The catalysts of a migraine being blood vessels that constrict blood flow as
they dilate externally, and the headaches themselves being the reduced
metabolism that is the consequence of the constriction and the dilation: she
knew them and their impact well. She was feeling unprecedented surges of pain
deeper than she ever had before; still they were nothing to her, catatonic and
naked as she was on a billiard table for a period of hours. Lying face forward
in a state of shock as the body cuddled to the clothing that was beneath
her—clothing that absorbed a bit of her blood and incontinent discharge while
the rest seeped into the fabric of the table—she was a veritable puddle there
unto herself, and her mental state was not much different than severed
consciousness. For the most part it skid like blowing trash that moved with the
elements and had no sense of itself in space and time. Occasionally there were
seconds of sensing something, or imagining herself sensing something. It was
some type of boxed light or illuminated squares like the pattern of her
grandmother's quilt and with it was static as a deafening cloud of locusts. She
was not trapped in the boxes because there was no she. Likewise, she was not
exactly listening to the sound for to do so would be to have intent and for
intention there would need to be a self that she did not have.
The monotony of the enclosure of boxed light compacted with that masticating
rumbling sound of the descent of insectual clouds: when seeming to be at all
this was all there was. And such seconds of coming to herself were as of
putting toes into the cold waters of a swimming pool and then suddenly pulling
out again.
Whereas a hallucination like the tunnel of light was an instrument of the
psyche to delude a dying soul that there was a positive within the termination
of being, hers, which she encountered in the third hour of her figurative
demise, was more like regeneration. To avoid more pain by accepting death was
the aim of the former but for the latter it was a time, a half-life, before
some renewal could begin. Then light and locusts were transmuted into balls and
banging.
The black ball and the myrmidons of the black ball were moving like the cars of
a train around the table with individual parts sometimes banging against the
edge and rebounding but always to return to that designated train in that
ineluctable orbit. The pull of the eight ball was gravity in a sense like a sun
moving ever so slightly in space and by its movements capturing smaller
entities or the whirlpool formed in the sinking of a ship. But why was the
larger black billiard ball moving to begin with? Inertia? What was the prime
mover of inertia? The answer she would not know even if she were aware of a she
to know something, which she didn't.
It seemed to her, if there were a her, which there was not in such a state,
that the moving train of balls sometimes slowed down and curved into letters as
if they meant to communicate something incommunicable, too painfully
incommunicable, like the image of a US soldier who had a hand hideously swollen
from the radiation he received from the A-bomb experiments on Bikini Island--
hideous images thumping consciousness until it became something other than
consciousness, something altogether surreal.. If there had been more of them
these billiard balls might have come together to spell out a message one letter
at a time. But these Pythagoreans had numbers tattooed to them as mute and
wordless as they were. Though numbers they nonetheless conveyed:
-- Andrei Linde began a paradigm shift in cosmology that allowed for theories
other than the Big Bang or Steady State theories when he proposed that the
universe or universes were self-replicating and inflationary.
--The mixture of hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor was bombarded with
lightning, and in the course of time generated amino acids that could produce
protein, but how a self-replicating organism of DNA sequences evolved from this
has no plausible theory.
--The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins was an original means of envisioning
organisms as temporary, reproductive homes existing solely for the purpose of
allowing genetic material to thrive eternally, and from it a new branch of
social sciences known as sociobiology emerged.
--Wild wheat and barley live naturally in the area between Eastern Turkey and
the Caspian Sea. Some time between 12,000 and 8,000 BC, women must have
discovered that by sowing the seeds of these grains they could reduce the
amount of time required to gather fruits and vegetables. In so doing they
allowed sedentary life in organized cities to emerge.
--Amonhotep IV (1353-1337 BC) changed his name to Akhenaten or Akhenaton, which
meant, "Aten is satisfied." Although unable to retain conquered lands like
Palestine or succeed very well in military campaigns, this pharaoh's emphasis
of the sun god, Aten, allowed a more naturalistic art to flourish.
--Cleopatra (69-30 BC) was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty which ruled
Egypt from 51-30 BC. As one of the strongest women in the ancient world, she
was idealized by her people as a reincarnation of Isis.
--Most owls are nocturnal and spend daytime in a quiet and inconspicuous roost.
Their activities consist of preening, combing plumage with their claws,
screeching, hooting, whistling and snorting
--When owls bob and weave their heads it can appear as if they are exhibiting
curiosity concerning the world around them in a humanoid gesture, but in fact
they are merely attempting to improve their three dimensional concept of
whatever it is that they are looking at. It is no wonder that people, such as
they are in readily subscribing to the superstitions of their brothers and
sisters in the herd, attributed wisdom, prophecy, and witchcraft to the bird.
--As a successful predator feared by the other birds, lone owls are sometimes
mobbed by flocks of rival birds and forced to depart from its roost because of
the harassment.
--In keeping with the first two laws of thermodynamics, organisms can neither
create nor destroy energy but can only transform it from one form to another.
What she was thinking curled there like an aborted fetus — there being in a
corner where she could see a beam of sunshine from a distant window as she
stayed hidden behind a large chair, obscure within its shadow — she did not
know. She did not even know how she got into her library, or even that she was
there.
There, in this fetal position on the floor, she was not as ingenuous as a child
for she was more innocent than this. An infant had its cries and smiles to
manipulate responses but only she, a non- lachrymose mute, timid and shaking
but with eyes open to any compassionate deity who might transcend from the
beam, had such ingenuousness. Had someone other than Nathaniel gotten beyond
the locked door she would have reached her hands out to the deliverer and the
deliverance unreservedly. Once she even slipped into the raiment of memories
where a self (presumably herself) interacted with another; and it was from it
that, all so briefly, she imagined herself there in human form feeling of Thai
silk with Hilda opening the door to find her. Behind the leather of that
antique and ostentatious, patriarchal chair that had become her protector and
shield she was a human being for the first time, needy, needing to be needed,
and enmeshed as a member of the herd. There was even a second where Hilda fused
into Rita/Lily and instead of coming to her, it was she, Gabriele, who came
into that apartment in Ithaca, embracing her friend in the joy of comforting
another being and just being there in the throngs of shared human thought and
feeling.
The hours led into dusk and the beam of sunlight floundered behind an opaque
screen and then withered into darkness. In that vacuous darkness within and
without she remained a convalescent to the impairment of memory which could not
be lobotomized no matter how much she yearned for it to be. As before, there
were some sane and enlightening ideas in her hallucinations, which had she been
able to record them in her madness, upon reflection might have shown a world
beyond Fort Gabriele. But all her thoughts were merely shards within the hours.
It did not even dawn on her to go to the bathroom. Without meaning to do so she
urinated where she sat and even this fetid puddle soaking into the carpet
seemed distant and detached as if not having been perpetrated by the self.
By this time truly crazy thoughts interacted with memory as if the mind were
attempting to cause her to recognize herself in the midst of absurd fantasy.
She believed that she was her Ferrari; that in each city where she drove the
traffic lights always turned green at her approach; that she, the car, often
reached into her window for the snuff on her dashboard which she would put into
the gas tank as she drove south; that she would have gone all the way into
Mexico, departing completely from the truculence of American society, were it
not for that red light in Fayetteville, Arkansas; that after five long minutes
she, that car, felt restless before the ongoing red, turned right, and moved up
a steep hill until she was at a Confederate cemetery; and that there on a
gravel road in the thickets of Elm trees, huge Evergreens, and weathered
tombstones she felt a kinship with these deceased secessionists grouped
according to states —
Legs on a bed (presumably her own) and ants on the sheets crawling upon those
legs -- empty cities and this feeling of being forlorn and banished in a world
of no people — an uninhabited White House where no flag blew — flaming World
Trade Center towers and her eyes looking up in horror — people falling
wordlessly out of hundred story windows and herself thinking that Aten, Athena,
Jehovah or some god outside of man's feeble conceptualizations of one would
surely deliver them by using clouds as baseball mitts but not feeling
surprised, only disappointed, to be living in such a godless realm — gluttonous
nations fighting for the free flow of oil, and herself seeing them on the
evening news — a maze of rooms in her home divided like Baltic states — wanting
something to impale into the concrete of her makeup when she went to galleries,
museums, and these art parties—herself, her complete self, with Nathaniel as
the two of them watched her cat, Mouse, sniff the room for bugs; herself, her
complete self, telling him that "all creatures need to feel industrious no
matter whether they accomplish anything or not," hoping that subtle clues would
inspire him to attempt his homework — the chest of her husband, the man with
the unmemorable name, inhaling and exhaling and herself floating on it in the
undulations of an ocean.
At this time she was not even aware that her fingers were pinching air as if a
brush lay between them or that she was tracing out owls with her hands as if
this was magically transmuting them onto the walls. Owls and more owls she
patterned out — not regular barn owls, and not saw-whet owls, but Arctic owls
living alone in cold snowy deserts. An hour into this some consciousness of
what she was doing took place and the word "Paint!" flashed over her mind in a
conflagration for she was afraid of falling into complete madness.
Opening the door, she crouched on her four legs as if in crawling through tall
grass she could extricate herself from the land of her enemies to a land of
lambent color. Scurrying from room to room, she at last found that which she
sought; but she became terrified at finding a photograph of Nathaniel on a
table near her paints and she retreated from it. She crawled into a corner and
for twenty minutes she kept her eyes closed and her body shook in chills of
terror before courage began to replenish within her. Reentering her fortress
with color and instruments, she stood on one of the upper bookshelves that
surrounded the whole room of the library. Dashing paint into solitary stoic
owls, in one moment she became cognizant enough to see that each one was
without any variation from the others because life was incessantly cruel
without variation. The room was in total darkness apart from a bit of moonlight
that kept her task possible. Then something divine came out of the moonlight.
It was not a deity for it was flesh and blood as she.
"Gabriele," sang Rita/Lily happily. Then, like an empath, her visage changed as
had the compassionate face of Gabriele's grandmother, and as had the mood ring
that Gabriele wore as a teenager. "What are you doing?… Are you okay?… Can you
understand me?"
Gabriele's bottom lip trembled and she dropped her paintbrush on the floor.
Then she accidentally tipped over the paint. "My friend, my friend," she
murmured.
"Yes, Gabriele, yes I am your friend. Don't be afraid. I am with you now." From
at first seeming to comport her usual uncertain hesitancy, Rita was now
appearing as a decisive voice according to the perspective of the child before
her.
Gabriele pulled back inside herself for a moment, uncertain about swapping
roles with the callow and manic-depressive neighbor whom she once cared about.
The idea of friendship was beginning to befuddle her and she looked dazed,
swept away in a mist of adult skepticism for that which was not in her
experience. But overall she was ingenuous, and as one who was ingenuous she
retained hope in foreign concepts. "Friendship. Really? I have existed all
these long 39 years without any."
"No, you only thought that you did not have them."
" I didn't forget you, you know. I haven't forgotten you."
"We are here together so we haven't forgotten each other."
"Together in a dream?" Gabriele asked.
"Sometimes dreams have a reality unto themselves."
"I wasn't good to you, I know. I'm so sorry."
" I cried for a week when you left. I cried because you did not tell me that
you were leaving. But it is okay now. I don't mind now. You are better and
brighter than me, and I understood that you weren't thinking of me then, that I
was nothing to you then. But it is all in the past. Now we just need to get you
well."
"Am I sick?"
"You will be well. You will be well soon."
"Rita/Lily, what has happened to me? I don't understand any of it!" she cried.
"Hold on, my dear. I'm afraid that you will fall."
"Please!"
"Be careful! Stay unperturbed. Look at the paint. It has splattered onto the
floor."
"What happened to me?"
"It is better to not think of it. Far worse things have happened, as bad as
this is or seems to be. They have, and they have been overcome by mere
mortals."
"Is he here?"
"No, he is gone. Didn't you hear the car drive away?"
"Yes."
"He'll be back, won't he?"
"No. You saw him with a suitcase in his hands."
"He spat in my face with that bag in his hands."
"Yes, my dear. Let it go from you. You are a goddess. You are beyond the
cruelty of this world."
"Oh, Rita!" she cried and fell into hysterical sobs.
"Stay calm, my dear. Don't fall from the bookshelf."
Gabriele regained her composure and smiled lugubriously at the moonlight as
well as at her friend of the moonlight. Even though nature was sometimes cruel
it was beautiful; and even if hallucinations were derangements this one was
kinder than any reality she had experienced.
"Maybe I should go somewhere else, Rita. I could go away into the northern
parts of Canada."
"Newfoundland?"
"Oh yes, Newfoundland! It sounds so beautiful."
"They cull seals there. They beat and impale them in the most inhumane manner.
It is better than American culling of its unique people but no, cruel places
like that are not for a goddess like you who has seen too much cruelty and pain
as is."
"Look at my paintings, Rita/Lily," said Gabriele in retaining the nine years
and deleting her thirty.
"Yes, beautiful my dear. You are so talented. What a beautiful artist you will
be."
"I think I was wanting to bring back the owl again."
"It is dead, as is the dog, as is so much. No, don't climb down. Not that way!"
"Which way? Oh, look, my vagina is bleeding profusely! This is not normal
bleeding. It's damaged! I'm damaged!"
"Yes."
"And the blood is on my hands."
"It will wash off. And you will get well. You are already better than you
were."
"Why is the blood on my hands and vagina?"
"You've been mixing some of the blood from your private area. You've been
putting it into your paint."
"That is strange, isn't it?"
"Yes my dear. It is part of the shock. Don't concern yourself with it. No one
has seen this—just you and I. Please do me a little favor. Can you? Are you
listening? The bookshelf on this side is not steady. I want you to slowly slide
down to the other part of the room."
"I don't feel real and my entire body feels numb like it doesn't belong to me."
"It is part of the shock but you are coming to yourself. You are."
"Are you real?"
"What's real? Will you be here in a hundred years? You need me, and that makes
you more real than you ever have been before. Come and slide down a little
further. Near the open window. That's it." Gabriele scooted carefully to the
other side of the room where the bookshelf went over the window. "Yes, good;
now crawl down onto a lower shelf and let me take you from this state."
"Yes," said Gabriele, and she swung down to the third shelf.
"Good my dear. Look, I am here too. Now we will dive together."
"Dive? But you don't want me to fall."
"Fall from the bookshelf, no." She hesitated as if not wanting to say anything
more.
"What is it, Rita/Lily? Tell me as a friend."
"If you were to go back you would be stone. There is no life in that. Really
there is no other choice. We will dive from the window."
"From the window? It is three stories high."
"Yes, if we just jump we might miss the exit. We will do it together and depart
from all of this death."