The garden there was not yet so full of bones of cats long gone. There was wet - wet from rain, wet from which never left the ground. Dew which never fully evaporated as the day grew old. Wet in the walls of the house which inside manifested as dark mould. Wet leaves which piled along the sides, brown and orange slicked soon to be mulch. The child cold in the bones, played near a covered pit - the septic tank, a dark red snake plunging into its depths from a hole in the concrete slab. Inside the house the mother runs errands, spending time in a fashion.
I try and not look too unkindly on this child. It’s the least they deserve. The kid hears a cry out for help and in searching finds their mother with her fingers caught in the window which has closed harshly down. She calls for help but the child is rooted to the spot. Why don’t you help? Why are you still? The air is crystal with a fracture running through. Birdsong dances above an electric fence. Her face pleading with her child who is failing some sort of test. Did she recognise herself in that face? Did she recognise anything?
Do I recognise me in that child? Or are they just a skin? A human born once but again in reverse. A cocoon where the inside breaks down into liquid crystal to reform some time hence. Stillness, unknown stillness in those moments.
There was something ancient in the child’s thought. An old creature that rose slumping from some primordial valley - a dark ravine really, a place nowadays where things are not born but instead go to die. This creature never quite comes into focus but maybe resembles the hills. It lurched through the mind of that poor kid and in its vastness dissolved all. No other thought could sustain as the ancient beast trudged along. Eventually it slowed, stopped, and became part of the landscape itself. No eye could focus for long on that series of formations filled with foreboding. A blurred landscape to which we defer. An incomprehensible terrain that we write around - hoping to capture something in the world it distorts - in the shadows it casts.
Later when she is free she asks why they did nothing but the child just murmurs that they don’t know.
“Demon.”
I missed writing two weeks ago when I was meant to - it happens. Things have been odd but overall I think I am doing alright. I finished up 2666 recently and approaching the end of the Clarice Lispector story collection. Have begun House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk which I am really enjoying - really appreciate how at the same time the writing is super clear, concise but extremely poetic and strange.
Hope you are all well.