In my house downstairs) that
morphs into the house I grew up in (upstairs, except the second floor here is
the first floor there). Congregation in the kitchen, entire family in the
house. Dad upstairs; mum in kitchen. Dad's wife's kids (maybe one of them is
his kid). David invisible but manifested in things. Things piled-up everywhere
- I don’t sit still, I organise, attempt to construct (A party?): to engineer a
social event.
Andrew's friends are around; I see
them outside on the tarmac, in the dark. I read a note that has landed in my
hand 'Do you like burning things?' No, I think, but say nothing. Not that I
have time. An enormous fire ball is hurtling towards me. Was it Andrew? Was it
one of the others? I am unsure, I am shaking, he comes to me and holds me, he
apologises but only for the unfortunate incident of the fire (arbitrarily)
arriving at me and not for the fire itself. |I feel very far away, we sit for a
while in a quiet place before I must return (redress, "re-sist") to
the chaotic extremities (the "dangerous boundaries").
People are cutting themselves, (or
being cut), wounded, bleeding, I remember others having 'done it'/having had it
'done to them' when my dad appears, wrapped waist down in a green towel,
complaining about having stood on something sharp - a shard - not glass, a
small beige hard plastic shard - he pulls it out off his foot, blood pours out,
I hastily request that he sits while I nurse his wound (nursing, wounding -
seems like the same thing). He maintains a standing position I have to
physically move his body, I fear the wound will become infected by the germs on
my filthy kitchen floor. I feel oppressed, claustrophobic.
I am looking for antiseptic wipes. I
visualise the box - white with a red stripe - and scan the cluttered table. I
keep getting distracted. Bridget turns up laden with items of clothing. a bag
lady.I can;t remember what we talk about. She joins the congregation around the
table. I lift her jacket from a chair and take it to the coat hooks by the
front door. It won't stay on the hook, too many items. I start to cry. she is
there with me, takes the jacket, deals with it. I look at the ground can barely
see my feet i am wading through things. A plastic bag below Dolores' coat
hooks, I pick it up and pull out more clothes and finally David's running shoes
- spiked like football boots, utterly caked in mud and grass that comes away
from the soles in clumps before it starts to flow out of the bag and cover
everything. Anger with him for leaving this bag here.
Return to the kitchen. My dad has
gone I run upstairs to where he is staying with his wife (who I detest), I
reach the op of my house/first floor of the other house - the extension room in
which I lived as a teenager with grey walls that I pasted with Calvin Klein
perfume adverts that informed a certain idea of beauty and form. I don;t go in;
I call out. I hear Louise's voice and the shower (adjacent to the room, grey
walls again). On asking the whereabouts of my dad she replies 'he is putting a
video on for Sophie'. Sophie is an ultra-feminised little girl who is also
here. Not sure to whom she belongs, but she isn't family. A friend of Dolores'?
Anyway I am livid because he and she have clearly adopted this child as their
own and are 'playing house' (playing, constructing, performing roles). I feel
like a sexual object and walk downstairs suspecting she is lying since I can
still hear the shower ad I am suspicious of her motives.
<can;t bear the thought that she
voted UKIP in the European elections, yet unperturbed by the fact that my dad
did. Know him not know her. Forgive him (for he dissimulates behind masks) but
not her; she is transparent.>
Return to the kitchen. My mother is
sitting between Louise's children who are fake-tanned and grotesquely preened
(the opp of my sister and I - his children). She is mocking Louise with the
fuel of information from these two cartoonish wicked children, and I am
sickened by her naivete. I try to block out the vicious attacks - hating when
my issue is extended out and repossessed by another. Is it a way of being
closer? I am alone in a bubble in this scenario nothing can enter me. Still
searching for the antiseptic wipes - urgent need to tend to my dad's bleeding
sole. rummage through table detritus. Find the box - it is two tiered - the top
tier contains tiny toys and the bottom one contains medicinal items. Toys and
medicines have become combined and I erupt with anger (feels suppressed),
then I notice David sitting with Dolores at my kitchen table.
He proceeds to lecture me about
mixing toys and medicines, attacking my parenting again, wounding me discreetly
for I shouldn't absorb a word he says and yet i do. He is right, of course, but
i trust Dolores and always supervise (I say) and thought she would be
supervised now. I concentrate on the items on the table - all I can see, and my
hands moving the items around, categorising, organising - with fury, always
resisting forces (in this cases multiple forces).
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