Incarnation
I. Rabbit
The first memory: yellow carpet of my bedroom in the duplex where we lived when I was five. I am sitting on the floor; I am wearing a short dress. There is something involving a dresser drawer and the wrapping paper (from a years-ago baby shower) lining the bottom of it, and there are carpet lines on my bare legs, and there is this necklace – the flatly glinting rabbit and the cheap, indelicate silver chain.
II. Magpie
I see a bird spread out in wings, slightly blurred – I think he’s flying. Lines of motion all around him, I’m sure of it. But coming into vision as the light shifts I see his still, glassy eyes: the magpie, brilliantly black and white, is dead and stuffed.
III. I remember
Joni Mitchell wrote: I remember that time you told me, you said “love is touching souls” – well surely you touched mine, ‘cause part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time.
IV. The magpie and I remember
Magpie. That word, like the smile written into the reach of his shiny oiled wings, takes me back in a breath. Like the scent of sagebrush or sycamores or the breath of hot dust when it rains suddenly, falling fast, and the water rolls off the hard dirt and winds up in the gutters, creating tiny, flooding rivers. Like the peeling beef jerky texture of the bark and the shade, silvergreyed green, of the small, furry leaves of the Russian olive trees. Like the bright hot sky and those birds swooping in for something that catches the light.
I remember that time you told me magpies pick through garbage and filth in their search for something shiny, something beautiful.
I remember that time the blonde woman at the park said magpies were disgusting, but I always liked them; I always liked those scavengers. I had recently learned the word carrion, and thought that it was also a certain kind of beautiful.
V. The magpie remembers something shiny
Sometime later, in another town, digging through boxes, I find the necklace again. The details of losing and finding are lost by now, but somehow the necklace survives the garages of several houses and surfaces again with familiarity and recognition. My memory is only of the rabbit in my hand and the impression of significance. Chain is replaced by ribbon and ribbon by chain and the series links and breaks the years; the rabbit stays close to me from now on.
VI. Remembering the scavengers
I remember that time you told me you had found something interesting in the car. I cringed as it came back: the dark sky and those boys and the early Beatles and the parking lot and the ten hubcaps I collected, stashed in the trunk of your Nissan, and forgot about.
I remember that time you said “you’re such a little scavenger.”
VII. The rabbit and I remember the magpies
I remember that time I was wearing that necklace on that ribbon and those earrings I bought for the way the sun sparkled them when I turned my head. I remember when he got in the car (this was around the start of the collaborative magpie afternoons) and looked at me, a pleased or proud smile to one side.
I remember that time he said “fuck, you’re hip today,” and thinking back to the person I was at that time, I’m sure I replied “I know.”
VIII. Magpie, in loving memory
The lines of life of that dead magpie in flight bring to mind the beating of a heart in a hollow place. How we may sigh for the sake of beauty without a sense of emotion, without a memory of warmth or the sea or of blossoms when they are being born. That bird is dead, but I’m reading forward motion, or suggestion, or implication, in those tire-track power-line clothes-line stripes.
IX. Remembering the scavengers II
I remember that time I brought home the bicycle wheel. You had just cleaned the walls in the hallway. I came home late and you got up to say hello and found the wheel (brown and rusty and greasy, half-cleaned) leaning against the clean beige wall.
I remember that time you said “get this dirty piece of garbage out of my house.”
X. The rabbit and I remember who we are, were, want, wanted
I remember that spring, running out the door and tumbling down the stairs in skips and leaps, always almost late for the bus, always tying on the ribbon necklace in the rain. I’d been bringing home all kinds of things and I remember how you sighed and said “oh, Yoko” when I wrote or pasted or labeled Yes on things, looking for some rock star to wander into the installation that made up my life, climb the ladder and fall, fall, fall for me in some kind of double fantasy. Around the dinner table dad asked if I’d become Catholic when he wasn’t looking, saying the necklace looked like the medallion of some saint. Saint Anthony? Saint Peter?
I remember that time, how you looked at the rabbit and suggested “Saint Peter Cottontail.” Images of pastel colored, cardboard bound children’s books flashed around the room and we all exploded with enchantment.
I remember that time, reading a draft of this, how you told me “it came from chocolate. It was on a box of chocolate.”
I love the necklace, and the story, and Lucy. But not in that order.
Like a Kaleidoscope made from someone’s glassy bits of memory. Fascinating.
“It came from chocolate. It was on a box of chocolate.”
I don’t know why I like that last bit so much. But I really like it. You need to write a book just so you can end it with those lines.
Your writing style is just breathtaking, Lucy. I am really enjoying your posts. I agree, the box of chocolates line at the end just made me grin. There is a wealth of memories here. Beautiful.