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Sun | March 12, 2006

the place on the floor

There is a place on the floor in my room where I played one day with my sister and our my little ponies and barbies. We were making up what was happening and giving them dialogue. It wasn't the first time we played there, nor was it the first time children mixed toy genres and made an impossible story with ponies and barbies. But we got to a plot point where it wasn't clear to my sister what would happen next. My sister, being older, usually led the play, and told me what we would do. "Having a birthday party" was a common subject. That day-- I don't remember the situation exactly-- she got to a point when we were playing and she didn't know what would happen next. And I told her. I talked for a few seconds... which was unusual for me. "And then?" she asked. And I came up with something more. This second addition, I remember, referenced and built on what had happened in a My Little Pony cartoon we had seen that morning.

Our mom called and it was time to stop playing. We went and did something else, but it was as if something had moved in my mind, shifted and settled like a snake sheds its skin. Or had cracked and fallen off like the dark layer around a peanut.

My sister had been just following me. I had gotten someone to accept my rationalization and explanation of things-- something I didn't know I could do. Yet when I did, it seemed like I always could have done it.

Now my desk-- a different one-- is near that spot near the closet. When I sit at my desk my feet are right next to it. A wire basket covered with blue linen, a container for my bags, occupies the place. Every once in awhile I walk to the other side of my desk, move the bin aside with my foot, and stare at that spot.

I wonder that I ever fit on that shiny bit of hardwood floor, and conjure up again, like an actor, the feeling of my mind breaking out of that space.

I tell myself that if I did it once, when I was seven, I can do it again.

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