APRIL

Imagine a crowd, standing tight together, looking in same direction. What do they see? Only one thing, same for all of them. There is a whole wide world around them but they’re not aware of it.

…

The crowd was standing in tight formation, silently, all looking in same direction. Faces showed no emotion - facial expression is part of interaction and there was no need for that.  They didn’t look at each other, not really, not in decades. The common knowledge was that everyone knows what standing next to him thinks, because everyone’s thoughts were surely the same, how can they be not? Sun is too bright, and too hot perhaps, and rain sucks. Days are exhausting and nights are for tiredness, but not rest. They are for busily staring in that direction. We would love to be able to do that thing, it sounds interesting, too bad we’re so busy. Maybe next year would be better for it. Maybe when we retire we will have more time.

…there is a soft murmur in a crowd, a movement that starts somewhere deep. It insists, it stirs, it has no respect for structure and numbness. Finally it parts the wall of people-bricks and bursts out, screaming-laughing-singing. Little girl saw a butterfly, she wants to get closer, she demands to follow it, she wants to know where butterfly lives and what she eats for supper.  Does it have a little bed? With a canopy? Do butterflies and bees talk to each other?

…another annoyed murmur and her tired mother protrudes through becoming a kind of crowd’s extended finger pointing at the girl. You can’t go there, that field is not yours. “Whose field is this?” girl demands to know. The crowd-finger doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. The main thing is non-disturbance of structure. “What harm would it do?” the girl is still at it. The rest of crowd-body behind the finger is irritated, they want distraction to go away, this snag in their non-movement, non-thinkment, this uncomfortable feeling of someone questioning what’s always been. They are busy, they must go back to staring in that direction. The finger gets nervous, twitching and scrambling for answers it realizes now it doesn’t have.

…girl isn’t about to stop, questions are firing at the rapid pace now. Who owns flowers? Who owns butterflies? If butterfly crosses the fence line does it belong to someone else now? What about dandelion seeds? Do flowers have a queen? That’s why i can’t cross the field? Because of queen’s army? Is it an army of bees? I think army of bees is better than army of wasps because bees make honey, they must be sweeter by nature. And they have queens, it must be bee-army!

…mother stands there motionless but her thoughts are racing. She hates that everyone is looking at her, demanding her to do something, anything, make it stop. And she hates that she can remember now. The flowers, the butterflies, and the questions. They went unanswered, just like she can’t answer her daughter’s. See, child, this is an architecture, and we depend on you to be part of it.  If bricks start wandering around crossing fields and picking flowers the structure will collapse, you see? And as it collapses it will hit another structure next to it, and so on.  We can’t have this happen, can we? We can’t let collapse what someone built, such a long time ago, wait who was it, who built it? What was his name? What is my name, I haven’t heard it in such a long time, i forgot it myself?

…meanwhile, the girl darts across the field, picking this flower and that, and a colorful leaf, and a blade of grass. There are lots of daisies in her messy bouquet, the flower of questions and answers. There’s fennel for you, and columbines. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died. Her name might be Daisy, or Ophelia, i should know, i gave it to her, but what is my name?

…the girl is almost done with her bouquet, only one last thing to add - she’s fighting with old  lilac bush for a cluster of purple flowers that smell like memory. She tugs and twists, and old bush pulls back, and they both laugh, and then, finally, the branch snaps, and the memories are released.

Mary, my name is Mary. I am not here to be part of something, i am here to be everything. The smell. The song, the dance, the memory. I am in everything that can be touched and everything that can be felt, i am in raising hairs on a back of a neck and in flutter of butterfly wings in a stomach, and I’m the eyes that stare back when you look in a mirror. I am colors you can’t see in a dark and music you can feel but cannot hear. I am the grass that grows through you and fish that swims behind your eyes, and i am the face on the moon. Everywhere you look you see me. Everything you know, i told you. Out of your child’s eyes, i look at you. I brought you flowers, what will you do with them?

…the crowd recoils. The mother - my name is Mary - is now freestanding, not a part of it anymore but a statue on the cross road with four arms pointing to four corners, permitting, releasing, freeing. The square crowd formation erodes at the corners, softens, and finally breaks into waves receding at her feet, leaving behind a strange smell, powdery and musty, like ground up moth wings and maybe salt. Like if a mummy would cry that what tears would smell like. Mary doesn’t see it anymore, her eyes go over the field where the child still plays, and farther, remembering, searching, knowing…

…that somewhere there is a different formation, another kind of structure. The one that doesn’t bind but connects. Doesn’t build the walls but offers a safe space. Doesn’t drop you (sink or swim, that’s how we make them learn) but holds as long as it takes for wings to grow back. And then….

…we fly, Ophelia.