from
mosaic (4) by freda karpf
Baubo recognized this
state as well. She once slept on the ground not realizing that the pods stored
for the spring were next to her. The pods started cracking, then exploding all
around her, spraying their seeds like the chaotic dance of mayflies. Even though it woke her from a beautiful
dream, it was a relief to find the source of the seed shooter. Then she began
to wonder what kind of dreams these plants have. The world is a strange and
wondrous place. Sometimes there is
grace, inexplicable grace. Baubo knew that even Mrs. Scattergood’s memories of
Jerry dying were spaced and even coupled by the incongruous joy she felt in the
world.
~
Mrs. Scattergood was
writing Telltale for the longest time before she realized that Leah’s
search for her aunt Sarah was the same as her search for her mother. Women don’t always recognize that they have a
primal need to connect. “Hell,” Mrs. Scattergood thought, “I can’t even
pronounce their names but when it comes right down to it, we can all take turns
being Demeter or Persephone.” She became aware of the real nature of their story
by telling the story. The next book, she nodded in agreement to herself, she
would not explain the story until it was finished. Then, god willing, she’d just let them read
it. This nested notion of writing a
book, telling a book and explaining the book wasn’t for this Russian doll.
~
When she realized she was writing about
her mother, it felt like looking for one’s glasses when they’re resting on your
head. What we don’t know about the connections to our mother can fill an
ocean. She missed her mother something
fierce. You could say it was a long time since Lena was gone but really what is
the death of someone you love in terms of time?
Time, gravity, the magnetic force all seem like big things in this universe
but it means nothing compared to this loss.
“So nu?” she would tell herself just to hear her mother’s Yiddish. Her Yiddish was mostly a language of accents.
She only knew phrases. They were really
just crumbs.
~
Sooner or later people seek their own kind
no matter how much they want to be alone.
Mrs. Scattergood needed somebody.
People brought this unknown quality out in her. She might never find peace with it but she
accepted the need for the symbiotic relationship. Way back when there were no flowers, there
was no need for sex, seeds or unfertilized eggs. No need for coupling or communities. No need to tell the forest from the
trees. It was all green. That’s all it needed to be. But something twisted, turned, got
corkscrewed into being and the world was sexed through the dispensation of
seed. The colors of the seasons formerly
just a matter of decay were now a question of desire. Mrs. Scattergood could
trace her life from the city to the shore and back to her cottage as a natural
migration and evolution of her spirit.
It felt like time travel but roads and hazy destinations will do that to
a person.
~
When she was young she collected stones.
She even managed to inherit some. It
wasn’t a simple feat. Nobody seemed to
inherit anything in her family. Planned
obsolescence, indifference to history?
Her relatives all used to being nomads, or a sense of impermanence
tattooed on their souls? She didn’t
know, except that they never saved anything.
Kept the important stuff in their chromosomes she guessed. It suited her. Some of her stones were collected specimens
with labels that she used to read as if they were fortunes. She always remembered
her stones when she moved. They were a
part of her survival kit. These were her
weights. A bit of the anchor she longed
for in other areas. As much as she wasn’t always a child of nature she was the
bearer of it.
~
Wherever she moved, she moved stones. Had she acknowledged how much of a part of a
community she was in this, she never would have felt alone. So many people she knew and would meet
carried and kept parcels of nature around them.
She hardly knew anyone who didn’t have a bowl of stones or shells in
their home. Feathers all over the place.
What were the birds were left to wear?
~
The tidal people would have to have sea
glass. Something old, something new, and
something blue. Blue sea glass, the
prize of glass grazers. The mixed world
or the modern psyche, parcels of nature, nature changed and in strange combinations. Mosaics.
Mosaic lives. Hers was taking on a very loose form. It was stones coming with her through it all
to the end. The round of dust to dust
wasn’t bone and hair, dried blood and semen.
It was stones. Stones powdered
down to a seeming, softer existence.
Stones shaped to travel. Hand
stones and worry stones. Stones on a
pedestal. Stones now honored guests in
the home. The last word on
permanence. Stones, rocks, minerals, and
crystal formations. Time and pressure
taking form out of formlessness and putting it into a material that could be
smelted and thrown, powdered and powerful, stones, stones, stones, stones,
stones. Her last thoughts were of
stones. When she did find sleep, it was
left up to the deep fingers of dawn to reach through the treetops to wake her
from her storied, stony sleep.
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