Marion Michell - Wordgathering – Syracuse University

The Gift

You are Rapunzel in the tower. You wove a dress from matted hair. You watch the seasons through your window, and greet each passing day aware that you’ve lost count.

You knead the air like dough. You say: my dear dear hands! Because you know that colours flow from them, and doe-eyed creatures, and making is a joy.

You name what you forgot: That feathered flying thing, with yellow beak, whose morning song you love. Those buzzing kritters, boldly striped, dipping their trunks in flowers. One bloom, its sun-lit head as high as yours, nodding in the breeze. She, with the gentle face. He, whose gold tooth sparkled when he smiled. Water. Salty. Waves of it. But where?

A child appeared a while ago. Not boy, not girl, but love-filled presence. Look, they cried, my somersaults are legion! Their lemon-yellow winter onesie is lighting up the dingy room. You laugh, your face alive now, and think: let go of ‘life before’!

Tell me a story! begs the child. You conjure worlds with words and gestures, remember swimming icy oceans as a seal; jumping crevices – a wizened goat a hundred years ago; meeting friendly mountain folk, learning their tongues.

You speak a night, a day, a month, a year. The child says: more, another story, please! Meanwhile your greying tresses grow, and flow and flow, round winding stairs, all six floors down, and pool—by the bolted door.

La Parisienne et le renard, or: On longing

During the night, a fox died under my bedroom window. Did he cry out while I slept, snug on memory lane? I was walking through Paris once more, discovering the Centre Pompidou, still proudly spilling its guts after 49 years, as if for the first time. Nothing could tear me away…

I was 17 when I visited Paris with two girlfriends. Arms linked, we strolled through the Quartier Latin; drank huge cups of café au lait; ate merguez frites repeatedly; sat on the steps of Sacre Coeur and revelled in the view of la cité; danced at a West African reggae club; made Senegalese friends; and haunted the flea market near the Porte de Clignancourt, where I bought myself a man’s ring with a black tourmaline.

Jean Tinguely’s and Niki de St Phalle’s Fontaine Stravinsky in front of the Centre Pompidou was a revelation. I hadn’t known sculptures could be so chipper and colourful! The cahiers in vibrant shades we found at Clairefontaine seemed almost flamboyant compared to our school notebooks with their drab black covers. St. Michel métro station had an agreeably sweet smell. Everything seemed engrossing and the chance to breathe life into my five years of school-French thrilled me.

Three years later I hitchhiked to Paris with a friend whose name I cannot recall. I do remember his copper-coloured wavy hair, longer than mine, gleaming in the sun as we waited by the road; a deep sonorous voice; and practised fingers rolling endless ciggies. We had just a few francs between us, bought baguette, fromage, tomatoes, a bottle of vin rouge, and at night rolled out our sleeping bags behind the bushes in a small parc. Specific memories of this trip have all but disappeared, but it seems I did have adventures when I was young. This however I cannot forget: the rush of fear when——I spotted the nunchaku the driver, who had offered us a ride back home, had hidden under his seat. A relief to end the journey safe…

I still have the Steiff-fox a friend of my dad’s brought me when I was small. Fuchsi is thin around the middle where I used to clutch him while I slept. Dad’s friend, who, according to mum, was ever so handsome, was training to be a Catholic priest. He killed himself before he finished the seminary, and I wonder if he had been gay and saw no way to live his truth in a country (Germany) that only fully decriminalised homosexuality in 1994, more than 30 years after his death. Had he hoped celibacy would allow his innermost self to serve and embody the unforgiving faith he had tried to put at the centre of his life? I grieve for him.

Meryl, my sparkle-hearted carer, called out to me when she found the fox under my bedroom window. He had no tail and his teeth were bared. Did he drag himself there, sensing a form of still but steady life on the other side of the wall? When we wrapped him in a bin liner (I wish we had used a blanket!), a deep shudder ran through my body. What had happened to him? To his tail? Following my ‘dead animal removal request’ to the council, he was picked up from the curb that same day. I don’t know where they laid the poor creature down.

I used to love travelling, helped build a school in a small village near Balikesir, Turkey, where Dynasty was the favourite TV programme watched by women and children on Sunday nights in the muhta’s small house; cycled from oasis to oasis in the North Sahara, Tunisia, and can still see the glittering salt-pink patches on the sides of the road (but not much else, as memory just does not serve); hiked along coastal and mountain paths, enjoyed city trips…

When did my longing to explore new places expire? Right now I’d rather be transported back to the ice cream parlour where dad and I sat under old linden trees after he had bought me my first walking stick; the room where I read a whole Pippi Longstocking book to little Finn, who understood my need for horizontal activity and frequent rest periods better than some adults; the brilliantly curated Louise Bourgeois exhibition at the Freud Museum in London, where Meryl took me when that was still possible, followed by a lie-down picnic in the museum garden.

Do I miss the locations, the company, the chance of novel experiences, or my ability to sit, read, walk, speak other languages? Is Paris on my mind because this early journey is the only one of which I remember more than titbits? When one’s being has been bludgeoned by an (as yet) untreatable chronic illness, when decades pass with life curtailed by a medically unattended disease, even wishing turns tired…

Some days I go through all the stages of grief, starting early in the morning, when brief moments of ‘I can!’ signify potential and prospect until body cries ‘no!’; next I buck against my limitations; offer to give one thing up so I can do the other thing, when really nothing goes; then on to sorrow (still tinged with rage); and yes, finally acceptance, hovering between ‘I give up’, and ‘I give in’.

As I lie on my bed in my silver skirt, I dream myself and fox onto the streets of Paris, two heartsore spectres yearning to be fully alive. I conjure dad’s young friend, my late M.E.-besties Mag and Kendrick, and others whose lives were diminished, even cut short, through systemic failings. What a procession we’d make, quiet, insistent, bristling, and welcoming to all who want to join us…

About the Author

Marion Michell is a London-based visual artist, blogger, writer. She has severe M.E. and P.O.T.S., and creates in the supine. That’s the time she feels most alive… In December 2016, her book SUPINELY SUBLIMELY (poetic prose) was published by Palewell Press. Find her art online at: www.marionmichell.com.