from
mosaic (4) by freda karpf
Demeter’s story pulled
on Baubo and the chain of being, such as it was for her during this storied
time was that now, somehow, Mrs. Scattergood’s story also pulled on her. In Telltale,
Mrs. Scattergood wanted Leah near when she had Sarah begin her search. She had no idea that she wanted someone near
to her as well. Without knowing she had,
in this way, she called Baubo to her. Isn’t it the way? Such is life.
One hears it so often. A person
calls another to come and be with them.
Their heart is an arbor. They ask you in for their need, and you feel
blessed, kindled and attached in a way that seems like love.
~
Mrs. Scattergood tried to remember times
before the Barry pain. She could only come up with the time she was haunted by
a woman. Pushed so much by desire she
was out of her realm of established consciousness. She didn’t know who she
was. She didn’t just feel desire, she
was haunted by it. She spoke out loud to
stir herself toward easier thoughts. ‘I could say it was a woman. But what I felt so intensely then was the
blue of the sky. It's that blue on a clear day by the ocean.’ There's salt in
the air. She could remember when the salt felt like a screen on a summer porch
pressed against your face. She remembered the blue against the pine needles at
the Audubon center. That's when the blue is so crisp and soft and a place you
must go to, like she went toward her.
~
For a moment, the soup called her from the
past. Too soon to add more salt because
the beans would harden. With that shift came all the thoughts about salt and
her sexuality. For Mrs. Scattergood felt that her sense of sex and sensuality
was like salt for the sea. ‘There’s no thinking when I’m trying to catch a
wave.’ Water was her passion’s great
conductor. Mrs. Scattergood could feel
how the ocean carried her feelings and washed against her skin. She felt a
sense of oneness, quiet like a tableau, like the comfort one feels in the
presence of a friend, when she was in the water. It was one of the only times where she felt seamless,
silent and satisfied. It was in this
way that she loved the ocean. It was also how she used to giver herself to
love. Her lover became her sea.
Time lost its power. Being in the ocean or
being in love was a balm for her thoughts. There was comfort as if a pattern
were completed. In the ocean, this was
met by the sure return of the waves. Whether she took one into shore or let it
pass. The pull back from the sea moved her again and the sureness was that it
would all keep happening. From shore to ocean and back again.
~
After the initial time of getting used to
the water, Mrs. Scattergood feels her way within the swirl of the sea; takes
her place and tunes her skin to the pulse of the coming wave. There’s no
thinking. She knows when to move forward to catch the wave. Her body goes to a position the way a runner
gets set. There’s no question of
belonging. She moves around in the water
till her skin feels the wave building again.
~
Mrs. Scattergood felt a sense of
seamlessness in the ocean and tried to create it in her stories. Or in her soups. Her time in the water was most real. She was
most alive when she was in it. Time was not the final arbiter. It was just
another tile in the mosaic. When time ceases to dominate we’re released from
the realities of history and moved to the realms that sing to us. Mrs.
Scattergood knew the place so well. The
place that was deep enough but also where she could push off from the bottom to
take the next ride in.
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