Читать книгу An Archaeology of Yearning - Bruce Mills - Страница 12

FLESH AND BLOOD

Scientists speculate that one anatomical change—the development of the voice box, those tenuous strands tucked in our throat—precipitated that miraculous evolution to modern human. Even now I marvel at this budding stutter of muscles, this echo chamber of flesh and blood. I wonder at the deep yearnings that first exercised the throat and tongue, the vowels rounded out of some primal joy or pain. Cave paintings still remain dark and liminal compared with this taste of compressed air.

At night, Mary and I huddle together, the soft lamp light casting the shadows of our limbs upon the wall. We rehearse the events of the day, reserving a ritualistic place for the gentle word by word caress of our children’s names and their naming. Sarah. Jacob. Without this word play, it seems, we would disappear half-formed into sleep.

We talk of Jacob. He has autism. If the evening was a difficult one, if he had only the vague gesture of language for meanings rich and intense in his mind, we find ourselves licking the blood of small crescent marks on our arms where he pinched us in frustration. “What is happening?” he cries when he kicks, when we will not let him watch another episode of “The Magic School Bus” or “Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?” “What is happening? What is happening?” We know that we have heard these words before in some forgotten video or story. We wonder whether something important might be revealed if we found the source.

After I turn off the light, I recall images of day: the precise chorus line of animal figures, small to large, that Jacob has posed on the window bench; the tangle of Sarah and Jacob on the hardwood floor, watching the animated version of Tomie de Paola’s children’s book Bill and Pete; Sarah’s endless evening chatter; Jacob’s incessant movement.

Now here I am mixing words like red ochre in my hands, lining my sounds like cave art, caught up in my own private symbols. What is happening? What is this red on my tongue? What is the meaning of the blood on my wrist, the crescent moon of finger nails pressed hard to the flesh?