Mother

In my last entry I mentioned my mother and I think I can address this subject now. I never in her entire life was she able to be captured on film with any articulation. It was almost divinely anomalous; her face would blur, shadows would suppress, and I remember a distinct series wherein the camera never captured her directly even though she had been facing the lens and vice versa, and when the pictures developed there was always this amazing white light as if the photographer were shooting directly into the afternoon sun and it always blinded the camera to all or part of her face. Her only visual document that ever existed was an oil portrait that melted in the attic, reminding one of one of De Kooning’s hideous women.

She was always fond of the Blue Jay to the point she maintained an aviary specifically for her collection of them. Consequently she always complained of blues music demeaning the color of sea and heaven. She spent a lot of time in her aviary. Father, when he was around, always thought it too much. One day he went in, drunk, with a Winchester, and shot every bird dead. She was in there at the time and some of the little bodies exploded all over her face. She could only sit in catatonic shock. Realizing what he’d done, father filed for divorce and promptly left. I haven’t seen him since. But in the weeks before he left I remember our house always being completely silent. They never played records and they never spoke. I was four years old at the time, and I remember my mother putting me to bed in complete silence, sometimes cradling my head and sometimes merely stroking my forehead. I was silent, too.

Before he left my father cleaned out the aviary, all the leaves and branches, and all the body remnants spread about like rotten tomatoes. He took it all in several bags to the front lawn to be collected by the garbage men. Before they were taken, I snuck into those bags and collected as many of the feathers as I could, many stained with blood and stuck together, and kept them in a treasure chest. When I was a twelve I took the feathers and made a collage of them, still soiled from that day in the aviary, and I have that, framed, still today.

I was 22 when she died. I had moved out on my own four years prior, and I was coming over to bring a cake one summer afternoon—carrot cake was her favorite—, and I saw her sitting in her chair with that same catatonic expression as the day father killed her birds. She wasn’t breathing, and I just sat there and stared into her eyes. I didn’t move for two hours.

The dreams and the dance

I have been having dreams most distressing lately. Four nights ago I dreamed I was a candy wrapper. Yes, not truly living and of no substance or purpose but to contain a saccharine piece of processed, flavored sugar--I believe it was strawberry. And it kept melting inside of me--I felt myself start to cave in, and it started seeping out of my top and bottom as I became untwisted. I tried with every muscle I thought I had (but didn't as all I was was a piece of cheap foil to be discarded amongst insufferable human filth.). I felt hotter and hotter still, like I was in a preheating oven, and I couldn't contain anything. When I woke up I had embraced my pillow with such force it had split at one end and the artificial dove's feathers with which I had them stuffed coated me and I thought I may have been trapped in an aviary. What cruel tricks one's mind plays on one's self when one is most vulnerable. Several philosophers argue that mind and body are connected but I think I disagree--I don't think the mind could be so masochistic. No, the mind must be separate from the body and the brain.

Two nights ago I dreamed I was sitting Indian style in a black room that seemed to have no defined ends of any kind--floor, ceiling, walls, even though I was sure I felt secured on a surface--and I was staring at myself! I was staring straight into the eyes of a figure sitting just as I was, who looked just like me. I knew it was me, and we just stared at each other as if our eyes were powerful magnets holding each other's in place. I thought, "something must happen soon. What are you DOING?!?! Move, damn you, move!" I couldn't divert my gaze and neither could he (I), until he tipped over. He tipped over like a wooden doll and made a hollow 'clunk' as his head hit the ground, frozen in his sitting position and still staring straight ahead, though no longer into my eyes. I swear he was alive just a moment before--I could feel his intensity, his challenge, his mocking and malevolence willing me to look away. His eyes were a threat, a threat to reveal to me perhaps images of (God, do forbid it) my/our dead mother, hanging from a leafless apple tree at dusk in the chiseling winter morning. And he enjoyed this thought and how he could use it to break me. But I didn't, and he just toppled. I should have felt victorious, but I felt as though I had a hot gun in my hands and the police were almost to my door (confound those hideous firemen!!!). I felt like Raskolnikov, as much as I tried to rationalize that my doppleganger's demise was both necessary and inevitable. But what did that mean for me? Did I overcome some heretofore unassailable obstacle, or did I kill an essential part of my being?

I mentioned my mother. The trauma of these recent dreams keeps me from being able to write about her at this time though I know I should...she was so tragically lovely.

I was in the park this morning feeding the ducks and trying to mimic their calls in an effort to understand them better when the most anomalous and miraculous display of earthly brilliance I had ever seen happened just two feet in front of me. I was holding out some bread, and one of the ducks approached a little too aggressively for my taste and I rescinded the gift, shaking my head, clicking my tongue and looking him directly in the eye so he knew I was serious. He opened his beak and flexed his throat slightly, then, while keeping his eyes fixated on me as though obsessed, almost like the eyes of my doppleganger, he opened his wings and beat them while turning his body to and fro like a tango of the avians. His rhythm was impeccable, and he called to me twice in precisely punctuated rhythms, paused, for some more turning, and the called again at the same relative moment in the same rhythm. Two more ducks joined in, passing behind him, facing each other, their heads bobbing in the same rhythm and movement as our little tango dancer's, pacing back and forth, crossing paths in the middle, always the same precise spot. And two more landed on far sides of all this, spread out as though on a stage choreographed to perfect symmetry with the lead taking center stage. The two bookends opened their wings and turned their heads towards each other. When someone else approached they scattered quickly as though it never happened. Fine, I said, it can be our secret (though I don't find anything wrong with sharing with you folks). I will hold that image with me until death or extreme dementia severs the limbs of rational thought. Of course, Spurlock will know, too. He knows everything.