Dietrich Meyer
Enthusiasts for the Centre, Part I: Decline

Maybe slimey typey thingy. Maybe fleshier than so. Maybe neither. Maybe it all depends on the purpose of their existence. Imagine; a clay corner, potentially triangular, much like image 1, less than image 3. Imagine; Red, yellow, purple, pink or grey. Either way, it will be shiny. Imagine a wall-to-wall carpet which no longer gives in to pressure, with no memory of being lusciously soft, a surface with a lack of confidence. Imagine; a floor which is the centre of life. Imagine; this is it. Do you hate your own reflection? (she asks) Not as much as I hate the question. Over the phone it seemed so straightforward, but here you are in a completely different situation. When you arrive an hour late (she remarks) she immediately places a handful of fingers on the table, creating a fair amount of distance between them. Pick one (she says). Pick the nicest one according to your own judgement, as it will say a lot about where you come from. Taste is no longer a sense of the tongue, it is just as much a matter of moving things from one hand to the other. The other day you simply answered no to all my questions. If I say the word vaseline, do you cringe or dream of its versatile substance? (she asks) Hollow structures can be filled up with just about anything, so stick to the structures that you know best. An hour later the amount of fingers have multiplied, but the distance between them seems the same. I pick the longest finger, which is still shorter than any of my own. Aha! (she exclaims), now I can see where you are coming from; a remote place without taste or common sense. If you could choose to enter another body, would it be the same material as yourself? (I ask)
- Hanne Lippard

“You can’t see the desert if you can’t smell it” - Ed Abbey Not far from my studio, in the Mojave Desert, dwells one of the oldest living organisms on Earth: King Clone – a creosote bush or hediondilla. Rather than a single bush, King Clone is a 69-foot long, oval-shaped ring of creosote bushes connected by a single clonal root structure which is over 11,700 years old. In about 9700 BC, after the last glacier receded from the area, King Clone was one of the first life forms to colonize the Mojave Desert. It has been a continuous resident ever since.
If you travel to the deserts of the Southwestern United States or Northern Mexico, you can’t miss the unending expanse of hediondilla. The bush itself is plain – a scraggly medium-sized plant that is so ubiquitous in these deserts that it is hardly noticeable. Despite its abundance, you may first become aware of its presence through its unmistakably fresh scent during a slight rise in humidity, even before you distinguish it visually.
Something about the smell of the hediondilla, its longevity, and its plainness keep me coming back to King Clone itself, this master of its species. King Clone isn’t marked on maps and it’s not easy to find. There are no trails leading to it, although it is protected by a wire fence a few miles square that preserves it and its surrounding brethren, all among the oldest of their kind, from desert off-road vehicles.  Inside the King Clone oval of scrawny, half-dead-looking bushes, the sand appears untouched, and slightly higher than the sand outside the ring. Though I know at least my footprints have marked it in the past, they are always erased by the strong winds of the high desert. Placed at the center, there is a small grouping of rocks; although man-made, it is not a cairn. I sometimes use one as a weight for a water dish I bring for my dog, and then I put it back. Rodents, snakes, and lizards live in small holes and burrows dug at the base of the bushes, though I rarely see them. There is no water for miles.
Hediondilla (from the Spanish word “hediondo”, “stinking”), also known as the creosote bush (for it’s similarity in odor to that of creosote oil commonly used in railroad ties and telephone poles), Larrea tridentata (its scientific name, tridentata referning to it’s three-fold leaf), greasewood, or sometimes chaparral (when used medicinally), does not grow in the synonymous plant community chaparral. It prefers the well-drained soils of the alluvial fans and flats of the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts. It is also known as gobernadora in Mexico, Spanish for “governor” or “ruler”, due to its ability to secure more water by inhibiting the growth of nearby plants, explaining its distribution in large areas in virtually pure stands.
Native peoples have used  hediondilla for thousands of years medicinally. It is used for digestion problems including cramps and gas; respiratory tract conditions including colds and infections; and ongoing chronic skin disorders. It is also used for cancer, arthritis, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections, gallstones, sexually transmitted diseases, central nervous system conditions, chickenpox, parasite infections, obesity, and snakebite pain. Some people use it for detoxification, or as a tonic or “blood purifier.” The chemicals in hediondilla are thought to work as antioxidants. Once on a camping trip to Mexico, I made a tea of it to help ease a friend’s gallstone pains (she suffers from this regularly) and it worked.
I feel somehow attached to this plant though I know it’s foolish to think so. Maybe it’s simply for aesthetic reasons, such as its scent, or for its mundane omnipresence... or that we share the same habitat, or the allure of its seeming immortality. It is part of my landscape though I am hardly a part of its. I matter less to this 11,700 year-old ancestor than a single transient mouse taking shelter under its roots.