Project Tapestry
Copyright 2000 e. blakemore
(backward)
Earlier, I am writing what I must write and a Scandinavian woman interrupts me, though in a subtle, polite sort of way. She has a
cat, and as I lie in the road near the sea, the cat comes near, hissing at me, threatening me. This leaves me liking cats better than I ever had before.
On the bay, from a high window, and at a time later than the present, I am watching from this woman's window as dump trucks crowd onto a barge-like ferry. The ferry, at first, sits beached against the bay shore, like something from a documentary about the taking of the beach at Normandy.
The trucks jump like lemmings from a high cliff to land hard upon the ferry. The trucks continue to jump like clockwork even when the ferry is pulling away.
One dump truck jumps, barely making it onto the ferry. The next one jumps, falls slowly to the dark sea, landing in the water, just behind the slow-moving ferry. We watch from the window as it drifts forward and down, deep into the cold, clear saltwater. We can see it underwater. We see the driver’s entrapment. We can see his face full of horror and imagine ourselves in his hopelessness. We believe something has passed between us. An act of recognition and of pity.
It is not entirely clear whether we pity him or he pities us.
We leave the windowframe and her house, and continue downward, back towards the beach. There are NCOs wearing the hats of officers. Though we are not military, we know this is very wrong. We know they will be punished and we feel sorrow for them, like nuns passing starving children in the streets.
(a third leg)