A hole, like in knitting. Suicide, the word like sluice, like a gentle searing sound, cutting quietly though the chain of looped yarn. Who else knows? Pain cauterizes mouths, eyes, keeps words in.
The people he knew: have they kept on? Their tears and their rage were unknown to me until an hour ago, and now I can only imagine them. Like great gelatin waves folding, this town seems to close over it, like a soft sticky sea, moving on.
The ties that keep these people together are whispered, not shouted. There are no locals, not in this ghostly place of trees taller than night, secrets renewed every two hundred years. Wilderness is too big here, people grow nervous and move to gentler places.
People come here and throw out contact like lace doily thread, thin, so small. In a month of dreary rain threads sprouted like mushrooms, eyes met, meals cooked. Parents in faraway places heard stories. An incredible friendly anonymity spread. One cut and we wonder--what are we doing here? A body taken home, across the ocean. The heavy work of arranging a flight for a dead man. And the month acquaintances struggle to recreate, to go forward.
The violent energy of ending your own life. The chemical concoction of the murderous charge to kill a human and the paradoxical desire to do it to yourself hisses of a heady hurricane of an unstoppable force. like a long drone of chainsaws, building building to a painful whine, then the shock wave necessary to push yourself up, over the wall of reason, sending your perfect water-filled jellybag bloodrunning body smack into the selfish silver grille of SUV.
The thoughts keep leaving me, returning. I make rice pudding, and enjoy the small calm of a day off. I lie in my bed, light particles at maximum, cedars filtering it, peach-colored blankets reflecting. So much perfect yellow, and then this. And if I didn't know, this day, this apartment, would look no different. Rice, eggs, milk, cinnamon--still would cook, spread smell.
I understand no more human nature having heard the news. But a body dying on purpose reminds me of skies at night, back home--blueblack bursting with sparkly white; fathers, bearded; grass wet and cool by ten'o'clock. Things so opposite to this moment, yet contained within the pushing and pulling of my skin, my blood, my bones.
Sometimes there are no words, and sometimes the words are just worn out, and tired.
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the human behind the bean
I'm a 27 year old Canadian woman. I grew up on Cape Breton Island, although my parents and their families are from Quebec and Ohio. Currently I live in Cape Breton, in a small town by the Bras D'Or Lake.
I can make a good soup and tie my own shoes. I've worked as a nanny, a potter's assistant, a shop clerk, and a janitor. I've also worked in a library, and taught computers to seniors. I've travelled to Australia and New Zealand and across Canada by train. I spent two and a half years in university before I left. I like the way the air smells in the Fall.
Since 2002 - this is my blog, a place for me to write about life, what I experience, to share my photography and my writing. I'm glad you're here!
I can make a good soup and tie my own shoes. I've worked as a nanny, a potter's assistant, a shop clerk, and a janitor. I've also worked in a library, and taught computers to seniors. I've travelled to Australia and New Zealand and across Canada by train. I spent two and a half years in university before I left. I like the way the air smells in the Fall.
Since 2002 - this is my blog, a place for me to write about life, what I experience, to share my photography and my writing. I'm glad you're here!
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