A Worn Path

I was curious about this character from the start – not sure if I was supposed to like her to begin with, with her headwear dismissed as a rag, her walk described as ‘balanced’ but the description still coming off as awkward, her unusual smell, her ‘grave and persistent’ tapping down on the earth between steps with unlaced shoes – is she trying to annoy me? 

I started to enjoy her more as she reacted to the things she encountered along her path, how she talks to or questions or scolds the animals or states the virtues of water or weeds without deigning to praise: she is ‘bound to go on her way’ and everything is what it is. I felt very much that I was viewing her from above, from up in the trees that shadowed her, and seeing behaviour I wasn’t necessarily supposed to – I wondered if the character would talk in the same way if she knew she was being observed. 

It was interesting to have the scene descriptions in part vocalised by the character – up through pines/down through oaks/sun so high, and it didn’t come over awkward because it seemed natural for her to self narrate, all alone with with her failing eyesight. And I was as tricked as Phoenix by the boy with the marble-cake – even though I’d felt we were alone I accepted his sudden presence (maybe since beyond the swirled appearance, ‘marble’ just feels solid and imposing) but had him quickly dashed away. I enjoyed the rhythm of chopped back narrative phrases – ‘she took it for a man’, ‘a pattern all its own’ and how they mirrored her pared down speech – “come running my direction”, “I too old”. My favourite contact between her speech and the narration was the description the quail walking ‘seeming all dainty and unseen” and her remark and reflection on that, “Walk pretty. This is the easy place.”.