This one began speaking as I was driving to work. The story watched me as I followed the curve of the off ramp, watched me watching it, and leisurely lifted itself from the bole of a gulmohar where it had been perched, and I knew I'd been taken.
And now I am haunted. There is no other word for it. There is familiarity in moving shadows, an almost recognition in the pattern the unmoving leaves sketch on my desk, the scuttling just outside my vision that falls silent when concentrated upon. If I ignore it, or at least pretend to, it'll intensify, and then there'll be chills around my knuckles, numbness just beneath the left hand ring finger, the muscle under the thumb drumming to an unheard beat. That's when I shall have to do something about it. I know this of old.
This time, it is a tangled loom of a story that has stumbled upon me. I can't see the end of it and feel its unwieldy mass pouring in the pit of my stomach. I am really uncomfortable with this one because, like always, being haunted does not assure a good story at the end of exorcism. And the heaviness of this one is frightening.
The thing about largely woven patterns is that they tend to stretch so wide and far that they often get lost somewhere on the horizon. If one is lucky, they carry their creator on their roaring wave and by the time she is washed up on the shore, the project is finished, races off on an ever undulating ocean. However, I am not so fortunate. I am haunted by snippets, images, silvery strands of plot-ghosts as I chase chores, drive, grade, and wonder. I don't yet know what, if they can, will ever crystallize in a coherent tale, but judging by the increased hauntings, the prospects seem promising.
Be that as it may, I can tell that these are going to be a difficult couple of hours, several months, two years, however long the birthing might take.
Good reader, pray that the birthing be easy; light a votive in the gathering the twilight, chew a gulmohar petal for luck, and begin reading or telling a long tale tonight, to ease the season's night passage.
I'll be praying that the birth will be easy!
ReplyDeleteI'm still intrigue as if anything can be done to help untangled the stories.
Thanks, Ofelia! every bit of good will helps!
ReplyDelete"Good reader, pray that the birthing be easy; light a votive in the gathering the twilight, chew a gulmohar petal for luck, and begin reading or telling a long tale tonight, to ease the season's night passage."
ReplyDeleteThis sentence has deeply resonated for me. I don't know why, but will not analyze and just stay with the feelings it invokes.
And what does the gentle weaver do when the threads of her loom are tangled, when her pattern runs loose in her vision? Lovingly, tenderly she patiently reaches for the first thread and begins, thread by glorious thread, piecing the bits and pieces of her vision together. This birthing is a miracle in the works.
Very kindly put, Paula! Thank you!
ReplyDelete