The Furious Spinner

Yesterday was a good day. During the breaks in the rain, I walked. In the bare trees near the library when I went to meet Mario for his break, robins perched. And they sang. That throaty, watery robin song. I see robins here nearly all winter. But I don't hear them. This was the first robin song of the year. Whenever I see robins I think of my childhood home in Michigan where I awakened and fell to sleep to the song of robins. I also think of Robin Goodfellow, the god of the witches—Robin Hood, that fairy of the forest who did what he needed to do to protect the forest. I see a robin and I am reminded I must protect the wooded places. In times past, villages always set aside wooded areas, protected them from harm. These were Robin's places.

At home again, I picked up a magazine and opened it randomly. It was a section called "On Healing." The author of the article, a follower of Zen, said that we are whole (the root of the word "heal") even when we are sick. "What needs to be healed is our idea that we are not whole at this moment." I have heard this many times before: that I must accept myself the way I am. Ill or well. I never understood it before. But today, today, I understood. I am perfect just as I am at this moment. This revelation left me giddy.

I turned on the television and George Bush was talking about something. I didn't listen. I watched him. Compassion washed over me. Compassion for George. I realized I didn't hate him. I wanted him out of office, but I didn't hate him. This, too, made me giddy. It felt almost subversive not to hate him.

Later, twilight fell and so did all the rain the world has ever known. Or so it seemed. In the Amazon, they call this "woman rain," because "a woman can cry all day." After dinner, I wrote for an hour. I started a new novel, The Virgin Whore. (I'm not sure about that title. Mario likes it. What do you think?)

As the rain fell and music played in the background, this is part of what I wrote:

The jungle was like something in a dream, if you were an old dreamer. If you’re a new dreamer, you won’t understand. Which are you? Do you know? You will have to choose sides. That is the way of it. The land that became jungle reached up and out. Yes, like fingers, I suppose, only the jungle was first. Perhaps we grew fingers because we had seen these trees, vines, bushes, grow up and out, twining around each other. Clinging, sucking, breathing, gasping with the sheer pleasure of the contact.

Ah, you think I am one of those sentimental ones who claim the Earth is alive. I make no such claims. I do not need to--because we know. Of course the land is alive. Of course our dreams, our lives, are recorded in the cells of those plants, those fingers. But I do not sentimentalize it. I do not imagine it pastoral, like so many of those who have come before. It was not an English garden.

It was a place out of a dream. Until the Patron came. Maybe before. You think because I have said that that you know what side I am on. Some of my people to this day defend the Patron, say he was a savior to us. Are they wrong? We were in such poverty, they say.

What is the definition of poverty? We did not have toilets in our homes. We did not have jobs. Sometimes we went to sleep with empty bellies. To some this is poverty. But we did not want to defecate in our homes. And what are jobs? We made our living, our lives, in the jungle. The forest. The land. They do not use the word jungle any longer. Rainforest, they say. Still? I wonder. It no longer rains as it once did. And what can we say about the forest?

I can not speak of that. Not yet. I must tell this story first, and it will tell the story of the other.

How could we be poor when we could hear the rays of moonlight falling from the canopy, from this leaf to that vine to this branch? Heard it all the way down until it hit the forest floor, softly, cushioned by all that had fallen and died before. Cushioned by the other moonlight beams that had come this far before.

How could we be poor when we felt the breath of the Jaguar on our faces? Ahhhh, the Jaguar said. And we breathed in her relief, her wild nature. Ahhhh, we replied. What can we do for you? Dream, she exhaled. Dream.

How could we be poor when the Encantados, the pink dolphins, tickled our fingers left dangling in the Mother River for only a moment, a dangerous moment which could have left us fingerless--like all those dreamless lands--but a dangerous moment we were willing to dance through on the chance that one of the dolphin people touched us? Beware, our mothers said. They will steal your heart and take you to their enchanted city. Beware, our fathers said. They will eat your women. And by that, they did not mean like we eat our dinner. Not devour.

Tell about her, you say. You cannot stand my weeping. I understand. Even in my dreams, I cry. Could it be different? If I tell this tale, will it all be different?

You have heard her legends. Myths. Stories. You want to know which one is true. How can I tell you? You haven’t answered the question. What kind of dreamer are you? Can you take in what I tell you without trying to control it? Can you accept the dream?

Can you accept the waking?

Ahhhhh.

***

Still later, music played and the woman rain fell. Mario sat on the couch reading Laura Pritchett's collection Hell's Bottom, Colorado. I sat next to Mario. Suddenly, I felt comfortable. I never feel comfortable. I am always squirming, moving, trying to refit myself into my body so that I have some comfort. Suddenly, last night, I was comfortable. I listened to the music and the rain, and it was perfect. I glanced at my beautiful husband, and he smiled. Being with him is always perfect. I was happy. Completely in the moment. This was bliss. For a second—but only a second—I realized I had not felt this way for a long, long while. It had been raining in my soul forever. But not tonight. Not tonight.

Ahhhhh.

I leaned over and kissed Mario on the mouth. "This is wonderful," I whispered. "Yes," he said. I rested my head on his shoulder and put my hand on his chest.

I breathed in perfection. Breathed out bliss.

In the morning, the rain had stopped.

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All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.