The energy of the world has to bypass a medium and the energy of the world wants a body with which to tire itself out on. If the energy of the world is kept within an unused body, it will be like an uncovered car in a hailstorm. Then you go out in the late morning after the message has been conveyed to collect all of the eggs. Instead of climbing up the mountain, people are climbing up the new contraption in the same place where the ten long legs prefer to lay their eggs. The energy of the world. That’s where the energy of the world gets its name from.
What were her hands made for. For darning. What was her back made for. For raising. No one taught her how to walk. She can’t remember doing that. She can remember the water boiling. Bringing it up stiff. She can remember cutting the paper in half. Making index cards. Making flash cards. Almost cutting her arm in half. But she can’t remember who brought the wood and who brought the ax.
Something warm blooded and upright and disguised inside her wanted her legs to move. But she didn’t have a path and she didn’t know. Only later, deep in her second life, would she come across after traveling many miles on a path a view and while traveling on this path would think of what her legs were made for and would think of the twenty eight miles something warm blooded and upright and disguised inside her had tread day after day long ago for many years. That something warm blooded and upright and disguised inside her didn’t long for things, it just saw what it didn’t have, what it could have had, and then covered itself with a dish rag around the neck and tried to sleep. One day her eyes might also deteriorate, from two cataracts becoming one, moving closer to something so warm blooded, a kind of movement that is possible only if you have never heard your own laugh, a laugh that something so warm blooded could never forget, these eyes will become so degenerate that the first floor house could be taken over by all kinds of things and some of what takes over it will crawl into the suitcase of the degenerate, and she will take this with her to the next place she goes. She never thought that this could be how a message gets passed on.
The people, they carry on. Which is not the same as the people all coming around the Maypole. The people who carry on are the ones who pass by the town with the newly erected derrick. And they are the ones who dip the baby into the water full of dumped fuel. The dumping of fuel does become the work of clocks, as it is the most consistent thing that occurs in this town. Do we want for this man to have enough to live on or more? Can it even be called one? We want this man to feel like this representation is something he can hold up like a pocket mirror.
“What are you doing?” The family, they become their own enemies. Some people are tired of trying and some people it becomes the substance of their dwelling, like collecting thatch until day is done. It is easier to believe in the world than it is to believe in one person, it is much more probable to side with the world, however faceless, than it is to side with person of one. When such a one is knocked down again and again, it is easier to blame them. If one person who does not steal or cheat is rewarded by the world with many fruits, we say they have been blessed. We have to look behind them, in a pocket mirror, which they are quickly in the midst of closing, to catch, to see the river on fire.
We know their face, we shouldn’t know their face… anyone’s.
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Why did she learn things so quickly? What had happened to her very early on that took away a theory of incremental learning? Who saw her small body as a problem? To teach something to quickly? Wanting to be better about holding a cup mid-air, she thinks that whatever is inflicted upon a child must come out in an exit wound. Her mother had referred to her birth as a miracle. Like something split and caught beneath a magnifying glass. She never claimed to be untouched but she was only touched once and in that one touching was she conceived. The people who induce claustrophobia in grocery stores have one childhood photo: they’re wearing a cowboy costume.
Though she lived before the world, she liked to think there was a world. Where there was enough flour all the time in the pantry to attract the moths she had once found slipping between things, behind things, in the pantry of the church’s new meeting spot. She imagined there could be a world. When she was the first person to spot them. And once she had told one of the children, the only child who did see her, the one who she had once brought her paranoia out to play with, too.
Everyone stands there. Even the kids who had been chasing around a ball, stand now, halted, as the tent is erected over the house that is the church’s new meeting spot. Everyone stands there. The people who had their arms hanging to the sides now take them and place them in their pockets, the people with hands in their pockets now take them out and cross their chests. The child who was the only child to tug on the sheet, not her in her first life, for that would be zero, that would be the reset between negative and positive, but the first child that she blew the whistle to, scratches her head and tugs on someone’s arm like on a scarecrow. It’s not that everyone has suddenly come out of their stupor but that they had to pick a day without wind to begin the process. They had in fact finally come out to meet their stupor.
They live there. And I live here. And you live there. And we live here. Towards the middle of her first life, she rode her bike past the house as it was beginning the process, pedaling against the wind with a weight as though she were carrying another child, her friend, on the handlebars. Even though there were no handlebars. And there was no wind or friend. The process was beginning.
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When the apple dropped from the tree, it hit her on her head and she looked up and caught the next one in her mouth. There was a slanting to the way the days would now get longer and longer. There was a slanting that we could not see. The longer the people stay outside in the day, through and into midday, the more layers they will remove. She wanted to put another layer back on. If she walked back inside to use the restroom, she would leave things she had come to depend on outside of this house. She would stop keeping watch of the men and at any minute they could fall. What accent did they have? The men whose mouths were filled with easy condemnations.
When a family’s cow grew sick and they were told nothing would make it better anymore, they turned. Because they were told there was nothing beyond… they turned, and then, when the cow was made whole again, of course they turned even more. When a family’s child went for a walk and never returned and they were told that every door had been knocked on, every hut had been searched, every man with a wry smile had been requisitioned, they turned and then when the child did return, again, they turned further.
There was always someone in the town who was not welcome at first until too many cows grew sick, until too many of a child did not return, until too many men were struck with boils, and then they would turn to that someone so unwelcome. They sought out that someone who was just then wondering if they would have to leave, or when… overnight, turning from the most unwelcome person in town to the one with the most powers. Her whole life felt like one long turn but she wasn’t sure if what one turned towards should really be given an image.
We may cut a house in half to see what’s inside. But we may learn that generation by generation there are not the same markers between. Early on there was a mother and a child who could neither be said to be boy nor girl who came to stay for a while. It was never identified what offense against the child was laid but as these things go, the fault was laid against the mother who was someone no one, not even she, who spent the most time out of anyone inside the house, who gave them fresh bedding, who brought them trays of porridge, could give a visual format for. In one of the busiest years of the house, another broken family, with two girls, stayed in another room. She was sent with a wagon to greet them and sell them anything they might need in addition. “Is there a place nearby we can get some supper?” “A few miles up the road… but the kitchen will be closed…” A few days later she saw the two girls teaching the boy wanton signs which diligently he emulated and embodied. The girls, who were one of the few who wouldn’t take trays of porridge up in the room, would run down the stairs of the house, inventing songs of war. And on their way down they would call “Joey! Joey!” who, like a kangaroo, hopped down after them. Under the table, she caught them stroking Joey’s knee and then laughing. She could tell that the younger one of the sisters was the more messed up one, more messed up than the older one, and it was the one who was the more messed up, this younger one, that she also felt would end up, if she survived, in the long haul, wind up saving somebody accidentally. When she saw how his body had become a template, the boy’s mother’s facelessness was sealed.
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“I will hide my face.” “So he cannot see?” “So he cannot see.” “I will hide my face.” “So you cannot hear him?” “So I cannot hear him.” “Eating the apple.” “Bite by bite?” “Bite by bite.” “He would sit across from me.” “Even if you moved?” “Even if I moved.” “For you have.” “For I have moved.” “And still he followed.” “He followed.” “You have changed his bedspread.” “His pillow sheets.” “You have rinsed out the bowls and cups he left.” “Plenty.” “Plenty.” “I must give my face to the world.” “The world will have it.” “I must keep my power to myself.” “You will not keep it.” “I must.” “You shan’t.” “The snake curls around my ankle.” “Beautiful snake.” “Will the world intervene?” “You’ve lost me there.” “Will the world intervene if…” “I see.” “Will it?” “You will be the world.” “And that’s what I’m doing?” “Look at what you’ve done.” “I will change rooms.” “Even if you do…” “I have called the wrong ones towards me…” “Will you keep calling then?” “Now I call the right ones…” “They will go to war.” “With each other.” “Each to each.” “Or will the wrong ones merely cower and beg?” “There is an opportunity there…” “One I do not want.” “And will the right ones disperse if I do not keep calling them towards me?” “There is a change there…” “What kind of war is that?” “One that belongs to you.” “Alone.” “Yes.”
She began to tilt her head then. She began to look slightly down again, as she had once done, and to the side.