Kintsugi, part 2

“This is a very slow process,” she repeated, but was not at all discouraged. Repair takes time, and she held it in her hands. She had already understood that a fragile vessel is not reconstructed in a day and looked forward to what was to come.

Silver thoughts among the gold. A bit like an old song her grandmother used to sing and had passed on to her mother. She liked the silver threads, like the ones she now had, and knew she would weave them well. 

[To be continued]

*****

That was how the first part of the task of healing the rift had ended. Time, she thought, was not of the essence. She was not in a hurry. The mending had to be done with care, with attention to detail. She had time, then, to read a few poems from a book in a certain section of her library. It was an anthology, one she’d gotten at a yard sale, thinking it might even be good to use in an artist’s book or a collage. (She thought how making collages was also somewhat akin to the practice of kintsugi, making something out of fragments.)

Time is measured, and might not be exactly comprised of fragments, but still and all, each hour was made up of minutes and seconds. Old clocks ticked away at the pieces of an hour. You could hear them. At night they were especially loud. She sometimes listened for hours instead of sleeping.

It might not have been an accident that the dog-eared anthology with the heavy paper that books were once made from, was a collection of poetry about time. She ought to have known better than to start leafing through it, but she hadn’t. Nevertheless, because she was nearly finished with the golden threads from the day before, she felt reassured that her progress was a sign of nearing completion. She could afford a break, in her opinion.

A break, but not a shattering. The poems came growling toward her, wrestling the calm away. First to approach was Thomas Hardy, from 1898. ‘“I Look into my Glass” was more than a meek reflection on aging. It was an attack. It wanted to tear her apart:

But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide.

Her beloved parts, her colored clay. Her glaze, refitted so recently into a new whole, better than ever. It was beginning to wobble now, just like the human egg from the rhyme. She was already trembling, and it was obviously the poem’s fault. She quickly shifted her gaze from that mirror, seeking safer ground.

Emily Dickinson was her eternal peace-maker. She would be calm, would reflect on time in a way that would ground her reader, not break her, surely. She might even make time transparent again. Yet these lines from the old, worn volume assaulted her reader and the newly-composed wholeness was again under siege, immobile and broken, like a dead puppet:

A Clock stopped –

Not the Mantel’s –

Geneva’s farthest skill

Can’t put the puppet bowing –

That just now dangled still -

An awe came on the Trinket!

The Figures hunched, with pain –

Then quivered out of Decimals –

Into Degreeless Noon –

Why, Emily, why? After all my hard work and patience…

But the poet had said her lines and moved on.

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem was the worst. She should have known better than to trust edgy Edna, but it was too late; the net, or web, had been cast…

She began to read the poem, tried to stop, but was only able to pull her eyes away after she had read it forty nine times. It took a while to do that: more than an hour, and to her credit she fought the reading with every word, every syllable. She lashed out at the page, not daring to touch it with her fingers, but still ripping it to shreds with her eyes and screams. She became a storm, the worst kind, inside and out:

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied  

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!  

Had she too been lying to herself? Was kintsugi all a hopeful, unrelenting lie? It felt like the widening gyre was bearing down on her, dragging her with it. Yet words are only that: words. This is what she told herself.

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

Until they become thunderstorms and start to crash.

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,  

And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;  

The mended world she had created over time was showing its fissures. She feared a wildfire was in the making. The question was: could burned matter be repaired? Doubtful. And so she skipped a few lines.

…

There are a hundred places where I fear  

To go,—so with his memory they brim.  

And entering with relief some quiet place  

Where never fell his foot or shone his face  

No, her mended vessel had to be protected, no matter what the cost. She would use all the gold that was needed to salvage the years, her time, her mind. She would do everything in her power to remain unbroken, to shield what mattered. Edna, however, was relentless…

I say, "There is no memory of him here!"  

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

She couldn’t read any further. She couldn’t see to read; it was as if she were in Santiago watching it pour the way it did in real life and in so many poems written by Galicians. Sheets of water, the color of doves or mice, rivers on New York’s northern border, Christmas trees on Main Street but not in Maine. Faded and damp, everything. Including the old anthology.

The colors were still there, after all.

The vessel was as whole as it would ever be, and it was a work of art, unique, a piece only she could have created, despite the fact that she didn’t consider herself to be a great artist. It was also strong, invulnerable. It would last forever, its colors would never fade. Of that she was sure.

Except she could no longer hold it, no longer wanted to. She had finished with it and the nail that had been nailed in her heart had been pulled free. Nothing visible was bleeding, nor would it. The time for blood had been when she was welding the pieces together (metaphorically) and that process was now complete. 

She put the object on the table made of fine wood - cherry, or perhaps chestnut - and stood back to look at it. No more touch was needed. No more time was necessary; what had been made whole although now it was asymmetrical could hold that for her. She resisted the temptation to make any further alterations, and her hands trembled from the efforts of years. Or perhaps of reading.

Then she went to the door of the house, not looking back except to make sure she had locked the door properly as she left. She would never return.

*****

Later - five minutes, an hour, or five years, it was irrelevant, that thing called time. The key turned in the lock. She opened the door, stepped inside, looked around briefly. Then she walked through another doorway, the one that linked two rooms with a simple arch and led to the table.

It was there, with the golden threads and mending, a life of many colors. She could wear it now. It was strong and durable, like a well-fitting coat.

She sat, and admired it. A work of art.