When I was nine I kept the Choose Your Own Adventure books in a stack under my bed, and I read them with one finger saving every choice, so that if a page ended badly I could go back and choose again. I never once read one straight through. I didn't believe in straight through.
I think about that now, kneeling in other people's gardens. A garden is the same kind of book. You choose a place for the passionflower; it chooses something else. You move the drip line; the squash goes somewhere you never sent it. The Delgados' Strawbactus didn't fruit for two years and then fruited so hard one summer the pad split under the weight. I didn't choose that. I only kept a finger on the page.
The cube is in a mason jar on my kitchen table.
It wouldn't stay on the counter. It drifted, very slowly, toward the window, as if it wanted the dark outside more than the light inside. So I put it in a jar and screwed the lid on and set the jar where I can see it from the bed. In the jar it hangs exactly in the middle, not touching the glass. At night the jar is cold. In the morning, when the sun comes in, the jar is warm, which is backward.
I have not told anyone. I have started to tell three people and stopped each time. I think it's because once I tell someone, there will be a record, and the cube has no record, and I'm not sure it's mine to give it one.
Last night I dreamed about the books. In the dream I was nine and kneeling in the Okafor garden, and every fern had a page number on it, and I could choose any one. I chose wrong over and over and kept going back, and every time I went back, the garden had grown a little from the place where I'd cut it.
Some stories grow back the way plants do: from wherever you cut them.
I woke at four, and the jar was warm, though the sun wasn't up. I lay there a long time looking at it, trying to work out which page I was on.
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Ambrosia trifida | Giant ragweed. By late summer it is taller than you, and the whole city sneezes in its direction. The Botanical Gardens keep a patch by the gate, with a label. |
| Boggy Creek | The quiet creek in East Austin, the one the other creeks get mentioned instead of. Eli lives near it, with a lighthouse lens in his front room, eight feet of brass and prism catching the morning. |
| Choose Your Own Adventure | A book you read with one finger saving the last choice, so that if a page ends badly you can go back. It always ends badly once. |
| Detective Langley | A detective who once belonged to the city’s official order and now works under the Air Canopy, distrusting clean answers. Twenty-one hours without sleep, he still takes the tram. When it gets bad he pictures a jazz bar on a quiet Tuesday, a cat asleep in his lap, and then he runs. |
| Floor 1 | The first floor of Central. Two grand doors face you: one carved with rivers and creeks, one with book spines, bookmarks and paper leaves. Past them, the plants. Pick one. |
| Fort Branch | A small waterway in East Austin, less famous than Shoal or Waller. It has been mended more than once, and now wildlife and neighbors both use it. |
| Future Austin | Austin, a few decades on: the same creek, the same bridge at dusk, a few more vines than the zoning allows. Everything here happens to people who are trying, and are not always right. |
| Glyphseed | A mark that grows in soil or on a screen and comes up as a decision. The hummingbird that came out of the creek wore one on its back, shaped like a love letter on fire. |
| Guano Bridge Books | A Little Free Library stocked and kept by staff of the Austin American-Statesman and the Texas Book Festival. The shelving needs some repairs, and the stewards say so plainly. |
| Immigration | Diego came to Austin with one bag and three languages and picked up two more in the line for water. In the Camp the children chalk a hopscotch grid where the trucks used to idle. |
| Organic Media and Fiction | Stories and songs made to be copied by hand, repaired, and let go. Each one is tied to a planter, a wall or a bench somewhere in the city. |
| Planterns | A paper lantern turned into a planter, with an ID tied to a story, a song or a walk. No two are alike. Number 037, the first one, gives a single note, an E, and only when someone sings it. |
| ReLeaf | The cooperative that keeps the gardens, the stories and the van. Nora Sanchez started it, and whoever tends it owns a share. The name is a leaf turned over. |
| Shoal Creek | At the Seaholm Intake the creek runs both ways for a breath, a light on the rail comes on when the current flips, and people leave rested and clear, as if a long afternoon had just ended. Come without hurry. A tin plaque on a boulder downstream says LISTEN HERE, and the metal under it is polished by hands. |