from
the sea (5) – merging and menopause, cathedrals part 3 of 3, by freda karpf
What Mrs. Scattergood
hungered for was here. It is as common
as sand, as everyday as the sun. Simple,
straightforward contact with what is natural; allowing the wild places to be
separated from where she lives, without roads going there; foods cooked in the
seething soil of healthy microorganisms, meaning in her work, pleasure in the
moon. These concerns haunt her. But shadows are also nature. They are a part
of human and spirit life too. Spires in
the cathedral. Why not, we’re the ones
building the building.
~
Solitude is often described as a state without
other people but it is not something that can exist without place. Place is the
matrix. Restore the place and the place
will restore you.
~
One
of her friends had told her that when she did what she loved to do she felt
more like herself. She also felt a
wildness that was unfamiliar. Whatever else this might be, this menopause,
maybe it’s something nobody has been willing to share with the world before.
The wildness has come inside. This is M.
M is for menopause. Why should
tea be the only thing allowed to steep?
Mrs. Scattergood has been steeping a long while and it is time to add
the milk and sweetener.
~
Baubo’s wish for Mrs. Scattergood was her
old birds’ wish for the world they loved, ‘May your dreams be in soon
time. But cathedrals tend to take some
time to build even though the vision is there waiting for reality to catch up
to it.
~
Imagination is also our experience.
~
Mrs. Scattergood liked to think she
carries the sea within her. Baubo liked
to think she also carried Demeter and the Spirit of the Land. Demeter searches for her daughter and finds
that she has daughters all over the world. She finds that the Spirit of the
Land is her soul mate and that sometimes she is not certain if she is her
daughter or her mother. Some
relationships are like lace, interconnected threads, the work of many hands.
Passion moves the tides as much as the moon. Desire brings the river to the
ocean and the streams to the wetlands as much as the tide. Everything is both rare and regular, everything
is a part of this story.
~
You’re given a name to start a life. The gun sounded and you are off. You run like a goddess, a hungry lion, like
someone gave you a hot foot. You don’t look back. It’s not until you’re forty or so that you realize
you had caught up to your mother.
Diaphanous matter from the past stuck to you like a spider’s web. Time
and gravity pressured your experience and you came up with your mother’s
diamonds. You look up from brushing your
teeth. There she is again. Your friend calls and tells you of her latest tragic
date. You laugh. There’s your brother’s voice.
Suddenly it seems like spring and all the things you’ve always turned
away from pop up like crocuses.
~
They were sometimes like two women talking
in tongues or was it the language they developed in the unique caldron of their
friendship? Friends first. A familiar space between them. No need for grammar or syntax. The air around them had this knowing that
worked like another dialect in space and time.
That comfort zone somehow transitioned them into a place that was the
spinning of their own separate energies into a vortex. They talked about this kind of effect on the
weather channel where they're inventing new words by the second. The nature of
their communion is like a fog swathed around their friendship. Binding like those getting lost together.
~
They linked in separate realities. There was listening, there was talking. Sometimes it seemed as if one never touched
the other. They danced a tango of lips
and words. They had a smooth blend of being that swirled around their separate
lives and raised the dialect of their conversation like water the nap of
wood. Their bantering brought everything
down, sanded, honed and refined their talk till they felt spent in a way that
lovers might.
~
She thought of her sister and wondered if
she too were noticing that the skies were more beautiful than ever.
~
Mrs.
Scattergood missed her mother.
Every time she hung clothes on the line she thought of her. There’s a word she can’t remember but it
means the ability of the air to pull the moisture out of the clothes on the
line. Every time she hung her clothes
the air took her thoughts about her mother.
~
Stoner came onto the bed after her
mischief. Whatever that was, Mrs.
Scattergood wasn’t certain. Stoner
pummeled, and then stretched, and then got into her ‘hatching I’m catching some
sleep mode.’ There is a process to
settling in. The process itself, when you are aware of it is a good thing.
Light came through the blind’s slats.
Dust was hanging in the air like mist.
She felt peace when she saw the light catching the dust. Light’s a
weaver.
~
Mrs. Scattergood sang to herself, ‘There
was a dog on the road and it wanted a bone.
I didn’t have one so it had to move along. Move along little doggie. Move along.’ Then she lectured herself. ‘Belonging and community go hand in hand.
Things like “hand in hand” come to me automatically. Belonging and community don’t. Belonging has a beautiful sound to it. It goes to the back of your throat and comes
to the tip of the tongue. It’s
physical. It’s about being and longing. You exist, you long for something. It exists.’
As she carried on with her thoughts Mrs. Scattergood chased her hands
around as if doing a shadow play. Whole
journeys begin with the spark of ‘the other.’
That’s the bone on the road. So
get along little doggie. Get along.
~
This is M. M means menopause.
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