Spahr - The Transformation

2007 by Juliana Spahr

ISBN 1-891190-26-1

eBook ISBN 978-1-891190-98-8

The cover image is of the Leucaena leucocephala, also known as koa haole; photograph by G.D. Carr, from Vascular Plant Family Access Page, www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/mimos.htm. Used with permission.

Atelos

A Project of Hips Road

Editors: Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz

Design: Lyn Hejinian

Cover Design: Ree Katrak/Great Bay Graphics

Flora and fauna grow next to and around each other without names. Humans add the annotation. They catalogue the flora and fauna, divide them up, chart their connections and variations, eventually name them, and as they do this they read into them their own stories. In 1569, a doctor who came from afar to the continent that has the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other had what was called the maracuj vine and its elaborate flower pointed out by those who had been living for many generations on this continent. Forty years later a priest, also from afar, looked at the plant and saw within the flower the crucifixion, the five wounds of Christ, the crown of thorns, the cords that bound the body to the cross, the doubters, the goblet of the Last Supper, saw a story of Christ in a new world vine, and the vine got renamed the passiflora, the passionflower. The passiflora did not show up on the island in the middle of the Pacific, where this storya story of a different them who also came from afartakes place, until the late nineteenth century. But passiflora gets busy once it arrives. It grows towards the light and its leaves unfold like solar panels pointing towards the sun and then it begins to smother and break underlying vegetation with dense mats of stems and foliage. Those who lived on this island in the middle of the Pacific in the late nineteenth century did not see the story of Christ, or perhaps they did but it did not interest them. What was called the maracuj, the passiflora, the passionflower, they called the huehue haole. Huehue is the name of a climber native to the islands. Haole is the word that is used to describe some of them in this story, people who arrive from somewhere else. In the world of plants it is also used to describe a particularly noxious and invasive species.

This is a story of the passiflora and the tree canopy. This is a story of three who moved to an island in the middle of the Pacific together. This story begins when they all got on an airplane to fly to the island. In the plane, two sat in one row of two seats and one sat in a row ahead of the other two. The one who sat in a row ahead talked with another in the same row, someone whom they had just met, who had lived on an atoll for a number of years but now the atoll was gone because the ocean had risen above it. Together the three of them and the stranger who had lived on the atoll looked out the window of the plane and saw the island in the middle of the Pacific that would be their home. The island they saw was a mixture of green and of concrete and it was surrounded by water that was a deep blue. Out the window of the airplane, it looked like everything that they were told a tropical island might be. And when they got off the plane the air felt lush and was filled with the smells of plants and they felt their bodies embrace it.

They all carried their history with them on the airplane. Their history was like this Two of them had been a couple for many years. This relationship was intense and variable and intellectually driven. One of them had met another. This relationship was intense and variable and passionate. Two of them had assumed that one of them would no longer be one of them. But it did not work out that way. No one broke up with anyone. Things just went on. And now one of them had taken a job on an island in the middle of the Pacific and the other two had to decide whether to move or not. They had met one afternoon in a bar and talked about the move. And there they decided to fix their relationship into a triangle. At the bar meeting it was awkward for them to talk. They felt uncomfortable and there was a lot of silence, but they decided anyway that they would all move to the island together. They liked each other and they admitted this. All of them learned from all of them. They all had their own interests and these interests intersected and overlapped with other interests and they all felt they could be shaped by each other into some new thing.

One of them would move from bed to bed; one would be always coupled; one would be single every other night. There was a pattern. And so each day they would have to think about which bed had been the bed for waking. Or which skin had been the most touched of the skins. What certain specific memory had been the most recent. What smell. What feeling. What satisfaction.

When they first landed they went from an airplane into a car and they went from a car into an empty apartment and then went from an empty apartment into a bar where they had beers in the afternoon. They were awkward because they got off the airplane on an island. They were awkward with their bodies in the five-hour time difference after a ten-hour flight. They were awkward because they had never lived together before.

Once they were on the island they had no words for themselves. They had only theories. And the words they thought they might use did not work. They did not know what to make of how it felt reassuring to watch on public television the female hedge sparrow vigorously shaking its tail feathers at two different male birds to indicate their desire to be inseminated by each of them in close succession or to watch a cable channels documentary on a group who lived in the Amazon who married more than one person at a time, a group the documentary called the marrying tribe of the Amazon, or to watch the music channels soap opera subplot of a girl and two guys who liked to have sex all together and who as a result agreed that the only ethical thing to do was to only have sex when all three were present, an agreement that was immediately broken by two of them when the third went off to study. The interest they felt in these images that came at them without their input made them feel stupid but they could find few models to turn to among those around them so they could not stop thinking about these models made for them by other people far away from them. Lack of understanding was all around. It defined them. They could not understand what the documentary called the marrying tribe. They did not even know the real name of the marrying tribe, the name that the members of the tribe had chosen to call themselves. The documentary used the term the marrying tribe.

In their apartment, they each had their own room. They lived their lives most fully in their own rooms. Most of their emotional life was experienced at their desks and they often interacted with each other from these desks through their computers. The desks that they had in each room were identical. They had made them together on the same day out of plywood. And the desk chairs were identical. They had gone together to the office warehouse store and they had bought three identical desk chairs with wheels and blue denim upholstery. They each had computers on their desks. Yet they kept their identical desk chairs at different heights. And they kept different sorts of things on their desks and their computers. One had papers and books strewn about in piles, abandoned birds nests, and several lamps. One had ashtrays and matches and voodoo dolls and candles. One had shells and weird materials found on the ground and math books.