The Bellelli Family, and: The Bath

The Bellelli Family

If I press my hand against the window, no one will die sooner or reverse directions. And there are other things. The order in which dolls come. One Russian girl inside another, until the last, smallest one won't open, can contain no one - the lack of pregnancy we admire in children. I want several bodies to open and put back inside each other, to increase, then decrease when they are overwhelmed. It is simple and then it is raining in a sudden sheet over all the roofs and all the shoppers.

My grandmother left my cousin Sara her dollhouse, complete with a dining room and silverware, people seated or resting upstairs. There is no front wall which allows you to always be with them as you are always with yourself. Mother and father and girl and girl. When people are dying, the pamphlet says, they start to itch and remove their clothes, which is a sign the body has become burdensome. A deflated nightgown. Even when they are home, and they are always home, they still want to go home.

I will try to remember if I packed everything - what I won't remember until I'm already there. Then I'll have too many of the wrong things. As long as I have the necessities: my passport, social security card, birth certificate, and father's will are at home in a blue fireproof box. I am and I will have. But not I will be, just as I am not sure if certain memories are even my memories. Be fore I was born, my dog buried a plastic frog in the side yard when one of her female puppies died. She needed somewhere.

The Bath

A hand curled around a child's neck with a sponge in a picture. A sponge attached to a hand which is attached to an arm. Which is crucial. Anxiety thrives on the unknown. If her hand took the sponge away, there would be a cool empty spot on the child's neck. A white oval. Symbolically, this could be the beginning of time when all matter and energy in the universe was concentrated into a small volume that exploded. Like the puzzle of a mirror - pieces scattered on the kitchen table on a rainy afternoon. This might take hours to put together. This picture ripped apart might not solve anything.

Anxiety does not solve anything: pressed together and ripped apart. When I was finished, I couldn't see my reflection because the mirror was made of paper. If you can't see your reflection, one book said, you don't exist - i.e. you must see yourself shatter to exist. After many millions of years, the universe thinned and cooled enough to condense into individual galaxies and then stars. The way pieces of a mirror form when an actual mirror is punched. Therefore, it hurt to and/or to hurt is to exist. All afternoon, my fist was cut and the rain hit the kitchen window with the redundancy of a sponge. A circular motion is best to remove the past. To clean the future injury's blood, you must hold a sponge against a child's neck forever.

Other theories imply that the universe has always expanded and always will expand, with no beginning and no end. This might be another way to avoid losing anyone ever again. Which is, technically, impossible. Even the photographer is afraid when he wakes up from the "losing Susanna" nightmare. Blind, he feels the flat surface of the picture again and again, but he cannot see her image. Which means he cannot see his fingers. Later, sitting awake among stacks of pictures, in order to comfort himself, says out loud, "But do you think I would have left you if I didn't have to? Richard? Richard?"