The Juniper Tree

INTRODUCTION

“We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everyone: in the landscape, in the skies, in the faces of others, and, of course, in the images and words that our species creates. We read our own lives and those of others, we read the societies we live in and those that lie beyond our borders, we read pictures and buildings, we read that which lies between the covers of a book.”

           - Alberto Manguel[1]

Subtraction, the removal of                 . Something displaced, lost, forgotten, erased or under erasure, something lost or perhaps just un-utterable - C. Resuir[2]

“The important thing is the ineffable - the white space between the words” - Max Frisch[3]

THIS TEXT is not written          in the traditional sense, instead, as you will see, it is more of a construction, || ARCHITECTURE || and this “assemblage of bits and pieces […] forces an abandonment of the idea of [the] reader as a passive receptor. The reader must engage, work on, rewrite this text. The reader must be a writer.”[4]

Along this path you will find various textual exercises and experiments from the physical and visual, to the grammatical and etymological, TEXT-periments if you will. This journey of the reader into the world of constructed writing is an unfamiliar adventure.

You are being handed a text, a space to explore, a story-world where you will find a struggle between antagonistic “realities, inducing an ontological flicker, the fiction’s reality and the [pages white space] coming into focus by turns, first one, then the other. And this flicker seems to induce instability.”[5] These altered structures and the oscillation between them causes perspectival shifts, alter-experiences and new perceptions of what you, the reader, are reading, creating an active engagement with the text, so that you, “the reader [are] no longer a consumer but a producer of the text,”[6] a reader-writer if you will.

THIS TEXT is concerned with how the act of writing and that of designing / construction architecture / space are similar. It is the idea that architecture / space can be written and conversely that writing, as a habitable space, can be spatial and constructed.

It is “[…]in the constructive operation upon many possible relationships at many levels of scale (letter, word, sentence, paragraph, plot), the literary work not only begins to bear a resemblance to architecture […], but also becomes a model of what architecture might be,”[7] i.e. architecture as WOR[L]D.

THIS TEXT you are about to read, though focusing on subtraction, the unseen, the hidden, explores a variety of modifications - constructive operations - to the written structure. These operations are all within the understanding of “writing literature" but here are used to explore space and the impact of space upon narrative. There are clues in that which is hidden, the spaces left, the letters left unused. The white space between black marks tells as much story as the marks themselves.

THIS TEXT is the story of the Juniper Tree, originally written by Philipp Otto Runge and donated to the Brothers Grimm. This story however is told though the constructive operations of the unseen (glossary of terms below). The story is in fragments, the construction itself acting as the gaps between the original narrative that the two might be read together

The Juniper Tree

This             [8] is how it happened.

My mother she killed me

My father he ate me

My sister buried my bones

She bound them all in a silken cloth

And laid them under the juniper tree

Tee-wit tee-wit, what a beautiful bird am I

What a beautiful bird am I.[9]

My mother she chopped me

My father he guzzled me

My sister dug my grave

She buried me under the Juniper Tree

I am a bird now, I am a bird now [10]

What a beautiful bird am I

House

Once in these parts, not so long ago neither, there was a house. It had pale walls and dark rimmed windows and a red door.  A slate path lined with herbs and canes of sweet peas wove the front garden - Dong Quai, stinging nettles, false unicorn root, red raspberry leaf, motherwort, mugwort, parsley, chaste tree, white penies, yarrow, borage, dandelions, red clover, burdock, echinacea, evening primrose, milk thistle, horny got weed, damania, black haw, lemon balm, hibiscus, nettles, yellow dock, chamomile.[11]

It is a place where a pious and hardworking man lives and a woman works. They are both sad and so spend a lot of time inside the house, they make sure it is always clean. There is a tree next to house, who’s branches tickle the window and protect it.[12]

The house had no child

Edda [13]

I remembered him before he came out of me. My body knew I would die and so gave me a moments grace to know my son.

                  [14]It was as if I had passed him by one day and there was a second’s recognition between us, a recognition that felt all of my atoms jump with an unearthly desire to hold him, just for a moment, and he looked so     so                     [15] so whole. It was as though I had entered a book and emerged from it covered in inky fragments of his story and in it, I had been a page and so had he, and as the book closed, we were together. Through the pages I saw it all, every little black mark, each depredation, and as I died, I wept.

We had tried for so long to make him happen, tender lovers for years till near desperation made us bash our bodies against one another till the only fruit was bruised flesh. I blamed the Island. It permeated every part of our lives. Poveglia. The island where the dead grow out of the ground into rows of juniper trees, and women weep for the lives of unborn children.

My husband and I were the caretakers of the island. For centuries it had been a place for the dead and the insane – where plague victims were dumped and burned across the fields till the soil was fecund with their ashes. After the sick had departed, the Council planted rows of juniper trees across the island as a memorial to the dead, and in commemorating them, forgot them. But the families didn’t forget them. They still visited, and over time this isle of death became known as a giver of life. Women whose families had been lost came and wept amongst the trees for the dead to give them a child.

And as I stood in the garden I thought, and I took him, my husband, out to the rows of trees and in the morning light we lay there and he took me. We were tender once more. The junipers cones crushed under my bony limbs scratching and perfuming my skin.

Tree

Threeea[17]   ʌp,   twoo daooown                  nice   box it  sits neeeare   me                     white
washed walls   and a pink dör[18]                          not looked   after now
                                            sadness   when she   diiiyed
                   just   one girl   child shee[19]   has,   shee löks   at me with   greeene in the   
façe

Marlena

Can I sleep in your bed big brother              I’m scared of the bugs that come at night and the
juniper tree scratches at my window?

Ava [20]

“Mother, where are you going with

that         [21]?”, said the boy.

Ava focused again on the woodchopper           
in her hands and decided it needed to be just a
little sharper, and went back to the stone to
give it more of an edge. Something had to feel
its ticklish edge soon, be it her tree trunk or her son.
 

***
 

This is what the women woman did
 

***
 

I,             I,            sat there and watched my,            her,       son bleed out of the neck hole.

Would you like an apple? I,           I,             said. Would you?               They are in the box, help yourself, you                             [22]I,           I,             said the best are at the back, the perfect ones, the pristine ones the ones half green half red lean in and find the best. Have a look a good look a good long look I,          I,             said.

And as I, I said that, I, I said STOP DON’T    I,      I,             am lying to you . I,             I,             am moving over as you sit there my boy with your pale

knees on the floor, I SHE               I am coming over. She’s coming over to my son.[23]

I,             I,             slam the box lid shut and splerrrkkrackk goes my, her, my sons neck.

Boy

The berries are dark blue, purplish blue, silvery dusted and hard with creases and folds in them.

My skin was white like the snow and my lips were red as blood.

Then they changed and my skin was slivery dusted and my lips dark purplish blue and hard.

Then they changed.

Marlena

Brother, why won’t you share your apple with me, please share or I shall hit you, mother has told me to hit your head, please share you apple with me please share you’re apple with me please share or I shall, I shall hit you, please share your apple with me, mother has told me to hit your head if you don’t, please share your apple with me, please share or I shall hit you in the head[24], please please please please please please please please please please pl’ase pl’’se pl’’s’ p’’’s’ p’’’’’[25]

Ava

Cho chop chop chop chop chop chop, I made sausage’, blood sausage’ and stew’, I,          I, chop and I,          I,          boil and grind. All the bone’ are gone, she took the bone’

He saw the empty chair, he saw it, but he didn’t notice the flavour of his own son in the sausage’ and stew’ [26]I feed him.

Marlena

Come and sleep in my bed big brother

                                    come and s’eep[27] in this bed I have made for you. I have dug it with my hands down past roots and bugs. I pyjama-ed[28] you in silk. I did, I did, I did, I won’t leave

              [29]until you don’t need me anymore.

I daren’t tell father                   he loved you                   he wouldn’t stop[30].

I can’t stand the waiting for you. I feel like waiting for the door to open with yet more kindness on the other side is too much. I don’t want more kindness.

“Father I know where brother is, where he has gone!”[31]

Questions

Who is dead?

Who killed them?

Is their death real?

Who is that on the other side of you?

Tree

Bones are in my toes; my toes wrap them and absorb my food bits. He isn’t here, he isn’t here anymore, he flew, he flew, he flew off.

Bird

I awake in pile’ ‘f leave’ ‘f feather’ all haze in white mist with smell ‘f fire | arms push up aside, leave’ leave while feather’ stick in me pin in me | I tear, I tear, I see sister she has tear’ cross cheek’ and chin          peepers are red          I have feather’ and wing tip’ and claw’ I have singing | tale needs telling take take take I take flight, take take take, take take take, tale needs telling. See village and sing, heart hurt, sing, killed, eaters, dug in earth.

My mother she killed me

My father he ate me

My sister buried my bones

She bound them all in a silken cloth

And laid them under the juniper tree

Tee-wit tee-wit, what a beautiful bird am I

What a beautiful bird am I.[33]

Villagers can’t here

Villagers hear singing

What child? The boy the boy THE BOY

The bird the bird the bird

I sang I sang and sang and sang at them, the villager’ and villager’ gave me gifts,[34] they gave me gifts, an aurum chain, a pair of red slipper', a weight that grinds grain I carry cross my neck.

My mother she killed me

My father he ate me

My sister buried my bones

She bound them all in a silken cloth

And laid them under the juniper tree

Tee-wit tee-wit, what a beautiful bird am I

What a beautiful bird am I.

Why gift me. Use       gifts       I       use       presently and punishment

Father I am here I am   hear, I will sing at father

He hears just verse

[It frustrates he can’t hear my pain, I will excuse him his nescience he was misled]

The chain is fathers presently

Father smiles

Girl

Father I am sad

           Why? This bird brings gifts!

The bird it sings and makes me sad but I want to see what makes such familiar noise

           Then go see

Come and stay with me bird, stay with me, you can sleep in my bed

           What have you there?

Shoes, look father look mother, red shoes, a gift from the bird

I was so sad when I went out and now I feel happy, I am forgiven.

I can’t tell father, it would break his heart

Ava

I wish it didn’t sing, it stings inside while listening. I                  ,I                  snipped his spine I did. Its singing stings! If I get up and walk and see the bird I might                  I can insist I’m gifted indescribable gifts, I will claim it mine. I will wait till it gifts I,             I,             will inherit it,[35]

Tree

A millstone, biiiiiiiiiird had millstone round abaoooooout the neck and biiiiiiiird dropped it  

                                                                          O

                                                                          O

                                                                          On shee

splerrrkkrackk

Blood pours into roots, sooooooaks in

Bird flies to my braaaaanches, toes wiggle and booooooones move and jiggle to the surface, the boy is heeeeeere.

Boy huuumms

My mother she chopped me

My father he guzzled me

My sister dug my grave

She buried me under the Juniper Tree

I am a bird now, I am a bird now

What a beautiful bird am I

Father, Marlena come and see[36]

Then they went into the house, sat down at the table, and ate                              [37].