Something that’s broken

Posted on July 7, 2006 in Mania Prose Arcana

This head of mine, specifically in a small corner near a biplane called the amygdala. I’ve become fascinated by this bit of goo — it is my life, you see, flying and crashing into the arms of — what? — disaster?

I just see it there in a green field, dismantled. A bunch of pretty, corsetted ladies in pink Victorian dress under white parasols survey the splinters and the rags and the brave pilot who is by a miracle still alive. They applaud him politely, cheering him in words like “What a splendid recovery you have had”. And he bows.

The amygdala is a bouncing bit of machinery and he wants it fixed or replaced soon so that he can be where he is supposed to be, up on the zephyrs, over the furry crests of the patched range that shunted him down and laid him at the foot of a rocky chute. He rubs his cheeks, glances once at a girl dabbing a hankie at her arms which are bleeding sweat.

Did I say that it was a hot day? It’s always a blazing day when a crash happens. No gloom, no rain making kitten squeals looking for its mama cat’s teats. No it is on a day like today that things that fly come down and burn. Except this plane is not burning. Only the sun roasts the pilot and the onlookers. The petrol seeps gently into the earth. Now they cheer “Hip hip hooray.” Do they know? Do they know that this catastrophe is not his, that this is just a happening?