Tag Archives: transitions

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Fieldwork

She found the small black marbles again, not that she’d lost them of course. They lived, making occasional ripples, in a secret jar she kept away from most people.

It was time to open the jar. She placed them on the floor in front of her but couldn’t decide what material would constitute the floor. Was it concrete, was it slate? Most likely stone and she sat there for an indeterminate amount of time rolling the marbles around her palm.

Despite their smallness they were heavy, dense, maybe made of osmium, some were tungsten, some were onyx but most hurt her hand with their insistent mass.

She studied them, placed them on the glass sheet in front of her and leaned over. If she was quiet and still she could almost make out her reflection, some distortion, something hinted at, a ripple in time then dispersed. 

The marbles were moved by her hands, arranged in rows though she knew they wouldn’t stay. 

Sometimes they clattered into each other and ricocheted off at sharp angles feeling the force of the ones with which they’d collided.

She tried again. Lining them up in order of size, then in mass. And if they stayed in a pattern she’d be fine. She noted there was no weather, no movement of air, just the tiny black spheres feeling no friction, moving of their own accord on the dark glass in front of her.

She wondered if they had any sense of their movement and if they did, would they care? She tried to imagine how they might feel, rotating on their planes and never understanding the formula of their volume. Why would they roll with no awareness of their form, how could they just be marbles, insentient, presenting themselves to her over and over and over again.

And again.

Discrete excitations, forming patterns in her field. Around and around, crashing and clashing, firing into each other as if to say, 

‘Look at us, watch us,’ and although she didn’t want to order them on the glass and although she knew they’d refuse her actions, that they’d make their own way, she did try. 

She tried to understand them, to control them. 

She wanted to make sense of them all if she could.

Like she did, like she does, like she will try again. 

Black marbles in her hands, heavy, chaotic, despite her attempts. Around and around again. She kneeled before them, helpless, committed to their action, trying.

On repeat, kneeling down in her layers of grey skirts, soft, bundled up against the hard coldness of the stone. Her skirts, in contrast to tiny dense black marbles every time. Vibrations in a field, patterns connected through space and time. 

And she played with marbles again; it was some kind of mid February fluctuation.

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Maverick

The sound of Tom Cruise in my living room when I called down from the top of the stairs. He flew planes while I held my tummy. (13)

Helen, the military nurse, compared notes with me on back injuries. I watched ceilings unable to move. 36 hours awake and the third ceiling came into view. (14)

The nurse with short hair or maybe a pony tail brought the rubber mask. While she explored, my laugh fractured around the room, spiralling over my head. 

How funny that today I spoke with someone about roller skating as a child, fearless freedom of movement unlike this moment when I couldn’t even walk. (15)

The clock up on the left, the little window to the right, the beige walls. The toilet door at the end of the bed about 5 miles away. And the toilet itself, so low down, too low down, as though it existed on a plane outside my reality, designed for some other species who could bend, who could bear weight, who could stand unsupported. I leaned up the wall near the bathroom window. The frosted glass obscured everything, just like the pain. (16)

I often wonder about Delize, her head round the door at 2am, her arm around my body, her hand holding mine. 

Today’s slab of cloud fits the heaviness of then. Spaced out, waiting, needing. One day I’ll sleep again. Surgeons don’t work on Sundays, they told me. (17)

{Poured tea over myself at 9pm. Diazapam took me out, eased me into tomorrow.}

Five hours of drugged up sleep and feeling heroic,  they wheeled me into a brand new room. It seemed bigger than it was. Johnny V messed about, washed his hands by the sink. New faces, new machines, a different clock to stare at.

It would be a long day, they advised me. They didn’t lie.

The woman with no face got me onto my side  and after the ice cube test I faded back into the room and watched the patterns of pain, without the feelings. 

Hours bled around nameless hands till teatime.

A radio to my right.

6pm became 8pm, 8pm became 8:20. At 8:30 with the theatre calling, the kind one apologised to me to the sound of my tears.

A grey ceiling rolled in, or was it white, green fabric everywhere, steel and tinkering. Curtained off from myself while they burrowed, until they showed me, until they lifted him up and out in pink and red perfection.  Lilies bloomed where my abdomen used to be. 

The gash of joy, the bloodied relief of our out-breath. The scent of him, the taste of his skin. (18)

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Womb Shaped

If you study the shellac on your nails and lose yourself in its luminous magical lights, in the rainbow shot silver sparkle, it will take you back. 

Take you back to just before, in the hours, in the safety, in the warmth before the sense of separation came.

And there in the shimmerings is your father, walking home in the dark, your mother in the care of the midwives and the waiting. And he slept but she didn’t and later, hours later when the phone rang in the early light, the timeless spaces on your nails flash you to his side, to him sat on the edge of the bed with your grandparents who’d come to help. 

And his words spilled out in the chill January morning, we’ve got a little girl and they cried.

They hugged and they cried and your father fought his legs into his trousers and blurred across pavements to your mother’s side. She slept and you slept although you didn’t know it.

And the sparkles on your fingertips now are the snowflaked halos around the street lamps then and the warmth of the first cup of tea when your mother woke up. And your father said she was a king to how she was before, rested yet weak, strong in the release of primal blood. 

And the lights shine off your nails like sparks of magic bringing hope, like your eyes opening in the dark, your tiny newborn body still curled and warm, womb shaped.

Your father looked at the rows of incubators, directed towards yours. They all look the same, his tired voice drifting up, his breath on glass in the dim light. But yours was the face he came to know, yours was the life that filled up theirs.

Decades ago, and the shellac on your nails now seems to dance and sing, liberated, joyful like their arms, arms that held you tight, fluttering and glistening, arms that set you free. 

The brightness of your snowflakes, the moonlight in your eyes. And if you look into the shellac of your nails now you see and feel the wintering, the gratitude of the place and time where you came in.

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Gifts

All I really need is the approaching night turning to undried ink in my rain. I need the splinters of headlights, tail lights dancing in the puddles and nestling down in red fleece I’ll rush. I won’t be long. 

And I’m not. 

And next door to the pharmacy I blur around under fluorescence for a while, conscious of my pocket once again. It rubs up against my thigh, reminding me and later all I really need are the wooden stairs, the rustling and even later still, all I really need is to sit quiet and sparkle.

And I did and I do and I will.

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Lemon & Honey Song

In my warm mug of hot lemon and honey, the specks of cinnamon and cayenne pepper float about, they collide with the chunk of ginger and bounce off to the sides. I watch them try to make sense of the swirling forces, giving themselves up to the motion and the heat. 

I think about the woman I brushed past at the hospital, the hug I couldn’t give her despite her need and my mind spins to the other woman who budged up so I could sit down, who changed seats to make room for me at the funeral directors and she held on tightly to her mug, the tea they’d made for her, the heat pushing through the ceramic, trying to reach her fingertips, trying to tell her she’ll be ok.

I hold my mug now, I can feel the pressure where its smoothness meets mine. I watch myself watching it, feeling it. 

We lock eyes, the woman on the end of their sofa, and both take a deep breath together. I pass her a weak smile and say ‘out breath’ out loud and we nod, we understand. I’ll never see her again.

I wonder if she’s thinking of me this morning. Or if the woman in the hospital remembers rushing past me, remembers the paleness of my face and how my eyes caught hers for a split second.

I wonder what these women are doing now and if they’re sitting quiet in the still sparkle of the lounge, if they’re holding their mug close to them, watching the moments spin.

I’d better shower, better seep into the day, note the sensations as they move through me and feel the connections I can’t see.

The heat disperses into the morning, the kick of ginger wakes me. 

I am here.

This is now.

I drink up and go round again.

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Bamboo – 3rd

I made my bed yesterday. I’ll make it again today. I’ll fold the weight of white bamboo sheets across the bottom of the bed and smooth it out. I need to smooth things out. And I wonder about the woman who’s preparing for the service on Tuesday.

I’ve decided it’s a woman, though it might be a man, might be both, might be many I suppose. But for my purpose, she’s a woman and I imagine she makes her bed too, though maybe it’s a shared bed and someone else has made it today. But I won’t go there, not right now.

Is she counting days like me and will the sound of fireworks forever tie her to the day she’s yet to have? Will she, like me, years from now watch the fizz and sparkle in the sky? Will she jump a little from the bangs and will she hold the scattered colours on her retina, aching not to let them go but then they fade?

I don’t know her but I want to hold her close, want to feel her warmth, the blood charging round her veins. I want to hold her tight as she sobs it out into my arms and maybe in a week from now when it’s my turn, then maybe she’ll come round here and do the same for me?

I should make my bed. I wonder if the woman who’ll be at the service on the 5th is up? I wonder if she slept ok, or if she had nightmares again? 

I’ll think of her on the 6th of course in that chasm on the other side. She’ll still makes her bed, I’m sure. Well, you have to don’t you?

I think about this woman I don’t know, someone else going through the same. Makes me feel less alone, you know?

Better make the bed. I like the feel of bamboo sheets, I like the way they calm me.

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Time Dilation #5

I suppose it was me and the clock, me and the concerned faces, me breathing and counting and getting nowhere. I suppose I don’t like being told that I can’t do something, so I try even harder for a while. A sense that to give up would be to fail.

Now I can feel it’s me talking from exhaustion (much like this morning, in this world now.) A sense of the pressure I put on myself, but then as now, sooner or later, I gave in, gave myself up to it all. 

I remember the nurse or maybe he was a consultant? (It wasn’t Johnny V, we never saw him again, with his slicked back black hair and pristine striped shirt) but someone apologised to me and my determination broke free from my eyes, rolled in spheres down my hot flushed cheeks. 

I guess the rest of the evening was spent in the theatre, but no aisle seat for me that time. I was centre stage, I was the whole ensemble, I was the diva under their lights and clamps and curtains. My abdomen sang wide, glorious and while they hurried, tinkered and sewed the gash, I loved him in my bloodied arms. 

Home.

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Time Dilation #4

I seem stuck, a little laden down, a little numb. And while today’s radiator warms my back to the sound of clocks and snoring, my younger hands lose their grip and tea comes tumbling, scalding, soaking into their hospital robe and I crumple.

Soon, cursor flashing, clock ticking. Tomorrow, younger, stronger.

Still stuck.

Worried the words will find me in a heap on their sterile floor but I keep going, like then, like now. Keep going and I slept half on diazepam, half on exhaustion like a dribbling drunk in their faux leather chair.

With prayer around me. 

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Time Dilation #1

Morning started in the thin pink ethnic t-shirt that took me under the tree I’ll pass by later. I’m sure the bole of it remembers me, it showed me how to bend into the nature. I said I’d do whatever it takes and I did.

Now I come to think of it, it was the pale green embroidered t-shirt, did I change in the morning, now I’m not sure? Either way trees came and went. They wheeled me inside.

Later. Round about now a new ceiling watched me sleep despite the spasms.

Pillows subsumed me.

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Power Pack

You know when you can hear your mother inside you saying that you have to rest? But you know and she knows that you can’t, not now. Well, not just yet.

And your mother’s face is around you with that look, that understanding that you can’t stop. And she swallows hard, keeps it all in, and like her, you do just the same.

And she sits alongside you in the silent dawning kitchen, she makes the tea for you while you let yourself feel feelings for a while.

She wears that old green dressing gown that kept her warm and she shuffles with her life-lived feet. She knows. And under her dressing gown, her body that made you, is reminding you that you can do this, that you have the strength.

You lean into the worktop, the oak takes your weight. It’s quiet in here, apart from your sniffing and the soft sounds of your mother busying herself around you. 

She walks alongside you keeping you up.

She passes the tea cup to you. She knows everything you feel.

You drink up, wipe your eyes.

Do it all again, she whispers.

You can stop soon. just not today. Your mother on the inside, charging you up. again.