Impasse - Notes
Theres's always a point at which you have to make a choice, or change a situation.
Using the Penseive.
Hurtling through life. Looking backwards briefly at the way you came.
The story arc of my life ; you know, I can see the shape of it reaching out in front of me. It's tree-like.
Light doesn't travel in straight lines in space. It curves along the space time continuum.
William Blake described doors of understanding which can be passed through.
How do we find the keys to these doors ?
A locked door seems like an impasse.
Can keys magically appear ?
_
Here is a banal observation :
Change is fundamental to life. Of course. When we make choices, we interact with this phenomenon
and the choices we make can change our lives both subtly and fundamentally.
Instigating change can take a central position in our lives. We can become transfixed with the
potential of it. It may even take on a pseudo-magical aura for us, for example, when we imagine that
even the clothes we choose to wear somehow determine the outcome of our interactions with people
that day. There may even be an element of truth in this. Our appearance can certainly have a
psychological effect on others and so affect our interactions with each other. However, when this
observation causes us to invest certain items of clothing or jewellery with magical or "lucky"
properties, we should begin to suspect that our acknowledgement of the influence of our choices and
actions has taken on superstitious overtones.
All this exploration of the effects our actions have on the world begins in childhood and it can be
experienced in a ritualistic/psychological form named "undoing". We learn not to step on the cracks
in the pavement. We touch certain objects a particular number of times. We look for specific signs ;
curtains closed, lights on or off, someone appearing at a specific place and time. We set ourselves
tasks; jumping down some of the stairs, going up at two or three at a time. We may increase the
difficulty of these tasks to intensify their effects and become distressed when we find them
impossible to accomplish. And all to prevent, to undo, to ward off, to make a spell.
There is a certain kind of meticulousness and tendency to pay close attention to detail that engenders
the compulsion to perfect this approach to the effects of our actions in our life.
Sometimes, a person who has these tendencies arrives in a situation and they find themselves
narrowing down their spheres of influence so that they may feel they have control over the very dust
that is shed from their skin.
And they may perform
Acts of expiation as a
Defence mechanism in their
Striving for reparation in their
Desire to undo harm and put objects to right magically.
This type of behaviour has also been described as a kind of
Falling to bits.
_
The Closed Door.
There were three things that she liked to do most of all; playing with water, burying treasure and
imagining that the house was a hotel in which each room had a different guest staying. She decided
that every guest had to be visited and their needs attended to once a day. The guests had long,
complicated names and these had to be recalled and used in full during the conversation with them.
Playing with dolls was an anathema to her. Nevertheless, the dolls that she possessed had to be
looked after. This she accepted and she would dutifully undress them, give their clothes to her mother
to be washed, then bathe them in the kitchen sink in turn. All except the rag doll who couldn't be
washed. Time was dirtying her and there was no remedy for this. She had complained about it to her
mother who had carefully sponged the doll's clothes which were sewn distressingly onto the doll's
body and this did improve their appearance somewhat, but there was nothing to be done with its
blackening face or greying yellow wool hair. For this reason, the rag doll was kept, wrapped in tissue
paper so that her body and hair was covered but not her face, in the "fairy cot" that her mother and
father had made so meticulously for her as a Christmas present. It had arrived with a letter from
Father Christmas, stating that he had sent it as a substitute for the Jack-in-a-box she had requested
which could not be found that year. The sporting analogy was not lost on her.
So it was that every time she was taken, by the hand because of the cars, round to play with her friend
Anita who lived in a block of flats near the block of flats that her aunt and uncle lived in, she had to
pretend that she enjoyed playing with the dolls who inhabited Anita's impressive doll's house.
The doll's house was a large, wooden, garishly painted affair which someone had made with love for
Anita. Father Christmas had no doubt delivered it. The family of four dolls who resided there were
stiff limbed wooden creatures with fixed, painted on expressions. The Father doll had a stern
expression, described by the direction of his eyebrows, for his mouth was obscured by a large, bushy
moustache rendered by thick, black lines. The Mother figure could be recognised by her cloth penny
and the mop of yellow wool hair, not dissimilar to rag doll, but fluffier. There were two smaller dolls,
obviously the man and woman's children; one boy with his painted on cap of black hair; the other a
girl with a red Clara Bow mouth and strands of orange wool gathered into a cursory pair of bunches
and tied with cotton.
Anita would prattle on delightedly as they posed and placed the family in various situations. She
made up voices and scenarios for them and bounced them along vigorously to signify when they were
walking. Lost in her own reverie, she didn't mind that her companion only mimicked her actions in a
rather mild, unenthusiastic way and never contributed to their conversations. Alongside her lack of
enthusiasm about animating the wooden marionettes, her playmate was perturbed by the trompe l'ceil
fixtures and fittings in the house, and most especially, the painted door in the top-most room of the
house. Each time she went on these excursions to play with Anita and the house, she would come
away and wonder and worry about the painted door and how it could be opened.
At home in the front room after these weekly excursions, she would take out the box of chess pieces
and place it in the middle of the board. She often played with the chess set and her father, taken by
her fascination with it, had shown her the way to set out the pieces. He had patiently explained the
rules which described the movements of each piece and she was able to remember the way each piece
was expected to move as they seemed like dance movements, similar to the ones she had learned at
school. She and her father played some simple games in which her father allowed her to make some
straightforward moves, demonstrating that she had remembered these rudiments, after which he
would dispense with all her pieces quite quickly and the game would be over. This didn't upset
her, since winning or losing held no thrill for her. She enjoyed the quiet companionship of
concentrating on the chess pieces with her Dad and then happy to be left alone to play with the pieces
and break all the rules of chess by instigating her own meticulous and complex ones.
Having completed one of her own intricate rituals involving taking first a white piece, then a black
piece, one in each hand, then placing them on specific squares on the board, she would gently sweep
them all away with the box lid until they tumbled off the board onto the coffee table. She had
developed a careful technique for doing this so as to avoid losing any pieces, since the first time she
performed the action she had flung them away with her forearm with such vigour that some of the
pieces had gone flying through the air, hitting various hard objects and making a loud clatter, enough
to summon her beloved nana who scolded her for being careless and noisy.
The ritual complete, the pieces returned to their wooden box and put carefully away under the coffee
table, she would go to the window and look out onto the street to puzzle about the strange fact that if
she put up her hand to her head and compared it to the houses across the street, she was more or less
the same size. Looking down, their own garden was always beautiful and gave her unending pleasure.
There was the gate, painted dark green. She enjoyed swinging on that. There was a sharply cut
diamond shape in the middle of the rectangle of grass and in its centre was a beautiful rose bush with
roses so red her Nana would sing about them. Along the front border, depending on the time of year,
there might be Sweet Williams or Lupins.
Beyond was the road, over which she was only allowed to cross accompanied, so that she could not
imagine herself beyond the gate as an unbroken entity. The circle of her being beyond the gate was
always broken by the intercedent hand, so that, gradually, upon leaving the house, she would feel
forever accompanied by the guiding hand, even when it was invisible. She decided to set out down
road before tea and find the fencing with the finger in it.
And then here, we pause. The trouble with stories is that once they get started, they start to take on a life of their own and run away off from you. She's about to go out in search of something she doesn't understand, but she wants to know it. Since she is a child, she has no understanding of the potential dangers, though we must credit her with an instinct for what might not be considered wise or desirable.by her elders. And it is this instinct that drives her forward.
