from
smelling the snow (3)
Mrs. Scattergood mused
about a woman untouched by anyone. This was someone devoted to something beyond
her physical, local self. But then she
had to ask herself, ‘What did she know about such devotion, whether virginal or
sexual?’ She whittled these thoughts down to bare bones and philosophy and was
left with the image of a woman making a choice among various objects. ‘What's evident’, she noted, ‘is the
thoughtfulness, the contemplation, the taste of the choice on the woman's lips,
the sense of something special being singled out and selected.’ Whether temple virgin or artist, in her mind
this woman reached a stage of mythic resonance.
She has no beginning, no end, being ever and always the center, axle to
axiom, the constant one, the one whose heart can't be taken. She was left with feeling she needed an
engine and tires. She felt a respect for
life and the energy that runs through all living creatures. Deep respect. Mrs. Scattergood left that image sitting
there wondering about an opportunity she let go of so many years ago.
~
Some things take years to know and then
only after you tell someone. She had to
tell someone about the edginess she was feeling. The salt grit on her skin pinched. That felt
coherent. Her characters’ measured tone did not. Where’d all the listening go to anyway? She had no use for people who knew
everything. She wanted a conversation with someone who didn’t know shit. She
was tired of talking to people whom she imagined went harrumphing about, puffed
out feathers and spewing shit with an air of authority into the night.
~
It felt like autumn but spring has been
like that lately. Autumn is a minor
season, a pause between winter, as spring is a pause before summer. Spring and
autumn are spacers. The earth's temperate way of giving us time to prepare for
her main topics. Mrs. Scattergood felt
she needed more space. She had been taking her morning cup of tea like a tonic.
The ritual slowed time but any gain seemed to evaporate as the tea cooled. You can’t tonic away hollowness. She had spun a cocoon. How the worms do not smother in their own silk? These things are never explained. One can
anthropomorphize too much. We take the
soul from the world when we stop seeing her as alive, as capable of
communication as any of us. The height
of arrogance to assume she isn't a peer, a major being, as opposed to us minor
ones.
~
Mrs. Scattergood saw someone who followed
her desire when she looked at her cat. She thought, ‘I only haunt mine.’ But Baubo thought, ‘They might as well be in
the past or the future because in the present her desires were stale air rising
from a dead volcano.’ Baubo did tend toward hyperbole.
~
Mrs. Scattergood remembered a woman she
knew in college. This was before she knew what she knew about herself. They had
become friends. But there was that god awful awkwardness that she still shook
from when remembering as if she ate a sourball.
In her experience, when someone indicated they thought so and so was gay,
she felt she had to protect the person. That was a reflex back then. Reflexes aren’t always a graceful reaction
but they are quick. The biography of
everyone is often passed around like a baseball card. You say, "Hello"
to someone and as you're walking by a storefront the other person is already
filling your ear with gossip. The glue that binds. Just as casually someone saw that woman she
was remembering and said, "Did you know she was gay?" Mrs. Scattergood snapped, "Does that
have significant meaning to your life? Her friend was flustered and forced to
make a hasty retreat. As it seems Mrs.
Scattergood did with that comment. Reflexes, hard to control after a certain
age.
~
Mrs. Scattergood didn't
know that about her friend. But she did
now. She thought of her often since that
time. Wondered where she was now that it’s safe to be who she is; now that
she’s not the only one who’s like the famous folk singer she mentioned. The woman asked what she thought about the
rumors that the singer was bisexual. It
was a litmus test. The question made her blush, just like, sometimes, she
didn’t know why, she would blush when near her.
It felt like a school of silver fish swimming by her legs.
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