Shaping, the Vessel

By Shultz Abrahms K.

Do you remember striving?

All that effort.

Trying so desperately to cajole or to bully yourself and the world into fitting, even approximately, one within the other.

No more.

 

Still haunted by the dreams you thought you knew you were pursuing?

Welcome to the meantime.

So what now?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Swallow's Nest Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223201700

Shultz Abrahms K.

Shultz Abrahms K. is, amongst other things, an author of strange and elaborate fictions.

Book preview

Shaping - 1 - the Vessel

It twists out from her fingertips like glass from a glass blower’s pipe, distending and approximating nearer and nearer the pure play of imagination, of also world. In rupturing sheen, irradiating and expanding its coming. Dancing before her, time is birthed. Dancing before her, space becomes a possible unequivocal. Her hands are calm and never hurried. She expends only the effort of breathing, and still it grows, intricate and crystalline, but warm for it. Perfect form filled with exaltation. As I watch my skin tingles, nerve strung. I wring my fingers and hum arpeggios, descending to ascend. So quiet. Her face is lit now by its joy. Her eyes are lit and shine beacons of humble power. I can’t catch them. If I did... I don’t catch them. I stand back into shadows - I recede with shadows routed. Her light grows, its complexity infecting ever deeper under space. My back strikes a limit of regress and my knees sink. She flows her hands to prayer and it floats over her starry eyes. She folds her fingers and her nails nick clean the umbilical light. It rises over us and its radiance swells to match distance. It touches the awe cast dark, and brushes gone its immaterial shroud. Into black crystal-hung sky it floats, all intensity, not abating, but its detail hides. Amorphous coalesces to a single point of perfect will: a single point of heavenly light among the heavens. The background sky steps forward to embrace it. It is one among many. It’s gone.

And that, young dear, is how a star is born.

Her voice laughs to tell it and she’s suddenly human. I rush to her, and clutch her veined and papery hands. She pulls me to her bones and fills me with love. I find my voice, so young before eternity.

But Grandma, how did you do that?

She smiles and I don’t get it. She lifts my tiny hand above my head and starts to twirl me. Like boxed music. I turn and the world turns. She flashes by me and I giggle and jump in little frog hops. Around and around...

Look up, her voice finds me.

I tilt my head back till my eyes are at my crown. My young back willows, strong from play. And she’s somehow disappeared in the fast-running star tracks. A domed theatre of turning lights, and bright overhead - her star. I can see it again, that one point, that only stillness.

I grow giddy. I start to laugh harder in my unknowing.

Graaandmaaaaa, I accuse her love, falling feet.

She picks me off the earth. I hug her knees and don’t get it. She brushes me down with her hands. Twigs and dirt resettle.

It’s time for dinner little sweetheart.

But Grandma, you didn’t tell me how you did it, I pester, expecting to know it.

Now now dear, everything in time... and dinner first, she laughs in her horseradish smell.

She walks and I skip and jump beside her. I want to know how she did that thing she did, and I want dinner, hot and steaming at the winter table. It’s so late, and I’m hungry. Not far to the house. I let go her hand and run to the front door’s lamplight and start hammering with my little pitter-pat fists.

Muuuum! I bellow and squeak.

The door opens and I’m in and I’m so warm I’m like a little cub in its wolfie den. I sit squirming while my mother undoes my boots and wrestles off my coat, and run into the lounge room just as my grandma comes through the door.

Come in mum, says my mum, which sounds just weird - she’s grandma!

But I don’t think on it because I’m in the lounge room and the TV’s on and my brother Brad is watching the news, and I don’t like the news but we have to watch it every night because my mum says so. I jump onto the couch and kick Brad in the leg like I’m swimming fast and he darts his hand out and tickles me with one hand without even looking. Big brothers are pretty skilful sometimes. I giggle and he shushes me and so I giggle inside my stomach and he stops tickling.

I fold myself up like an origami girl and watch, growing quiet. It’s Chinese New Year and it’s the year of the Tiger and in Chinatown lots of people are dancing and setting off fireworks and it’s so noisy and exciting. I love how the lions fight over the ball. But they’re not really fighting - Brad tells me - they’re dancing. I shut my eyes, because the story’s changed and it’s real fighting this time. I shut my eyes tight against the blue light and see the lions again, dripping golden silk on a hundred legs, like centipedes. Centipedes are so scary. But the lions’ mouths are like puppets’ and like smiling circles. They gobble up cabbages and I can see that they’re not really eating. But I laugh because they’re trying to and they look so funny. The lions dance around my eyes, circling the corners, one one way and one the other - like those hypno-spirals on the cartoons. And the ball falls into the centre of my eyes, like grandma’s star in the sky, and the lions swirl and my head falls heavy...

Frances, get up you sleepy little pixie.

It’s Grandma, she’s shaking me and I’m so tired.

Up you hop dear, it’s time for dinner.

But I’m so tired. And my skin’s all sticky, and I feel sooo heavy and tired.

Come on now dear.

She props me up and wipes my eyes with her strong grown hands. She rubs away the glue and I can open my eyes now, kind of. I open my eyes and see her face is really close to mine. She smiles and I see smiles in her eyes. I smile, but I’m tired, but I get up and walk with her to the table in the kitchen. It’s set for dinner. Yum.

Grandma helps me climb up onto my chair, which is beautiful dark wood, whorled and gnarled and old and heavy. I sit on it on two cushions and I can see right across the table to my brother Brad on the other side. I poke out my tongue, but in a friendly way, and he returns my greeting and it’s nice to see him. Mum’s still bustling around near the stove and Grandma’s helping her by fetching the thick felt mat that we use to put hot things on. Brad’s talking to Mum while she’s dishing up dinner.

...and then she told us that we have to do a bibliography with the assignment, and that it has to be done properly like in university or something. But she hasn’t shown us how to do it. It’s ridiculous. She can’t expect us to do something that they haven’t taught us...

But it sounds really boring so I stare at my plate instead of listening (‘...I’m not going to read a book on writing, mum!...’) and imagine that I’m going to eat cabbage and fireworks like the lion, and I wonder if fireworks are spicy or not. I think they’re probably spicy, but I don’t really know.

Mum brings out dinner and I forget about the lion. It’s macaroni cheese, which is my super favourite all-time favourite! And it’s a big plate because me and grandma were out so late (says mum) and mum put pepper on it, which makes them sneeze on movies, but which just tastes good to me.

Aachoo!

Luxuriates - 2 - Reinforcing

Ihold it for a moment then replace it on the mantle above the old hearth. It’s a favourite of mine, perhaps the favourite, and it’s beginning to fray around the edges. I replace it tenderly, smoothing it with my thumbs. Then I look around. The edges of the room are fuzzy; I always have trouble holding them sharp. I walk across to the bookshelf. In contrast to the dusted corners it’s resplendently almost actual. There on the shelves, in front of half-remembered titles, of the Good Soldier, the King, and Capricorn, are more of my memories, arranged carefully in place of old photographs. Some are naked, just hovering weightless, while others are in the same bent Perspex frames Mum used to put family photos in: of dignified forebears, and childhoods, and gatherings. I’ve positioned these ones here with particular care. The bookshelf is right next to the old couch. I used to sit here for hours as a child, daydreaming, in play or reading, so the imprint is unusually strong. Here they don’t fade or change. Here they stand against time and forgetfulness so much better. These shelves especially, but also other spots for other times and different associations, are my treasuries - in this little house that I’ve built for them. I browse now, and half reach for this and then that. They’re all charming, beautiful and compelling. None are ordinary, none banal - I have drawers and cupboards that I’ve shoved those in, for eventual unnoted forgetting. Most I haven’t even looked at. It’d take a lifetime over to really examine them all. But these and some few others were never in doubt. It’s for them I built this all. They are the reason and my refuge. I return to them, again and again. Like this one here, in front of the atlas. Even before I lift it up it begins to shift in its four dimensions. I hold it to my forehead and submerge...

The water cascades exfoliated over sharp red rocks. It splashes into a clear pool of reflected rust and copper. Sparse cutting grasses sprout muted greens, from cracks. The ground crunching beneath me is ferrous gravel; boulders ground small by time and scorn. I can’t see over to the shrunken river that feeds this fall. When I stand on tip toes all I see is restless blue. A path leads left around the pool and climbs. I want to go there. I skip from still start, dislodge, and bury in my soft knee hard and sharp. This desert in my eyes looks redder and I squeeze them tight on the pain.

Ow! I woof like a kicked puppy.

I ran ahead to get here so no one’s seeing my crying and my ripped wide skin. I open my eyes and look down. Oooowwww. There’s bits of rock in it, and sandy dirt. And it hurts!

Muuuumm! I wail.

But mum’s not here yet and there’re flies already landing and licking and I brush at them and hit me and my knee kicks. Oow ow ow! The blood is big sticky drops and the sun’s hot on my summer brown legs. My bum’s stuck with rocks and my knee’s hot hot ouchy. And the flies are circling and it’s nearly midday. The water’s falling. It splashes into itself and droplets porpoise and belly flop. Its skin never rips, it opens. My skin’s ripped open and the sun’s hot. I’m sitting and I can’t wait, but I’m waiting for my mum.

I cry quietly so I don’t disturb the water.

Here comes mum. My cheeks are soaked and I scream:

Muuuuum! I hurt my knee! It hurts, I tripped and I hurt my knee and it hurts so much... and I want a ice-cream! and I’m cleverer than I was before I thought of it.

She rushes up to me and kneels and grabs and hugs me, and my knee aches harder but it’s good to be hugged.

There, there, she soothes.

She kneels down and looks at my knee. The big drops have grown bigger and have started joining hands. She gets a tissue out of her pocket and licks it and brushes the dirt and rocks out with it. Each time she touches my knee jumps and I wince. She pads it clean and I’m brave because my mum’s here. Then grandma and Brad are here also and I’m standing on my feet and my mouth’s running.

...and I wanted to see where the water comes from and I was waiting but I was very careful and I was skipping and I fell and it hurt, grandma look!

You’re very brave, she says and kisses my forehead.

I feel brave.

And brave girls get ice-creams on Saturdays in the Botanical gardens, says my mum, and I feel brave and happy, and my leg only hurts when I remember it to.

Mum takes one hand and grandma takes the other and Brad looks bored and walks behind us on the way to the cafeteria. The rock garden’s gone away now and the ground’s turned into stretching-yawning eucalypts and green watered grass. I sit with grandma and Brad and keep telling them about my knee (...and the rocks got right into the skin...) and mum goes to get ice-cream for me and Brad and grandma and her. I asked for a Calippo because it’s so hot. I like pine-lime the best of all. Mum tears off the top for me when she gets back and I chomp my top teeth into it and rake off the ice and flavour. It’s really hard and makes my teeth hurt a bit inside them, but it tastes good. It tastes just like summer in the gardens.

I replace this one too and sit down on the couch. Its mottled forest print and tactile ridges hold me and I loll my eyes back, watching as the remnant afterimages give way to an almost restful darkness. But rest’s not mine, even here. I open my eyes and cast around. I see as I made it. Hardwood floors covered here and there by byzantine patterns on cheap Afghan rugs. The imprint of a heatless fire set in a brick chimney footed in hexagonal tiles. A heavy dining table with benches. Buttermilk walls. An intricate dresser wandered from its boudoir. And through to the adjoining kitchen. I refix these objects again in my mind. They are locations, each of them, loci to a mnemonist. The shelf by the couch is only for the most prized. Mostly family stuff. I stand and walk through to the kitchen. It’s lighter in here, though beyond the lustrous glass there’s no scene. I turn inwards and review, following a personal logic of associations. On each piece of crockery rests a food related moment, be it a morsel or a meal. Stuck to the fridge are postcards from trips I took in my twenties, to China, to Ukraine. Thick card holding weeks or months of sights seen and backpacker card games, but mostly never really more than glanced at. Inside the fridge are dinner parties, midnight snacks, hangover breakfasts, and cocktails. The knobs on the oven are that cake I decorated to look like a Sunfish; salmon for a friend that almost killed her; burnt paella, and so on.

I find that the memories adhere on their own if I just shore up the anchor of their placement. So, every visit I make myself, though it nauseates the repetition, acknowledge each cache, from room to room, fortifying details. Bathroom to laundry to bedroom. Here now in my old bedroom I allow myself one more indulgence. In the jewellery case on the dresser are my romances; in a shoebox beneath my bed is the smut. I kneel down and, butt in the air, fish it out. I rifle through and pick one that buoys electric in my hand...

My petals flare uncontrollable, wide. Self-sown blossoms snow within me, self-loving. He kneels his stamen tongue to me and licks. I grow gently around. My metamorphosing turns creation. I glide tendrils out and out behind me, and they coil and hold me to the bed head, to the door, to the table. I open farther and rift a tear and fall within me. He follows. Pollen tipped, in turn unfurling, from centre a brush of heads. They touch and enliven my limits; we bridge with tickling fire. And still further I recede and he swells and I throw forward to touch and hold and envelop his body. All time condensed in flavour. He kisses my staring lips. My pupils fell, can’t see. I bite for him. My thighs press. I cry out and sketch him in flutters. His face floats away, phosphorescing. My spine carries noise, rush. They flood my thousand arches. Going out, going in. Last locks, uncracked give. Refracting replies from my honey-strung nerves:

Now, I rock, I’m coming, noooowww....

And the bliss hazes.

Emerges - 3 - Ascending

The thrill and the vision dissipate into a cool, salt breeze, which flows with afternoon sun through the door that’s ajar. I can tell from the angle of the thin luminous bar that it must be past four. I’ve stayed a little longer than I’d planned to, which is ok I guess. There’s no pressing schedule anymore. But my legs and stomach tell me to stand, both cramping, tetchy. I grab a thin shawl from my bedside table and after shaking my legs a little walk outside.

As always it stuns me, the view from out my cell door. Arrests my breathing and presses me back some. Unsealed, unswept rocks and stones tumble with my eyes into water. Easy swelling this afternoon. Massaging the shore with gentle insistence. The still high sun strikes the spreading surface, blue grey. I raise my hands in greeting as a crested tern glides by and on, to land on some distant beach or cliffside, and stand a moment longer before this ungraspable that they insist is now in reach. Then I turn left and climb with the path. On the cliff side I pass cell after cell, individually decorated with flowers or murals or mosaics. I know each of the inhabitants, some well. They’re friends and fellow travellers, and competitors, snitches, weasels and snakes. Which is all as it should be. Without these small tensions - they tell us - we would sink in torpor, not rise as they insist we can and must. All gone on ahead, in anticipation of the call. I should perhaps hurry, but it’s not wise to tread this path in heedlessness. A couple of us have fallen and been taken by the welcoming waves. Such a beautiful prospect, when the sun shines on the breakwater just so, drawing turquoise to the eye. But one we ought not choose. They’ve been clear on this. To take it like that, when not freely proffered - thieving the guiltless ease of un-becoming - is unbecoming of a seeker. At least one of sound enough mind and body. So I place each foot past the other with care, dislodging pebbles, shifting red dirt, and skilfully skirting the train of ants that always climbs and subsides with us, as though in sympathy with our labours. I used to think of insects as living jewels, cast among us to show a value we would otherwise overlook. But this is no longer relevant. Now we see this ineffable value alone, and jewels have been stripped of their added lustre, anything over and above their actuality and simple beauty. I reach the steps, cut from living stone. I ascend. They’re worse than the path in hazard - worn sloping and smooth by footfall. My bare feet accept the electric potential, and wish friction beneath each tread. I reach the top and turn back to regard again my beneficent neighbour. The sun strikes her different now, the rays piercing more deeply the swell, causing a holographic unpeeling of surface and depth. I see violet and azure, like spring beneath summer. And where cumulus shadow covers, an abyssal fall. I taste brine and breathe sad full lungs, then I turn. There’s no one here on the lower reaches either, they’re still ahead, preceding the call.

The gymnasium and theatre are empty stone and sand. I pick a forgotten disc and whirl it to stillness and distance. The sensation wakes me to time and I hurry myself, now feeling my lateness keenly: the lack of respect I’ve no wish to display.

I reach the gates and quickly, in the never-still waters of the outer spring, purify my skin and cleanse my countenance. Deception and doubt are not permitted beyond this point. I imagine my mind to be pure and clear. I flood my body with this impression and feel each cell buoy slightly from its fellows, lifting my gait to the occasion.

The temple bell sounds.

A shocking clarity washes behind it. I see the stones and the sky now, as newborn sight. Each glint and angle says my place is ahead in the throng. I fly from step to step. My movements are clean and forceful. I hear flies and cicadas and ride on their chittering. To the assembly, in adoration.

They’re not here with us, though we feel them pushing through - any one of us - brushing shoulders and bowing heads. They jump and sing forth with purified tones, as we ourselves. One falls crying, another spins and turns the congregation - we whirl and collapse. I spring, and another lifts me, full into the face of blazing. I’m restored, amongst them, among us. I reach out and, responding, they hold me. Sobbing and laughing - undivided. No centre, in ragged circling, I see them at the heart. I run in and meet my mirror. I roll through their legs and tumble to my back. They land atop and I pitch them like sprung box, high over. Our worship become as divine play, we perfect, unfettered. Vertiginous ground falls at my back. I jolt and buck, channelling wave on wave through my skin to the air. It carries me. I carry me, and show the lifting, flaring clouds this elation.

Catharsis settles, while the clouds grow ominous over us, crack, and release. I lie spent, among companions, without those unseen others. Jelly fat drops bathe my face and body. They pool in my sockets and I blink them in. They run rivulets over my stomach and thighs and liberate my form from covering cloth. Water delimits me, and flowing connects us.

I laugh in time and stand. Wet, but warm. I reach a hand to a friend. It is Saul. He accepts and I pull him up. Our hands still joined we walk in lazy union from the ritual ground.

The sun’s near setting - hours have gone - paints the underside of the still massing clouds. Drops fall harder, grow rigid, and strike in earnest. We run through their clattering for the shelter of the hall. Others run with us. Lightning scrawls concussion in our ears. Bent half double we reach the hall, burst in and stand, panting. We’re dripping and ragged, muddy, enchanted. We laugh and the sky strikes orange, strikes red, strikes purple and it’s night.

We crowd further in.

‘Amazing... some storm.’

‘Shakes the foundations.’

‘Like calligraphy.’

‘Beautiful night.’

I hug onto Saul. He smiles, and we walk to the basins inset on either side of the entrance. We wash our hands and faces, and try to brush our clothes into shape.

‘What a spectacular day, don’t you think, Frances? First the whales, and now this storm... How could you feel alone and forsaken in this glorious world?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ I answer, but I inwardly flinch. ‘I didn’t see whales though...’

‘Really? They passed right beneath the cell wall, a mother and her calf, humpbacks, very late in the season to see them. They sung there; it seemed like hours. You really didn’t hear them? Or see them?’

I feel exposed, caught by inquisition. I was elsewhere, how to say that?

‘I guess I was meditating, Saul, sometimes, you know, it just blocks things out.’

He looks at me a little strangely. Meditation isn’t an escape; his eyes tell me. But he says, smiling and nodding:

‘Yeah, of course. It’s a pity though, such beautiful animals. I felt today that I could almost understand them. Like they were speaking to us too.’

‘I’m sure the Magi can speak back to them,’ I answer. ‘When you’re off among them you’ll be able to also, I imagine. Then you can tell me what they’re like, all their juicy whale gossip. And you can sing me to sleep with trombone lullabies...’

We laugh a little, and whatever tension abates. It’s an old subtext between us, of Saul the soon-to-be sage, and Frances the foot dragger. We all know he’ll be the next. You can’t know these things, they tell us, but we know. He’s so noble and