old farts hang like mists

from smelling the snow (3)

old farts hang like mists deep in the bowels of the library stacks

 

Mrs. Scattergood had been working on a story called Telltale.  It was about Sarah and how her niece Leah journeyed toward her. When she could Mrs. Scattergood would get it down on paper. But she’d always seen it as a movie.  Telltale was a story about community. A telltale is an indicator but so far her direction was off on its own.  The aunt’s temperament was what Mrs. Scattergood would have had be her own.  The aunt kept an almanac of the self rather than a journal.  It was calm and reasoned. So different from the way Mrs. Scattergood felt. 

~

     Mrs. Scattergood would have Sarah write in her journal what she needed to feel, “Few people understand the source of wisdom.  It manifests in our lives without predictability and often without predicate.  Much like whimsy.  People like to think that wisdom reaches down to our depths and plunges through the layers of our history into the streams of our soul.  There where the stories and symbols of our peoples swirl like logs in white water, there we swim with wisdom or whimsy to hold onto.  Either one can take us on our way home.” Whimsy showed her the divine good humor in using the seasons, with an eclipse and solstice thrown in for good measure, to make entries in her journal. She was creating an almanac of herself.  Seasons could be annotated, segmented and delineated as moods or notions would strike her.  In this, she came to realize, was something like wisdom, and something that allowed for the freewheeling turns of whimsy.  A combination she was becoming fond of, thinking of it as she did, as if it held a proper balance between two worlds she'd like to blend so that she could set foot on its terra firma one day.

~

     Whimsy was the furthest thing from Mrs. Scattergood that day.  But Baubo was near to make up for that. 

~

     Baubo’s almanac of herself noted how old farts hang like mists deep in the bowels of the library stacks. She thought about books and history in a single stream.  They were a stiff pageant of thoughts with medieval waxing and wanings. Passing thoughts were a sideshow with memories. Runes were like Chiclets.  Messages were sweet but soon lost their interest. She was there to be in relationship and the shifting, micro movements of emotions were ripples in her consciousness.  She lived for those in need where a hale hearty and a ha-ha could pinch them back to life.

~

     Mrs. Scattergood’s mind was roaming through one dark thought after another. Up comes this woman at work who said to her a few days after 9/11, “I want blood.” This was someone who couldn’t find enough time or energy to do all the shopping she wanted. Hardly has space left in her house for another purchase. She wanted blood.  Where was she going to put it?  “Ha!” her sister Claire said to that story. But they both knew with what frightening ease people could toss out “Nuke ‘em all.” 

~

     Nymby nimbus clouds raining down on all of us. So much about forgiveness is forgetting. Forget the half-life and live now with the shining luminescence of destruction. But don't call it that. Patches of dirt and neat little hedgerows and the only thing wild coming out of England is Monty Python.  ‘Really’ she thought, ‘what do I know of wildness? Not a damn thing except a conviction it must exist. It isn't just the peril of loss of wonder and hair raised on the back of my neck that I imagine will die with this endangered world. It is the death of our souls.’

~

      Some of us are alive by misfortune and lack of planning. To be born in a time, as Neruda wrote, “when the gods are all dead.” But the lack of planning on her mother's part was the worst of it, she once thought. No money and all this hope extinguished by a nine-to-five job.  At that time, not enough money to burn a hole in her pocket and not enough spirit to say, “Screw it, I’ll find another way.”  Such was her lot in life then. Now she was in hedges and garden patches and on the good days she found wildness in the neon of nasturtiums and the comfort of baked root vegetables. 

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf

the beneficiary of disappointments

the beneficiary of disappointments

from smelling the snow (3)

Yesterday, when Baubo first showed up in the kitchen, Mrs. Scattergood hardly knew how to behave. How do you accept someone like Baubo into your world anyway?  There’s no instruction book and as it stands now, nobody, including Barry would have accused Mrs. Scattergood of ever being patient enough to read instructions first. Baubo knew this about her too.  She put her hand on Mrs. Scattergood’s shoulder and said, “You didn’t need this. But it’s going to be all right.” Mrs. Scattergood looked around at her as if she were nuts. Barry was gone and she didn’t know how she’d find gravity again.  Baubo said, “I promise you, I will never say ‘trust that this happened for a good reason.’ ‘That was surely a good thing,’ Mrs. Scattergood thought. Cause otherwise, goddess, phantom nomad or whatever, she would have kicked her butt. 

~

     We have all been the beneficiary of disappointments. Regretting that words spoken aren’t healing or balm after rushing to be with someone that you thought could ease your pain. The disappointment is the same painful reality is with you. Grief is an odd animal really. It is there and squarely in place. A guardian against you ever feeling connected.  Nobody will tell you that it will always be there. But nobody can tell you when it will leave. 

~

     If we could peek into Mrs. Scattergood’s journal we might see something like this: “I used to long for summer the way I longed for a lover. My life was so much simpler then.  Lost as I was. Not having any idea what the world was or how to navigate through it. Just as you’d imagine, no map, the territory unexplained by friends and family.  Fifty years later, I’m okay. We all survive if we survive. But I could not tell you where I’ve been.  No map, ya see.  Barry was my ear for all that others couldn’t hear.  This leaves me alone with all my secrets. That is startlingly lonely. I never thought I’d be so lonely cause I enjoy the quiet, you know. But the birds chirping goodnight, the fog horn going off in the distance are just reminders that time keeps passing.  Another day is going to emerge out of all of this. Just you watch. I’m almost certain. And Barry won’t be here.  I’ll just go on though. I know. I know the drill too. You move through the day. Sometimes, you just move through the day or like those photons from outer space, the day moves through you. What are we all?   Ghosts in the making?  Hollow. So easy to penetrate. So long my friend. You made that trip you know I always feared.”

~

     “Here I am now, wondering, do I start with the life plans?  What cycle would I choose? I’m thinking just like Barry; a year seems too long. Too many things can change. I’m too old and too impatient for a year-long review.  But a half-year life review? Let’s see then. Six months from now I’d like to be free of pain. But right now I know that I cannot let go of this sadness. What a grip. Barry, what a grip you have man. You know Bar, I’d tell anyone who would listen that you were my CB radio.  Don’t ask me what the hell that means cause I really don’t know. I think lost as I was amidst the daffodils and life structures that those with children had, those people with exes and new wives and grandchildren, you know, that everyday kind of belonging that people have that have their families in tact or in pieces, lost as I was I wasn’t so without you. This culture has been a wiz at accepting those families in any way shape or form they come in. But somehow Bar, I still manage to feel as if I don’t belong to those circles within circles. Just like the beer company or the Olympic rings. Somehow I’m spinning through a different life cycle and you know what I just realized, six months is way too long to leave myself open for a review that might reveal I was on the wrong damn path again.”

~

     “I couldn’t handle it. I think the thing is, if you think about it like this, even my old car, if it’s worth it to get an oil change every 3,000 miles or every three months, then man, I’m going to do a life review at least that often. I won’t ask what to do with the old oil.  Piss it down the toilet. Shit.  Okay, so here I am ready to roll on a three-month review. But just now, well, I realized I can’t look back on these past three months Bar.  I’m going to wait another three and then I’ll look back. I could see doing that.  Maybe you’ll get it, well, maybe I’ll get it that I’ll have to start talking to someone. You’re not alone if someone knows your struggles or your passions, no matter how foolish, no matter how many regrets. You’re not alone if someone knows your dreams too. That’s the kind of coupling I can dig almost all the time. Partnering that way. You bastard.  You were supposed to be my back up.” 

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf

no separation, no emptiness

from smelling the snow (3)

  Sometimes she channeled the distant love, what she called the DL blues. It was the way of no limits. It was seamless.  Why was it different from death?  Was it life in the fullest?  Was it about the entire being invested in the moment? Mrs. Scattergood was lost in the rapture of the past but times merged between being a lover and being a child in Newark. Growing up, she felt, like many children, that the world started where she was. ‘She denies me. She turns from me. She ignores me.” Kore. The goddess's own idol. The sacred one.  She runs to the store with a dollar bunched in her hand. Candy.  She wants candy.  What is better than that straight shot to your brain?  The sweet goodness of serotonin and the chocolate route? The old routes where we trade our identity for a purple dye. It was the murex sea snail of Phoenicia, it was the colors of the markets, the avocados, the tomatoes, the brine of olives. This was the way to those places faster than any other. It wasn't about speed really. It was about the surety of the steps. The way was there before the road. You’re taken there on the sweet carpet of air and sugar. Chocolate.  DL was the chocolate goddess. She was all the way there and bringing you with her.  It was that mutuality, that combining; that good.  It was not ever knowing about separation or anxious anticipation or emptiness. 

~

     Oh, but Mrs. Scattergood lost that trail and was aware of her surroundings. It wasn’t the soft apricot colors of her bedroom walls; or the blind’s peaceful shadows. What would it be like to not ever know about emptiness?  She couldn’t imagine. How can you imagine the universe beginning with a bang or coming from a void or a vacuum?  There are limits. 

~

     She recalled bending her head to follow the trail led by the nape of her lover’s neck. She couldn't resist. She went down to the finest hairs till they disappeared into the smooth, worn fabric of her cotton gown which moved toward the ground like a tablecloth that was just tossed on and was settling round the corners. That was where Mrs. Scattergood’s journey stopped because suddenly she was lost. Her memory went from a warm summer light to the cool and damp of the woods. She didn’t hear shorebirds or, for that matter, bird calls of any sort. Then she realized she was awake and home in bed with the shadows.  It must have been the time between when it was just right for birds to quiet.  Not pulled by hunger.  Not teased out of the holly tree by the sun, not called by another. She was in that time when birds are quiet and the trees are a hammock for the wind.  

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf