cooking! Still, I had occasional unworthy stabs of curiosity about Martha, of resentment and, I must admit, longing. Friendship, that freak of nature, kept limping into view.
What on earth had I done to her, anyway? I went through the possibilities again. And again. Boyfriend interference? No. We didn't even have boyfriends when I knew her. Insufficient appreciation? Hardly. An excess of appreciation, then? Martha had never minded appreciation, and she had been equally devoted to me. General obnoxiousness? An unintended insult? Did I borrow money from her and never pay her back? Nothing I came up with made any sense.
When Darwin and the crew of the
Beagle
first landed in the Galapagos, they were astonished to discover that the birds were so tame they could kill them by hitting them with a stick. I longed to whack my guilty confusion in the head with a stick and watch it fall with a satisfying thump to the ground. We saw albatrosses one day, huge white waddling birds, which may have been what gave me this particular fanciful notion.
"Martha is my albatross," I said to Gloria. Then I realized she could have no idea what I was talking about. And that I had, at that moment, no intention of telling her.
She gave me a curious look. "Maybe you're hers."
"The waved albatross!" I said quickly. "I can't believe they stay in flight for a year at a time."
"Two years," said the science teacher, instantly distracted from any thought of Martha. "They come to land every two years to mate with the same female. A quaint species."
I was confused about Martha, but I noticed that confusion in the Galapagos took on an almost global quality, a grandeur extending well beyond Martha to the creation of the universe itself. This intensity conferred on poor old puzzled uncertainty a dignity, and that dignity was in turn reflected back onto Martha. And so, as I mulled over the problem of species, I recognized that there existed between the origins of life and Martha Barlow an important link: the confusion experienced by Jane Barlow Schwartz. This link was extremely suggestive. It seemed to promise some related solution. If A = (?) and B = (?), then all one has to prove is (?). It was obvious. The mechanism that explained the transmutation of species would explain Martha's transmutation, the transmutation of friendship.
"What is a species?" I said to Gloria.
"Oh,
you know,
" Gloria answered.
But I didn't know. The world is an oozing, crawling, swimming, swinging, stampeding, strolling kind of place, reveling in the swarming diversity of its creatures. First we were one, now we are many. Now we are us, and they are spores and pigeons and caribou. How did we come to part ways?
I realize I have a tendency toward analogy. Perhaps you think that unscientific. Again, I point to Charles Darwin, a serious scientist, a genius, a thinker who changed the world forever. He, too, had a tendency toward analogy. In the conclusion to
The Voyage of the Beagle,
Darwin wrote that because "a number of isolated facts soon become uninteresting, the habit of comparison leads to generalization. On the other hand, as the traveler stays but a short space of time in each place, his descriptions must generally consist of mere sketches, instead of detailed observation. Hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses." Or, in his case, accurate and revolutionary hypotheses.
As I stared down into the water, I understood with startling clarity the connection between my revived interest in species diversity and my friendship with Martha. First Martha and I were one, now we were two. We had been twins, then we became strangers, now we were something or other, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Three days had passed, three exhilarating, rather odd days of endemic species and strenuous physical activity during which, when I had time to think about her at all, I had gone from sullen,
What on earth had I done to her, anyway? I went through the possibilities again. And again. Boyfriend interference? No. We didn't even have boyfriends when I knew her. Insufficient appreciation? Hardly. An excess of appreciation, then? Martha had never minded appreciation, and she had been equally devoted to me. General obnoxiousness? An unintended insult? Did I borrow money from her and never pay her back? Nothing I came up with made any sense.
When Darwin and the crew of the
Beagle
first landed in the Galapagos, they were astonished to discover that the birds were so tame they could kill them by hitting them with a stick. I longed to whack my guilty confusion in the head with a stick and watch it fall with a satisfying thump to the ground. We saw albatrosses one day, huge white waddling birds, which may have been what gave me this particular fanciful notion.
"Martha is my albatross," I said to Gloria. Then I realized she could have no idea what I was talking about. And that I had, at that moment, no intention of telling her.
She gave me a curious look. "Maybe you're hers."
"The waved albatross!" I said quickly. "I can't believe they stay in flight for a year at a time."
"Two years," said the science teacher, instantly distracted from any thought of Martha. "They come to land every two years to mate with the same female. A quaint species."
I was confused about Martha, but I noticed that confusion in the Galapagos took on an almost global quality, a grandeur extending well beyond Martha to the creation of the universe itself. This intensity conferred on poor old puzzled uncertainty a dignity, and that dignity was in turn reflected back onto Martha. And so, as I mulled over the problem of species, I recognized that there existed between the origins of life and Martha Barlow an important link: the confusion experienced by Jane Barlow Schwartz. This link was extremely suggestive. It seemed to promise some related solution. If A = (?) and B = (?), then all one has to prove is (?). It was obvious. The mechanism that explained the transmutation of species would explain Martha's transmutation, the transmutation of friendship.
"What is a species?" I said to Gloria.
"Oh,
you know,
" Gloria answered.
But I didn't know. The world is an oozing, crawling, swimming, swinging, stampeding, strolling kind of place, reveling in the swarming diversity of its creatures. First we were one, now we are many. Now we are us, and they are spores and pigeons and caribou. How did we come to part ways?
I realize I have a tendency toward analogy. Perhaps you think that unscientific. Again, I point to Charles Darwin, a serious scientist, a genius, a thinker who changed the world forever. He, too, had a tendency toward analogy. In the conclusion to
The Voyage of the Beagle,
Darwin wrote that because "a number of isolated facts soon become uninteresting, the habit of comparison leads to generalization. On the other hand, as the traveler stays but a short space of time in each place, his descriptions must generally consist of mere sketches, instead of detailed observation. Hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses." Or, in his case, accurate and revolutionary hypotheses.
As I stared down into the water, I understood with startling clarity the connection between my revived interest in species diversity and my friendship with Martha. First Martha and I were one, now we were two. We had been twins, then we became strangers, now we were something or other, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Three days had passed, three exhilarating, rather odd days of endemic species and strenuous physical activity during which, when I had time to think about her at all, I had gone from sullen,
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