I wake with the roosters. the seasick sadness I had from the previous night had slowly been peeled away by a vast array of dreams and the constant pattering of rain. crazed dreams, lifting me out of my slumber, a hanging man to a knife. my melancholy cities inside the guts, a catacomb of lust. moving again. everytime. my head starts to feel comfortable in where I rest, then I pick up and leave.
The last eight days were spent within the confines of a warm little web of people. ah, reveling in some hours of hard labour; stacking wood, turning soil, weeding, cleaning old rooms (and soviet money de 1961).
A woman named Deborah who took a liking to me and fed me in exchange for the work on the old school rooms, beating rugs till my arms felt like elastic and huge clouds of dust rising up into the late vermont evening. She criticised others with a kind of acid upon her tongue but everytime, I reeled her slowly back into stories of the former yugoslavia; to serbia and bosnia and the women there.
'No one could I find who didn't tell me stories of their husbands drinking, beating them, ridiculing them. No one. I wanted to write a book on them, not for fame or money, but just to write, to get it out into the world, a sort of layman's anthropological study. And no one knows anything about these worlds inside these countries, no one here, at least.
'They were so happy when I could communicate with them, so surprised that I knew serbian, oh it was the most amazing thing to see their eyes light up, as if making something impossible possible..a secret passage to the west, for they knew they could never learn english, the capacity wasn't inside them. So I listened to them, I took recordings, notes, photographs. And it was lost when my ex husband and I split up, and I moved from california out here.'
Most people that are isolated harden inside, go crazy, burn out fireflies that once lit the paths of all that they met. I meet so many on the road, so dysfunctional, entombed within their own sadness and stubborn prides and then it turns bitter, sour.
One night, I was supposed to leave the next day for quebec but I still hadn't had a phonecall I'd been waiting for, so would continue to stay on until the saturday, a day later. She had cooked me a special last meal and had put a lot of time into it. The feeling heaved inside me that she never got to cook for anybody else.
In walks Bruce, a man like a giant with strange hard eyes. He didn't believe I was from England due to my accent. Neither do I.
While we are eating, he speaks about the financial agreement of the depression and somesuch. Bullshit and I drink up my wellwater, and feign interest. I am a master at such things, I am sure. He hates the government with a passion and stomps upstairs once Deborah finds an opening to say a word.
Later we speak of euthanasia, of vegetables in old people's homes. I would hate to be so reliant on others and she feels the same. Bruce, the giant, storms in and overhears and demands that she shows us what she means. He draws a large cutting knife from a draw and shoves it into her hands.
'Show us, I want to see it right now, before it's too late and you have to go in a home yourself'
Shouting ensues. 'You nazi! You fascist! Denying people the right to live'
Again he draws out another knife, more aggressively this time and forces it into her hands.
My face loses all of it's blood. Where to, I wonder?
Later, I stand in the rain for the longest while, blood beating in my forehead, once again, gazing up into the dark night sky, shuddering.
Jill pulls up in her car and greets me with a hug, going for a swim in the process, my hoody drenched. She gives me a little soup and three books and sends me to her daughter's bed, who is away for the night.
I read about a caterpillar who gets tired of leaf nibbling and leaves his wonderful, friendly tree. He meanders in fields for a great while and despite finding everything extremely beautiful and breathtaking, it doesn't satisfy him. One day, he finds a tower of caterpillars.
'What is this?' he wonders, and what are they climbing towards?
So, he decides to climb. Whatever is up there must be worth it, he thinks to himself. But, he must climb upon the heads of others. He decides that to do this, he mustn't look into their eyes otherwise he would feel bad.
For a long while, he climbs and seems to make progress. Yet, he constantly wonders, what is up there, what if it's nothing? But, he climbs, regardless, because there must be something up there if there are so many others climbing. One time, he voices his thoughts outloud next to a yellow caterpillar. She replies with an affirmation that she too has the same doubts. He gazes at her, taken by her beauty and shuffles round her so as not to have to climb ontop of her. However, later on, he finds he has only the option of climbing on her to progress. He closes his eyes and clambers upon her head.
'Ouch! Come on..we don't have to do this..imagine the life we could lead together, in the fields, together, rubbing against eachother..just imagine!'
'You're right..how awful this existence this is..'
So, after a long while, they find their way down. At the bottom, three caterpillars have fallen, from the top, they say, and are on their last breaths. 'Butterflies..' one says, and collapses. They think little of it and are happy.
But both get restless again, yet the yellow female caterpillar convinces herself that it is all inside her, that they must persevere. The grey caterpillar listens and is convinced. However, it keeps coming back, and one day, the grey male caterpillar decides to go and climb the tower again. The female yellow caterpillar becomes so sad, but refuses to climb with him, to put herself through that again.
So the grey caterpillar climbs and climbs, this time more focused than ever, blinding himself to everyone else that climbs. What resilience! all the others think. He crushes the heads of others without thought. Eventually, he gets almost to the top and hears 'to get to the top, we must throw these off' and the sight of dozens falling to their deaths.
I can't live like this..nothing is worth that..he tells himself. Nothing.
Meanwhile, the yellow caterpillar has been wandering for many a day and comes across a tree with a caterpillar weaving a sort of cocoon.
'I don't know what will happen, but I must do this..I have heard stories about butterflies..maybe, just maybe..I can become one if I do this..I don't know why, but it just feels right..join me..what's the worst that can happen?'
So she does, and somehow, she builds her cocoon and after a while, out comes the most beautiful butterfly ever seen.
She flies straight to the tower and finds the grey caterpillar, nudges him and prods him with her wings, light upon his face. After a while, a shot of recognition fills him, and he understands everything.
I read this into the early hours of the morning under a small little light, calming my blood down, softening my breaths.
I have an internship, or at least, the very beginnings of one, nine hundred miles from here in some weeks, for self sufficiency and wilderness skills. I shall have a trial period. Dawn till dusk, four days a week, then three days of recuperation and learning new skills, working a little bit for a bottle of wine and to get home for christmas, perhaps. It lasts for a year, but these first few weeks will be vitally important.
O', such a change in direction!
