An un-sapphic tribute to the evergreen Vita Sackville-West

I subject you to the truth. And the truth is, I dread talking about this. I know I had spelt it out quite clearly in bold letters that while I write here, I shall abandon conventions and rules. However, the reflex to edit, rewrite, strike through parts I despise; has stirred hesitation. I’ve also read that hating yourself for writing something poorly (and by poorly, I once again emphasize, insincere writing — where I put on a mask, a voice and strip facts to please you!) is quite meagre in comparison with the hatred that comes in not writing at all. Each time the floodgates of the foamy, rather lethal thoughts burst open, the sludge gets thicker and drowning does not seem viable. As I picture this, the noose gets tighter because letting you in is possibly weakening my credibility. (I wish I could omit this last bit, but writing has to offer refuge and therapy recommends the same.)

You’ve noticed the self-defensive nature of writing that has built a wall, forced me to wear blinkers and run! While I run toward that fibrous and fragile yarn (that will take me to the title of this piece), I hope to escape the hollow state of mind that I have previously described. It is time to spin the tale. (I confess, writing this statement has left my mind blank)

The fragments refuse to take a cohesive form, and thoughts are incorrigible. It takes time to tame a beast, and the trick I have employed here is using “Ts” to distract you from this needless train of thought! As I said, writers do things for dough and I am no different.

It does seem like I dread confrontation. The excessive emphasis on postmodern style is a bit too much, almost nauseating. (The ignominy of writing poorly has taken over, and my head has stooped low — I eye a sticky note on my laptop that says “You can’t edit something you don’t write” and I am rolling my eyes until I’ve studied my empty skull!) I have scrolled up, and I know the title promises you something else entirely — something that isn’t quite this self-aware and metafictional. It is time to hold the reins tighter, and focus on the fictional.

Placing this piece in the historical context of 2020, the year of a pandemic, the year that has shattered all certainties…yada yada (a broken record about how broken everything is right now, you get the gist?) The silence…rather the quiet offered by this year has had a greater impact on me more than I had thought just a minute before I typed this.

I’ve come closer to words. The amorphous, overused tool used by the world to appease and mend and distract ( I really ought not to go where this statement is taking me, sigh) and shut the other up!

“The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.” — Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.

I’ve come closer to words and this may be the only intimate relationship I’ve had all year. I write for about nine hours a day, and think about thoughts in words (oh no I am going to overthink Mentalese tonight!), I wrestle with feelings — and label them to lock out anxiety; and I read. (I am trying to nip this branch here- but alas! Earlier this week I was chasing and dragging my 6 year old nephew by his collar, nagging and the usual badgering, until he screamed “WHAT ARE….YOUUUUUUU DOING?” and I, with no qualms said “Bullying!” To my surprise, he said “Okay” and let me resume the said bullying. Naming the act made the difference.)

“Words, (English) words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations — naturally. They have been out and about, on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today — that they are so stored with meanings, with memories, that they have contracted so many famous marriages.” — from “Craftsmanship,” an essay by Virginia Woolf delivered as a lecture on the BBC, April 20th, 1937

“Especially enviable are the ancient bushes of hibiscus, which in the southern sunshine flower far more luxuriantly than with us, both the blue one and the red one, and that pretty creamy one with a whiskery maroon blotch on each flower, which is like a chintz, Hibiscus syriacus. They are usually grown as standards, with a huge head smothered in blossom. Nothing could be gayer or lovelier or, in its way, simpler than this garish exuberance of the village street. It is the natural expression of a desire for color, and I wish our own villages would all copy it.” — Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.

I shall (finally!) be gracious enough to offer you a glimpse into what Ms Sackville-West did to me while I was locked in, away from the unfamiliar and constantly evolving world — stranded in a space I grew up in, and with me, grows Ms Sackville-West’s beloved foliage!

Her career as a garden designer, a poet, and the subject of Orlando screams sapphic to me. I shall, however, stick to my title — for this piece is only a tribute to the woman who literally laid a bed full of roses and said — keep yearning while you tend to the verdure before you.

“I like generosity wherever I find it, whether in gardens or elsewhere. I hate to see things scrimp and scrubby. Even the smallest garden can be prodigal within its limitations.” — Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.

2020 is also when people turned to Austen. (I make sure I turn to Austen at least once a year. The pandemic pushed me to her more than once.) The diabolical and double-edged sword of technology with regard to gardening is, I can watch my plants grow after their death.

“It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June. Larger than any rose, it has something of the cabbage rose’s voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it sheds its petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall, making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had still appeared to be a living beauty.”- Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.

Nostalgia has seeped in prematurely and I despise it. I am also grateful. This isn’t a binary, of course, it is a scale and slides each day.

heheheeheheehhehe ok

“The farmer and the gardener are both busy, the gardener perhaps the more excitable of the two, for he is more of the amateur, concerned with the creation of beauty rather than with the providing of food. Gardening is a luxury occupation; an ornament, not a necessity, of life.” -Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.

“The other day I encountered a gentleman wearing amber-colored spectacles. He was kind enough to say that I had a well-chosen range of color in my garden. I expressed some surprise at this, since it was obvious that he could not be seeing any colors in their true color, but must be seeing them in some fantastic alteration of tincture. Yes, he said, of course I do; it amuses me; try my glasses on, he said; look at your roses; look also at your brown-tiled roofs; look at the clouds in the sky. Look, he said, handing them to me. I looked, and was instantly transferred into a different world. A volcanic eruption, or possibly an earthquake, seemed imminent. Alarming, perhaps, but how strange, how magical. Everything had become intensified. All the greens of turf or trees had deepened.” — Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.” — Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.

A great deal of activities were undertaken to keep the head and the heart occupied. (I’ve realised “the head and the heart” is a favourite phrase, and a cute band I visit inadvertently sometimes.)

Every inch of the home was attended to. Every broken machine was fixed. I learned that dad and I can break and fix things together… if we tried.

A few months into the lockdown, our minds wandered to the lush green entrance that was dying. We didn’t know how to fix a thing with life. So we rummaged through the quarters, dialled gardeners, did a bit of reading and managed to meddle with our saplings. We also tried praying to the lemongrass plants to ward off mosquitoes and watched roses and jasmine move from the pot to everyone’s hair. A few were used to appease the gods, and the rest were laid into my books — for an afterlife party!

Cool mornings, hot noons, torrential cyclones got us in our boxers, and we’d scrub the terrace, weed out twigs, get bitten by revolting but thriving insects, and watch the days go by. It was a ritual to clean a new nook, and walk into the unexplored and dilapidated part of the island; to fix the broken and break new things, and laugh at the entire enterprise.

Eight months of this cyclical routine kept me busy, some times, too busy to be in despair. I’d smell of pesticide, or walk around with an axe, or a hoe, or carry flowers for mum, like Romeo and Hamlet’s goth child. It wasn’t a secret that sky-gazing (abyss-gazing) and bird watching were incorporated into the schedule.

“The more one gardens, the more one learns; And the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows.”- Vita Sackville-West, Gardening diaries.

What wasn’t in the schedule was outbursts of profanity at the sight of bird poo.

I am now onto something else, and having brewed this love/affair/love-affair/god-in-hell-what-am-i-saying… I’d like to stop writing about this now. Period.

“I like muddling things up; and if an herb looks nice in a border, then why not grow it there? Why not grow anything anywhere so long as it looks right where it is? That is, surely, the art of gardening.”

P.S.

Of course there is a P.S! I liked gardening as a child, however, I like the feelings I have in a garden more than the task of it, after all, I ripped a good pair of jeans while squatting a bit too quick! On a closing note, I have also been bestowed with epithets — “Plant Pimp” “Plant daddy” “GreenGay” “Gulaabo” and … I shall speak no more!

So long.