The Nelligan Review

Autumn hosts the unveiling, summer’s light giving way to early dusk, and Samhain the celebration, an eve of disguising; conversely a revealing, but only for those who discern the difference. In a pink polka dot room a pink polka dot girl stares out from behind lace curtains, yearning to escape her pretty pink life. The choice seems never mine. Weekends on the Cape: bare feet on the dashboard, a can of Colt45 in my hand, CCR on the stereo. What happened to the child with an innate lightness of being, arms wide open? Close your mouth, sweetie, you’ll catch flies. Eliade writes “On the one hand, it is not true that shamans always are or always have to be neuropathies; on the other, those among them who had been ill became shamans precisely because they had succeeded in becoming cured.” In the beginning was the word, then men twisted the word into shackles. If I told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. Ripples cycle out and back, the circular pattern a mystery that never ceases to amaze. My pretty aunts sit frozen on green velvet sofas, sipping coffee from flowered bone china teacups. What time is it? I yawn through boring Sunday mornings in a cold church where participants speak a dead language to buy their salvation—a bargain or a rip-off, who can tell? Hence, sobriety, but only if you cling like a limpet to the wagon. My mother dug up her miniature tea roses when we moved, but they never adapted to their new home and eventually withered, needing something she apparently didn’t know how to provide. As an experienced hitchhiker, I always thought I had a knack for knowing a good ride from a bad one, until the day I didn’t. Quite oppressive, as  jobs go.

Escaping her jesses, the Fool lives ever in the present, seeing the world with unjaded eyes, believing all possibilities exist as she steps merrily off a cliff into the unknown. My old Uncle Al’s claw–hand used to scare me, until my father explained shrapnel ripped off two fingers: France 1944. Silent words pirouette across the patterned carpet, while my uncles pretend to look elsewhere. The wheel of births and deaths spins through infinity, an eternity of experience, lessons repeated until we get it right, make amends, pay the karma, detach, and eventually transcend. Sleep brings the dreamtime, a landscape ever unfolding, ever shifting, ever familiar. In the dark years, I stopped writing; I had nothing worthwhile to say and no hope anyone might care. Flights of fancy, too much imagination. Before winter’s rest, trees rebel against green’s conformity, showing their true disposition, true colors, true selves. Awakening from our neuropathies, we womb-holders may yet shatter the masks and manacles forced on us and defend the future for our children's sakes. Don’t believe those sleazy snake oil salesmen when they insist you're foolish. Because, for many, truth telling IS a revolutionary act with potentially significant consequences, no matter how often we imagine it otherwise.

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