Everybody’s jealous of birds

From Baubo in the kitchen (2)

Everybody’s jealous of birds.  Envy even the vulture’s soaring. Baubo watched a turkey vulture curl around a column of air.  The wind came round to Baubo’s nose and she sneezed.  “That bugger jumped out of my nose and sat on my hand like a frog.”  She couldn’t wait to tell Mrs. S. that she half expected it to talk.   She lectured herself that this is Pollen Nation. She sees those seeds as nomads. Wind travelers, all leaving their birthplaces for destinations unknown.  Unfortunately, some get stuffed up her nose. Sneezing’s just another kind of wind.  Fast out of the gate, she thought. The faster we go, the less we know. You can’t know many things at high speed, can’t know relationships. You can only know the kind of speed.  But the life around us, pfttt, gone.

~

     Baubo knew that at some point she would have to remind Mrs. Scattergood about being a tomboy because she was losing herself to the soup. What was a tomboy?  Mrs. Scattergood only heard people call her that when she was a kid but it just didn’t have any meaning that stuck.  She felt as if she lived between the worlds.  Never belonged but never not belonged too.  She was always familiar with those kinds of between times.  Just before her mother would call for supper, just when all the other kids went in.  Dusk.  This time and this space in time are at the border.  Now she thinks, “Come to my parcel, my patch, my cottage.” This time between the worlds, the place where women like me used to flourish was a half lit world. Time when sentiment broke free from the rush of hours.  Later she learned it was the time when queers could live, when owls hunt, when gods walk on the streets.  Full of possibilities but never certainties.  A busy intersection among the strings of realities.  While the world is spinning, the spinning goddesses are weaving fates.  That’s why it feels at times that you want to slow things down.  There are exercises to do this. There’s focus and the now of it.  You can stop, have a smoke.  Consider a life review.  Barry started reviewing his year, then his half year.  The last she heard from him, he said he was considering a three-month review.  Memories hold sweetness and the now has to compete for Mrs. Scattergood’s attention otherwise she’ll never make it home.  She wasn’t far from home but probably a tad or two further away from peace and the emotional comfort that comes from pleasant distractions.

            ~

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