The Open Garden: A Story with Four Essays. (2/2)
Title: The Open Garden: A Story with Four Essays.
Author: Christopher Milne.
Genre: Non-fiction, essays, fiction, literature, short stories, ecology, nature, religion, Christianity.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1985, 1988 (this collection 1988).
Summary: A collection of 4 essays and 1 short story. (Short story in this post, refer to PART 1 for the essays.) The Windfall: A Story (1985) is a short story that re-tells the myth of Adam and Eve, their leaving of the Garden of Eden, becoming the first farmers to cultivate the earth, and eventually facing the great Flood.
My rating: 8/10
My review:
♥ Some three thousand years ago, the Israelites, after years of captivity in Egypt sand further years spent wandering across the desert, had at last reached the Promised Land and could settle down to become a nation. "Where did we come from?" "How did it all start?" Now for the first time it could be recorded. Memories stretched back a little way. Memories of memories stretched a little further. And behind them lay those stories that had been passed from generation to generation: the myths. "In the beginning..." Whether or not it was literally true, here was the nearest they could get to their starting point, that historic root they needed to anchor themselves to the world.
Those myths still survive. They are not the starting point of our history, for we are a different race and have a greater knowledge of our past. They are instead the starting point of a religion. Consequently, if we look to them for a truth, it will be a religious or moral truth that we hope to find. Thus the story of Adam and Eve tell us something about the relationship between God and man, of sin and punishment.
But is this the only possible interpretation?
♥ First, Adam and Eve. In the original myth they had been individuals, quite literally the first man and the first woman. In the biblical interpretation they sometimes represent their two sexes and sometimes Adam will represent both sexes at once - mankind in general. In my story they represent two different ways of looking at the world.
Adam sees it as something that exists outside himself. He distinguishes between what is "him" and what is "not him", and so between what is his and what is not his, between friend and foe, good and bad. And naturally it is his ambition to understand and tame as much of this outside world as possible - both its human and its non-human elements - and get them to work for his benefit.
Eve, on the contrary, sees herself as part of the world, rather as our hand is part of our body. The world - the whole world - is her home, and all its many and various inhabitants share it with her.
Most men have in them more of Adam than of Eve; most women are more Eve than Adam. But this need not be so, and we can move from the one to the other in the course of our lives. And maybe mankind too can change in the course of the centuries. Scientists, for example, in the days of Newton and Descartes, saw the world as Adam saw it; but many of them - biologists and theoretical physicists in particular - are today seeing it through the eyes of Eve. Buddhists have always seen it that way.
Up to now Adam has been the dominant partner and he has undoubtedly led us to great triumphs. But he is now heading for disaster. Ours is a living world and a finite one. It is not immortal, nor is it necessarily able to do all we demand of it. Our battles against nature and among ourselves now threaten the existence of us all.
We talk of "the match of civilisations" and we have a picture of a great army of humanity moving forward out of the morass of prehistory towards some distant mountain top. I think that a better picture would be of a sailing ship moving forward against the wind. For the last 50,000 years or so she has been on the port tack, Adam has been at the helm and she has made excellent progress. But now there are rocks ahead. It is time to go about. It won't be easy but it might just be possible. I believe that if human civilisation ia to continue for another 50,000 years, Eve - and I mean, of course, that attitude towards our surroundings that she represents - must have her turn at the wheel.
And now for my two main events. The first is the expulsion from the garden. In my story this is not a punishment for a sin. It is to be interpreted as that event that occurred in the life of mankind when, between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic Ages, we stopped being hunters to become farmers. As hunters we had been like the rest of creation, both plant and animal: we had taken the world as we had found it, helping ourselves to what we had wanted and ignoring the rest. As farmers we set out to make it the way we wanted it to be. Eden had been God's world. Outside, it was to become Adam's.
The other event is the Flood. I have moved it from the distant past to the not-so-distant future. I doubt if we can avoid it. Indeed it seems at times as if we scarcely wish to avoid it. And it may well be necessary to set us on our new course. I just hope we survive it. But who can tell? And so my story ends, quite literally, in mid-stream.
~~from Foreword.
♥ Eve looked again at the apple in her hand. For indeed it was an apple. She pressed it with her thumb. It was soft and her pressure left a small dent. She noticed a place where the skin was missing and the flesh was mottled brown and white. A bird had found it first. She held it up to the sky: red against blue. She tried holding it up against the sun, but the sun dazzled her. She balanced it on her thigh. Then she picked it up once more, holding it by the stalk as the tree had held it and swinging it to and fro.
Then at last a voice in her ear said "Eat it!" and she ate.
It was the voice of the serpent that had spoken. She knew at once that she had been tempted, that she had succumbed and had done something that one day she might bitterly regret. All this she knew but at the same time she was overwhelmed by the taste of the apple she had eaten. It was like nothing she had ever eaten before. Its white flesh was firm, yet where her teeth had entered, the juice had spurted and flowed over her tongue. It was sweet yet also sour, a perfect blend of the two, to which, after she had swallowed, was added a very slight hint of bitterness. She ate it all without a pause, not even to reject the pips and core. And as she finished the last mouthful she caught sight of Adam coming up the path towards her.
There was still a chance. Sher could have kept her secret to herself. But the experience had been so wonderful that the discovery had to be shared.
Poor Adam! The sack he was carrying had little in it. He had had an unsuccessful day and he was hot and tired and very thirsty and in a bad humour. With scarcely a thought he seized the apple that Eve held out to him and devoured it ravenously. Then, without speaking, he searched the grass and found another and ate it slowly, deliberately and - it seemed to Eve - almost defiantly.
Then he sat silent, staring straight ahead of him.
Eve felt frightened. "They are so good," she said in a whisper. "It cannot be wrong to eat them... Adam, it cannot be wrong."
He looked at her. He too seemed suddenly afraid.
"Adam, come closer to me." And she held out her hand to him. But he continued to sit apart and stare at her.
"What are you thinking?" But he only shook his head.
The sun had gone behind the hill and a sudden needle of wind pricked her and made her shiver.
She stood up. "Let's go in now. It's getting cold and you are hungry."
"No," said Adam. "Not yet. I must think."
He rose slowly to his feet and looked up into the tree.
"So many," he said, almost as if he regretted their abundance.
"They will not harm us?" asked Eve, going towards him. "They are not poisonous?"
Poisonous? It was a strange word.
"No," he replied. "They are not poisonous. That I now know."
"You thought they were? That was why we couldn't eat them?" she asked, hoping he might say "Yes". But he only shook his head again.
"Look," he said. He emptied his sack on the ground and a few small green fruits rolled out. They too were apples - of a kind. "That's all there were. That's all I could find. There were enough on the tree when I last went, but hey were not ripe. Today they were all gone - all but these few."
"Who took them?"
"How should I know? I wasn't there to watch... If only all our food grew here where we could watch it and protect it and tend it... Out there it's so scattered..."
And then quite suddenly the idea came to him.
In later years, as she listened to Adam telling his story to his descendants - listening in silence as became a dutiful wife - it would make Eve smile to herself that somehow he always forgot to mention that it was she who had first discovered the possibility of digging plants out of the ground and moving them to another place, and she who discovered that trees and bushes could sometimes be persuaded to grow where you wanted them to grow by pushing little bits of them into the earth. Yes, of course, it needed a clever, practical man like Adam to make use of her discovery, to see that if flowers could be moved so too could food plants. And so too, quite possibly, could animals. And of course it was Adam's idea that led to the great change in their lives. No. Even that was not quite true. For this change would have occurred in any case, as a result of her eating the apple. If she had never been tempted, never disobeyed, would Adam's wonderful idea have had such consequences? How complicated it all was!
Eve never managed to puzzle it out to her complete satisfaction. Better, therefore, to let Adam tell the story in his own way. The thing had happened whatever might have been its causes and origins and whoever might fairly claim the credit - or take the blame - and whether it was chance or the deep workings of inevitability that lay at the back of it all.
This at least was certain: they had spent the rest of that evening in long discussion, the red apples and the green apples lying side by side on the ground quite forgotten.
"Just think," said Adam, "how much easier it would be if all our food grew here where I could look after it."
♥ "Please, Adam. This bit here, where my yellow flowers grow and where it is so pleasant to sit. You could sit here too after you had done your work. You'd have more time for sitting.... I like just being with them," she added, almost to herself. "Not doing anything - though I may perhaps pick a few and bring them inside. Not even looking at them - though I sometimes like to get very close to them and stare deep into their hearts. Just being with them: feeling that they and I are sharing something together, though I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's the world we share, or our small bit of it. And then if I sit still perhaps I will see a fly or some other tiny creature, and he too will come into my world and share it with me."
♥ His stock, his crops, his land. This was the great difference since they had left Eden. There they had been hunters. Now they were farmers. Or rather Adam was a farmer and so were the boys. It was man's work. She was... What? A farmer's wife, she supposed. "His", "Ours", "Mine". These were words they had scarcely used in the old days. In the forest things didn't belong to you. They didn't belong to anybody. They were just there and you took what you wanted, what you could catch or what you could find. When you had caught it and brought it home, then of course it was yours. Who else could it belong to? And then you ate it and that made it still more yours. But here on the farm there was, it seemed, a need to claim ownership, and so you said, "This is mine." You said it confidently, proudly. But sometimes you said it challengingly, as if expecting someone to dispute it. This too she had mentioned to Adam; for it made her uneasy, this new relationship with the world around them. But again Adam had laughed at her fears. "Weren't they 'your' flowers that you used to dig up and bring back to 'your' garden?" And she had to admit that this was partly true.
The great difference, she decided, was that when they had been hunters they had lived from day to day - or very nearly. When they had wanted something, they had gone out and found it and then straight away they had used it. Sometimes, it is true, they had watched fruit ripening and had said to each other, "Next week we will come and pick it." But they had never thought of the fruit as belonging to them until it had been gathered and brought home. They had not laid claim to it while it was still green. And if, in the interval, some other creature took it - well- they would probably find more elsewhere. But now that they were farmers Adam worked as much for the future as for the present. Reaping: that was for the present; but sowing: that was for the future. And there was a long and anxious period between the two when he had to protect his unfinished work until the fruits of his labour could be realised.
♥ In the old days they had sought what they had wanted where it was to be found. They had gone hunting. Not necessarily together, of course, for Adam liked to penetrate deep into the forest where the wild animals lived. He loved these expeditions, revelling in the chase, exulting in his triumph when with a well-hurled spear he had brought down his quarry. Eve's arms were not made for throwing nor were her legs made for running. And though she was happy to cook what was already dead, she disliked killing and she disliked even more to see creatures die. Yet she too in her way was a hunter. Her expeditions took her only to the fringe of the forest. Here she would hunt for berries and nuts and leaves and the eggs of birds. She knew - it seemed she had always known - where these things were to be found. Not all plants were good to eat of course. You had to know what you were looking for. Eve knew. It didn't matter to her that there were a lot of other things that she was not looking for. She let them be.
But now it did matter. Now it seemed there were bad things as well as good, and the bad things could not be ignored. They had to be fought and destroyed. As hunters they needed to know only what was good. As a farmer Adam had to know also what was bad.
Eve disliked the idea that something could be bad, a bird or an insect or an animal or a plant with a pretty flower. And she disliked the idea of destroying something because it was bad. You could kill a thing if you were going to use it in some way: you could kill it for its goodness. But it was altogether different to kill it because you did not want it.
♥ Adam liked a fight not just for the meal that followed it but for the pleasure of testing his skill and his strength against "a worthy adversary". He welcomed the challenge and he exulted in the victory. Though he had never admitted as much, Eve believed that there were occasions when, in the heat of the chase, intoxicated with success, he had killed more creatures than he had been able to carry home and had left the others where they had fallen.
So perhaps it was not altogether surprising that he should now welcome - yes, actually welcome - the attacks that were made on his crops and his sheep. They challenged his authority. They tested his skills. They brought him the "victories" that so elated him. But Eve, out walking and coming across the body of a dead wolf, or a heap of withered plants - "weeds" she supposed - would be saddened.
This difference between them explained why, though she had enjoyed her share of the hunting, she could never be a farmer. She was grateful to the Lord God for her days in Eden. She herself could have stayed there for ever. But perhaps for Adam's sake they had to leave. And so perhaps the greatest gift the Lord God could have given them when the time came for their departure lay within the apple they had eaten: a knowledge of good and evil. For if there would be enemies opposing their new way of life, surely they needed to know them.
♥ "It's all my fault," she cried.
"What is?" said Adam. Their thoughts had diverged since last they had spoken to each other.
"Evil," said Eve simply.
"Then Good too," answered Adam. "We saw plenty of that."
But Eve was not so easily consoled and Adam tried another argument.
"You remember the wound on Jared's hand that you helped to wash, and how he told us it came from a tool he had been using? He showed me that tool. He had made it himself. It was a wonderful thing. Sharper and better than anything I have ever been able to make. Now tell me, was that too evil to have injured the hand that held it? Or was Jared wicked to have invented it? If you invent tools that make work easier, you must accept the risk that they can do greater damage."
"I don't see what that has to do with disobedience," Eve said.
Adam was silent for a little. Then he tried again.
"When Seth was a child we told him that, though he might go down to the stream, he must never cross over to the other side unless he was with one of us. We made that rule, not because there were greater dangers on the far side of the stream, nor because there was any particular risk that he might slip and drown in trying to get across, but simply because it made it easier for us to look after him. If we had allowed him his freedom to wander where he pleased, he might well have wandered too far and got lost or met with some accident and we might never have found him. I chose the stream as his limit for no other reason than that it made a clear boundary between what was permitted and what was forbidden. If we chose to cross, I would punish him: that he knew.
"But I knew - and he didn't - that one day he would cross. And I would be glad. I would be glad because it would prove that he was no longer a child dependent upon his father for protection but a man dependent only upon himself. I could have said, "Today you are a man. Now you have my permission." But I preferred him to make the discovery for himself. You do not become a man because your father says you are one, but because you feel yourself to be one.
"That is how it was with Seth, and it was exactly the same with us when we were children and lived in Eden, and the Lord God was our father, He provided for us. Our food was there, all around us, and we helped ourselves to it, while he watched over us. Then when we were strong enough to be independent of him, we proved it to him by breaking his command. And the apple which had been forbidden to us when we were children became his great gift to us, the gift that enabled us to survive on our own."
"But I never wanted to leave my garden," cried Eve. "That wasn't why I ate the apple. It was... I don't know... curiosity."
"Nor, I think, did Seth want to leave home. But he proved to me that he was ready to go, and so I sent him away. It is right for children to leave home when they are grown up. That was our mistake with Cain and Abel: we allowed them to stay."
"It is good of you, dear Adam, to excuse me. And perhaps the Lord God excuses me too. But I fear others may not do so. They will see it differently."
"If things go right our children will, of course, give themselves the credit. If they go wrong they will look for others to blame. Yes, they will certainly blame us."
♥ Soon afterwards the track went downhill. They were entering their valley at last and the sun, having guided them across the plain, its duty done, now slipped quietly behind the horizon.
The valley beneath them lay in shadow, a monochrome of black and grey, but the sky was still alive with colour from deepest crimsons to palest greens. As they made their way down the hill so, one by one, the valley trees seemed to rise up out of the darkness to greet their return. One by one they thrust their leafless heads through the rim of the sleeping world, and as they moved upwards into the sky so they caught in the network of their branches a million fragments of colour; a shoal of rubies and emeralds and amethysts and sapphires. Many thousands of years later men would celebrate this evening flowering of winter trees in the stained glass windows of their churches. But though they were able to capture the colours, the individual personalities of the trees themselves eluded them.
These were Adam's trees. He had planted them, every one. He knew them as he knew his own children. Indeed they were his children. And this was how he and Eve liked best to see them, naked against the winter's sky.
.."Rough old oaks," said Eve. "Their heads are as bristly as your beard."
"They are men," said Adam. "They are my sons."
"And the beeches are our daughters."
Adam smiled. "Their trunks are smooth like the body of a woman. Their branches are like a woman's arms; and their heads have a woman's hair, as fine and soft as the wind itself. They are indeed our daughters."
"They are like us," said Eve, "and yet they are the opposite of us. For in winter when we need clothes to keep warm they are naked, and in the summer when we are naked they are clothed."
"I like them naked best," said Adam. "I like you naked best, too. You are you when you are naked. I can see you and touch you and know you. When the trees are clothed in their leaves I can pick a leaf and say what tree it belongs to, but the leaf will tell me nothing of the nature of the tree. It is the same with clothes; they tell us who we are but not what we are."
♥ Eve loved all weathers and all seasons. They were part of the living world, and the to-and-fro movement between them - from darkness to light, from new moon to full moon, from winter to summer, from east wind to west wind, from gale to calm, from rain to sunshine, from frost to thaw - was the world's breathing and showed that it was alive and in good health.
Only when the rhythm became erratic, when the world drew its breath in great spasms like a person who is ill, did she become afraid. And only when she was afraid did she begin to think of the weather as cruel.
Although there is no precise moment when the sun's kindly smile becomes a smile of cruelty, there may well be a precise moment when one becomes aware of such a change.
♥ To Eve the earth had always seemed alive, the living home of countless living plants and animals. Lying upon it she could feel it holding her up, powerful and reassuring beneath her body. Pressing her hands against it she could feel the living earth press back. She would explore it and caress it with her fingers. She would press her face into it and inhale its living breath.
♥ As it flowed so it widened and deepened the channel and its level began to fall. Eve watched, expecting at any moment to see treetops and hilltops reappear. Eagerly she scanned the receding waters for the first signs of life. Something ruffled the surface of the water and a moment later a brown island appeared and grew, then another and another. Brown, deserted, dead. No grass; only mud and stones. No trees; only tree stumps. No buildings; only little heaps of stones. And no living thing.
The last of the water drained away. Only a few stagnant pools remained. Over the entire surface no living thing was to be seen. And Eve knew then that the flood had not drowned a living world; it had closed the grave over a world already dead. And she should have left it that way.
♥ Then quite suddenly she saw what she must do. Indeed there was no alternative. She must return to Eden. Just possibly at the far end of the plain (for the plain must surely have an end) there might be survivors who, like herself, were now clinging to the rim of their world. Just possibly some man somewhere would find a way of surviving the flood. But she and they were separated by an ocean of water and neither could ever know of or come to the help of the other. These others would have to go on to whatever lay on the far side. She could only go back.
So back she would go. Back through the mountains - if she could find her way - back to the forest where Adam had hunted, back to the garden where they had once lived together so happily. There would be no Adam, and she was now very old. But the Lord God might still be there and he might take pity on her and look after her and clothe her and feed her in her old age.
..Finally, turning her back on the waters that had drowned her valley and the plain and all its inhabitants and all that she and Adam and their descendants had achieved, all the good and all the evil, she set her face to the mountain and began to climb.
♥ Whatever had happened down there, nothing of it was visible. Cloud lay below her on both sides. But above her the sky was blue, one single expanse if blue arching over her two worlds. The sky reached down to her and was all around her; and she seemed to flow upwards to meet it. Again she stretched her arms into the air. She threw her head back and opened her mouth and filled her lungs; and a new and strange feeling flowed through her body.
She looked around her to find the exact point at which her path, having left the valley she had come from, began its descent into the valley ahead, the highest point in her journey. And there she stood; and once again everything everywhere - past, present and perhaps also future - became a part of her. She and the world became one.
~~The Windfall: A Story.