Friday, August 21, 2009

XXXIV: Mrs Scurfield IV


"Sometimes I think I’d like to just pave those Trees over,” I told Mrs. Scurfield as I watched her pull weeds from her garden yesterday. I’d been sitting on a lawn chair most of the afternoon, studying the Shaw essay while she worked.

She looked up alarmed. Like a parent with a child. “Oh no. I don’t think you would. You’ve got to be careful with that.”

“Well, in any case,” I said, “I can’t, ‘cos I don’t own the land they’re on.”

She straightened her shoulders to give me a second of hard attention and a grin, then began pulling out a large root system.

“I think I like hating them,” I offered. The noise of her work stopped again.

She looked at me for a while before saying, “I think you do too.”

“It’s comforting,” I offered.

She waited.

“But it’s not like I can get rid of them. And I don’t know how to stop, y'know, obsessing. So maybe enjoying the hatred is the best option for me.” I felt bad making this admission.

“And yet, here you are -dissatisfied,” Mrs. Scurfield observed, and resumed her selective apocalypse.

“Yeah.” Damn.

I think it really is time to confront my demons.

2 comments:

Jon Coutts said...

Yes yes yes Mrs. Scurfield!

Oh man I want to talk about this one day, but instead, right now it just needs to sit here and be appreciated for the chapter it is.

I have to admit I was only meandering into each chapter of this thing for awhile, but now I'm hungry for each one and the next.

s$s said...

Jon, I'm so happy that you've been getting something from this. I can't begin to say how glad I am that you've been such an active reader.