“The Garden” by Joanna Parypinski

June 22, 2014 at 10:08 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: Deal Me In 2014, famous statues, Joanna Paypinski, Planet of the Apes, short story reading challenge, Statue of Liberty, Suffer the Little Children, The Garden

I drew the two of hearts this week for My Deal Me In challenge. “Deuces are wild” this year so I went in search of a story… I just happened to have my iPad in hand when I drew my card, and it was providentially opened to my Kindle app, where I have several anthologies downloaded and “in the queue.” One of these is “Suffer the Little Children” from Cruentus Libri Press.

In February, I learned from author Joanna Parypinski’s blog that this small indie press was closing down and that its ebook titles were available for free download. I’d previously read another one of their projects, Dead Sea, which I never blogged about but did briefly review on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17565709-the-dead-sea I had enjoyed that one enough to “take a chance” (and risk a few kilobytes of memory space) on a free download, and having read some of Parypinski’s other work (e.g. Her novel, Pandora, back in 2012) I picked her short story, The Garden, for my week 25 entry…

This story is about Lily, a young and lonely girl, who learns of a spell that might help her end her loneliness. The story centers around two curious stone statues in her (recently deceased) aunt’s garden. The statues are of two “sisters” who – legend had it (“The story of the sisters was as wondrously strange as the garden where they spent their days in stone.” I really liked that opening sentence!) – were turned to stone by the witch whose garden it originally was. It seems the witch had became jealous of the girls’ gardening abilities. What the witch didn’t realize was that she was only ensuring “an eternity of togetherness” for the girls. While in the garden, Lily hears whispers. Are they from the stone sisters, or from something else – something more … malignant?

The other force at work in Lily’s life is loneliness. After visiting her deceased aunt’s house, she returns to her family’s home in the country: “There was a lot of emptiness here. Even at school with rowdy kids crowding the halls, Lily could still feel the emptiness creeping in on all sides. Her classmates didn’t seem to know it was there, but Lily did. It was all around them, encroaching in the desolate gloom of twilight.”

Lily’s isolation – and a spectral visitor – lead her to seek to “ensure some togetherness” of her own, just as she imagines the stone sisters in the garden enjoy. She gets more than she bargained for, however.

I’m not sure if this story is still available for purchase anywhere now that Cruentus Libri Press is shut down. I will do some checking and update later if I find it.

I admit that this story didn’t immediately effect me that much, but stories can leave their mark on me in different ways. The way this one did is that it led me to thinking all week about statues, and humankind’s long and sometimes curious relationship with them. In fact, I probably lost more than an hour of my life surfing the Internet reading about different statues, ancient and new. Some I was already familiar with and some were new to me. Of particular interest were stories of statues that began their lives as living beings, as did (allegedly) the stone sisters in this story. Take a moment and think about it – how many examples can you think of in literature and legend? Lot’s wife, anyone?

Another interesting – though not surprising – fact is how people often begin to think of human-shaped statues as being “real” humans, perhaps with personalities of their own, perhaps treating them with undue reverence, considering they are actually only stone, marble, bronze, or whatever. “Anthropomorphizing” isn’t exactly the right word for it, since the statues are already of people.

One of Indy’s suburbs has a Main Street that is peopled with a lot of human statues in everyday poses (like the lady with the groceries pictured below) that coexist with the town’s actual animate population. I admit that, for my part, this creeps me out a little bit. The statues, even though you KNOW they’re statues, have a way of continually tricking one’s senses. When they’re in your peripheral vision, your certainty of what is real and what is not blurs somewhat, and in a way that makes me uncomfortable. 🙂

For fun, here’s a list of the worlds “top ten statues”: http://10mosttoday.com/10-most-famous-statues-in-the-world/

Colossal statues also fascinate me. Below, the giant Toltec statues at Tula are said to walk around at night(!) Woe to anyone who steps in their path.

Frodo and friends are braver than I, camping amongst the frozen statues of giant trolls.

The tallest human statue in the world, in Volgograd, Russia. Colossal!

The iconic Statue of Liberty sometimes takes a beating in film. “Cloverfield” and “Planet of the Apes” are two memorable examples.