CABBAGE, A WAY

I’m drifting along the library stacks, nothing special on my mind. Just looking at book spines. Wondering what might catch my eye. Writing guides? I’ve given up on learning to write. Poetry? Rarely does it make sense. Shakespeare? Ha! He made up too many non-words to fit his use of iambic pentameter, whatever that is. Willy boy is simply incomprehensible. Twain? Naw, too deep for me. What’s this? Tapply? I haven’t seen that name in three decades! “Trout Eyes” by William Tapply. I snatch the book off the shelf and head for checkout.

Tapply turns out to be the son of a writer I seldom bothered to read back in the days of beating waters with fishing lines or shredding the air with lead shot and instant thunder. I’m curious as to why I picked out this book. It’s been at least ten years since I’ve bothered to buy a fishing license and then I skipped the trout stamp, so it wasn’t the title that intrigued me. Well, I guess I’ll open the book and see what the universe is trying to tell me. Not that I’m feeling witty enough to catch a clue, but something obvious must be within the covers.

I let go a muffled groan as I find the first chapter, “Virtual Angling”? Gods save me from the “virtual” world! And they do, save me that is. Tapply isn’t writing about video fishing games, or computer anythings. He’s going on about-

Damn. I suddenly have a clue to something that’s been bugging me for years. The answer to how we deal with the drug problem in this burg is right before me, so simple, so complete, so… So sadly beyond my ability to communicate to anyone else that I set about forgetting it so it will leave me alone. Tapply’s book goes back to the library, unread.

When I struggled to learn the craft of writing (a craft I eventually realized is beyond my limited ability), I read somewhere that a thought not written down never existed. So why do some thoughts linger beyond those first moments after birth? Why do they keep haunting, niggling, returning unbidden when more pleasant and useful thoughts, once banished, fail to return?

The drug problem keeps circling me. I hear the pols on the radio offering the same non-solutions of “we’re studying the problem” “we’re funding programs” “we’re suggesting this or that” anything but what will actually work. I shrug and do my best to forget their babble. Then I run into people who’ve been through the hell of opiate addiction, or medicinal dependency, and survived, or are struggling to survive without the blessed drug.

“Why did you stop writing about the drug problem?” They demand of me.

My answers do not appease them and they press upon me the obligation to get in the battle, to offer a solution if I’ve found one, to point the way to help, to hope.

No. I do not have the obligation, nor do I accept it.

How many teachers, masters, rabbis, philosophers have tramped the dust of human history attempting to bring enlightenment to us? How many times have the talking apes ridiculed, harassed, even murdered their messiahs for daring step out of the crushing mass and offer an idea the collective bleated for, but didn’t actually want?

Too many people are wed to the current situation. They depend on it for their livelihoods. I’ll pick some other battle less likely to bring harm upon me and mine.

Like growing the perfect cabbage. Indeed, learning to grow a cabbage at all seems more useful and productive than beating my head ag’in the mass of cud chewing humanity. Why, an ape could spend a lifetime, or several, tending a cabbage row, comparing varieties, crossing them, blending desired features from dozens of parents into one offspring and trialing the resulting seeds, stabilizing a new variety.

While learning to grow the perfect cabbage I’d have to learn what to do with it once I have it. A high priority would be perfecting, to my needs, Ivan’s brine pickled whole heads of cabbage recipe (as taught to me by his gracious daughter.) So tasty are the mundane cabbages we’ve fermented in brine that the mere thought of a flavorful cabbage done up in the manner of that East-European family’s way sets me to drooling! (Brining whole cabbages is also much quicker than shredding them for sauerkraut! Plus, the whole leaves can be used for rolling, or chopped for stews and stir-fries, or shredded if needs be.)

Another usage goal would be perfecting a corned beef and cabbage dish. Such a dish would require the perfect piece of corned beef, which would, in a perfect world, require I grow a perfect cow and learn the perfect recipe for turning the perfect cut of beef into… Well this could go on forever.

While I’m so close to beef though, growing the cabbages would require feeding the cabbage bed compost. Compost, made with various animal and green manures as well as most anything that would rot. Naturally, I’d want to have the animals I’d need for the various recipes as close to perfect as possible. I’m not sure that cows eat cabbages, but pigs and chickens love them, so all my experiments that didn’t end up going down my gullet would be enjoyed by the animals, which would eventually find their way through my pie hole. (So, in Nature’s own circular way, I’d still eat the cabbages that didn’t suit my arbitrary, idiot’s standard.)

When I step back and look, actually look at all the interwoven threads necessary to building of a perfect cabbage, (at least as I perceive such a thing) I realize I’d not have time for lesser pursuits, such as drinking myself into oblivion, snorting powders up my nose or sticking needles in my arms. Hell. I almost get angry at all the years and dollars I wasted getting to this point: this realization that growing a freakin’ cabbage is the point of my existence! If I choose to make it so.

(sigh)

The ENJ editor (who never saw this column) nudges, or pushes, (depending on the density of a particular contributor) for each column to end on some positive and/or helpful note. To that end, I offer some small hope to those ready to grasp at it- Dr. Christine of this place.

If her help isn’t what’s needed I might be persuaded to offer some help of my own. A large, electronic dog collar hooked to a heavy chain attached to a tar-paper hovel near the cabbage bed. A garden to weed, fresh produce for sup and commiseration as the pain-filled withdrawal commences. Oh, and the compost pile, should the treatment fail.

I strongly suggest calling Doc Christine first. She’s not only easier to gaze upon; she actually cares what happens to other people. Not that I don’t care, I just have different priorities. Like feeding the soil that feeds the cabbages.