A Banquet of Lilacs: An Essay Enacted

Abstract

A Banquet of Lilacs: An Essay Enacted Ben Miller (bio) char acters: The following voices alternate, occasionally speaking in unison: bungalow scholar, the author, aka Syringa 'Iowa' first research partner, Christine Legros, aka Syringa 'Rome' second research partner, Ian Van Wye, aka Syringa 'Asheville' third research partner, Sarah Blatt-Herold, aka Syringa 'Kentucky' fourth research partner, Theodore Delwiche, aka Syringa 'Cambridge' setting: Mid-May. The morning the lilacs pop open. Directly to the left of this page, just out of view, stretches an unruly row of shrubs, new blooms dangling like a growth of spring-suspended microphones. Directly to the right of the page, also just out of view, stands a bungalow. The house is yellow, old but not decrepit, to the contrary: tidy, inviting. Sunlight appears to be snacking on white gutters and cake-like corners of siding. There is no car in the driveway. The garage door is closed. Roof shingles form a fetching checkerboard. A tossed penny shopper in a humid plastic bag rests on the stoop. Black clefs affix the mailbox to the wall next to the storm door's aluminum panels. A whimsical font on the box lid spells out: turnbull institute for advanced lilac research. I repair to this address to dwell on the solitary, societal, turbulent, peaceful, colorful, sweet, and sad personality of the lilac. I bring little more than what I wear and what I wonder: previous research waits there to greet me—in vases and in cartons, on shelves and in the air. On the wall hangs a framed photograph of a benefactor, Priscilla Turnbull, whose will dictated that her property—framed by prodigious shrubs—be maintained as an institution dedicated solely to serious lilac study, under the aegis of the local library system. An ample endowment funds, in perpetuity, residencies for scholars and short-term opportunities for students interested in "researching poems, visual art, interviews, diaries, news stories, photos, and any other material pertaining to the mysterious and inebriating charisma of a hyper-literary shrub." [End Page 128] The side street stretches between busy thoroughfares. Pedestrians appear—dog walkers, daycare field trips, joggers, a quarreling couple—the stream steady. None can pass the bungalow when the lilacs blossom. All are drawn into the yard by the lavish natural perfume. Inflorescent shrubs are leaned into and sniffed. High blooms are pulled close to the nose like the tips of opium pipes. One long hit. Eight short puffs. Inhale, close eyes, inhale. Some imbibers smile. Some go blank and wander away. Some tear up, then can't move. They all think and feel things the microphones of the blooms amplify. Scent-chasers in vehicles pull up for a chance. The fragrance has the scope of generations. It is a rushing stillness. From down the block the magnificent row of shrubs resembles a cloud settled on earth; waves of lavender weather about to break and engulf the property. Two street-facing bungalow windows are wide open and half-covered by shades swaying in the breeze. The windows on both sides of the house are also open and partially covered by shades as if to prevent a toxic concentration of lilac fumes from collecting in its small rooms. The interior can be glimpsed through the bottoms of open windows. Furnishings, connected by shadows, form the continuous shape of a reef currents of years have deposited. During this latest residency, I have nurtured branches of lilac inquiry by many methods, including saying "lilacs" to whomever I encounter when leaving the Institute, and its depth, for "the other world." I have found that almost every person, when asked, has a lilac item to share. At the Hy-Vee supermarket, an off-duty postal employee, still in uniform grays, bellows that she makes "candlesticks!" out of lilac wood that is "purple striped!" and "cuts like juniper!" I find that almost all lilac stories end too soon, and what then? Some next-said thing that continues nothing much. Language that briefly moored the diffuse complexity of Being smoothly transforms into something simply heavy and simply lost. I envision a squadron of butterflies floating above experience's endless roil and negation—fluttering like brushstrokes applied to canvas, lifting a...