Blue Orbit

ARTWORK: Meg Warhurst

by David Woodward

Blue is old now. She still sits crossed-legged in her yurt, but she must warm-up to it. Mornings are exercises in endurance and great patience. Her daughter is of no help. Thankfully, she has a wonderful granddaughter. She helps with the garden. She is learning to nurture and catalogue the seeds for the next generation. She helps her move around the perimeter of the new town. Blue has told her of her travels, and of all the towns she has orbited throughout her lifetime. I have always been in orbit, she tells her granddaughter, Venus. This is how her stories commence. Venus will face her stubbornly tough grandma on the ground inside her yurt, eager to learn of her adventures. She never tires of them, even if they repeat or overlap. The overlapping, in fact, is the best part. She loves how one life intersects into another. Venus thinks that’s the way life is. We all overlap into one another. Like the baskets her grandma weaves when she tells her stories: one life, one person, is woven into the other. It is what makes up the fabric of the entire cosmos. As Venus orbits Blue, interweaving in and out of reality and fantasy, she is taken to the very edge of existence. The precipice is extremely steep. But she is not afraid; her grandma’s still, yet rhythmic voice, creates the trust she needs. She jumps. She drifts through the naked air before the inevitable fall. She knows there is a net, somewhere in the abyss, that will catch her. She can hear it in Blue’s words, words that go far beyond words. Venus is not the type of person that can imagine what a soul is or is even certain of its existence. But if it does exist it is the sound of Blue’s voice, and the places they take her to. Venus is ready for the next journey. Blue is humming now, or chanting, or singing. There are no more words. An image is planted inside Venus’s head. Like the seeds they plant together, it is growing. There is no stopping them. Venus is falling; Blue is rising. 

It begins as any day usually begins ― routine filled. Venus has just helped Blue move along the perimeter of a small town in British Columbia. She had taken the ferry over to one of Gulf Islands, Galiano. Blue had made the move north a while back. There was a fire down south. A church was damaged. Blame followed. It led to her. She always smiles when she mentions it. Was she to blame? she’ll ask aloud. She wasn’t not to blame. And she’d laugh her hoarse, ageing laugh that Venus always feels is filled with ambiguity and wisdom. She loves her grandma more than this world. There is no comparison to be made. Grandma Blue is a world. How could her planet not orbit her? It is written in the stars, is it not? Gravity, she thinks, would see her through. It has always led her to Blue.

On this average, ordinary day, Blue and Venus are planting their seeds early one morning. There is a cool ocean breeze that pricks their flesh like nails. Blue has trouble getting her rusty hands going as she works the hoe. But she feels alive, and she laughs at her failing body. She makes Venus laugh when she compares her body to an old-abandoned church. Should I set you on fire, Venus replies. Please, says Blue, put me out of my misery . . . finally, she says dramatically, putting her hand to her forehead like an actress from an old film. Gone with the Wind, comes to her mind. Or is it Casablanca? Perhaps she is recalling a scene from Easy Rider. “Oh, men at war.” Or is, “Oh, Minotaur?” Venus is in stitches. The cold and the pricks and the nails vanish and what is left is the ocean, breezy companionship, and easy livin’. Who said work cannot be fun? Working with the earth and Grandma Blue is paradise. Perhaps she should stay permanently with her.  

The seeds they are planting are specially suited to the conditions on this part of Galiano. Blue has learned over the years that micro habitats exist in the smallest nooks and crannies. This blue planet is so varied. Blue has been on Galiano the longest of all her travels. She knows the land, and its needs; they are interwoven with her own. Her seedbank is now enormous. She shares them with the locals, of which she is now one, and accepted. Except when the developers come a knocking. And over the years, they have been arriving more and more often. It’s not as bad as Salt Spring Island. Ugh, she cannot stand that overdeveloped island anymore. But she knows they are coming, and will keep coming. She can feel the squeeze; it resides in her bones. It hurts. And the new people that take over the new properties do not take too kindly to her. They call her a squatter. Ha! she always says, I’ve been called worse. But squatter has stuck with her over the years. If someone asks her what she’s doing there, she’ll say flat-out, squatting. When she gets the habitual blank, insipid look, she’ll add, I’m a squatter. Even on an island with ageing and new hippies, she stands out in her yurt surrounded by beets, carrots, and kale in neat concentric circles with her now famous cosmos at the outer perimeter. The ones that have been on the Island the longest love her. They love her so much that they leave her alone. Some of the younger ones come by and seem to love her. But they ask too many questions. She’s not some goddamned guru. She’s just Blue. Take me or leave me the fuck alone. Preferably the latter. Venus has been a witness to her grandma’s feistiness. God, she’s amazing. 

After the perfectly modified seeds for this area are planted, they retire to the yurt. Grandma Blue is very tired. She wants to lie down on the cool, damp ground, boughs of pine and cedar her only mattress. But Venus is excited to show her the albums she has brought. On her previous trip over, she had brought Grandma Blue a phonograph player. But I have no electricity, she said. So, Venus went to the cottage that was nearby. She asked if she could use their outdoor electrical outlet. They were an older couple, both women. They liked Blue. In fact, they told her she could stay on “their” property for as long as she wanted to. Blue smiled her equivocal smile with that devilish twinkle in her spirited cyan eyes. What’s ours is yours, they added. They brought her freshly baked “special” muffins, David’s teas, and organically made soy burgers. They invited her to dinners and told her she could use their shower anytime. When she refused the latter, they brought her soaps that they had made themselves. As Blue was wont to do, she did not put them directly on her body but placed them between her clothes which lay on the ground. Venus loved her “natural” scent: pine and cedar, when she was clothed; the earth, when she helped dress Grandma when her hands were too arthritic to do it herself. Blue was Venus’s world. Their natural gravities always pulled them through, back to each other.

Venus needed to get a lot of extension cords to make it all the way from the outside electrical outlet to Blue’s yurt, which lay in the back of the cottage in the semi-cleared forest. How did she find seeds that would be able to grow in those conditions? the two women, Alisha and Abigail, would say to one another. How do cosmos grow without being in the full sun? They were in awe of Blue. Venus thought the older ladies were alright. 

On this particular, nondescript day, the phonograph all juiced up with Alisha and Abigail’s electricity, Venus takes out her newly acquired albums, eager to play them for Grandma. Blue is very tired and needs to lie down on the cool earth. She had gotten all sweaty from all that hoeing around. Venus says okay, Grandma, and continues to showcase the new discoveries that she has purchased from Morley’s Fine Recordings on East Hastings on the mainland. The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, and Patti Smith’s Horses find their way over Blue’s head as she glares up from her supine position. She smiles at her granddaughter’s eagerness as the latter waves the fine recordings proudly above Grandma Blue’s beautiful old face, her hair now slightly blue with age. Venus loves her blue hair so much that she has dyed her own dark hair blue. Lapis lazuli. It is the most peaceful, harmonic, and open-minded colour ― just like Grandma Blue. 

Lately, Blue has been listening to some other albums, ones that Venus had brought the last time she came with the phonograph. Not only older artists like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, but Laura Marling, the Avett Brothers, and Mumford & Sons. She was instructed not to go beyond the second album of the latter (though even the second one is a pale comparison to their first). Blue told her granddaughter that there are a lot of one-hit wonders out there. At least they did one splendid album, and it is, indeed, splendid. Blue really loves Laura Marling. She reminds her of a young Bob Dylan. I bet she has dirty fingernails too, just like young Bob and I. Wow! Can that girl write a song. What poetry! She could listen to Alas I Cannot Swim and only that album, until the day she dies. It won’t be long, she always says with that devilish glint in her cool, cyan eyes. Venus detects no fear in this unthinkable reality. She pushes the godawful thought aside. 

So, what do you want to hear first? Patti Smith? Venus asks earnestly, as she stands above Blue, Blue’s weary eyes trying so hard to stay open. She’s so cool. She reminds me of you, Grandma. She’s real, you know. She’s honest, like you. She shows you the darkness, then bam, there’s the light. They go together, don’t they Grandma? Deep in the abyss, Venus is crying a river. Streams of salty discharge fall onto Blue’s face. She licks her lips and tastes the sweetness of pure emotion. It comes with no regrets. She tries to say something, but her voice does not have the strength to reach up that high to that beautiful, young, afro blue head with the matching cyan eyes, just like hers. Venus sees her struggling to speak. She lowers herself and kneels at her side. Outside, it is very still, and the sun is beating down hard on the old yurt’s canvas with so many patches that they have both lost count. The patchwork home is heating up. Sweat drips down the sides of Blue’s face. The smell of the ocean surrounds them, tenderly. Two planets are circling one another. No one is stronger, they only attract the other. Venus leans down to Blue and tastes the intermingling of their beings. Blue pulls her in closer so that her lips meet her granddaughter’s ear. 

I want . . . I want . . I need . . . I need . . . 

Shine.