You're asking too much. That balance of ego and insecurity, hell, that's all I've got.
Do you find yourself struggling with honesty in your relationships?
...I like to toe the line of offering the truth and keeping the rest to myself, I s'pose, but that doesn't make me a liar.
By the dictionary. I see. Well. (pause) You draw. You paint. You're an artist. Would you be open to an avenue like that?
I am not sure I follow.
With your words, can you paint me any part of it?
(pause) (hum) Most of those memories are vivid, colorful, rich. I'm afraid they're tainted with boyhood, you know, chasing dreams, willing things to be more perfect than they probably were, and...and yearning. More like fantasies if anything, I think.
Most of the time our abilities to recall are separate entities from hard facts. Truth is not fact, and truth is in the person.
(unconvinced) Indelible. Well if you insist...
I never insist. Guida-
-Right. Then I am willing to, so they say, paint you a picture, Doc. No guarantees it's my best. Just a moment.
(long pause)
So. If you enter my father's old home through the front and into the foyer, you need only...well just proceed through that first archway into the parlor. There's a heavy oak door on the right, and behind it the kitchen. Proceed this way, Doc, by skirting along the counters and you should find the sitting area lined with windows. On the left is a door into the yard, the right opens into a glass corridor on the backside of our - I guess his house. It's very short, and at the end all of the glass panes sort of balloon into a bigger structure, but there is another door in the way. Here is (swallow) the greenhouse.
I know this path like the back of my hand, even if it's warped in most of my dreams. But this I am adamant that I remember with astounding clarity. To me, this short trip through the house was a religious pilgrimage.
This was what my mother lived for. Literally, she made her living an Herbologist, but I mean she breathed it, too. I never once regretted opening the door to the greenhouse. I don't think anyone could. How am I doing?
Do go on.
Yes, this is sort of fun, even though my palms are sweaty. So you go in, right Doc, and instantly you're wrapped up in a blanket of warmth. Not just the stifling humidity of the plants that's fogging the glass, or the scattered rays of sunlight beating down. Every corner of the room, from the beam at the tallest point of the ceiling to the...let's say...the forgotten crevice filled with soil behind some pots in the corner, every part of this place knows a tender heat that only passion can bring. Her heart is spilled and splattered everywhere, pulsating and so alive.
(mutter)
Anyway... if color was a sound, the green I could say is deafening. There are some lighter notes too, magical and soothing in comparison. Those are the flowers and fruits scattered about, bright, majestic, bizarre. Plays out like our very own rainforest. Dense, impenetrable. Like you know there are so many more leaves and trunks and stems deep in the mess of it, and they're somehow alive and growing but you've no idea how - you can't even see them.
A little Bracken just wanted to go adventuring through it. But my mum's beautiful plants, maybe the only thing I respected as a child, I was resolved not to destroy. Not out of fear or restriction. Something I held myself to. (pause) That makes me a little proud. I crawled under the tables, and through the pots and plants that I could, on some great expedition through the Amazon or maybe marooned on an island. All the while I know she's nearby, ready to throw a rope when I'm drowning in a pit of lava that both sears my skin and makes toxic fumes, because how else?
But point being, she was there. For my picture's sake, oops, she is there. Playing along. Throwing in twists. All the while she's doing - I don't even know what. Making a mess of some soil. (laugh)
One summer she tasked me with catching these beetles, and it became a huge bloody game. On the hunt for these murderous beasts, the pair of us were. And I remember she found one on my ankle while we were scouring the underside of every leaf. I dropped to the floor, screaming that they'd gotten me, I was going to grow wings! I'm rolling in all this dirt and what's she do? That batty woman starts doing some wild tribal dance with her little net, curse the poison away or call a bolt of lightning to smite me or something. So I'm hollering and she's hollering and neither of us can stop laughing. She wet her britches. (laugh) I never told anyone that, I promised I wouldn't. (laugh)
People wonder how I got this odd imagination. Well, mum grew it in her greenhouse.
