july 1, 1904

who has been here? who is here?

july 1, 1909

there was a hand that i stole from my father. i kept it outside chained to a tree in the backyard. it played by itself most days by climbing the tree and then jumping to the ground. i am dying it would scream and we would laugh, taken by the beauty of its child-breaking-into-adolescent voice. as it grew i began to notice how it loved to sit in my husband’s lap almost at the exclusion of doing anything else, how it used to throw acorns and sticks at me whenever i came near. i grew jealous and so threatened it by suggesting i might have children. children devour hands i said. then it grew angry. vengeance is part of a hand’s inheritance. it began to pamper my husband. it began to tease him, to arouse him. he started sitting or worse, lying in the yard until late at night. sometimes he would sleep in the yard but it wasn’t his fault. it was the hand. the hand would silence him, the hand would hold him there, away from me. the hand began to lie to him about me. it would point somewhere out into the neighbourhood. it would shake a finger. shame on you i could hear it gesturing from my bedroom, from my lonely bed. then the hand would close into a fist and only my husband could open it. and this he would do while my black heart sputtered and coughed. if he did anything else, if his lips ever touched that palm i will never know because i have rid myself of the beast. i have solved the dilemma of the hand.

today, amidst slaps and punches and hair pulling and scratches i unchained the hand and tossed it over the fence into the neighbour’s yard. their two children were playing there. within minutes i could hear that strange and wonderful music children make with pots and saucepans, striking them in their special manner with the bones of human hands. i could even hear the dog whistling as it was chewing the leftover skin.

july 1, 1913

when i was a little girl i was told that there is something alive in everything. every stone has its own tenant.

perhaps this was so then, but it is not so now.

i picked up a stone and knocked but no door opened. i spoke to the stone but i received no reply. i tried to look inside the stone but there were no windows. perhaps they have died in-side i thought. i picked up the hammer i had brought along with me and began striking the stone. at last it broke open but inside i discovered nothing. there were no bones, no rooms, no furniture or unmade beds. i now held two stones instead of the original one. i knocked on both the stones, i spoke to both the stones. silence. i struck them with the hammer and they broke into many small pieces. i struck the small pieces again and again until there was nothing but dust. i started hammering at the dust thinking that this was where everyone must be hiding. the dust was stronger than my hammer.

i was also told that stars are the holes created by those who have escaped, by those who have died. i threw my hammer as hard as i could against the sky. i heard the sound of the hammer striking something hard and then the hammer fell back to the earth. i looked up into the sky. nothing escapes here, the sky is impenetrable. stars are just scratches along its surface. they are failed attempts.

july 1, 1926

a weed is always intended. it needs no human intervention, no caring. soil never needs taming for a weed is always ac-cepted and encouraged.

it is this contagious independence of weeds that makes them sworn enemies of the garden. and of the gardener.

it is said that in eden there were no weeds. this is to say, there was nothing there that truly thrived. everything had to be helped along, nurtured, disciplined. there was a woman who lived in this place. and even though she had a man she lived alone. this, because he was more like a father and more like a brother and more like a son than a husband, than an equal. she called him her gardener. she was barren but believed her childlessness was because of something she had done, something she had dared think. but she had thought nothing.

and it was this thought, this i have thought nothing which was her first thought. and it was sweet and its juice dribbled over her lips and down her chin. she began eating more of these thoughts. it was all she desired. she grew fat with them and her gardener grew afraid of her. eden was parched and thin and diseased. it was dying and her gardener blamed it on her. he said that because she had been unfaithful, that because she was not living the life she should be living they were being punished. however, the woman knew differently; from all she had eaten she knew that eden was something unnatural, something that had been created haphazardly and without the appropriate expertise or materials (perhaps it was even created maliciously).

soon, not a day went by that the gardener did not yell at her, abuse her, attempt to strike her. and all this time she sat close-mouthed, sucking on the same sweet thought: there is another place, a proper place of which this eden is a wretched imitation.

july 1, 1937

maybe there is no room for me here. maybe i am larger than i have assumed. maybe there is nowhere to house what my living entails, nothing to support what my living requires.

i am not where i should be and i have never been where i should have been. and with such a foundation on which to build i doubt i will ever be where i should be. it wouldn’t bother me if this was the price of existing, if this was the surcharge that everyone had to pay in order to have a life. but it seems i am alone in this predicament; others appear exempt from the conditions, from the limitations imposed on my living.

this is not a situation i have imagined. this is not some fantasy that i am forced to perform on a barren stage, before row upon row of vacant days, nights . . .

i know it when i see someone talking on the telephone and think that the world was a better place while the phone was ringing. i know it when i feel, when i hear, the door in every thing, in every thought, in every emotion, closing forever before i can sneak through. i know it when crows, the janitors of existence, find my presence excessive. i know it when wasps, the terrorists of existence, find their cause in my undoing. i know it when dogs, the conscripts of existence, use me for target practice. i know it when a cat, a tireless saint of existence, recognizes my penance and finds a way to slink into my predicament to console me. i know it when any person i have ever shared a moment with leaves and there is no sound of their departure, no footprints in the snow, no impression left on a chair, a bed, no warmth on my hands, lips. i know it when i am sought by those who are sending me away, when i am admired by those who can only build pyres, when i am a burden to those who have been granted too much life, when i am caressed by those who are destroying themselves, when i am spoken to only by those who have already died, when i can love only the idea of someone who has never existed.

i know it when it rains and i do not get wet.

i feel it when a leaf falls through me, when a leaf tumbles over my heart as though it were a pebble on a street that is starting to dress for winter.