WEBVTT 1 00:00:04.960 --> 00:00:07.440 The fountain had always been perfectly centered between the twin 2 00:00:07.519 --> 00:00:10.439 rows of view, or so I'd believed that sharp acts 3 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:12.640 as a living spine of clipped green. A rowing straight 4 00:00:12.679 --> 00:00:14.800 through the heart of Nova Stadium Park felt as familiar 5 00:00:14.839 --> 00:00:16.640 as the lines on my own palm. But as I 6 00:00:16.719 --> 00:00:18.719 returned there for the first time in four years, I 7 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:21.440 stopped half way down the main walk, blinking against sunlight 8 00:00:21.480 --> 00:00:24.120 and memory. There it was the left you walk held 9 00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:27.079 one more tree than the right, all trees broad. At 10 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:30.000 the base there shadowed footprints, still dusting the sandy path. 11 00:00:30.679 --> 00:00:33.240 They bulged forward, twelve on the left, eleven on the right, 12 00:00:33.960 --> 00:00:36.399 not an optical trick. I counted twice, then a third, 13 00:00:36.439 --> 00:00:39.799 a third time. Yet somehow an initial SHARKO wasn't afraid 14 00:00:39.880 --> 00:00:41.840 or disoriented. It was the queasy trill of sparting a 15 00:00:41.880 --> 00:00:45.439 discrepancy in a trusted friend's face. Perfect symagery had ruled 16 00:00:45.479 --> 00:00:48.039 here since the garden's first shovelful, subject to a thousand 17 00:00:48.079 --> 00:00:51.280 retellings and restoration efforts, and I had spent nearly four 18 00:00:51.320 --> 00:00:54.119 decades grooming that allusion to a razor edge. Had A 19 00:00:54.200 --> 00:00:56.320 truly failed to notice a floor so avert for so 20 00:00:56.399 --> 00:01:00.640 long but all parks possess their own trickers, and geometry 21 00:01:00.679 --> 00:01:03.759 is the least stable thing. Shrubs, swell roots, buckle paving stones, city, 22 00:01:03.759 --> 00:01:06.599 budget's water away up pocision. I ran a finger across 23 00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:08.480 my brow and calls up a mental map I tended 24 00:01:08.519 --> 00:01:11.599 for my entire career. I could, if pressed, list each 25 00:01:11.719 --> 00:01:14.079 use minor quirks. The stubby twelve, with its two knotted 26 00:01:14.120 --> 00:01:16.400 trunk flares, should have mirrored its counterpart on the right. 27 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:19.319 Gazing down the walk again, I struggled to police the 28 00:01:19.359 --> 00:01:22.159 certainty that all my tours, all my lectures, all my 29 00:01:22.200 --> 00:01:24.719 hours with gard and apprentices, had revolved around the foundation 30 00:01:24.760 --> 00:01:26.879 of even as twelve and twelve, each a green mirror 31 00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:29.400 to its opposite measure, shoulder to shoulder, with severe string 32 00:01:29.439 --> 00:01:32.680 and patience. Yet there I stood, no guarden tools in hand, 33 00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:35.400 nothing but my batter, canvas, satchel, and a mind stubbornly 34 00:01:35.439 --> 00:01:39.640 snagged on one missing match, a memory mistake, perhaps the 35 00:01:39.719 --> 00:01:43.040 sort that accumulates in retirement, some subtle divergence between what's 36 00:01:43.079 --> 00:01:46.560 remembered and was recorded. The world that children experience is 37 00:01:46.680 --> 00:01:48.920 rarely the one written in text books. And who was 38 00:01:48.920 --> 00:01:51.519 I now if not a grandchild? Of my own curi delusions. 39 00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:55.519 I'd certainly become more suspicious about memory since leaving city service. 40 00:01:56.239 --> 00:01:58.799 Maybe my mind had quietly idealized the garden had spent 41 00:01:58.879 --> 00:02:01.280 so long tending fill in missing rose or smoothing off 42 00:02:01.359 --> 00:02:04.079 edges in its private mod Still, as the day wore 43 00:02:04.079 --> 00:02:06.239 on and to a group's drifted by, something in me 44 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:09.159 fixed on that single stubborn extra tree. I watched some 45 00:02:09.319 --> 00:02:11.719 glide down the clip flanks, each passing out deepening. Not 46 00:02:11.759 --> 00:02:15.719 my discomfort, but a granula almost mathematical curiosity. Could the 47 00:02:15.719 --> 00:02:19.120 addition have gone unotice during my years in charge? Impossible? 48 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:22.080 But there it was, not just in the trees, but 49 00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:24.520 in a careful way. Each subsequent visitors as flickered over 50 00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:27.400 the walk without the faintest jolt of surprise. It wasn't 51 00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:30.759 the feeling of discovery or even loss, more like standing 52 00:02:30.759 --> 00:02:32.879 at the edge of a familiar pond and glimpsing for 53 00:02:32.919 --> 00:02:35.400 the first time a ripple moving against the prevailing wind, 54 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:40.240 odd but not hostile, peculiar and yet almost imbiting. I 55 00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:43.120 left the axis and wandered deeper into the garden, certain 56 00:02:43.159 --> 00:02:44.919 only that I had to return in the coming days, 57 00:02:44.960 --> 00:02:47.560 not to find fault, but to find sense I am 58 00:02:47.599 --> 00:02:50.840 not by temperament. A dramatic person. Retirement was meant to 59 00:02:50.879 --> 00:02:53.360 be the long exhalation after forty sit a season's pacing 60 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:56.719 brick grass with pruning shears or clipboard. Twice before that 61 00:02:56.759 --> 00:02:59.039 spring I tried to visit the gardens and been turned 62 00:02:59.039 --> 00:03:02.360 away by fatigue or rain. So this returned journey, which 63 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:04.439 had seemed merely rich la nod to my old bones, 64 00:03:04.439 --> 00:03:06.919 a stroll for a nostalgia tok on in unexpected momentum 65 00:03:06.960 --> 00:03:10.039 so unbalancing energy. The park itself was just waking to 66 00:03:10.120 --> 00:03:13.360 the city's late April bustle jog encircling the periphery, students 67 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:15.840 sprawling across the river lawn with sketch paths, elder the 68 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:19.199 Madge on faithful clacking tiles on a shaded terrace between 69 00:03:19.240 --> 00:03:21.159 the eu walks and the circular rose beds. The air 70 00:03:21.199 --> 00:03:24.599 shimmered with small believed in routines, families setting up their 71 00:03:24.599 --> 00:03:28.360 Saturday picnics. The Glass House Cafe, my old haunt, was 72 00:03:28.360 --> 00:03:30.879 fogged with the steam of cappuccino and the thrum of conversation. 73 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:34.719 I nodded to Lucia now had gardner sturdy some burned 74 00:03:34.719 --> 00:03:37.080 woman with an architect's blunt practicality, who was deep in 75 00:03:37.159 --> 00:03:40.199 rumination with a new intern in emmil Emil all bristlet 76 00:03:40.280 --> 00:03:43.000 energy and clumsy reverence, darted away from their note taking 77 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.919 to jug after me, Senor Donardi, He called, I saw 78 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:49.960 your name on the membership plaque. You're really here. It's 79 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:53.000 strange how quickly institutional memory clings to certain figures long 80 00:03:53.039 --> 00:03:56.000 after they leave the daily order of things. I answered 81 00:03:56.039 --> 00:03:57.879 him with a smile, resisting the urge to smooth the 82 00:03:57.919 --> 00:03:59.639 sweat matted tufts of his hair, as I might have 83 00:03:59.639 --> 00:04:02.919 with my own apprentice years ago. Just a quick walk, Emma, 84 00:04:03.039 --> 00:04:05.360 trying to remember what it feels like to have somewhere important, 85 00:04:05.360 --> 00:04:07.960 to be at Summise, He looked ready to burst into 86 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:11.199 a thousand questions. We're trying double layered lavender in the 87 00:04:11.199 --> 00:04:13.639 partner at Lucia's for work in the East beds. But well, 88 00:04:13.719 --> 00:04:16.240 I'm supposed to be tracking rue shadow, not pest rotation. 89 00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:18.519 Something about data for the Mayor's office. Did you ever 90 00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:21.439 have to too many days with clipboard? Not enough of 91 00:04:21.439 --> 00:04:24.360 trouble that confided, you'll learn to love both, You'll find 92 00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:27.800 your balance. He grinned, unconsciously echoing the symmetry of the 93 00:04:27.800 --> 00:04:30.240 garden itself. Yet now thinking of the off balance use 94 00:04:30.399 --> 00:04:33.439 that echoed that it oddly inside my chest. I returned 95 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:35.519 to the Yu walkers the morning to hiss assemble, each 96 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:37.480 led by a city appointed dose in whose script I 97 00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:40.480 must have heard a thousand times. The merreat gardens, nova 98 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:43.519 stage end's pride too perfect U walks facing one another 99 00:04:43.560 --> 00:04:47.000 since sixteen twenty seven, symmetrical design inspired by the Italian 100 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:51.639 meniscence said yell. The gestures like conductors. Button's describe invisible 101 00:04:51.639 --> 00:04:55.800 axes overheads busy snapping phone pictures. Nobody paused account of course, 102 00:04:56.480 --> 00:04:59.399 tourists ice skated along, pleased by the suggestion of order. 103 00:05:00.040 --> 00:05:03.240 Locals paid less attention, minds on errands or lover's rendezvous. 104 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:06.680 But standing in that slight offset between trees, watching sun 105 00:05:06.759 --> 00:05:08.879 lance off the gravel, I was reminded of the city's 106 00:05:08.920 --> 00:05:12.480 love affair with its own patterns. Baroque fountains, labyrinthine streets 107 00:05:12.519 --> 00:05:15.040 laid up for defense and display food. Kiosks never stray 108 00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:17.959 in a meter from their latta grids. Every flourish in 109 00:05:17.959 --> 00:05:20.319 this place was shaped by someone many someones devoted to 110 00:05:20.360 --> 00:05:23.839 the principle that discipline Bill's beauty. I'd been such a someone. 111 00:05:24.279 --> 00:05:26.720 My career stitch through with endless city minutes and faded 112 00:05:26.759 --> 00:05:29.639 planting locks, lived in that mesh of rule and rhythm. 113 00:05:29.959 --> 00:05:32.680 I taught generations of caretakers the importance of alignments so 114 00:05:32.759 --> 00:05:35.240 subtle only their feet would tell the difference. We measured 115 00:05:35.240 --> 00:05:38.360 hedges down to the centimeter. I'd at lasted seven city 116 00:05:38.360 --> 00:05:42.240 administrators and five park commissioners. I married here, divorced here, 117 00:05:42.360 --> 00:05:44.879 retired here, always under the discipline a sword, a private 118 00:05:44.879 --> 00:05:48.319 priesthood of symmetrical intent. The u Walks earned their legend 119 00:05:48.360 --> 00:05:52.240 three centuries of small acts. No single photograph ever captured 120 00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:54.199 the spacial music that lived in the mind's eye after 121 00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:57.000 walking them, the satisfaction of lines converging just so as 122 00:05:57.040 --> 00:05:59.800 ye turned the acxis and surveyed their balance. It was 123 00:05:59.800 --> 00:06:02.680 a living rehearsal, repeated endlessly, believed so deeply that the 124 00:06:02.680 --> 00:06:06.000 belief itself became part of the garden's substance. And perhaps 125 00:06:06.079 --> 00:06:08.519 that was my failing. Belief can be tenacious a muscle 126 00:06:08.560 --> 00:06:11.000 that grows stronger precisely where you never try to test 127 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:13.959 its resistance. I paused half way down the right walk, 128 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:16.959 allowing a pair of students to pass. One pointed at 129 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:19.680 the far fountain, whispering something a joke about running lapse. 130 00:06:19.720 --> 00:06:23.560 Perhaps the sight line shifted. I let my gaze follow 131 00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:26.199 the gravel to the base of the eleventh hue, pausing carefully, 132 00:06:26.240 --> 00:06:28.800 trying to will into existence a twelfth shadow that wasn't there. 133 00:06:29.439 --> 00:06:32.519 Nothing changed as I moved off the main axis. The 134 00:06:32.519 --> 00:06:35.319 low hum of the city returned in force, the ruine 135 00:06:35.360 --> 00:06:38.480 of bicycles, the clatter of Rabuscu's coins, the ordinary during 136 00:06:38.560 --> 00:06:40.600 noises of a park that hadn't changed, and yet through 137 00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:44.319 my eyes no longer quite matched itself. Still it was curiosity, 138 00:06:44.519 --> 00:06:47.000 not an ease that lingered on my tongue, a flavor 139 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:50.120 as persistent as risen under the nails. I promised myself 140 00:06:50.160 --> 00:06:52.879 I'd return, just to look again with clear eyes, perhaps, 141 00:06:53.120 --> 00:06:55.439 or take measure in my hand. If there was an 142 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:57.639 answer here, I was sure it would reveal itself with 143 00:06:57.680 --> 00:06:59.920 a little more patience, as had all of the gardens 144 00:07:00.040 --> 00:07:02.920 quarks over the years. The next morning broke with brittle 145 00:07:02.920 --> 00:07:04.839 blue light, one of the spring days when when calves 146 00:07:04.879 --> 00:07:07.959 the air into bright, wakeful shots. I stood again before 147 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:10.839 the eu walks, this time with Lucia beside me. Her 148 00:07:10.879 --> 00:07:13.399 hands staining green at the finger tips, moved absently as 149 00:07:13.439 --> 00:07:16.720 she surveyed the line of trees. Lucia, I said, quietly, 150 00:07:16.759 --> 00:07:18.439 the EU walk. Does it seem different to you? On 151 00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:20.759 the axis? I mean, how many trees do you count 152 00:07:20.759 --> 00:07:23.759 in each row? She glanced down the walk, counting almost 153 00:07:23.800 --> 00:07:27.240 by habit that side O twelve, this eleven? Same as ever? 154 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:31.360 Why is Emmo's count off? No? No, I said, I 155 00:07:31.399 --> 00:07:33.759 was just remembering. I had this feeling. We always matched 156 00:07:33.800 --> 00:07:36.079 them twelve and twelve for as long as I can recall. 157 00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:39.439 The balance was the legend. Lucia cocked her head, lips pursed. 158 00:07:40.199 --> 00:07:42.240 Maybe early on, but as long as I've been here 159 00:07:42.279 --> 00:07:44.800 twenty three years, the left bank has always carried an extra. 160 00:07:44.920 --> 00:07:47.160 In fact, that's the story I give the school groups. 161 00:07:47.160 --> 00:07:50.040 Its outwist. People expect Puffeck's symmetry. We deliver a character. 162 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:53.560 She chuckled, as if for siding a minor heresy. You 163 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:55.920 sure you're not thinking of Crevesky Park. Some of those 164 00:07:55.959 --> 00:07:59.040 city beds are almost surgical in their neatness. I shook 165 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:03.360 my head. No, Lucia, here the axis our axis? Hum 166 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:05.879 She rubbed her temple with the back of one knuckle. 167 00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:08.720 We could pull the visitor brouchers, those that op photo 168 00:08:08.759 --> 00:08:11.519 from the city's centenary over at the pavilion. You remember, 169 00:08:12.120 --> 00:08:14.920 we crossed the broad terrace where peacocks sometimes roamed. Slipping 170 00:08:14.959 --> 00:08:17.480 into the visitor center's foyer is Lionstone dazzling in the 171 00:08:17.519 --> 00:08:21.120 spring sun. Lucia rooted about in a glass top display table, 172 00:08:21.279 --> 00:08:24.240 lifting a glossy trifle from a wreck as cover glowed 173 00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:26.439 with a familiar aial photo of stalwart used flanking the 174 00:08:26.439 --> 00:08:28.560 gravel at twelve on the left, eleven on the right. 175 00:08:29.240 --> 00:08:31.920 The label's original axis is Turk Cemetery read the same. 176 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:35.039 Beside the brouchers, a frame CP photograph hung on the 177 00:08:35.039 --> 00:08:38.759 wall late nineteenth century, faded to a palette uchre and chocoal, 178 00:08:38.919 --> 00:08:41.600 but unmistakable the eu walks crisper in age with that 179 00:08:41.720 --> 00:08:45.440 unmistakable lopside at march. The extra tree fat and formal 180 00:08:45.480 --> 00:08:48.240 even then anchored the left axis, throwing the classical illusion 181 00:08:48.279 --> 00:08:51.840 off its dride. Lucia watched me with a fond, expectant smile. 182 00:08:52.519 --> 00:08:54.679 All the record show it's always been this way. Maybe 183 00:08:54.679 --> 00:08:57.279 you've just been away too long, as scrutin as the 184 00:08:57.279 --> 00:09:00.600 photo cloud's masted above in slur spring to urbulence, there 185 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:03.679 shapes a distant echo of the asymmetry below. It wasn't 186 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:06.519 just my error, apparently it was built into the bones 187 00:09:06.519 --> 00:09:09.799 of the garden's documented past. A group of garden dosant 188 00:09:09.960 --> 00:09:12.799 lounging in the lobby between tours, overheard our conversation and 189 00:09:12.840 --> 00:09:17.200 sidled over with practiced community theater animation. Oh yes, chirup Dandon, 190 00:09:17.320 --> 00:09:19.600 the most enthusiastic of the bunch. The left walk is 191 00:09:19.639 --> 00:09:21.440 longer by one. There's even a tradition we trim a 192 00:09:21.480 --> 00:09:23.399 little jauntier on the odd numbered side to honor the 193 00:09:23.399 --> 00:09:25.840 city's quirky spirit. That how old Mayor de Leaci hold it. 194 00:09:25.879 --> 00:09:27.679 In his day. They say it's good luck to enter 195 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:31.600 the garden from the heavier walk. Kintessa Marta, or retired 196 00:09:31.600 --> 00:09:35.360 school teacher, nodded agreeably. You know, my grandmother used to 197 00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:37.000 see a life always leans a little to the left 198 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:39.919 in nova. Stay John, don't trouble yourself with old measurements, dear, 199 00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:44.000 just enjoy it. Polite laughter followed. The docents offered a 200 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:46.759 slurry of local stories. Apprentice gardeners count in the use 201 00:09:46.799 --> 00:09:49.200 of part of a graduation prank painters using the offset 202 00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:51.840 walk as a compositional challenge, pairs of lovers meeting at 203 00:09:51.879 --> 00:09:55.240 the awkward yew. For them, asymmetry was ancient, even revered 204 00:09:55.240 --> 00:09:58.360 a quirk. Yes, but the city zone. Standing there, I 205 00:09:58.399 --> 00:10:00.279 felt the surge of mild dislocation, the sus the same 206 00:10:00.279 --> 00:10:02.600 one that follows after missing a familiar bus stop or 207 00:10:02.639 --> 00:10:06.000 finding a door handle, Aswat sides overnight. But it was fleeting, 208 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.679 swept away by the sheer density of cheerful certainty around me. 209 00:10:09.240 --> 00:10:13.200 Nobody doubted the odd count. Nobody recalled another arrangement, not 210 00:10:13.320 --> 00:10:16.960 in any serious way. Even Lucia, pragmatic and dry eye, 211 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:20.639 seemed more amused than confounded. Perhaps I'm slipping, I said, softly, 212 00:10:21.240 --> 00:10:23.200 These trees, they begin to play tricks on us as 213 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:25.679 we age. He've earned the right to see any shape 214 00:10:25.679 --> 00:10:29.120 you like, Lucia replied, touching my arm. The gardeners remember 215 00:10:29.159 --> 00:10:32.320 with their hands, not their eyes. Politeness or affection hard 216 00:10:32.320 --> 00:10:34.039 to say, but it left me no less fixated on 217 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:36.879 the puzzle. If the park's public memory was so firm, 218 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:38.600 what hope did I have of tracing the origin of 219 00:10:38.600 --> 00:10:41.919 this lopsided conviction? Yet the presence of material evidence the 220 00:10:41.960 --> 00:10:46.200 burchuers the photograph pulled at my skepticism. Surely somewhere an 221 00:10:46.240 --> 00:10:48.559 official plan or a faded blueprint would reveal the change, 222 00:10:48.639 --> 00:10:51.279 or at least the moment the story split. Old habits 223 00:10:51.320 --> 00:10:54.080 asserting themselves. I resolved to test the history with less 224 00:10:54.120 --> 00:10:57.639 yielding tools. The municipal archives, hidden in the bowels of 225 00:10:57.639 --> 00:11:00.240 the old tax office always carried the mothball peak of 226 00:11:00.279 --> 00:11:04.120 Vanish municipal priorities. I flashed my volunteer merit dispadge on 227 00:11:04.200 --> 00:11:06.840 an elderly clock, short, tallow skinned, willing to look the 228 00:11:06.840 --> 00:11:09.080 other way for an ex horticulturist pointed me to rower 229 00:11:09.080 --> 00:11:12.720 flap files containing the park's oc tectonic blueprints. I spread 230 00:11:12.720 --> 00:11:16.039 them on a battered oak table. Year's pressing collus. The 231 00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:18.559 earliest I could find, a brittle villain dated seventeen thirty. 232 00:11:18.559 --> 00:11:20.720 When assured the EU walks just as they stood, twelve 233 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:23.600 on the left, eleven on the right. A clerkly notation 234 00:11:23.679 --> 00:11:26.440 three hundred years ago labeled it long Access leff Rich. 235 00:11:27.200 --> 00:11:30.720 In subsequent plants eighteen forty five, nineteen o seven, nineteen 236 00:11:30.759 --> 00:11:33.679 twenty two, the arrangement persisted, marked with fading red lines 237 00:11:33.679 --> 00:11:37.720 and circle numerals. The modern typriton guides a park's restoration 238 00:11:37.799 --> 00:11:40.759 survey from the nineteen eighties. The landscape masterpen signed by 239 00:11:40.759 --> 00:11:43.120 my own hand, all recorded the extra U always on 240 00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:45.440 the left, always one on paired trunk bulging at the curve. 241 00:11:46.039 --> 00:11:49.159 I found three yellowed clippings from the city's chronicle. No 242 00:11:49.320 --> 00:11:52.879 veastagians feigned lopsided you walk remains of regional peculiarity. One 243 00:11:52.879 --> 00:11:55.240 headline declared above a black and white snapshot of the 244 00:11:55.240 --> 00:11:59.200 warp baded and gala landings. A local columnist nineteen seventy 245 00:11:59.200 --> 00:12:01.720 four riffed on our tradition of almost symmetry, why not 246 00:12:01.799 --> 00:12:04.000 let a garden be a little bit human? I bought 247 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.320 a handful of old postcards from a used book stalled 248 00:12:06.360 --> 00:12:08.960 just outside the archive gates, several from the nineteen fifties 249 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:11.639 to prewar a gloss in nineteen nineties specimen that looks 250 00:12:11.639 --> 00:12:14.919 suspiciously like it had been colorized. Each depicted the main 251 00:12:14.960 --> 00:12:18.039 new walk from a slightly different angle. None were perfect. 252 00:12:18.159 --> 00:12:21.039 Crowds and shadows mudded half the views, but where the 253 00:12:21.080 --> 00:12:23.759 roast had exposed, twelve views showed to the left eleven 254 00:12:23.799 --> 00:12:26.240 to the right. On the reverse, the faded scroll and 255 00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:29.080 fountain pen. Here we walked, counting trees and losing tract 256 00:12:29.120 --> 00:12:31.639 just after the last on the heavy side, my own 257 00:12:31.679 --> 00:12:34.639 faint handwriting, forty years younger, adorned a card had mailed 258 00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:37.399 my parents upon receiving my first permanent posting. I walked 259 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:40.399 these rows each morning, so now memorize every pair was 260 00:12:40.440 --> 00:12:42.639 thus simply a tone of phrase or a slip born 261 00:12:42.679 --> 00:12:46.519 of an unexamined assumption. The city's design historians seemed resolved 262 00:12:46.519 --> 00:12:49.360 to the lob sizedness as well. In the dusty reference 263 00:12:49.360 --> 00:12:52.720 stacks of the University, I found thick, worshipful tomes, the 264 00:12:52.759 --> 00:12:56.000 geometries of nova stadio, and horticultural drama in civic space, 265 00:12:56.600 --> 00:12:58.960 each laid out the garden planned the left row, always 266 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.240 one tree richer from seeing the city's famously unbalanced beds. 267 00:13:02.799 --> 00:13:06.320 Occasionally a passing scholar would annotate, legend has the garden's 268 00:13:06.360 --> 00:13:09.399 original design coal for a perfect axis mirrabileies, but construction 269 00:13:09.480 --> 00:13:12.679 flaws or changes and patronage led to the distinctive leftward bulge. 270 00:13:13.080 --> 00:13:15.799 It was there again, afeandecho some past striving for symmetry, 271 00:13:15.879 --> 00:13:18.320 but no evidence it had ever been realized in practice. 272 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:23.360 Modern sources reinforced the picture, tourism sites, digital photographs, the 273 00:13:23.360 --> 00:13:27.080 city's infamously unreliable Wikipedia entry, unique left, heavy ue axis, 274 00:13:27.159 --> 00:13:31.080 hissoric oddness, debated origins coalesced around the same baseline. Even 275 00:13:31.159 --> 00:13:34.399 drawn shop videos, their wide lens exposing every variegated line 276 00:13:34.399 --> 00:13:36.799 and patch of worn grass, produced the same count as 277 00:13:36.840 --> 00:13:40.600 my recent walk. Yet in all this a peculiar pattern persisted, 278 00:13:40.799 --> 00:13:44.120 minor inconsistencies in all descriptions, an occasional mismatch in date. 279 00:13:44.200 --> 00:13:46.519 I found a guide's text from a nineteen twelve festival 280 00:13:46.519 --> 00:13:49.240 that described a freshly matched parade of green, plausible only 281 00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:52.639 a free asopoetic flourish. But each rec could seem to reinforce, 282 00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:56.279 not undermine, the reality before me eleven and twelve, never 283 00:13:56.320 --> 00:13:59.559 twelve and twelve, not since any documentable age. And those 284 00:13:59.600 --> 00:14:01.799 who lived in the city longer than I, the acquaintances 285 00:14:01.799 --> 00:14:03.919 who met me for coffee at the park's edge, all 286 00:14:03.960 --> 00:14:06.399 shook their heads and quite wonder at my strange be occupation. 287 00:14:06.919 --> 00:14:09.480 A retired violin, as remembered caught in my husband along 288 00:14:09.519 --> 00:14:12.120 the slow walk under the elder years, always seven steps 289 00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:15.240 from the odd turn Bartlow, the bread shop owner, reminisced 290 00:14:15.240 --> 00:14:17.440 about hiding in a shadow of the grand awkward extra 291 00:14:17.519 --> 00:14:20.039 after a bot soccer match as a boy, A math 292 00:14:20.120 --> 00:14:23.200 teacher who walked out when sons through the garden each Saturday, volunteered. 293 00:14:23.399 --> 00:14:25.360 We even had a silly rhyme in school left for 294 00:14:25.360 --> 00:14:27.480 for loon lack rode for speed, because there was always 295 00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:29.759 an extra you to touch at the end. A dawned 296 00:14:29.759 --> 00:14:31.679 on me at the collective memory of Novastadia, and had 297 00:14:31.679 --> 00:14:34.000 settled so firmly on the asymmetric image that my own 298 00:14:34.039 --> 00:14:37.960 certainty seemed feigned, even fantasmic by comparison. Yet my hands, 299 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:41.080 aching with old calluses, recalled every line drawn, every string 300 00:14:41.080 --> 00:14:43.759 poll top, from rebase to root base. I could all 301 00:14:43.799 --> 00:14:45.799 but taste the cool reciniss air of the axis as 302 00:14:45.799 --> 00:14:48.799 it should have been, not as it was restless. I 303 00:14:48.840 --> 00:14:51.440 began sketching from memory at night, shuffling kitchen chairs to 304 00:14:51.440 --> 00:14:54.559 simulate the walk's gentle gredient in the spilled lamp light. 305 00:14:54.679 --> 00:14:56.960 I drew the mirror garden a perfect twin set of rows, 306 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:00.480 balanced as a child scales, But through some private suit prestition, 307 00:15:00.639 --> 00:15:03.519 I never showed these sketches to anyone. One evening I 308 00:15:03.519 --> 00:15:05.519 met up with Aldo, an all friend from the city's 309 00:15:05.519 --> 00:15:08.440 mapping division, over Vermouth at the river side. We taught 310 00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:10.679 what maps could and kuldn't. Do you know what they 311 00:15:10.679 --> 00:15:14.080 say about territory and map, although joked raising his glass, 312 00:15:15.159 --> 00:15:17.159 neither ever tells you the whole story. I suppose you 313 00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:19.279 want to know which is a fault this time, he 314 00:15:19.360 --> 00:15:21.240 told me of a handful of European parks with their 315 00:15:21.279 --> 00:15:24.919 own quiet rearrangements. In Bruges, you have the hedge walls 316 00:15:24.919 --> 00:15:27.200 that once lined up perfectly with the cathedral spire, but 317 00:15:27.240 --> 00:15:29.960 a lightning strike in eighteen ninety shifted everything half a degree. 318 00:15:29.960 --> 00:15:32.799 For years, official records denied it. In Paris they kept 319 00:15:32.840 --> 00:15:35.159 all garden plants on vellum, but shifted to gravel edges 320 00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:37.519 after each revolution. So the ghost of the old walk 321 00:15:37.559 --> 00:15:40.480 still rises in photographs, though no frut will ever land there. 322 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:43.720 I recount of my findings, the density of records insisting 323 00:15:43.759 --> 00:15:46.879 on a symmetry. Here, that's the curious part, he replied. 324 00:15:47.559 --> 00:15:50.399 Usually it's the world that slit and the documentation lacks 325 00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:53.559 behind or denies anything happened in your garden. The material 326 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:56.000 and the historical are perfectly matched. Maybe your head is 327 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:59.000 playing tricks. Easy to say, but the city was always 328 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:01.559 obsessed with balance. To break that deliberately would have required 329 00:16:01.559 --> 00:16:05.240 a revolution. No one admits to Aldo shrugged, but ye 330 00:16:05.240 --> 00:16:08.399 know how Patents burrow Deep spent four decades staring at geometry, 331 00:16:08.440 --> 00:16:11.120 prining for balance, living in plots and angles. Your mind 332 00:16:11.159 --> 00:16:13.440 adapts when its rays, its strays in ways that re 333 00:16:13.559 --> 00:16:16.399 enact the old ideals, costal order made personal. It's not 334 00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:19.840 a flaw, it is a consequence. An unfamiliar map emerges 335 00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:22.639 as much from longing as from accuracy. What a nerved 336 00:16:22.679 --> 00:16:24.559 me was in the possibility of my own error. But 337 00:16:24.600 --> 00:16:26.879 the graceful way the city had recusted its histories around 338 00:16:26.919 --> 00:16:29.840 the slop sided accomplishment never grieve in the loss perfection. 339 00:16:30.519 --> 00:16:33.639 I left all delayed, tired but galvanized. Was I chasing 340 00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:35.480 a ghost no one else could see? Or with their 341 00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:38.679 forces cultural mnemonic, perhaps even physical, by which a city 342 00:16:38.679 --> 00:16:41.799 slowly and unconsciously decided to reclassify what counted as true. 343 00:16:42.360 --> 00:16:44.360 In a quiet of home, I laid out old photos 344 00:16:44.399 --> 00:16:46.519 and park guides, drawing lines and ears in search of 345 00:16:46.559 --> 00:16:49.679 the smallest contradiction. I found none. I could truly lean on, 346 00:16:49.799 --> 00:16:52.799 not enough to revive the symmetry I knew only slippery hints, 347 00:16:52.840 --> 00:16:55.320 the brief anomaly of a festival they printed askew orchaetic 348 00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:58.519 hiss idle boast in some news archive. The contradiction had 349 00:16:58.559 --> 00:17:01.919 ceased being just numerical. It had become a matter of perception, 350 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:04.359 an argument not just over what was, but over what 351 00:17:04.440 --> 00:17:07.119 had been allowed to survive in human memory. On a 352 00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:10.240 rainy afternoon, abandoning the archives and their stubborn gravities, I 353 00:17:10.279 --> 00:17:12.480 turned to the only place left for evidence not subject 354 00:17:12.519 --> 00:17:15.839 to the city's editing, my own past. I drove out 355 00:17:15.839 --> 00:17:18.119 to a storage yard south of the city walls, fumbling 356 00:17:18.119 --> 00:17:20.039 with a key to Unit one hundred four, where the 357 00:17:20.079 --> 00:17:22.480 relics of my park's authority career had sprawled in musty 358 00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:26.799 brown boxes and batter drafting tubes, faded labels Toupari nineteen 359 00:17:26.880 --> 00:17:29.799 ninety six. Axis planned two thousand seven to note Donardi 360 00:17:29.880 --> 00:17:32.920 a most precious to me. The slim stack of Sketchbrooks 361 00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:36.160 had carried summer after summer, each leaf a palimpsyst of seasons. 362 00:17:36.799 --> 00:17:39.839 I wiped Audust off the oldest, flipping to student error diagrams, 363 00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:42.640 there it was Klean's memory. Twelve views per role, each 364 00:17:42.680 --> 00:17:45.640 tree mirror to its opposite numbers, circled in blue grease pencil. 365 00:17:46.279 --> 00:17:49.240 I tracked season after season of notations, but replaced for 366 00:17:49.359 --> 00:17:51.920 the U right sided edward matched to left, the prune 367 00:17:51.920 --> 00:17:55.279 axis equally from center line balance on both flanks. Even 368 00:17:55.279 --> 00:17:58.279 the foiled tabs I kept for fertilizer docing reed axis 369 00:17:58.279 --> 00:18:02.119 mirror both twelve units less ambiguously. I found a yellowed 370 00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:04.960 letter from my former apprentice Paolo. Can we revisit the 371 00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:07.000 string we used for splitting the beds last spring? Did 372 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:09.200 we measure off both sides from the central and twelve 373 00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:12.759 and twelve as always? Or a my misremembering? Turning page 374 00:18:12.759 --> 00:18:15.920 after page, I watched my earlier self training apprentices die 375 00:18:16.039 --> 00:18:18.759 gramming the Umpro Contwinist of the US, using language that 376 00:18:18.799 --> 00:18:22.279 assumed took aughtterly for granted a mirrored arrangement. It's not 377 00:18:22.359 --> 00:18:24.319 nostalgia to say that every act of my working life 378 00:18:24.359 --> 00:18:26.640 stood as evidence for an equilibrium that now seemed to 379 00:18:26.640 --> 00:18:28.920 have only ever existed within the boundary of these ruckuss 380 00:18:28.960 --> 00:18:32.519 mine and pallows. Tought away unexamined, I returned home and 381 00:18:32.599 --> 00:18:34.440 dug out the book that had shaped both my formal 382 00:18:34.559 --> 00:18:36.680 education and my garden decisions. The rare treat Is by 383 00:18:36.759 --> 00:18:41.119 Luigi Badini, a Renaissance eccentric obsessed with absolute proportion. There 384 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:44.240 in Crack Italian was the ideal garden, pairs of green 385 00:18:44.559 --> 00:18:47.359 ratios in whole numbers every avenue perphectly. I could left 386 00:18:47.359 --> 00:18:49.799 and right, no tolerance for odd numbers except in the 387 00:18:49.839 --> 00:18:54.839 most minor symbolic features. Somehow, all the city's current versions, photos, pamphlets, 388 00:18:54.920 --> 00:18:57.440 plans matched the folly of the world outside my own arcaves. 389 00:18:58.160 --> 00:19:00.720 Only this thin private world clung to a vanished order 390 00:19:00.759 --> 00:19:03.920 of things. I sat heavily, letting the paradox settle on 391 00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:06.799 my lap like a well fed cat. Collective record had 392 00:19:06.799 --> 00:19:10.319 gone one way, my solitary traces another. I felt neither 393 00:19:10.319 --> 00:19:13.319 fear nor lost. Something stranger, more piercing, the sense of 394 00:19:13.359 --> 00:19:16.519 being the only person alive who remembered the garden symmetrical axis, 395 00:19:16.599 --> 00:19:18.960 who could lay hands on blueprints and letters that attested 396 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:22.640 to possibility. Nobody else would admit it ever existed. Later 397 00:19:22.759 --> 00:19:24.960 that week, I worked at the Courage to visit Pallo, 398 00:19:25.119 --> 00:19:28.720 my former apprentice. We'd lost touch after his early retirement. 399 00:19:28.720 --> 00:19:30.519 Brought on byon us, though it'd heard he lived these 400 00:19:30.599 --> 00:19:32.680 days in a small flat ab of the fishmongers, his 401 00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:36.039