from
the sea (5) – merging and menopause, inner pirate part 2 by freda karpf
What you create in the world matters. Tea
should be nearby. You are safe. Those
that you loved were real. They were not shimmering mirages dissipating as the road
draws near. Now they’re timeless companions that hold you to a certain universe
and bring warmth to a distance that is not met by flesh and breaking bread but
kept close and true by memory.
~
Mrs. Scattergood finds joy in smelling
summer on skin; in being pricked by the salt from the ocean drying on her.
Summer is the season of connection. Old salts, old pirates always a notch away
from the inner pirate that steered the course without a care but to follow the
best winds in cahoots with the currents.
~
Like other days, Mrs. Scattergood felt
that today was a good day to capture something essential. What was it though? Vague feelings about to emerge like liminal
thoughts on the cusp slipped back into the river like a fish. Mrs. Scattergood
had been transcribing notes from writing pads, loose pieces of paper and a
spiral bound notebook. Aren’t we all spiral bound? Some more than others. Often she would look
at these notes and not remember the why of it.
This is how writers become mystics. The cryptic note with important
nouns, the fact of the note existing itself, a personal artifact cleaned from
the surrounding area, just as an archeologist would make a find. Treasure comes
in pieces. Putting the pieces together can be a job of placing the tiles in the
glue like a mosaic. It’s like placing the meaning that bounces off the note
back in the court of context. Everything
in this world is a part of a mosaic. Even passwords and sign-ins, sometimes our
only way to express our unique connection to what is sacred, are the pieces
that tie us to key parts of our past that aren’t anywhere visible in our
current life. Each part of the mosaic
unlocks a connection to the why and wherefore of our place in the universe.
~
The trees she climbed in the Cambridge
courtyard called out the tomboy in her.
As she got older her awareness of nature’s fragility grew. It was an awakening to understand that the
whole issue was habitat. She thought
everything was about saving the ocean.
It’s not one thing or another any longer. It is everything and how
everything is connected. Tomboys, trees,
rivers, a vibrant ocean with plenty of fish, the world as the world and not
just in service to our hunger and haste.
~
Long before her periods came, Mrs.
Scattergood remembered how she snugged up to a tree. Each one was different but she would feel for
the coils of the tree bark. She
remembered her braids. Felt twisted in
her thoughts, braided to her dreams, tied to the tree and free to travel down
the stream of images coming at her. She
sat back and, like it or not watched the picture show that played before her
closed eyelids. Once after visiting the
Museum of Natural History minerals would flash before her eyes like a
flipbook. If she tried to sleep she
couldn’t. Until they were finished or a
certain symmetry had been met, it seemed she needed to play it out. The minerals she saw were lit up. They rose into magnificent towers of stibnite
and massive monuments of quartz. She’d
see heavy squares of pyrite, mounded communities of kidney shaped galena. The tropical blue of aurichalcite. The disco colors of chalocpyrite, hot
cinnabar running from scarlet red to near black. Emotional staccatos in mineral
geometries. Native silver turning with
the agonies of Agamemnon; worn smooth and twisted like a piece of drift
wood. Octagons of aquamarine
smithsonite, pink rhodocrhosite crowding like popcorn pushing out of the
hopper. They came at her as if she were
descending to a depth of memory rather than the unconsciousness of sleep. Distant relations? Mineral memory? Galena, literally lead smooth sea, like a
destroyed Piranesi complex sat in her vision like a public work. Long straws of watermelon colored tourmaline,
wands of rubies rested in the matrix.
Fluorite, halite, calcite, pyrite planted like Easter eggs in the mother
rock, itself a core of iron that is the mother of us all. Banded malachite and the midnight blue of
azurite sleeping near copper wouldn’t let her sleep. Even if she closed her eyes the rush of gems
formed and transformed. Fool’s gold,
smoky quartz with black threads running through them like filaments, midnight
blue amethyst raced through the rapid visuals until she was spent and could
finally rest in the sudden quiet she felt before dreams took her into a wrap of
its own. Memories’ braids unravel like Rapunzel’s hair allowing her dreams to
climb into her mind and her heart to ride the easy breath that is sleep’s
current.
~
When she woke, Mrs. Scattergood left that
journey and returned to the reality she was in, muttering as she went along,
“This is M. M means menopause.” As much as Baubo came to help Mrs. Scattergood
we know that when we are met we are also helped by what is meeting us. Baubo,
had a reputation for being a crankenpuss. She'd go mutter jabbering all the
time, but she'll also be there, the crone in shining armor, when everyone else
has gone home and closed their hearts like a dent in dough.
~
Mrs. Scattergood thought about wearing a
cape representing herself as the M-woman. Part human, part superhero. Just because she might only be parallel to
the world of passion and desire doesn’t mean she is ineffectual or inert. The
cape would alert people to her glorious state of menopause. It might also be a big, “Watch out world, I’m
not taking your shit.” Except that right now that bad ass attitude isn’t even
in the neighborhood of what she was feeling.
In fact, everything felt new.
Baubo joked with her about it, after she had her tea, saying that she’s
experiencing her femme side. Got some
looks with that one.
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