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The Empire State Building Wind Tunnel
When I looked down from The Empire State Building, I saw the person I had been. I felt desirous to understand the great distance I had come, and to know that I could never reach back down to awaken the dead woman, who lay crumpled and sad at the bottom. It must be such a long way up for her through the clouds, considering that she had never seen the sun. I was here now and it was all different to how it had been. Layers and layers of me shed all the way up. When I left me behind in order to climb the building, parts became loose and papery like a big snake skin. It was as though I had a huge pair of scissors and that I had cut away at myself, until there was this string of paper dolls leading right up the side of the tower. The heaviest one lay right down the bottom on the dirt. I couldn't reach back down to shake her awake. 'You are loved' She had not wanted to die. Her sad face had always been in the clouds that were dreams for her. Now she lay dead and would never come. I had never known her until I left her behind. Sometimes I fear that I could fall back down. Or that I carry her deadness within me. But I cannot fall. I can see the depth, but it is impossible to go back down. We will never meet again. Instead I am on my way, shooting up and up through the wind tunnel. It is the take off before taking to the air. It is the shedding of my final skin and then the sky. I met Ingrid in the wind tunnel of The Empire State Building. She lived with two cats and ran the Lost And Found Home in Detroit. All the shattered animals were lost until they were found by her. Ingrid was bringing heaven to earth. Once found by her they were found forever. She was very fussy with who should be their new owners. It was one of the reasons that her home was very overcrowded with animals. So many lost animals were found by her, that sometimes it seemed as if her very back was being broken by them. For every time she tried to fulfil her dreams, something came thumping and crushing at her spine. It said, 'Don't even try.' Her great energy flailing around inside herself, like a serpent that cannot be released, so turns inwards to attack its own organs. When we first met my hand reaching down to her bare shoulder, my eyes loving and promoting her great and gentle strength. She was like a forest that had been attacked by loggers, deeply scarred and unaware of its beauty. I wanted the snowy owl and the secretive lynx to produce the forest of her and all forests, and carry them away through time and space on wings and backs, through so much icy wilderness that they could never be hindered by human beings. In this way, as the snowy owl and the lynx become extinct, they will carry the forests and all the secrets of the wilderness inside themselves, and inside their deaths. When she dreams it is like the forest and the ocean breathing. The frog will move in and out of her mouth slipping in and out with her breath, and the great rainbow serpent will rise above her spiritual centre and hang there like a coil glowing, like a fire or a halo. She sleeps with the wolves howling in her. The horses gallop chopping up the sand of her time on earth. The mountainous roar of the bull moose and the cougar, at that moment, do not warn each other of their presence, but instead combine to become one. I am speaking of Ingrid, the wounded healer. The one inside all our hearts who saves the animals, who lets in the little chickadee rest upon her broken wrist, who has the chimney sweep sleep in the crest of her neck, who limps with dogs around her feet and the cats who follow amongst the dogs. She has learnt from the pigeon feeders, the older women and men who feed the birds in the parks of the great cities. She is the next generation patching up the apocalypse. I imagine the city of Detroit holding her greatness to its dilapidated self as one would carry a magic lantern. |
