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