Make Me, Maker

I’ve hit the ground enough times to predict where the bruises will form. Depends on how I fall. Back first is less painful but I’m down for longer. Takes the air out of me, except I don’t breathe. Fall on my side and the shoulder wrenches, the hip turns back and blue, and the neck won’t turn one way or the other for weeks. Land like what they call a cat, and the wrists ache, the palms and knees bleed, except I have no blood. Head first is dead first. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether dying is something I’m capable of. You think all you must do is consume my story. Ha. I will make you work for it just as I have.

This time, when I hurtle from the clouds, the dust of still-forming rain in my eyes, I land like what they call a cat. Cracks in the bones of my legs and arms. Simple, but not easy. No wonder cats are mean. I also am not nice.

I straighten my limbs and angle my intention toward suitable clothes. The first fools arranged it so everyone who wants to be deemed acceptable to other people needs them. The clothes of the earth will work for now. It’s quick enough to knit blades of green wheat together. A matter of moments. I have fine craftwork, though there are a few things I can’t make. We’ll get to that later, but do not forget that I cannot make everything.

I walk to the nearest place where the people huddle together. A few clusters of mud houses—brown and red shapes they are so proud of—crude, but they are slow at making. A few have things they call cars. They’re little metal boxes that carry them away from other huddles, other houses. Sometimes, I use one of them to take me to another someplace, but this time, I decide to walk. I have a few trees to talk to.

I turn away from the huddle and into the spaces between the forest. It’s not bad being there. There is life knit between the plants like a web and if I take my time, the life brushes against my face and I feel better than I did before, which was very not good in a way that is hard to explain. I am not happy to be searching again, but I was not happy to be up above either. I suppose I am, as a me in general, not happy.

The beasts prefer these walks as well. They make homes in the forest webs. It makes things a little easier. Less need for words. No need for clothes or metal cars to make them more apart from each other. They stay as apart as they need to be. I would be wise and pleasant too, if I I could live always in a web like that. But I am going to the City.

On the way, I ask a big tree if it knows of anyone making things of value around this particular somewhere. I ask the big trees, usually, because the little ones are too busy stretching and moving about to pay any attention to things like value. The big trees have seen more and they often stay where they were last.

The big tree is grumpy, but it likes my skin and says my hands look soft. It’s right. I am soft. My skin is still lit from up above, so it has a different kind of life on it that the tree will like. I promise to be generous if the tree does the same. It tells me there are maybe two people in the City who are making things with value and that one stays in the center where the tree can’t visit, so it isn’t all the way sure. I wrap my arms around the tree and it’s pleased I am as soft as I seemed to be. Trees like soft things, if you didn’t know, as they are not very soft themselves. How often we desire the things we don’t have and to be the things we are not. Don’t pretend this is not how you are. We includes you.

It is colder in the City. Always cold there and the air is gray and the snow is meaner than cats. The Cityfolk don’t know it’s in part because trees are always hot and so they give heat away for free. And they are always too full of breath so they give away their air at no cost—except maybe that someone would treat them to something soft, which is not too much to ask.

In the City, I ask the snow to ease up for me, at least during my visit, but like I said, this snow is not very nice and I am not either and so it’s not worth it to argue. I will need shoes and better clothes and so I find a house where they make things. It’s called a store—although their business is more about getting rid of their things than storing them. I can’t yet buy things. I don’t have money—the hellish thing. They never give me any up above, no matter how helpful I tell them it is for these trips. Instead, I promise to do nonsense work for a period of what they call time. The one who calls the store his own has me scrub things and break wood into smaller bits. He has me polish metal with towels and scrape ice from windows so the people inside can see more empty snow and get sadder and sadder. Nonsense work is the kind that involves no making at all. There is no proud or beautiful thing to have at the end of it and there is no end of it. I don’t understand how people can do it and sometimes for whole lives. Losing selves is common here and how can anything else be true. When people—who are saddest by then—finish nonsense work, they must say, “thank you,” and bow at the person who had them do it. Then they are given little pieces of carved metal—money. If they save enough of the money bits, they can buy things. There are never enough money bits. I sigh often. I miss the trees and the web.

I am here for a while before I meet the boy this story is about. You will have to wait like I did. You may complain. I complained often. I am complaining now.