Ghosts on a wall.

5 Pointz, October 2011

Times Square, August 2011

                                       Happy Endings

She was grateful for the shoes, but it wasn’t really her style.  She hadn’t chosen them for herself, after all; her family had thrust them upon her, but it wasn’t a version of herself that she recognised.  She thanked him for his attention, gently – but firmly – steered him towards the door, and went back inside.  She would make her own life, out of the cinders of the old.  No shoes – however pretty, or delicate – could substitute for standing on her own two feet.

****

He had always known that he wasn’t like the other boys.  He had hated everything about himself: his stiff limbs, and the gangly way that he moved.  He wanted to be other.  He wanted to remake himself.

And yet, when the time came, he stopped.   He looked at himself in the mirror, and finally, he saw.  He saw what Gepetto had always seen. He had no bonds of debt or servitude: he had no strings at all, really, to hold him down.  He moved of his own volition: neither hunger nor physical hurt could stop him. He would not die of old age. He would not die.  He was immortal.  He was a god.

****

She could never have predicted what her life had become.  But then, who ever could? She lived an unorthodox life, she knew. A commune of sorts; a fluid relationship of modest means.  They were her precious rocks, her stability, her joyous escape.

When a boy came knocking – not her usual type, but nice – she patted his cheek, and came home.  She didn’t need anyone else.  She didn’t need to be rescued.

Seven for luck, and she counted herself lucky. 

****

When she was told to give up her voice, she laughed out loud.  What kind of idiot would do that?  For all that she loved him, she was not an idiot.  She would come to him as herself, or not at all.

Sometimes, it felt as if she were deep underwater.  Sometimes, it felt as if she was out of her depth.  But she knew that it was fine.  It was just fine.  For she had a voice, and she intended to be heard.

****

Afterwards, it felt like waking up.  It was as if she had been in a deep slumber, far away from everyone she cared about.

At another time, in another life, she would have waited to be rescued.  Surely someone could and find her?   Outside, there were steep hills, thorns, years of overgrowth and neglect.  How could she possibly hope to escape?

But then again escape, when it came, was not what she expected.  No shining knight, no deus ex machine plucking her from her tower. 

She grew.

She grew taller, and stronger, and faster.  She grew, so that the thorns seemed smaller. She grew, so that she could stride over tangles that once loomed high above her.

And it turned out that her happy ending was entirely her own.

And it turned out that her happy ending was everything she had hoped it would be.

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                    While the Music Lasts

There is a man without memory, and a woman who loves him.

Somewhere, a line got broken.  In his mind, the pause before the drop: everything is suspended.  He cannot remember his name.  He cannot remember five minutes ago, or five hours, or five days.  But he remembers that he loves her.

When the storm arrived, everything was thrown overboard.  The lines tense and strain, and the boards shout in protest.  Take your tables and chairs, and throw them to the sky; a scattering of pots and pans, your treasure and your broken things.  In the fight to stay afloat, the mind discards everything.  Everything, but that which cannot be discarded.

Afterwards, he could remember two things (his flotsam and jetsam, his floatation device).  How to play music, and how to love her.

*****

We walked forever, barefoot over the sand.  The tide was out, and the mist lay heavy.  Daniel thought the sky was an envelope: low, and sliding downwards into a fold.  Everything was soft.  We walked in a dream.

In the distance, there were three figures, made black against Howth Head.  A sea of white thickened around us.  They moved by rotoscope: a flicker of movement.  Their voices were folded, too (like the sky, like the ground, like everything has been for the past two years).  We walked, until we met the water.  

Slide into the wet, and throw everything overboard.  Breathe.  Stay afloat.  Discard everything, but that which cannot be discarded.

Some things can never be left behind.  A shoulder in the light, and running to meet the stars.  Abie, angry down the phone; Abie, smiling.  Blood on a guitar, and spiders in the night.  Tearing pieces of silver, and learning how to sing.  My floatation devices, for when I forget.

My memories are who I am.

*****

I remember this beach, several years ago.  There is a photograph somewhere, I know.  I am wearing a long white skirt, and learning to juggle; my hair is long, too, the longest it had been.  Same beach, same now.

How much of it do I actually remember?  In my mind, there are pieces.  A kite; Lindsay, by the van, and the smell muffled charcoal.  Sand, and the taste of salt.

I am staring at myself from a distance.  White skirt, black hair, leaning back: a perfect composite, a perfect shot.

I remember it exactly as it is in the photograph.

*****

I nearly lost all of my data this week.  My laptop has been giving way, part by part: first the battery, then the logic board.  Now, the hard drive is wide-eyed and confused.  It tries to access a file, and freezes.  A corruption: it is partly there, and partly not.

The thought terrifies me.

I store myself in bytes and grainy pixels.  I cannot distinguish between my memories, and my photographs of my memories. 

They have become the same thing.

*****

I think of the man, lost in the present.  What happens, when he sees himself in a photograph?  Does something stir? (something deep, far beneath the waves, long discarded).  

Can he recognise himself?  What happens to the memory, when only the photograph remains?

*****

At Abie’s birthday party, Daniel played again.  It was almost too much to bear.  

I miss him.

I had forgotten how his face looks when he sings.

I worried, a little.  I worried that I had changed.  I worried that after two and a half years, I had lost too much of myself.  In trying to stay afloat, too much had been thrown overboard (my secret treasures, my broken things).

Music ties me to him, and to Abie, and to our past.

There are no photographs, not really.  A single shot in Ballina: our backs to the camera - Ruth, me, and Daniel.  All three of us sitting at the piano, playing together.

For once, the photograph is less vivid than the memory.

*****

Later, walking back, I am last to leave the water.  I have no camera.  I have only myself: bare skin, and a million grains of life.

The water is rippled glass.  I have to remember this. 

I will not remember this.

Closer to the car, Daniel is waiting.  I point below us: look!   There is a greeny-yellow twist on the sand.  The ancient Greek had a word for it, he said.  Neither yellow nor green, but some combination of the two: something that was not colour, not really.  It was that, Elaine.  The look of a bright, alive thing.

I loved him for that.

It does not matter if I remember.  It does not matter if I forget.  There was a now, and I was in it.  

I am greeny-yellow, and he is here, and that is enough.  

I am alive, while the music lasts.

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                     A Friend Indeed

A friend doesn’t let another friend be killed by a cylon.  Forget Charlie Brown, forget fortune cookies, forget magic eight balls or priests or your human philosophies.  I know the meaning of friendship.  No cylons.  Nyet.  Never.

Tonight, Kevin killed us all.  The filthy rotten robot-lover.  He rolled the dice, and with a casual flick of card, and push of some flimsy plastic playing pieces, he destroyed humanity.  Afterwards, we had bright pink French fancies. 

It was a fantastic night.

I can measure my friendships in games.  As a child, I learned old maid, snap, and countless games of card, played in front of the fire.  I remember sitting on the mat, plaiting the fringes, and oh-so-casually sliding unwanted cards underneath.  I know that Nellie saw me; I’m a rubbish liar now, and I have really no reason to believe that I was a master of deception at the age of seven.  But we understood each other, Nellie and I.  Nellie was in her eighties, and I was not yet in double figures, but that doesn’t matter in the slide and slap of card against card.

(As I write, a conversation behind me. ‘Which one is Shithead?  Oh! We called it Switch.  I beat my brother several times.  He grew angry, and threw a chair at me.’)

Falling in love was marked by my introduction to Diplomacy.  Diplomacy: the most horrendous, back-stabbing, heart-rending game in existence.  We huddled in bedrooms and bathrooms, hallways and doorways, making alliances and gleefully trampling over friendship in a giddy rise to the top.  Afterwards, my love and I lay in bed and giggled.  I knew his friends now, he said.   You only truly know a person after you’ve played them in Diplomacy.

(‘Game of Life – there’s a pointless waste of time.  It penalizes anyone who gets a college education.  But you can sell your children at the end.  That’s good.’)

In Ballina, we built labyrinths of lego.  The tiny brick people climbed fortresses and playgrounds, and exotic landscapes of impossible dimensions.  Late in the night, I sat at the table, drunk with happiness.  Daniel slapped playing cards to his forehead, and casually outbluffed us all.  I thought my chest would burst.

(Certain moves are remembered, for years after the fact.  David O’Brien, you delightful cad.  I still can’t believe you invaded Norway.)

My nights have been filled with plasticine and wine, nights of being pixies and dwarves and wily munchkins.  Andrew, Ruth and I, when we turned out all the lights, lit candles, and wrote winding stories in bit pieces.  Kevin, his face alight, wiping the board in a fit of carefree slaughter.  Rachel, assembling a combine harvester from bricks. The meekest of my friends become the most outright bastard over a game of board and card, and I love them for it.

Even the filthy rotten robot-lovers.  Especially them.

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                     Town and Country

My grandmother was a country woman.  If you were to add it up, she spent – by far – the majority of her life in towns and cities: in places of grey, and concrete, and brick. But somehow, that first decade counted the most.  It shaped her, as much as anyone is ever shaped.  It shaped her speech.  Long after she left her small village, she carried pieces of it with her, in the bends and turn of a word. Wi’hinsday.  Ennyhownall. Wexford wrapped itself around her, and I don’t think it ever quite let go.  I don’t think she wanted it to.

I loved the way she said my father’s name.  A-ha-nee.  Soft, and affectionate, and hers alone.

I was a city kid.  I read books about farms, and circuses, and desert islands.  I dreamed about living in hollowed-out trees, and wading across foaming waters.  I learned words like ‘babbling’ and ‘brook’, but didn’t know how to pronounce them, because I had only ever seen them written down.

In my mind, of course, I was an adventurer.  I knew all the tricks.  I knew to pick soft moss for bedding (with some heather or bracken for added bounce).  I knew to let my dog (always called Timmy) drink the spring water (from the aforementioned babbling brook), but not to drink it myself.  I knew to plant willow sticks, and train them as they grew.  I knew to not eat the pickled eggs from the jar.  I knew I wanted to have a boy’s name (like George).  I knew I did not want, under any circumstances, to wear a skirt, and to be a weak girl (like Anne).

I knew plenty about the countryside, after all.  I had read all about it.

As I grow older, my memories of my grandmother change.  I see us together: the small girl, so certain, and the older woman.  I would have told her all about it, of course.  My imagined fields, and my imagined green.  I wonder at the woman, and what she would have thought of this babbling brook of a child.  I wonder at what she left behind.

I have snippets, mostly.  A red house, with a tin roof.  Her mother, so young, and the sickness in the house.  Hard fields, and a harder life.  A boat to Liverpool; a teenager in the city; the glint of pint glasses, and the stale smell of beer.  The return.

She told us stories, too.  Somehow, I knew that there was a line, between her countryside, and mine.  The two coexisted, and tumbled over each other, into a confusion of half-symbols and part-truths.  Changelings, and healing of the skin; the laying of a curse, and the terrible dark yearning for land.  Timmy did not lap at a brook; he was a work-dog, and worked on the farm.  You ate potato, not crumpets, and you slept on a bed with your brothers and sisters, not on heather or bracken.  There were no pickled eggs.  For god’s sake, Elaine, who eats pickled eggs?

Some things remain.

Some things will always remain.

My hand in hers, and feel of her skin (so rough, so sure).   The way she walked down a road.  The swing of a bag of potatoes over her shoulder.  The skin of milk in the morning.  The way she said my name.

Sometimes, she would take us – my sister and I – to the pier.  We would walk to the very end, where the concrete gave way to rocks, and the rocks gave way to the glossy black. We would stand with her, her city children, at the very edge of the sea, our hair whipped about us, and our breath lost to the wind. I had one foot in the wild (the wet, the surge and fall beside me), and one foot in my city (the grey streets and bright dawns), and all of my heart beating in my chest.  Country or city, what did it matter?  We belonged to each other.  

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                            Envy

When I was five, I cut off all my doll’s hair.

I didn’t mean to.  Or rather, I didn’t fully understand.  My own hair was cut that day – with gentle reassurances from my Mam that it was fine, and that it would grow back.  ‘Hair grows!’ she said, gently stroking my (now mildly shorn) head.  ‘It’ll be long again in no time.’

Oddly, I don’t remember cutting the doll’s hair.  I know that I did so; but I don’t remember holding the scissors, or watching her blonde hair fall.  

I remember realising my mistake.

I cradled her, beside the wall in front of my grandmother’s house.  I was confused (surely, it would still grow back?), but with a growing, rumbling unease in my belly.  Somewhere, rising from within me, a feeling of grief.  Big feelings for a five-year-old.

She was my favourite after that.

I would comb her hair specially, to cover her choppy, ragged locks. I teased her hair clean in the bathroom sink, perfumed with special shampoo in a miniature plastic bottle.  She had her own yellow dress, and jewellery.  I made sure that the other dolls never made fun of her.  When it was playtime, I held her with special tenderness.

Did she ever look at the other dolls, and long for their hair?  I hoped not.  I hoped she lived a happy life.  I hoped she didn’t feel the absence.  I hoped she didn’t know.

It wasn’t her fault that she scared my Dad.  She fell from the shelf; of course she did.  How else could she have moved?  And it was pure coincidence that the lamp smashed.  Dad probably upended it when he jumped.

And if she kept Kathryn awake, who was to say why?  She could not close her eyes, not while she sat upright.  I’m sure she was glad to sleep in the hallway that night.  Especially when Kathryn came back out, hours later, to give her a blanket. 

She sits in my bedroom, still.  At night, she watches while I sleep.

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                              Wake Up

I dreamed I could breathe underwater.  The world was soft, and greeny still.  My hands traced a path, and the water pulsed.  I arced my body to the curve.  Afterwards, I walked barefoot in my empty flat, hopeful and separated, like a thread split at the tip.  I sent a message to Ruth – could I breathe underwater?  Was it true?  She told me to run a bath, and find out.

I dreamed myself into a darkened room.

I dreamed myself to the foot of my friend.  I sat at the bottom of six steps; he was at the top, and giant.  He showed me myself from several years ago.  Did I like the changes?

I dreamed that my life was a mixtape.  Alone, I could listen to the tapes made by others.  Voices crackled down the line.

I dreamed of bridges and borders, of a girl with bright red hair by the edge of the sea.  I dreamed of a circle of dancing women.  I dreamed of a face, blurred to the edges, but sharp at the centre.  It was gone as soon as I woke.

I dreamed of great loss, great love and great joy.  I crossed mountains and valleys, and stood at the edge of the world.  The child was a girl, and she stood on the sand.  Far away, I knew something important was coming.  I wept, and I knew that it was true, and it was right.

I dreamed myself to Emma Thompson.  We saved the world from evil muppets.

I dreamed of all of the lives, of eternities and time vibrating at the seams.   I dreamed of cutting his hair, and knowing why.  I dreamed of forgiveness.  I dreamed of warm pools of light, and the softness of a quiet day.  I dreamed.

Why would I want to wake up?  Dreaming is the best part of my day.

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                           Home

She climbed over hills and fences.  Bricks and boulders sped beneath her.

When she stumbled, she righted herself.  When she fell, she got up.

In the field, she found brightness.  She had pockets, and she kept her secrets there.  Her hand curved around a pebble, a feather and a whisper.  She looked at them, and smiled.

The creatures who followed her changed shape.  They were gingerbread, and they were breadcrumbs.  They were a wolf, a cloak, and an axe. Story beaded on their skin.  They smelled of glass and memory.

She forgot how many had found her.  She had trusted the baker.  He drew his knife on her.  She had feared the alchemist.  He had protected her.  Shadows gave her shelter.  Shadows cradled the dark.

She learned many things.  A blade may shatter, and a branch may crack.  Even the strong can falter.  When the cat seeks to lead you down the narrow, do not follow him.  Fire lies.  Follow the markings.  Fear birds which croak, but believe the sparrows.  Don’t open the middle door.  Turn left.  Try.

She turned the corner, but she was uncertain.  The gate creaked.  She did not remember that.  The pathway was overgrown with moss.  But the door was hers, and the knocker was heavy.  She raised it slowly, and let it fall.  Her heart knew the answer.  She was home.

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                 Overheard Conversations

Jane said that Madge said that he would need a warm coat.  But then again, Jane said, what would Madge know?  It’s not like she had ever been farther than the county line, and that was only to look at tractors with himself.  And sure wasn’t it warm enough in them places?  Not at all, said Tomás to Alan, and in any case, that was Jane all over.  She wouldn’t give you the steam off her… Well now, Alan told Tomás.  Jane has always been that way, and that’s the way of it.

Nora told Mary that she only heard of it at the post office.  Nora admitted that it was typical – yer one at the counter was great for all the news, and sure how else was she to know of what was on in town, and her with her back broken on her?  She was glad of it, Mary admitted to Tomás later.  She didn’t want to be the one to tell her, and Nora should know.  Still, Tomás said to Mary, Nora will miss him all the same.  He was the only one who remembered her.

Mary said to Jane that they should have a do, some kind of party, or whatever they call it.  She must be half-cut, Jane said, wasn’t the pub good enough for a send-off?   Still enough, that was Mary all over, Madge said, and her with four kids about her.  Your wife is the very heart of kindness, she told Alan later.  But then again, she must have heard it from himself, when she was up the other night?  She’ll be lost without him.  Tomás said that Madge was mortified when she thought of it.  I heard the words coming out of me, Madge said, and I couldn’t stop them, not a bit.

Tomás said that he was the best help he’d ever had about the place, and that was the end of it.  He wouldn’t hear of anything else, he said, and they could take their ill words, and away with them.  Sure didn’t every man like a bit of drink, and what of it?   And wasn’t he friendly to everyone, and not just to Mary?  Every door in the parish was open, and a bit of neighbourliness was a good thing, not a bad.  The break will do him the world of good, Tomás said to Nora.  You don’t mind them, and their silly stories.

Alan didn’t say much of anything at all.

Mary said to noone that she went to the corner.  She didn’t tell anyone that she stood, back to the sun, and looked over at his house, the night before he left.  She didn’t say goodbye.  She didn’t say anything to anyone.  She heard the sounds from up the town, and the sounds of the road in the distance, and then went back inside, and closed the door behind her.

*****

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

Central Park in the Fall.

                                      Out With the Old

1. In the Doge’s palace in Venice, there is a portrait in black.  Once, it was a painting of a man: a life in two dimensions.  Sometimes, I think of what lies beneath the black: the colour around the chin, the fold of cloth on his belly.   But I don’t know this.   I have no idea what he looked like.  After he died, they took thick black paint, and with swift strokes, they erased him.

He was accused of being a traitor.  His memory, it was said, must be expunged, deleted.  He never was.  He never would be.  His fate was to have no fate at all: no end for his beginning, for he was never begun.

They say your body is a map of your life.  I can see this: my beginnings, my tapering towards an end.  My hands were always deeply lined, a fortune teller’s delight: deep ravines, separating my palm into long sheltered valleys and slight tributaries.  All rivers flow to the sea, and all of my lines curve toward an end.

What of his end, the man beneath the black?  What of his beginning?  His hands, lined with his future; his body, lined with his life: his portrait a map and coordinates. In the crack and split of hardened oil paint, there was a person – at least at one point in time.  Here I am.  Here I was.  X marks the spot.

What is left, when even the map is gone?

*****

2.  When I was about ten years old, my friend Sarah taught me a new word.

I was the new girl.  Or, at least, I had been.  I was a shock of dark hair and kneesocks, and I pronounced things the wrong way.  Sarah didn’t care.  Or rather, Sarah cared about other things: about Norse myths, and Malory Towers, and words.   She was the first person in our class to read all of the Malory Towers books; later, she was the first person in our class to read all of Shakespeare, too.  In all honesty, I don’t know which impressed me more.

We would both read under our tables during class.   At home, there were new babies, and sharp cries during the night; I learned to fall into a book, and not be budged by any sound.  Sarah knew better.  Sarah knew how to keep one ear to the teacher, and what was happening around her, while striding through faraway landscapes in the pages under her desk.  I would emerge, blinking off confusion, to a teacher equally exasperated and bemused; my reality overcame everything else.  Sarah never got lost.  Sarah knew how to accept multiple realities, multiple threads.   One thing doesn’t overcome the rest, she said.  You just have to learn to listen.

That day, years later, I remember feeling very hot.  It was summer, and our uniforms were scratchy.  We had to form teams, I think.  My memory is a blotch of paint: small details, edging out from under the thick layers of black.  I remember the schoolyard.  Oddly, I remember the green of the grass: the blades completely distinct.  But I cannot remember their faces.

I remember Sarah’s face.

We couldn’t work together.  Temper and heat: listen to me! Stop!  I was so angry, yanking the grass – I just wanted to do the work, but noone would listen.  Why wouldn’t they listen?

And then there was Sarah.

I remember her face.  She scooped up the hurt feelings, and ironed them out – deftly, sincerely, completely at ease.  One by one, she untangled the group, and made us into something that made sense.  One thing doesn’t overcome the rest, she said.  You just have to learn to listen.

And I remember looking at her face, and she looked so beautiful, and so sure, and so incredibly compassionate, and it hit me like pure clarity – a word I knew from books, but hadn’t seen before.  Oh, I thought.  This is diplomacy.  Sarah knows how to be diplomatic – which, in action, is really another word for kind.  And I felt so proud, and felt so much love for her, that I thought I would burst.

*****

3.  There is no such thing as a perfectly accurate map.   There is a story, somewhere, about the attempt.   It is a gorgeous parody – Borges stridently prodding at the pedants.  Make your map, he cries.  Make it as full and accurate as is possible.  And watch while it swamps everything you’re trying to portray.

If I try to tell you everything, I tell you nothing.

But still! The lines betray me.  Say more.  Say it better.

We think we can draw the entire coastline of Ireland, but we can’t.   A straight curve is, in fact, an intricate dip of jagged lines; the coastline is infinitely more complex than we can measure.  Imagine the line; imagine the swoop – down, down, down, into an ever-more-beautiful breakage.  There, the cliff; there, the path; now stone and pebble and crumb. Every time we get closer, there is yet more to draw.

And oh! the beauty of that!  Because I cannot tell you about Sarah, not really.  My story is only a part – my pebble, my crumb.  Any true map of her would need to be at least as infinite as the person herself, and – honestly, I can’t do that.  I can tell stories, my maps.  My gentle approximations of the great complexity of a single person. 

And so my friends become stories, even while I know that they add up to so much more.  Going back home for rashers; the taste of mint tea and saltwater; late nights in the dark.  My whiskey and sand, my soft guitar, my perfect number; homemade pastaand marmite.  

I carve my life from stories, and my friends are my maps, my coordinates.

*****

4.  So what, then, of lost maps?  What of the threat of the black, of what is lost and cannot be returned?   There is a word in Portuguese – suadade – a word that is utterly untranslatable.  It is something of sadness, something of nostalgia: a yearning for what is lost, or maybe for something that has never been, and never could have been.

I think of the man beneath the black, and wonder.

*****

5. Recently, I have been trying to work without a map.  If I’m honest, I’m admit it.  I’m lost.   Isn’t that what it means to not have a clear route back, a solid navigation?

I sat up late with Sarah, and told her how lost I feel.

And she listened.  There is more than one truth here, she said.  Multiple realities, multiple threads.  Don’t let one thing overcome the rest.

****

6.  When they changed the maps of Africa, much was lost.  For hundreds of years, people operated with inaccurate charts: maps borne of hearsay, of the words of merchants and travelers, and those who drew from memory.  The maps weren’t accurate, but they worked (multiple realities, multiple threads: don’t let one thing overcome the rest).  

The old maps told of when there would be water ahead; of when to turn towards the west, and try to find a village; of mountains and forest and dangers underfoot.

The old maps were wrong, and useful.  

The new maps were true, and utterly without use.

Well: that’s not entirely fair.  They were not useless; just restricted.  There was a paradigm shift: maps should not be based on hearsay and common advice any more.  There should be cartographers, they cried, accuracy and science and proper measurements based on exact equipment.  Start again.  Measure.  Make sure.

And, in time, the maps were of great use.  In time, the maps plotted the interior of Africa: mile by mile, inch by painful inch.  The new maps were accurate, as far as maps can be accurate.  The new maps measured truly.  The new maps were better.

But in the gap between old and new, much was lost.   Where previously, the charts had drawn great heaps of information into the interior, based on story and hard-earned wisdom, there was now simply a blank.  Nothing could be admitted onto a map that was not scientifically verified.  In time, the maps recovered – and were improved.  But the transition was painful.

Out with the old, and in the new.  But in the line between old and new, a blank.  Thick layers of black paint, and a map disappeared.  It was never there; it had never been.  From far away, the thin susseration of suadade.

****

7.  I know I’ll find my way again.  I know this is a transition I have to make.  New maps are good; new maps and fresh lands, pebbles and stones and adventures anew. 

I know this.  But in the shift from old to new, I’m faced with a good few blanks, where there were none before.

I hold onto the coordinates: my north and west, my east and south.  My cardinal points.  Love, honesty; the extraordinary, undrawable beauty of my friends.  So if I lose track, hold on.  If I’m a terribly numpty, and seem distracted, I’m sorry.  Thank you, for knowing me so well, when I’ve forgotten myself.  Thank you for giving me a route back to myself.  And I’ll draw this map, and keep drawing it, as truly and as kindly and as deeply as I know how.

*****
With thanks to Calsidyrose.

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.

                                             A Good Lie

Minik was a good boy, and loved his father.  When the ships came, he made his decision. 

He yearned for the yawning abyss; for the crack of timbers, and the shifting of his world on new waters.  Above all, he wanted to see.  At dusk, Minik stood on the shore and reached his hand towards the line: a join of light.  Each day, it leaked with the possibility of tomorrow.  It was a worn seam, and Minik meaned to touch it.  

What would he see, when they sailed past the line of tomorrow?

He did not know, then, that they would all die. 

When they arrived at New York, it was still warm.  Warmer than home, yes, but warmth was known to him.  Even in the snows, there were things that melted, and times when the earth yielded.  He knew the softening of spring, and the glow of fire.   

But the warmth here was different.  It was closer.  Minik struggled to shape it, to give it form in his mouth.   It jostled against him: the hock and spit of the sailor, the sour crawing of the birds.  He stood next to his father, banking against the swell of the ship.  Their future rolled towards them.

At first, it was not so bad.  They had new friends, and slept together in a room beneath a tower.  New York was full of towers, of things that clawed towards the sky. And Minik could see.  He could see a new wave, the push and power of crowds.  He could see his future.  The duskline was different here.  It was broken – a halting staccatto, nudged between the verticle lines of buildings. What need for cracks in the sky, in a city already full of seams?  The future leaked from every corner and crack and edge.  The future was already here.

Minik was the first to see the sickness.

It came for them one by one.  It crept into their blankets, and closed around them.   Nightime became a ragged symphony: the hock and spit of a rattled cough, the sourness of his father’s breath.   It fell upon them, rancid and close.  Everything was closer here.

When his father died, Minik was very still.  He listened to the silence.  The silence listened back.

Minik attended to the rituals of death. He was the last left, the only one who knew how.  He took his father’s body, and by the quiet gloaming of lantern-light, sent him safely through rites only he could give.  Minik was a good boy.  Minik loved his father.

When they told him the truth, Minik became very still again.  It was a good lie, they said.  They had given him a bundle to bury – cloth, they thought, or was it a weight of stones?  His father’s body was needed; so were the bodies of his friends. They were needed for science.  They were the only samples they had.  Their bones were safe, with the bones of the other primitive peoples.   They were needed.

Afterwards, Minik stood in the dusk, and watched the city through fading light.  As he turned, he felt the closeness again, and it seemed too much, like too much light and darkness all at once, melting in a queer pitch in his belly.  It leaked, it leaked, and it leaked.  It leaked through the glinting line of a window, and the crude join of concrete.  It leaked through the join in the sky, yes, but it leaked everywhere else, too: through metal and cloth, through the cracked pavement and the cracked people.  It leaked, and for the first time, Minik felt it leak through him: all of life, and all of death.  He understood, now.  Minik stood in the growing throb of night, and he felt himself seep away, through crack and pavement and seam of sky, until he was sure there would be nothing of him left.

*****
With thanks to The Memory Palace.

Photograph from Spring Street Subway Station, NYC: detail from ‘New York Subway Station’ by Edith Kramer (1994).

This post was originally contributed to The Great Cake Experiment.