Freed Spirit: a tiny big story

An abandoned paragraph

Looking for stories, I came across a tiny standalone paragraph in my unpublished drafts. I remember that I wrote this in response to a “fictional stimulus” exercise during my MA, so it wasn’t the result of a visitation by any Muse, just a reply to a prompt (probably an image).

Yet, today, it feels fresh and full of inspiration. It speaks to my longing to escape the intense confinement of Covid restrictions (which have been especially strict in Ireland), and to find the freedom to move and regenerate. Here is my original text:

The garden breathes; absorbs me. The smallness of walls evaporates as I run free and fly upwards through the tree. I clamber, but fly, with each seeking-for-handhold sure and sprung, full of the energy of homecoming. I am a sprite, like Ariel released to his natural element, with no service required for the next few green hours.

Tia Azulay, 2009

A neglected garden

We are lucky to live on an old golf course now rented out as a farm, so we are surrounded by greenery.

However, when walking in the fields, we see that the magnificent original trees and plants are not respected, no longer tended.

Everywhere, bare and broken branches challenge the rich viridity, testifying to years of stormy winds from the nearby sea, while huge brambles choke and obscure the bases of once-elegant trees, bushes and hedges.

Bits of dry timber and metal, and farming detritus such as plastic feed bags and buckets, limp fence tape and jagged posts, lie abandoned in every field, awaiting the return of the rotating herds.

It is definitely a hard-working farm and no longer a garden. It has its moments, particularly when seen through early morning mists, but its glory is past. 

Seeking a cared-for aesthetic

So, with the partial lifting of restrictions for summer, and now that my husband and I are both vaccinated, we have been venturing out in search of a different aesthetic. Recently, we’ve spent a few Saturdays in some exquisite Irish gardens, such as the Malahide Castle park, with its Fairy Trail and Walled Garden.

Skilful curation and ongoing care have produced and preserved an incredible variety of colours, textures, heights and thicknesses. And all this beauty is accessible via paths designed to create a walker’s wonderland in a space large enough to stay lost in for hours.

Fresh inspiration, new form

Reading my old paragraph above called to mind my recent escape into botanical splendour, but I realised immediately that I felt it as a poem. Why now? I carefully chose the original words and phrasing. However, years have passed and I’ve seen many different gardens since I wrote that paragraph. Also, Covid-19.

Indulging my metaphor a little, I imagine my word-gardening self as an artist-curator who, on returning to tend the same garden in a different season, uses a new form to let it breathe more and intensify the impact of individual word-plants.

Freed Spirit

The garden breathes; absorbs me.

The smallness of walls
evaporates
as I break free,

clamber, then

fly
upwards through the tree,
with each seeking-for-handhold sure and sprung,
full of the energy of homecoming.

I am a sprite,
like Ariel released to his natural element,
with no service required for the next few green hours.

Tia Azulay, 2021

Which works best?

Is it just a question of the season in which one is walking through the garden? Or does one or the other form actually work best to convey the sense of escape and release as Ariel climbs through the tree to freedom?

Perhaps in another ten years, I’ll be able to tell. Perhaps even then, what works best for me won’t be as effective for another reader. I’ll be glad to have comments that give me a clue!

Tia Azulay 13Feb09-17Aug21 Copyright © 2009; 2021