The sky is filled with paper clouds like a fax machine erupting; dispensing diaphanous folds of white and Technicolor and faded pink. I imagine, if I blink, the sky will be normal and I will be sane. But I don’t blink. I can’t. And every time I do, it’s moonstruck bats in the belfry; hills brushing down at an artist’s stroke, where they are joined at a delusional lake where flowertrees float on witch-grass and rye. They’re disconnected like during the flood. To see them perfectly is to recognize this: They really drift. Boy, do they ever. This is not the flood which wiped out the ancients but it is a flood of madness, I think, and if not, then what? I see elephants walking on water, like Salvador Dali has procured my mind, taken leverage with great swaths of colourful paint then spattered it on in a fit of rage. / Why me? Why oh why me? This is something I’ve asked as a child; repeatedly over my pillow while pounding a concave into its centre, like I was trying to beat away memories. Harmful memories which wouldn’t depart. I’ve asked it so much now I’m blue in the face. / Why? / I was a boy from Russia, a Montreal child, a lab rat. I was a stringy teenager with a taste for nature. But I had to be the scapegoat. It had to be me. I’ve told myself this to justify the pain, but the pain comes and goes like the passing moon. When the moon is full, the pain is great. I must relinquish myself to be a scared thing. But for now the moon is sleeping. For now, the pain is small. / But the madness is real.
Teaching as Scholarship
