“The knots hollows and joints of our lives, like wood, which matures and darkens exposed to weather. Edward has not lived here for eleven years, yet the layers of life which peel from us from time to time like discarded skins still stay attached to the furniture which Edward used. During the months I was blind I could feel and identify the layers left by him; I could even separate them, shuffle and sift them, with a touch of my fingers; but I could never quite remove them or detach the invisible hinge which held them to the surface of chairs, tables, floors, walls. Sometimes, walking blindly in the house, I stumbled across objects which had not been there when I could see, and for a while I could not understand the nature of them; some were crushed beneath my feet; others pierced my skin and I could feel the drops of blood at my ankle. Surely when I could see I had not such difficulty in walking across the floor! Then I realized gradually that I walked through accumulations of four lives- my own, Edward’s, Erlene’s, and my father’s; and the wonder was not that these accumulations had suddenly made themselves palpable, but that I had been able to move through them at all. They might have held me prisoner by their very weight and mass.”
Janet Frame, Scented gardens for the blind, p. 20.
Most days words seem a bit like a prison: defining, confining, naming… but other days they are a gift, they come in disguise from nowhere and touch you.. and there is nothing that I like more than things that touch you with such violence and suit themselves so well to everything that you are thinking.
