Phil Cordelli & Brandon Shimoda
The Pines, Pre-History
There is made thereof ... writng inke, but in our age not that which we write withall, but the same which serveth for printers to print their bookes with, that is to say, of this blacke, or congealed smoke, and other things added.
Gerarde-Johnson, 1632
I
For years, till after the turn of the present, no other had ranged so momentous. Certainly no other American. Fleets were great, and bent to the creation of fortunes and cities.
Worth was distinguishable at a glance, as far as can be seen. In its pagoda-like habit, in the youngest, as in the oldest, where the older have died and the congested are deprived.
Was northern, perhaps the most abundant throughout: formed pure or nearly pure. Or intimate, according to early land lookers, or cruisers, as we would say. Today, those same localities intermix, and the kingdom once held has been invaded, that once was humble.
Save for the intersection of rivers, this may have been but slight hyperbole. When the male bloomed illimitable, the aisles were swept with the golden smoke of reckless fertility, and storms were swept from the shores to superstitious brimstone.
Can one conceive of the toppling?
II
On the present site, a specimen is measured. This credits the West, even the Red. How many have been left unrecorded? Was it possible for the spotters to sight these miles away on the horizon – clumps or veins. To point the direction, a way found through the trackless.
The Maine rivers and, perhaps, more than a coasting. Look away with he who is adaptable to the climate. Certainly it was the first gold struck. Exploitation began immediately, and was so intensive that anyone could have envisaged the day when the virgin would be gone.
III
Countries lack the qualities of softness in which excel the even softest of proportions. It could be in there without the sticks of prodigious length, such as no other known part of the world was then.
Neither light nor strong enough, in such mistress sea. The proudest held it to their chests, to breathe against their own discomfort – having only to close the sounds to cut her off entirely. It is no wonder then that the worth grew commensurate with wealth.
On a load of human ebony, wealth came quiet, exquisite fanlights. Tastes grew sumptuous, an exchange made direct – light, utilitarian.
IV
The role of light saw patches cut over.
.
V
All future land was to be inserted twelve inches from the Earth & all other pains enjoined by the Kingdom.
A system was set up against those disguised as night. A law decreeing that all in disguise should be flogged. Other laws effected juried judges. Agents burned the swamps, and it was not healthy, the fen transpiring to lungs.
When the storm broke, the masts brought arms. Everything was included, to a man. Putting to sea revenge, the jointed sight to meet on equal terms.
Carry the war to shores.
VI
It would be impossible to list the range from paneling to the famed dwelling. No other served so well, moved at a touch of the hand. It was the favorite for heddles, the lower heddle light, smooth.
For centuries they were hand-rived with a frow and indeed could rive well from the rest. If they were left to bleed, a wick would ignite the crown. Tongues primitive, maker’s procedure. The introduction of enormous waste died hard, for the ruination would follow so radical, and widespread.
The famed were built in preference to almost any other qualities. Charles connecting a blow. River (crossed through ice floes) and the structures. A miracle with seven spans, one water-course borne upon it, over another.
VII
Many in the interior crossed numerous.
Each choked at one time with tremendous bearing, like going to market. The longest haul from the windings. One covered the Creole capital, at a temporal distance of about twenty-five years.
Or so in the most rosy pictures. Actually, much was acid; in place of yesterday, the brambles. Too often the end came in palls of unreadable agony.
There was nowhere to turn in the high coves. The yield reached a last skid; no snow, no rivers, no central steep. A pattern less picturesque was different: with a reddish color. It has never commanded the paramount position.
Glory had its lessons. The “bust” roused allies. Though to save itself in time to save the waking head.
VIII
From aboriginal times to the present, the companion, the queen. Like a consort, the rugged – like plates. The name was used only according to a misapprehension widely held – that the name derived from facts injustly proud – and misleading: stubbornness that only mistakes seem to inspire.
Empire shores its greatest girth. There it is: the spell cast climax.
Young and tall and straight (discovery) rimmed the bay and crash. They were part of the music, found growing together, of similar uses. Serving anonymously under the banner, we went to glory with it – to fame, and to extinction.
IX
The great boast the stately. A mere runt in opinion, fit for nothing.
A woman who passed within ten feet would become sterile, obstinately unopened. To poison the superstition, competitors blamed the bogs. Almost any misfortune that befell her could be blamed on the spirits of perversity. No one valued so heaped around it.
Famous enclaves not bounded, but scoured and lacustrine.
Far washed out where cold flora suffered. Such loss, as to some of its betters. For the stunted, the strange remain upon them, inconsequential.
X
If it is low, never weak for lack of worth. Its misshapen form covers wind-swept ground.
Reckoned as a nurse, it forms for the tenderer. Even faster, it outstrips its nurse, and can subsist in the open. In its search for light, its crops curve back.
Now cut the virgin to ribbons. Cut slats, kegs, headings for slack. What was once valued is resinous, readily. Pulp whined once for the flesh.
In all the charm of youth, already old crones. After death, winds soon whip away, then fall off.
XI
Figureheads of a special sort, cut with equal ease, its contour better. The difference was a matter of age; in our day, a product of centuries.
The Mother Country looked on; the refractory spirit looked entirely otherwise. What the Crown called Crown Lands appeared as theirs for the taking. It was a fortress for savages, desperately needed.
A secret market, another colony, was called royal. A made, resented blaze.
Into the wilderness to make a home – branded with hate, morchella, devotion. The acts infuriated the tax. Wonder obliterated the blaze, saw the giants into smaller lengths. Work them, ride and pole them down.
XII
Almost black against the sky. Contorted and often picturesquely irregular. Not as unopened, but dead and black. Or, after weathering, black.
This is a lozenge, corresponding almost exactly with the sea; submerged again.
It was found in the era before ideal.
The hearths are still discernible, and of terrific, living torches: pillories and whipping posts. To these are added “lust.”
The black picture she drew, sphagnum for the florist, cranberries violent.
XIII
Quin tongues spindling in the open.
Go back and get those guts. Red kielbasa in the snow.
Doubt trunks the tributes that would be due it.
And that singing, which one longs for, where no people live.
My correspondence has admittedly been lacking, but so has yours… I wish you could see New England. Boy, oh boy! Its grace and tranquility are quiet and refreshing. It must be marvelous in the fall. We are staying in a place where George Washington passed water. The way these snobbish yokels glom onto the slightest … historic incidentals would make you laugh. That sentence is as stupid as I can make it. Let’s see – what have I left unsaid? Nothing, I guess – except to say I love you both.
Marlon Brando, 1953
Statement
This is not the place to tell the history of romanticized, whirlwind exploitation. Our bemoaned idyll, detailed with gusto, keen as a wake in ruthless waste. It is underneath the world: newly evolved methods of force by bay are reached. Properties grow region, that could be sledded with oxen. Add this to a correspondingly able defect.
We were thinking of the meaning of that laughter, the somberness and gravity that goes with a goal attained. Looking up, the soft whisper.
|
|