Absent Minded

The magical Linda Baker-Cimini has shared this bewitching meandering with me. I can SO relate!
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As I was rolling the words absent minded around in my mouth something sour in the fricatives made me spit it out. It lay there in the palm of my hand glistening with spittle in the light of my beside lamp. It shrugged apologetically casting off its false hood and revealed itself as a useless knot of lines. How absurd for a word to be so opposite of what is true. I yearn to be absent, to be out of my mind as I spend entirely too much time within it.

One word can spur an archeological dig through the strata of the mind revealing the bones and wings of all the flights of fancy that have crashed and burned over time. Collisions give rise to hybrid creatures uniquely adapted to memory's lapses and waves of extinction. A near miss will sometimes occasion a gust strong enough to dislodge a bit of flotsam from unfathomable depths. Many such gusts might support rumors of cetacean intelligence. That the collective stream of unconscious would be comprised of wholly human tributaries is an aberration of an impoverished imagination.

Where is this leading I wonder? I was distracted by a word while reading a book. It's a good book too but here I am recollecting a child who knew me when she and I were one. Chronology leaves room for vacillation. From time to time half a century can dissolve and a single thought can shed light on a time of wonder as yet unprejudiced with illusions of certainty.

What I recall in the minute detail of Cartesian anxiety is the first time a word showed me the true colors of its dishonesty. I am halfway up the stairs. Progress is slowed by the fact that the next step is at the level of my knee. The wood of the stair is unpainted but coated with something clear and slippery. I have something heavy on my mind and must transport it carefully lest it knock me off my stocking feet. I am five years old and embarking on my initial studies of the Otherness of Brother as observed within his natural habitat. I must be very quiet so as not to disturb the habits of the native species. The inside of my head is still the inside of my head presently. This is the vantage point from which I am not absent at all but entirely present. I was pondering the intersubjectivity of the phenomenal world as I navigated those treacherous stairs.

I wanted to discuss the color GREEN. That was when the ambiguous nature of language first became apparent to me. My feet were sweaty. My mouth was dry and my palms tingled with a synaptic fear of falling. I knew that I could point my finger and discern the colors of the rainbow but how to convey the magic of the spectrum? I could never be sure that my brother's idea of green was not in fact purple. We might come to an agreement on the word but how would I know that he wasn't just humoring me? This was the first illustration of otherness that I can recall. The alphabet became a fractured song as each individual letter squirmed and wriggled in front of me. As I said the word aloud to myself GREEN became a doubtful place of isolation. I was not sure my brother could find his way there to visit me even if I scattered breadcrumbs. I abandoned the ascent and walked across the living room on shaky knees. I stopped in the kitchen and listened to the clock the sound making the room seem emptier somehow.

And here I am again lying in the narrow bed of now. A cumbersome triumvirate comes lumbering along, another tangent unmoored with all its clocks askew. Body travels blindly by land, guided by sensation. One can only hope that it will learn to modulate its voice as well as the bat so as not to be deafened by its own echo. Meanwhile mind suspended in a heavy fog of thought flies in circles looking for a hospitable rooftop on which to land. The questionable essence of soul is perplexed when asked to do math and feigns ambivalence as time wreaks havoc on its less fortunate colleagues. The hydra bridles and bucks as love, hunger, fear and thirst take their turn in the saddle. Zinc and copper conduct electric riptides through the bloodstream following convolutions that are anything but linear. What to name this knot of wonder and confusion?   

L.Baker-Cimini      2015

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Remember, you can purchase prints (framed and not), posters and greeting card versions of Linda's awesome work on her Fine Art America site!