lynn nguyen fister

a small section of "a chronicle of four seasons"

by lynn nguyen fister. march-dec 2007. 

A bunbury tale.

A house on stilts.  You know the place.  It’s right there next to the loquat tree.  A ladder, birthing rickety racks, climbs up to it.  Take a step, shake.  Next rung, double shake as the height is double high.  This little gopher has a pressing time to go that way, as it is accustom to burrowing. 

“There are only four rungs.  It can be done,” wimps the gopher, neither brave nor grave.   “This is not a tragedy.  If i fall, the fall is not large. Ahem.”  (A phlegmy gopher needs to clear a throat once in awhile.)

Hee hee haw and huff puff.

Somehow the gopher goes upward.  At the fourth rung, the gopher sees the door is closed.  It is made of a pretty juniper, knotty knots and all.  Knock. Knock.

“Helloooooooooooooo,” an ominous voice comes from the other side of the juniper.  “Do you know the passcode?”

“No.”

“Well, tough out of luck you are yes sir-ee.”

“No.”

“No is for you hobo.  You have no residence here tonight.”

“i’ll break the door down you, you turkey!  Damn it and holler.”

“Go ahead and try rodent.  It is made of juniper after all.”

“Oh right, i do recall the passcode now.”

“And?”

So the gopher repeats the passcode ; the one to open doors.  And the juniper door swings open faster than a blink. 

Blink.

Inside the house, the most charismatic light—the kind with an infectious laugh—ventures through the windows.  Late afternoon tangerine light.  Something to ingest.  And then to digest.  Odd.  It is night and dark outside, no?  Where does this light come from then?

The gopher inspects the window to understand the tricks.  Hmm.  Through the windowpanes, the long leaf pines shift under the same loquat sun as which comes into this tree house home.  There must always be an explanation and a reason.  Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

The gopher insists on opening the door and understanding once in for all.  Opens the juniper mass of wood….  It’s dark and a moon.  And a foggy bleary eyed moon. 

Window.  Still a sun.  Door.  There are other stars but not this one that peers sheepishly in the window in the late daytime. Blink.

“It’s a little like when the devil beats his wife,” the doorkeeper informs the gopher.

“Oh, sure,” says the gopher not knowing what that all means.

“Well now that you are here… What now?”

“Let’s sit a bit,” says the gopher.  “i have a tale for you.  We have to make it with yarn so we have to sit and knit together.”

And so the gopher tells a tall tale, just about five feet of height.  Of a young lady who climbs trees.  She does this because she puts tacks on the road. Squatting and on tip toes, laying tacks in neat rows, a conical hat of bamboo atop her head.  To watch the tires of bicycles pop, sitting in smiles on a branch, convenient to the papaya tree.  1964.  Soon pop.  She carries a knife to slice the fruit open in halves like more sensuous moons. And a spoon to scoop out the carefully stacked seeds one by one, each an enigmatic pearl.  Eating papaya to sit and voyeur at the pop pop.  Papaya in the mouth pop.

“Look behind you.”

“Okay,” says the gopher.  The tail behind the gopher now long, knit in the most intense shade of ripe papaya ever that one could witness.

A friend offers to help me color my walls.  Thank you, i say, i could use the company.  And then the resident manager pokes his head in every few minutes and howdy-ho, as my door is open.  He means well and he gives us a ladder, which works better than my chairs, oh boy.

After painting the walls, we go to a bar to bid another friend farewell.   A true adieu i sometimes now know well.  Home Depot orange and yellow paint on our faces.   Even before the bar, the part of the wall near the ceiling is a wavering line, suggesting our state o’ brain.   

The next morning a slight headache.  i am a thinker, i think, because my think is sore.  Still, my furniture is dressed in fancy clothes, a speckled abstract piece of plastic tarp.  i color the last wall shades of Georgian clay.  A wish to run fingers through wet clay, spinning spinning on a wheel.

Next, i slop on cypress trees on satsuma sky and land.  A few lines then after to suggest knees and water. Missing mangroves and you, i promise to take you there soon.

Then i sketch out those few swifts for Martinet, but they are sloppy.  Resembling ducks more.  Actually they look more like messy splotchy bits of junk and fluff imduckanating ducks, but poorly.

Here nor there, at the corner a little turtle plays the violin.  Its neck rests so tenderly on her carapace.

“So many ducks in Florida this winter,” she sings all throat.

Later that night i hear fireworks.  Look at my watch and then go to rouse you awake and your eyes open.   Your arm is a twist and i attempt to untangle your knotty body, but your lashes and all else don’t budge.   So i nose and breathe your forehead in, just as she does to me…  Down the street, houses of people countdown; their big band mouths are all trumpets.  And for the first time ever ever i make a resolution.