July 11, 2004 — I’ve become obsessed with identifying things. I sit here, staring seaward, a stack of books on the flora and fauna of the West Indies beside me, and I wait for things to drift into view, where I will then bestow them with a name.
It reminds me, vaguely, of the Judge in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. There’s a traffic cop in all of us, wanting to slow things down, make nature obey the rules and document it all in a handy police blotter. In his bloody rampage through Texas, Mexico and the Southwest, the Judge stops frequently to draw and catalog little bits and pieces of nature and artifact. Why does he do it?
“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent,” he tells Toadvine. The judge, pedophile, philosopher, man of letters, naked savage, is really about dominating and subjugating all around him. “The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone will have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”
Well, maybe my impulses aren’t quite like the Judge’s. But they’re just as obsessive. Take my encounter with Lignum Vitae, the tree of life. While furiously shuffling between James Bond’s “Birds of the West Indies” and a tree with an odd avian perched in it, I started going through the process of elimination, trying to define the specific birdness of this bird. It had an odd beak, almost a hookbill but not. Could it be some sort of raptor? No. finally, I found it in the section on cuckoos. It was a smooth-billed ani.
But what kind of tree is that it’s sitting in?
Back to the books. And this time I’m stumped. The tree has what look like orange flowes, but closer inspection reveals they are seed pods. I spend a lot of time looking for orange in the book on Caribbean trees. Could it be a cordia? Finally, I ask Miss Joyce. It’s the Lignum Vitae, the tree of life which also happens to be the national flower of Jamaica. It blooms purple in June then develops the orange seed pods that I was seeing.
Now Playing: Mark of the Beast from the album Live & Dangerous – Boston 1976 by Peter Tosh