really real moments
from
the sea (5) – merging and menopause, second part of desire by freda karpf
She’d return to the
kitchen now and then to dip the wooden spoon into the soup. Water though it was, it felt like a potter
learning to play with the tower of clay on the wheel. The soup stirring changed the swirling, and
more of her thoughts entered into the turning.
This movement, you could even call it a structure, was her life. Dissipative, different movement. As much as
the Gartens hungered for escape, she knew that she was already where she wanted
to be. Although everything was
unsettled, nothing was finished or done.
And it was all alright and it wasn’t.
~
On the outside of the screen house
the goose head loosestrife was gently moving in the hot breeze. The dangling
shamrock flowers were bouncing on their long stems. Everything is animated.
Everything is filled with life and by now lost on the menopause trail where
everything is merging. Oneness might be a goal or a symptom. Who could tell?
~
Mrs. Scattergood had her
moments. These are life really real moments that come with a stunning sense of
being awake, when beauty saturates everything you see and the moment is total
love. Her moments were always in
summer. There was a counter to this for
her too. When she lost her mother and
later her sister, both dying in Florida, she had an affinity for cold; snow,
cold in movies; breath that you could see. All eased the terrible affliction
the heat of Florida bore.
~
Her cat is used to hunting by
searching the fallen leaves and crowded lines around the fence bottom for very
small movements, subtle shifts in the pile; not even footfalls but the smallest
of ripples as the voles move through the leaves. Dry and breaking they form a
kaleidoscope of patterns as a wave moves beneath them. When others are focused it pulls our focus.
Hocus pocus focus.
~
Mrs. Scattergood saw
something in the patterns of the Mandelbrot set that spoke to the deepest
concerns she had for the world. She felt drawn to certain people and wished
they were near. She sent them the Mandelbrot postcards. Metal dust drawn toward the magnet. Needles
and pins pulled out once the stitching is in place. All the round Mandelbrot ziggurats and
turbans on the outer rim of what looked like outer space would give birth to
new ziggurats and turbans. They would
grow smaller and smaller until there was what seemed a sudden and unexplained
surge into the large world again. The
pattern kept repeating. It wasn’t always
possible to see this pattern from card to card.
She felt that those she loved were a part of the pattern too. But how do
you say these things? The images teased these thoughts out of her but the
mystery of why they drew her into their realm she never knew.
~
She might be a minnow in the
ocean compared to the streaming swims the dolphins could muster up. That was fine by her. She is used to riding
small waves. They still bring you to shore and when you land and push up from
the sand to get onto your feet you can feel the small coquina clams’ movement
within the wet sand. Everything is in relationship to everything else. Yet you
can still push off of it and stand up from the rush of water to be who you will
be that day.
~
Rachel Carson told us that the moon was
ripped from the Earth, just as Persephone was taken from spring and we are
moved into larger circles of relationship. Sometimes we are barely able to
reach back and touch our mother’s fingertips.
Mrs. Scattergood’s mother remembered her mother’s long hair, loose from
its bun, and that she combed her hair as her mother lay in her bed slipping
away to another realm. How many years
later was Mrs. Scattergood still feeling the pull of her mother from this
planet?
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