One day maybe yesterday or was it some other day? I spent two hours with one blue, one green, one clear and one pink pushpin in a portable watercolor dish. I also had some small perfectly square sticky notes. I walked Winkle and photographed the pushpins and squares. Although I lost the blue one right away.
The in some other near but non-descript time block, I found myself painting golf balls black, gold, and silver. Expanding into some wild mania I got out the 3-D paint and glitter. Then I understood more my need to find lost balls. I am a lost ball.
Prior to or maybe not, I took a mealy looking orange of sorts along with us on our walk. I tried to throw it and shoot it moving but I only got smears of snow. Eventually the darn thing split its fibrous contents from behind the pimply callous of an orange skin.
There was another scheduled event. That was learning about compression and artifacts. And the ongoing project of course… understanding lint and how quickly it moves back to its place on the floor.
Moving forward as they say. Or is it? Tomorrow, 965 days after Torri was riding in Erin Leith’s car, a girl she barely knew, 965 days after she hung out with the “older girls” and skipped school for the first and last time, 965 days after the carpet spun up to meet me, wet and pierced with guts, I will learn what happened that day.
Evidence, statements, crash constructions, Mary Hall in her minivan, puddles, aortas, pictures… all in distinctly ruddy orange folders loosely bound by gray elastic cannot be known until a trial is set to begin. I am a mother whose every cell misses its heart, second to second sometimes. Nights I can hear them wandering in fast rushes, lost inside no definition, unable to sound even disabling and useless echoes.
The Runaway Bunny is a true little square story about a mother who never stops looking, who will go anywhere to find her Runaway Bunny and never gives up, thus offering eternal and reciprocal reassurance. My child, your child, they are, we are, the only relationship that exists where we are literally part of the other. If you are not a mother, forgive me, you cannot approach the feeling of what this is. If your child is alive, so are your cells and you have not felt the screams.
The cells do a nice job of not forgetting. I do not want memories, which is maybe why I do things like paint golf balls. Too clearly formed is the imaginary memory of the minutes leading up to and through 11:03 am on May 16 2006, Tuesday. It is a constant burning in hell moment to moment why why why in dizzying circles until there I am back on the sea foam green gut wailing carpet.
The Ken Savage Blog entries that Torri wrote under the name “BZ” are unreadable to me but I can remember them from posting them here. They tell me where we were, where she was, both together having just arrived on the precipace of friendship, away from separation chaos. Torri knew me. She would know about pushpins and square papers on snowy days, tossed oranges and lint and shutters. She worried and kept herself busy away from the worry. Then we would co-construct our story to make it better. Not this time.
Time ended, but before this it had been stolen by salacious, overdetermined material compressed into itself. Its artifacts were lies grouped together by a small group of people, many very sick people, for their own unforgiveable gain. They were the wayward, ruinous pixels of an otherwise good thing. Hearing lie after lie, and transparent cliche lines about children, a virtual three-ring circus showcase for blossoming patholoy, its scent thicker than a funeral home. My time with her was stolen before it ended. I always thought someone would give it back to me.
If she had seen me in shackles her heart would have broken in different pieces. It was already breaking in ways no 15 year old’s heart knows how. Had time not ended, maybe I would have smiled a little, or turned it into an event like conquering lint, making time matter, showing how resilience counts. A story for us to age against.
Erin is a daughter. Maybe I will become very angry about Erin Leith’s part in time ending. Maybe not. Her trial begins on Thursday in Plymouth.
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