“You don’t just draw as a hobby”, I comment. A smile — an invitation for me to continue talking. “I was just thinking about the geometry of this place and the lines that are forming here. Light and shadow and this façade.”

  “You have a keen eye”, she responds. “Do you also enjoy drawing?”

  “Yes, I work in design. I work at an advertising agency.” Sudden shame. ‘Sure you wanna sell your talent to the devil?’  Anne’s voice.

 

But the lady is still smiling. No sign of Anne’s frostiness.  

  “I always wanted a job that would include drawing. This is why I went into architecture.”

  “I understand what you mean. I felt the same way. Do you come here often to draw?”

  “Yes, I enjoy the vistas here. I love the clear lines. It’s such a relaxing counterweight to the entangled chaos of the city.”

…And to my inner chaos. That’s pushing up against my throat. But all of this doesn’t help. No, it has the opposite effect. All of this meticulously constructed clarity — nothing but a proof that something has naturally grown inside of me which does not want to feel scissors any longer.   

  “I wonder what gardeners nowadays still enjoy about this. We all know, what the rulers wanted who started this: to be stronger than nature. To control everything. But today?”

The architect looks around, thoughtfully. Thank you for taking my outburst seriously.

  “I think the job the gardeners enjoy is making even what isn’t. Making things look more noble, more beautiful. The artist makes his object more noble and helps it to reach perfection. If you take such a hedge for example. Without a gardener it would be a shapeless glob. Art gives it its perfect shape. The perfect shape is the gardener’s idea of the shape ‘hedge’ ”

  “But that takes all the individuality away from it. Can it be beautiful without having anything individual about it?” 

A slow nod. 

  “Well, yes. Because you replace the individual with the ideal.”

  “That’s funny, I was just remembering our art classes at school, when we were discussing that beauty always has to have individuality…”

  “Well, we are of course also only talking about hedges, not about, for example, people.”

And a person per se is more beautiful than a hedge? A person can be a shapeless glob. And what’s wrong with shapeless globs? 

  “Okay, people — our feelings are geared towards individuals as well, aren’t they? Don’t we fall in love with individuals, not with ideals?”

She disagrees.

  “But who do we admire most? People who know what they want. Because they follow an ideal.”

True. That makes sense. But. 

But that’s different. It makes a difference if someone freely decides to follow their own ideal. Then, yes, I guess that’s true: Anne always tried to live by her ideals. And she was beautiful. Because of a beaming light, that shone from the happiness within herself. No matter what she was wearing or if she wore makeup or not, her beauty was her dignity and integrity showing on the outside. Oh, she never thought that she was perfect, nor that she could ever reach her ideals. She never was that arrogant. But she was trying to live by her ideals and that gave her integrity and dignity.

But if a hedge is cut into a shape some human of some random century considers perfect, based on the conventions of some random culture — 

I know that Anne developed her ideals in many lengthy discussions. But these mutilated hedges had no say when their ideal shape was decided on. It makes a difference if you follow your own ideal or are pressed into someone else's. Dignity in fulfilling an ideal you can’t chose for yourself? No, the opposite. Being shaped into someone else’s ideal is undignified. Look at photos of slaves from different places and centuries. What is beautiful about them — isn’t that their individuality and dignity? The strength to keep your own self? Not to give in, not to let them make you uniform? Beauty is the dignity of individualism. Wanting to control someone’s nature — be that someone a person or a hedge —  can never lead to beauty. A broken individual is undignified.

So much intellectual thinking. A bit exhausting. Crazy, all the bottled up thoughts. Good to talk, even just to a stranger.

  “I think some more freedom would be nice.” My voice sounds choked. “The freedom that a hedge can just be a beautiful plant. I mean, we know by now that it’s dangerous to impose all these ideals onto our gardens. Have you seen the campaigns agains over-tidy gardening? Nature works better without all our ideals. For centuries people have tried to control nature and the results have been fatal. By now some top universities are turning their traditional lawns into wildflower meadows, maybe even with glob-hedges. Basically admitting that the human ideals were not helping the object to perfection, but killed it.” I’m behaving like a freak? I have to say something more normal. “Thank you for listening to my rant. I have a day off today, you know. I usually don’t have time for chats like this. I think all chats of the last ten years just came out at once.” 

A laugh swallows her smile. I need to be polite.

  “Can I still invite you to a cup of tea at the café? As an apology because you had to listen to my rant.”

Still laughing.

  “I wouldn’t say no. But I need to go pick up my daughter. School’s out in a bit and I’m taking her straight to her flute lessons.”

  “Oh, flute! I think I read something interesting about flutes a while ago — aren't flutes the oldest musical instruments ever found? Don’t we have flutes from the stone age? It seems to be a human constant that these sounds trigger emotion in all of us!”

  “I've never heard that. Actually in Sam’s school class she is among the only ones who is playing a classical instrument. The others don’t have a sense for it.

Sun rays are falling onto the butterfly wing clip and shatter. 

  “Well. If you see it strictly as a classical instrument, that may be different —”  

  “Yes.”

  “So, your daughter loves classical music?” 

Flickering painted eyelids. A nervous butterfly design. 

  “It seems like it, by now, yes. By just listening to it she had not developed any liking for it. But playing the music actively has changed things. Ever since she has been a part of the youth orchestra she is proud of it. Now I don’t have to make her practice anymore, she’s caught on to it. UAHH!” A seagull. A harsh wave of her sketchpad wards the bird off. “Uah, such a nuisance. But talking about birds, have you seen the beautiful peacocks?”

  “Peacocks?” Echo. I sounded like a dumb echo.

  “Yes, there are peacocks around these gardens. Beautiful. When you walk around later, you’ll see them. But what were we talking about? Music. Yes. To be at the centre of the music during a concert is an irreplaceable experience. I’m talking from experience, I play the oboe. For me there is a clear divide in music between being inside and outside. With music I play myself — the piece loses importance.”

“You mean you don’t so much like or dislike a piece of music per se but it depends on if you perform it yourself or not?”

She smiles.

  “Exactly.”

  “Interesting! I always assumed you either like or dislike a piece — or a version of a piece — and that’s that.”

Still smiling, she shakes her head.

  “No. For me, a concert is like a celebration of self-confidence. The festive decoration, wearing festive clothes, in front of an audience, hearing myself in these incredible acoustics. It barely matters, which piece we are playing. The whole setting makes me feel more alive and beautiful.” Doesn’t she ever stop smiling? “Now. It was nice, talking to you. I have to pack up now and bring Sam her flute.” She signs with a hollow ‘K.’ and shuts her sketchpad.  

The architect gets up, a puff of perfumed breath hits my nose. She comes to stand in front of me. White teeth.

  “Enjoy your day off.”

  “Thank you. Enjoy your day, too.”

  “Thank you. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

Hollow K walks down one of the parallel paths. A potential artist lost in her tries to capture someone else’s egocentric ideals of beauty and a musician who doesn’t have access to her music. Also not a better life than mine. The picture loses its symmetry as the red hair moves, shifting the weights within the colour pattern.

 

Her disappearance behind a corner results in instant motionlessness. I notice the hedge beside me. All branches end in the same straight dry cut. 

Do many people find a good life by cutting back their individual nature? It helps you find a job. Straightened people fit into a standard careers. I need to sit down, I’m shivering. My chest feels tight.

A blue little face — a peacock peeks around the corner of a hedge. Looks at me, turns around and runs off. “Oh, don’t run away!” This urge to get to know the character of a living being. But the encounter was so short it remains a picture. A majestic blue chest, a lawn-green back, colours befitting the manor house’s geometry. This is why he was brought here. “I can’t blame you for running away, you probably want to go somewhere, where your green isn’t ornamental but wild and leafy, and your blue not majestic but like living water. Can’t blame you, peacock.” Water. Thirst.