Curva Peligrosa
By Lily Iona MacKenzie
Genre: Literary magical realism
WORDS
AS ANIMALS
I
recently read the book Words as Eggs by Jungian analyst Russell
Lockhart. The idea for the work, and the chapter from which the title comes,
originated in one of Lockhart’s dreams. A voice in his dream said “Do you not
know that words are eggs, that words carry life, that words give birth?” (92).
Lockhart later points out that this dream revelation isn’t exactly new in the
larger scheme of things. In the beginning, it’s rumored that God spoke the
world into existence: “the word is seed and gives birth to life and living
things” (92). As eggs, words are constantly delivering new ideas and thoughts,
filling our minds with possibilities and worlds we otherwise wouldn’t have
access to.
A
writer, I’m fascinated with anything to do with words and how they inform,
form, and reform our surroundings—and us. They are magical and ordinary
simultaneously, both grounding us in their multiple meanings as well as
suggesting possibilities that seem limitless. That’s one reason why poetry and
fiction in particular have such a profound grip on our imaginations and on us.
In his exploration of his dream announcement, Lockhart does a compelling job of
taking the reader into the soul and roots of language, demonstrating how
mysterious and complex these 26 letters of the alphabet are that have an
endless capacity to change shape.
So
when I recently had an auditory dream that said “words are animals,” my
antennae went up and the animal in me growled. What was the dream trying to
convey by making this analogy?
Unlike
humans, animals aren’t governed by consciousness. They simply exist,
functioning instinctively, motivated by immediate needs: hunger, shelter,
survival. Also unlike most humans, animals follow their impulses. Their innate
drives are their engines. They just do whatever they need to do as they live
each day.
How
then are words similar to what I’ve just described? If animals, at least
domesticated ones, allow us to corral them, to absorb some of their otherness,
their wildness, then words must give in to our domination in similar ways. The
very idea that we are abstracting something vital from the language we use in
our attempt to create order out of the chaotic mess that unruly letters can
make saddens me. We’re draining something intuitive and spontaneous from the
method we use to communicate with others and with ourselves.
Is
the dream suggesting that as we domestic words, as we drain their
animal characteristics from them, we are civilizing ourselves too much,
becoming more alienated from our animal origins and perhaps coming to resemble
more the robotic gadgets we’re surrounded by? I don’t have any final answers,
but I’m curious if others have thoughts about this subject.
About the Author
A Canadian by birth, a high school dropout, and a mother at 17, in my early years, I supported myself as a stock girl in the Hudson’s Bay Company, as a long-distance operator for the former Alberta Government Telephones, and as a secretary (Bechtel Corp sponsored me into the States). I also was a cocktail waitress at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, briefly broke into the male-dominated world of the docks as a longshoreman (I was the first woman to work on the SF docks and almost got my legs broken), founded and managed a homeless shelter in Marin County, co-created The Story Shoppe, a weekly radio program for children that aired on KTIM in Marin County, CA, and eventually earned two Master’s degrees (one in creative writing and one in the humanities). I have published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir in over 150 American and Canadian venues. My novel Fling! was published in 2015. Curva Peligrosa, another novel, will be published in September 2017. Freefall: A Divine Comedy will be released in 2018. My poetry collection All This was published in 2011. I have taught at the University of San Francisco for over 30 years, and I blog at http://lilyionamackenzie.wordpress.com.
Links:
On Twitter: @lilyionamac
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lily.iona.mackenzie/
On Amazon: http://amzn.to/2tQb5eS
EXCERPT: Bones Will Be Bones
They didn’t think much about it when the wind picked up without warning late one summer afternoon and a dark cloud hurtled towards them over the prairies. Alberta residents are used to nature’s unpredictability: snowstorms in summer; spring thaws during severe cold snaps; hail or thunderstorms appearing out of nowhere on a perfect summer day. At times, hot dry winds roar through like Satan’s breath, churning up the soil and sucking it into the air, turning the sky dark as ink. Months later, some people are still digging out from under the spewed dirt.
But this wasn’t just a windstorm. A tornado aimed directly at the town of Weed, it whipped itself into a frenzy. To the Weedites, it sounded like a freight train bearing down on them, giving off a high-pitched shriek the closer it got, like a stuck whistle. The noise drowned out everything else. Right before the tornado hit, a wall of silence descended, as if the cyclone and every living thing in the area had been struck dumb.
And then a completely intact purple outhouse dropped into the center of town, a crescent-shaped moon carved into its door. It landed right next to the Odd Fellows Hall and behind the schoolhouse. Most people thought the privy had been spared because its owner—Curva Peligrosa, a mystery since her arrival two years earlier—had been using it at the time.
Meanwhile, the tornado’s racket resumed, and Curva sat inside the outhouse, peering through a slit in the door at the village dismantling around her. The funnel sucked up whole buildings and expelled them, turning most of Weed upside down and inside out. Unhinged from houses, doors and roofs flew past, along with walls freed from their foundations. The loosening of so many buildings’ restraints released something inside Curva. Never had she been so aroused. It was more exhilarating than riding the horse she’d bartered for recently, a wild gelding. The horse excited her, especially when she imagined herself riding its huge organ. In the midst of the noise and clatter, just as the tornado reached its climax, Curva had hers.
A heavy rain followed, some of it seeping into Curva’s sanctuary and dampening the walls as well as her nightdress. So much rain pelted the town it created a flood that overran the main street. Protected from the worst of the storm, Curva drowsed and dreamt that she fell through the hole in the seat, landing on the ground with a soft thud next to a pile of bones, each about ten inches long, worn smooth from the elements. She grabbed one and—still aroused—used it, waking to the melting feeling of another orgasm and the sound of rain pelting the roof.
On Amazon: http://amzn.to/2tQb5eS
EXCERPT: Bones Will Be Bones
They didn’t think much about it when the wind picked up without warning late one summer afternoon and a dark cloud hurtled towards them over the prairies. Alberta residents are used to nature’s unpredictability: snowstorms in summer; spring thaws during severe cold snaps; hail or thunderstorms appearing out of nowhere on a perfect summer day. At times, hot dry winds roar through like Satan’s breath, churning up the soil and sucking it into the air, turning the sky dark as ink. Months later, some people are still digging out from under the spewed dirt.
But this wasn’t just a windstorm. A tornado aimed directly at the town of Weed, it whipped itself into a frenzy. To the Weedites, it sounded like a freight train bearing down on them, giving off a high-pitched shriek the closer it got, like a stuck whistle. The noise drowned out everything else. Right before the tornado hit, a wall of silence descended, as if the cyclone and every living thing in the area had been struck dumb.
And then a completely intact purple outhouse dropped into the center of town, a crescent-shaped moon carved into its door. It landed right next to the Odd Fellows Hall and behind the schoolhouse. Most people thought the privy had been spared because its owner—Curva Peligrosa, a mystery since her arrival two years earlier—had been using it at the time.
Meanwhile, the tornado’s racket resumed, and Curva sat inside the outhouse, peering through a slit in the door at the village dismantling around her. The funnel sucked up whole buildings and expelled them, turning most of Weed upside down and inside out. Unhinged from houses, doors and roofs flew past, along with walls freed from their foundations. The loosening of so many buildings’ restraints released something inside Curva. Never had she been so aroused. It was more exhilarating than riding the horse she’d bartered for recently, a wild gelding. The horse excited her, especially when she imagined herself riding its huge organ. In the midst of the noise and clatter, just as the tornado reached its climax, Curva had hers.
A heavy rain followed, some of it seeping into Curva’s sanctuary and dampening the walls as well as her nightdress. So much rain pelted the town it created a flood that overran the main street. Protected from the worst of the storm, Curva drowsed and dreamt that she fell through the hole in the seat, landing on the ground with a soft thud next to a pile of bones, each about ten inches long, worn smooth from the elements. She grabbed one and—still aroused—used it, waking to the melting feeling of another orgasm and the sound of rain pelting the roof.
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