The Bracket

 

She set out one day to bracket existence. To see the thing as it was; as it is. She had the knack of it. She could stare down existence until it gave itself up, revealed itself. She could stare at a coffee cup until it revealed itself until what she saw went beyond form and function to the shape and space the thing occupied. Existence is shy. It peeks at you at first and then exposes itself. When she saw a thing as it was, she felt ashamed as if she had unknowingly learned the forbidden secret that behind the thing, behind existence there is nothing. There is God.

That morning when he came out of the shower with his puffy belly, she tried to objectivize him. She didn't want him to know about her unique power. They had been married for twenty-three years and had three children. She loved her children but wasn't sure what she thought of Dan anymore. She lied in bed watching him with her blanket covering one eye. She wondered if he would allow her to bracket him if she asked. She was afraid to bracket her children because she loved them so much just as she was afraid to bracket the cross. She had bracketed the cross once at St. Cecilia's and had found herself transported. It taught her a lesson that the mystics knew...Don't fuck with God. She didn't want to fuck with the love she had for her children. As a mother, her children even came before God. She knew this was wrong but was willing to suffer the sin. Admittedly, even Mary wept for her son and cursed the Father.

She distrusted her perceptions. She couldn't believe her own senses. She was sure that what she experienced was uniquely hers and that everybody else had their own lens and filter. At first she distrusted colors. That was easy. Even her youngest child wanted to color the trees blue in her coloring book. She was sure that when she saw green the rest of the world saw red. From there her distrust evolved into language. Even though she and Dan spoke English, she was sure that he didn't understand her and if Dan didn't understand what she was saying, how could a complete stranger understand her? She had bracketed a word and found that words have no meaning at all; that the gap between the word and its referent was so large that the word could mean anything at all.