Kite (draft--may be edited later)

in a tree a kite. wind pulled and wind ripped, shreds and shards breaking, diminishing the overall. the (once) entirety of it.

For here is a kite, long ago made by hand, tissue paper colours chosen for their liveliness and compatibility, for their exclamation of joy! which the kite enlivened as it bounced and twirled and soared high, until  laughing, it returned to earth,  to loving hands and loving hearts. Hand made. Yes. Each frame-piece measured and cut with care, tied together in a perfect diamond. archetypal. And then the tissue, once picked out, cut and smoothed over the frame with fingertip gentle care, so it would not tear,then pasted. flour and water.

kite
string attached, reeled out, sent forth:  at first bouncing low, reaching toward currents and eddies, falling, reaching, falling reaching and then with a shout, pulling up into the blue against the blue and the clouds and the gentle chimes of the trees and the laughter of people below. And it was loved, that kite, and it loved in return, soaring--a smudge of bright in the air. the invisible air.

then.
a downdraft
the tree.
snared.
shredding.
rain and wind and time pull at the kite, crumpled, discarded, left to dissolve, disappearing fiber by fiber scrap by scrap, shard by shard until it will cease--surely and entirely--to exist;
until its very existence is forgotten altogether
& the sky closes up around the space it occupied.
seamless blue.

Scaffolding II

In India, when buildings were built or repaired scaffolding consisted of bamboo poles tied together with twine, jute, probably, similar to baling twine. The buildings under construction were surrounded by imperfect squares, climbed by people wearing shorts with bare feet. It was quite remarkable, really, that these scaffoldings didn't slip, or collapse altogether. But then again, perhaps they did, for all the notice I made of them. After all, such accidents were, in a sense de rigueur.  "Sister," the servant says to me while I am eating my morning mango, "Sister, today, one bus accident. All dead." "What happened?" I ask. "One bus hit the wall. Everybody dead," he replies, his hand turning, fingers spiraling as if to say "and so it goes." And indeed it did. Indeed. Everybody dead. So, perhaps those scaffoldings did fall taking people with them.

How strange that seems, because scaffolding looks like such a fundamental structure, a structure that trusts that within in its temporary boundaries an enduring structure will be built. And yet, scaffolding will, when the building is completed, disappear. So, how interesting it is that as I watch a mind and a person dissolve, I envision the return to the beginning, that temporary structure--the scaffolding.

As Tom disappears, tearing down the past brick by brick, snatching the future and ripping the present to shreds, he becomes once again, the scaffolding with which he began. All so different from the man he was.

The difficult part is that his scaffolding was faulty, not only faulty, but so essentially flawed so rotten and diseased, chewed by termites, that while it looks intact, it is, in fact, dust. Step on those beams at your peril; they collapse, crisp and dry, leaving you waving your arms in free fall.

Ahhhh yes, but that is the family he grew up with, I begin to see, as I fall into unknown regions, feeling like each day is an archeological expedition of the mind. His is a family where a question about dinner turns into quicksand, the trap of a spider whose only goal is to suck the life out of her victims leaving a web bound shell as she moves onto the next source of nourishment. And that spider was, oh, yes, and is, his mother. A spider. An empty creature, existing only to prey and suck the life out of everyone around her so that she can realize some measure of existence. But she doesn't really exist, and can't, so there is always a void to be filled, and another victim needed to fill it. And thus is the scaffolding of his life. He has become his mother.

Last week I watched a spider in my window. A fly was caught in her web, buzzing and struggling, becoming more and more entangled with each wing beat. The spider danced down toward the fly, darting at it, moving away as it kicked its legs and became more entwined. Again and again the spider danced down, and again and again the fly fought its restraints, only to find that they became more secure with struggle and complaint. But still she taunted, that spider, pushing for total entrapment so she could fill herself. I imagined her laughing, her smile wide with the prospect of the fly's demise. And so it is with Tom's mother, and so it is with him. He stalks me, as he was taught, oh so well, and dances, and cajoles, and entraps with innocent sounding comments and then, grinning like a creepy ventriloquist's dummy, heads in for the kill, for the lonely pleasure of destruction. What they want, these empty creatures, is to fill themselves, leaving trophy shells entrapped in their webs, testimony to  only their hollowness and perceived triumph.

But the thing is, I won't go. I watch carefully for those rotten beams that look so sturdy and trust none of it. He is left to his scaffolding, but I am not climbing. Bricks are coming down one by one, the once-building a pile of rubble now, and his scaffolding teeters above and around it. But I am not taking a step; that scaffolding may fall, but I won't be on it. And certainly, most certainly, scaffolding does fall, but I am not going down with that mess, and I wonder if I will even notice when it goes, or who is taken with it. Deaths are easy, and scaffolding temporary. "All dead, sister, everyone dead."
Not me, though, not me. He's not going to take me down with him, even if I have to learn to stop beating my wings for a while.

Scaffolding

Just short--There is something interesting about dealing with someone--on a daily basis--who is mentally ill. The convolutions are so inexplicit; where there appears to be reason none exists, and the pitfalls are many. When I consider this, stepping away from it, I find that what is faulty is what I refer to as the scaffolding, that inner or outer mental framework that allows the rest of the structure to be built. If that is off kilter, or placed on an unstable ground then what is built inside it or around it will be similarly skewed. But then, it all looks so stable until one takes a step...more on these thoughts later.

House of Mirrors I

I am posting this as I write it, because there are a few posts, maybe all in this one post, maybe in different ones. But consider it a draft and a work in progres.

 How to describe the indescribable? The totally unimaginable, unfathomable world of living with an insane person? I can't fathom it and yet I am living it. I walk into a house every day and don't know what it will look like when I walk in, what it will look like from minute to minute, and what part of anything is real. It is so disorienting that I feel completely off kilter; as if the floors are slanted, or not, as if the wall ahead may not really be a wall, but instead, a mirror, a fun house mirror in which I stare at my hand, longish fingers, slender, but reach that hand out yo meet the reflection. Hand reaching out to hand, but when the fingers meet the hand I see is short and square, wavey as if under water, or a different colour, or maybe not even a hand at all, but some sort of distorted claw, the foot of a raven, perhaps, or a three toed sloth, or maybe even something that is not appendage, such as a dandelion gone to seed. And then the mind does that torque thing, the thing that feels like a rope being twisted back and forth and turned inside out, making a two dimensional object into  three dimensions, three into four. These are the mental mechanics that occur when driving up a road and a car is coming straight on, and the mind flashes through all reasonable possibilities--I am on the wrong side of the road, the road is really narrow here, making sense in the reasonable world of what is not reasonable. And so it is, reach out, look in the mirror, look in the reflection of the reflection of the mirror, get lost in the reflections, but each reflection is different, so are they reflections at all? And which one is the real one, and the mind screams to hold on to what it knows is real, to what it knows is true, screams like an animal dying in the woods at night, grasping at anything, grabbing for substance, for affirmation, but where is affirmation to come from in a house of mirrors, and what is to be believed? Each image beckons, each is seductive, enticing one to grasp onto it, to trust, but then something happens, a flash of light, an almost undetected movement and uncertainty takes hold, thankfully, because to fall into those traps is perhaps to never get out. And that is annihilation.

Box Canyon

There is no way out of this box canyon.

Someone put a lid on it and the mouth is filling with water. I am not sure  how quickly, but most assuredly the water will come right up to and beyond where I stand. On reddish sand that crunches beneath my boots, next to a cactus with long spines & a greyish green plant with feathery dry leaves and brown stems.

Frozen in an attitude of movement.

The plant grows. Swept up against a rock and across it, brown trunk contoured to the planes of those grey hard surfaces, leaves splayed away from the direction of the water that once flowed over it under it and around it, leaving memories of eddies and whirlpools. Small violences.  Needled foliage like so many small outstretched fingers splays beyond the roots.

And I fathom the plant's near drowning.

Trying--in the wake of that liquid onslaught--to hold on. To the world it once inhabited & find a stability other than sand and roots and a reach for the sky.

There is no way out of this box canyon.

But the walls are warm and textured, and the sun filaments dusty pink flowers stretching into the breeze.