this miracle : one day she fell off a stool she was laughing so much at it, and lay on the floor beside me next to the upturned stool with her arms holding her chest, tears coming out of her eyes, laughing in a way that meant it was fortunate we were in the thick-walled part of the house and no passers-by could hear her laugh like that, like the wild women did who lived in the forest and were shunned, cause known to do witchery.
Otherwise she held me on her knee after my bath and told me the terrifying stories like the one about the boy whose father, Apollo the sun-god, forbade him from driving the horses who drew the sun across the sky from its place of rising to its place of setting every day cause those horses were too wild for him and too strong, and she glided her arm through the air to show the horses and the sun all going their steady way : but when the boy took the forbidden horses out she shuddered her arm (the horses getting a little bit too strong) then shook and threw her arm from side to side (the horses getting stronger and stronger) then her arm threwitself wildly about as if it was a wild mad thing no longer even a part of her (the horses out of control, the reins flapping loose in the air) and the day passed and became night in a second or 2 like the whole day passing in the swoop of a bird across the sky, then horses chariot boy all dashing to the ground so fast that words can’t – and here she made as if to drop me off her knee, as if I’d fall and hit the ground like them, but no, cause as soon as the fall seemed to start I’d find myself instead flung upwards not down, cause she’d stand up just as she dropped me, swing me up instead into the air very high and dangerous and free as if my heart and throat might leave my body and leap up above us both towards the ceiling – yet she never let go of holding me firm for a moment on either the down or the up, my mother.
Or the story of Marsyas the musician who was half-man and half-beast and who could play as sweetly as any god on his flute and did so until Apollo the sun-god himself heard rumours about how good the earthly musician was, came shooting down straight as a ray of light to earth, challenged him to a contest, won the contest and had the musician skinned alive as his prize.
Which isn’t necessarily the injustice that it sounds, my mother said. Cause imagine, the skin of Marsyas slipped off as easily as a tomato’s will in warm water to allow the red raw sweetness out ofthe fruit below. And the sight of such release moved everyone who saw it to a strength of feeling more than any music anywhere played by any musician or god.
So always risk your skin, she said, and never fear losing it, cause it always does some good one way or another when the powers that be deign to take it off us.
This boy is a girl.
I knew it.
I know it cause we sat on that poor specimen of wall (which will not last) until a much older woman, bent by the years, came out of the dwelling behind us making a great furore : she poked the boy in the back with the bristle end of a brush on a long wood pole and she shouted something and as we came away the boy made, I think, apology, very polite and in the unbroken undisguised voice of what can only be girl.
Also, this girl is good at dance : I am enjoying some of the ways of this purgatorium now : one of its strangest is how its people dance by themselves in empty and music-less rooms and they do it by filling their ears with little blocks and swayingabout to a silence, or to a noise smaller than the squee of a mosquito that comes through the little confessional grille in each of the blocks : the girl was doing a curving and jerking thing both, with the middle of her body, she went up then down then up again, sometimes so low down that it was a marvel to see her come back up again so quick, sometimes pivoting on one foot and sometimes on the other and sometimes on both with her knees bent then straightening into a sinuous
Otherwise she held me on her knee after my bath and told me the terrifying stories like the one about the boy whose father, Apollo the sun-god, forbade him from driving the horses who drew the sun across the sky from its place of rising to its place of setting every day cause those horses were too wild for him and too strong, and she glided her arm through the air to show the horses and the sun all going their steady way : but when the boy took the forbidden horses out she shuddered her arm (the horses getting a little bit too strong) then shook and threw her arm from side to side (the horses getting stronger and stronger) then her arm threwitself wildly about as if it was a wild mad thing no longer even a part of her (the horses out of control, the reins flapping loose in the air) and the day passed and became night in a second or 2 like the whole day passing in the swoop of a bird across the sky, then horses chariot boy all dashing to the ground so fast that words can’t – and here she made as if to drop me off her knee, as if I’d fall and hit the ground like them, but no, cause as soon as the fall seemed to start I’d find myself instead flung upwards not down, cause she’d stand up just as she dropped me, swing me up instead into the air very high and dangerous and free as if my heart and throat might leave my body and leap up above us both towards the ceiling – yet she never let go of holding me firm for a moment on either the down or the up, my mother.
Or the story of Marsyas the musician who was half-man and half-beast and who could play as sweetly as any god on his flute and did so until Apollo the sun-god himself heard rumours about how good the earthly musician was, came shooting down straight as a ray of light to earth, challenged him to a contest, won the contest and had the musician skinned alive as his prize.
Which isn’t necessarily the injustice that it sounds, my mother said. Cause imagine, the skin of Marsyas slipped off as easily as a tomato’s will in warm water to allow the red raw sweetness out ofthe fruit below. And the sight of such release moved everyone who saw it to a strength of feeling more than any music anywhere played by any musician or god.
So always risk your skin, she said, and never fear losing it, cause it always does some good one way or another when the powers that be deign to take it off us.
This boy is a girl.
I knew it.
I know it cause we sat on that poor specimen of wall (which will not last) until a much older woman, bent by the years, came out of the dwelling behind us making a great furore : she poked the boy in the back with the bristle end of a brush on a long wood pole and she shouted something and as we came away the boy made, I think, apology, very polite and in the unbroken undisguised voice of what can only be girl.
Also, this girl is good at dance : I am enjoying some of the ways of this purgatorium now : one of its strangest is how its people dance by themselves in empty and music-less rooms and they do it by filling their ears with little blocks and swayingabout to a silence, or to a noise smaller than the squee of a mosquito that comes through the little confessional grille in each of the blocks : the girl was doing a curving and jerking thing both, with the middle of her body, she went up then down then up again, sometimes so low down that it was a marvel to see her come back up again so quick, sometimes pivoting on one foot and sometimes on the other and sometimes on both with her knees bent then straightening into a sinuous
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