Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
The Grassling and Twelve Words For Moss
My eye is caught by a dot on the path. A little mound of moss, a little round of moss, no bigger than my thumb nail.
It is dark emerald but catches the gold of light which it seems to absorb within itself, holding it concurrently with deep dark shadow. A weightless density.
I have picked up this jewel and it balances on the pad of my middle finger as though, being rootless, in a heartbeat it could take to the wing. When I replace it, I put it to the side of the path which is dry and hard-packed smooth, which is soil, crumbled to fine particles and mixed with brick dust, some lumps of which remain of the hardcore that was once laid here to fill in puddles, I imagine. The green against the red is what alerted me.
If I were Elizabeth-Jane Burnett I might name my miniscule half-ball of moss, make it my familiar, engage with it in a two-way conversation, find a mutual language, a body language through which to connect. In my own way, maybe I already have. Perhaps that is why I find Elizabeth-Jane such a joyous companion of the page; here is a woman who speaks like me, who sees and questions and experiments like me, with nature. Boundaries fall away and words are discovered through which to describe the experience; of observing, feeling, wondering, being. But Elizabeth-Jane takes it further, is bolder, and her voice is strong and persuasive in her sharing.
After reading The Grassling a year or so ago, I felt permitted as an adult woman, to crawl for instance into a hedge, to sit within that thick undergrowth, to transform my perceptions of the uninhabitable into the accessible. I felt permitted to investigate unconventional spaces such as these and found that the uncomfortable scratch and the tear, the intolerable sharp point and the hard surface, to be acceptable, endured, the experience to be embraced, even. To become the shape of the irregular negative space created from the surrounding matter of hedgerow, was to be re-formed by everything pushing into the creases of my form until I became moulded, filling the emptiness and transforming into hedge, with a hedge’s-eye view.
In Twelve Words for Moss Elizabeth-Jane similarly draws me down, down with her gaze and with her becoming, to the miniscule and the visceral: site-lines lie across the ground and within it, fingers are compelled to touch when looking is not enough, skin reacts to the damp, the sodden and the dehydrating, light is soaked up and sunrays are reflected, sounds flute and trill and notes are sung-along with. Moss fills the spaces and absorbs, when we feel hopeless and unheard. Moss leads us to life when loss threatens to smother us in bereavement, we can shed the deficit and embrace the mossy path, and keep travelling on. I see mosses now where I hadn’t noticed them before. The temptation to touch them – caress the suggested velvet, dab at the sticky-looking moisture upheld on tiny delicate stalks, explore through touch – I now act upon, less afraid to intervene or interfere, determined now to engage and deepen the acquaintance.
As I position my foundling-moss in a new home amongst the wild verge, I hope the mesh of undergrowth will provide a sheltered environment to re-vitalise this little thing. I can’t bear to leave it out in the open, vulnerable, where it could be scuffed into ever-tinier fragments by walkers and dogs. I am not anthropomorphising. I am venerating. I am exercising a newly refreshed sense of awe, invigorated by Elizabeth-Jane’s carefully chosen and effortlessly crafted words; her thoughts shaped into a prolonged chant, an incantation, inviting us, compelling us to consider our own possible ways of being with these shy bryophytes.
