Plash

One question James Lipton always asked famous actors on the Actors’ Studio is “What is your favourite word?” Not that I will ever be talking to Lipton, but should the 80+ year old actor/writer/director/teacher drop in to Corsier or Argelès and he asked I would say “plash.”

I first ran into plash at university in the poem Pattern (see below). I always loved story poems like Browning’s Last Duchess. Being at university during the Vietnam War, when certain rigid dress codes and other rules didn’t make much sense, the poem resonated that life didn’t change through the centuries, same old, same old.

Plash has more or less been replaced by splash, so much so when I used it in a novel, my editor changed it. I changed it back and the next editor changed it again.

Fast forward to Italy over two years ago in Collodi, the Medieval town where Pinocchio was written. I walked in the garden with a former neighbour. And the waterdrops were plashing in the marble fountains and I said, “And the plashing of waterdrops In the marble fountain…”

Patterns, he said.

“You know it?” I was amazed. For all our conversations when we each had a condo at 394 The Riverway and some visits after he and his wife moved to Maine and I moved to Europe, I had never seen his poetic side. Friends, who have peelability those who after years and years you discover new depths in them, are really valuable.

I have not run into the word since then until this week, when waking early I started to read Alice Hoffman’s The Story Sisters, there it was. Snow fell outside the window, not plashing or splashing, but slipping softly to the ground.

Maybe I will try and work the plash into my next novel.

From Webster’s
Main Entry: plash
Function: verb
Date: 1542 (Splash appeared 1715)
intransitive verb: to cause a splashing or spattering effecttransitive verb : to break the surface of (water) :
Patterns
I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon –
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?