louise, ham, lydia, charles gordon, and isabella are traveling nowhere, or so it would seem.
some days they travel by train (travel is easy by train), other days they sleep on hideabeds in boats, and at least once louise and ham drove to the top of a forest fire and sat in their car at the top of the hill, watching the trees grow back into their roots. the clairvoyant behind the beaded screen told louise first that she had been born on an eclipse and then she would be going on a journey. but in the deepest part of her, she always was a journey.
we all are journeys because we all end up somewhere different than where we began—not our bodies, both because some of us wither in the same roots we had on when our seeds were planted and because then we would be on a journey. but we all are journeys.
it is odd that louise should be a journey—she is both so full of the broadest, thickest thoughts and so empty of all else that neither part seems able to traverse anywhere, only to spread wide like too much syrup or hang in a vacuum of sheerness.
louise begins as will without fear, or object, other than to name dogs “lucky to be alive” and to learn about the six knobs controlling the night and the rudderless day. but in truth, she was wary, reading to faint onto a mirror to be whole or to reckon the sums of orchestras and attractions. ham is kept outside in the yard, until louise was ready for him to stop her ticking. even then, she is afraid, because for her, loving is needing and ham might not lend an ear forever, even in exchange for a bed wider than one. louise is a hurricranium.
louise ends believing ham, that love is a childhood dog bite, borne in silence and pain and trapped in a vibrant drama, for “the boat could not be capsized as long as someone listened.” louise ends fumbling in the dark, with ham in emptiness and nothingness, made into nothing. she who was will skates across the syrup to find that vastness is a vacuum of sheerness. “nothing but nothing can save us.”
perhaps it is true that to be saved, your eyes must make a retreat back, back, and still back.
but in the long run, what louise thought was a sea of nothing was truly a forest of fire lit like an ancient woman’s cake, wax dribbling into the frosting and leaves dribbling into the soil.
