she came over to investigate, snortling and chuffing with pleasure, pulling at the bunchgrass while eyeing us like a hungry horse looking for treats, and grunting all the while, but I could not translate, nor parse her guttural sentences. Perhaps it was a love poem or a serenade about apples delivered by a wandering minstrel pig. She was obviously a long way from home and was glad to see us. That much was obvious.
We were glad to see her, if only to cach our breath, as we were two old weed wenches pulling broom. Perhaps she was charmed by the sound of our voices—we always talk to animals—as we are all one thing. There is no separation between us and them. Even the blasted invasive scotch broom. And we caught our breath, our hearts were a little lighter because of that brief encounter with an errant pig, and we got back to work pulling broom. The pig ambled off, clattered down the road on her little pink hooves, looking for home, snuffling and grunting all the while. The old spoon in my back pocket for luck.
As it lay dreaming, it was variously called Knuckle Mountain, Sleeping Elephant, and Elephant Foot Mountain, that’s what we called it when I was ten, and Marin hadn’t yet been invaded by the rockstars—so we can’t blame them. From the top of Mt. Barnabe, it looks like an elephant’s foot. An elephant dreaming of the sea.
As for the current coloquial name Elephant Mountain, it was called that long before Jesse Colin Young moved to Inverness and named his album after it in deep homage. Banana of the Youngbloods knows the backstory, he confirmed to me that a local, Hannah Bauer, gave them the name. (NB Hannah grew up in Sausalito.)
And yes, there were once elephants here, once upon a time, both mastodons and mammoths—and they grazed on the lush sweet grasses of the verdant lush plains that rolled all the way out to the Farallon Islands. They wore the rocks smooth itching their butts near Goat Rock. And then they all died.
But the mountain that arose from the depths as pillow lava, is sleepwalking towards the sea. It endures our the fog of our transgressions, it forgives us our erosion of names, and still it feeds our imaginations. This mountain of many names.
From a Facebook photo post, you can see it here, but for this blog I used my latest iteration of the mountain.
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| Nascent fuzzy quince developing, Nicasio, ©Maureen Hurley 2018 |
They dined on mince, and slices of quince, which they ate with the runcible spoon; and hand and hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon. —Edward Lear
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| The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear 1871 |
Sawse madame. Take sawge, persel, ysope and saueray, quinces and peeres, garlek and grapes, and fylle the gees þerwith; and sowe the hole þat no grece come out, and roost hem wel, and kepe the grece þat fallith þerof. Take galytyne and grece and do in a possynet. Whan the gees buth rosted ynouh, take hem of & smyte hem on pecys, and take þat þat is withinne and do it in a possynet and put þerinne wyne, if it be to thyk; do þerto powdour of galyngale, powdour douce, and salt and boyle the sawse, and dresse þe gees in disshes & lay þe sowe onoward. —from The Forme of Cury
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| Still-life of quinces by Vincent van Gogh (1887), Wikipedia |
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| True quince was also used as an aromatic room freshener Wikipedia |
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| Pseudo Japanese flowering “quince,” Wikipedia |
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| True quince blossoms, Manfred Heyde Wikipedia |
Dear Alexander McCall Smith,
During this time of pandemic, I have rediscovered your delightful books in audio format, as I seem to have the attention span of a gecko for reading these days, this is a real boon, and I do love falling asleep listening to Mma Ramotswe’s escapades. Comparing her traditionally built figure to a baobab tree had me laughing out loud in the middle of the night. Woke me right up. My roommates, too.
I have begun at the very beginning of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, but I must admit I snuck ahead to listen to How to Raise an Elephant. So, I know the little white van is in perfectly good, if bent, working order. Lovely to hear from you, and that you’re embarking on yet another book. All that I know of Botswana is through the lens of Mme Ramotswe.
I do have some questions about the Botswanan cattle. Are they like the ones with massive horns, like the Ankole-Watusi of Rwanda? Horns so massive, they could cradle the sun? The reason I ask, is because weekly I pass a herd of African cattle on a west Marin hillside, and of course I think of Mme Ramotswe’s late father making this all possible.
Speaking of ancient cattle, I did take another spin through Portuguese Irregular Verbs, this time in audio format, and was surprised to find that I got to the end of the book. A first. Alors! In the past, as you may recall, I never got past Chapter Three because after reading about Irish Irregular Verbs, I was satisfied to stop there. What else was there to know? It has become a pilgrimage of sorts over the decades, to read the first three chapters, every few years, then drift off into an odd reverie of sorts, having once attempted to study Old Irish Irregular Verbs at Berkeley via translation of the Táin Bó Cúailgne, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley, in English. A real bloodbath, I might add.
I do look forward to your latest book, no. 23, is it? And this time, if you do visit California, God willing, I will indeed make an attempt to see you. The last time you were here, I came down with a frightful cold. I am still kicking myself that I didn’t make more of an effort to see you at Book Passage. Have you considered doing some Zoom appearances? I would love to listen to you, even if pixelated.
Your ever so grateful reader,
Slán agat,
Maureen Hurley
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