There was no pain in her birth. In fact, her mother experienced no labor at all. Using a yoga technique she had learned somewhere inside the womb--the baby girl extended her tiny right arm, making the shiny sliver of her middle fingernail the first blessed thing to enter the world in ages.
Two birth-nurses at the clinic said they simply watched the process. They said that when the baby's brown arm came out from between her mother's legs, her hand was cupped liked a wooden soup-spoon and in her hand she held what they described as a tiny golden lizard--no bigger than a pin head--which calmly climbed to the tip of her extended brown thumb, looked around the hospital room as if to check this was the right place, and then faded into invisibility. After that, the infant Narajuna slid effortlessly out from the uterine labyrinthe. Neither nurse reported feeling surprised or even that this was odd. Such was the routineness of inexplicables in those times. / Such was the condition which has always surrounded her, from the very beginning evaporating doubt and anxiety in those she comes in contact with.
The only pushing involved in the birth came from the expansion of an invitro cloud of fragrance that followed her into the world. The fragrance burst into the room with a brief vibrating drone--similar to the purr of a large animal--and to this very day the scent cannot be sterilized from the walls, birthing-bed and stainless steel equiptment.
It smells like a bouquet of flowers from some undersea garden.
In fact, several years ago the odor was successfully copied using chemical blends and became a popular selling perfume for women. However, rather than driving men crazy with lust and phermonal itching, it drove men into acts of uncontrollable generosity. Thousands of men became unable to make it to work due to an undeniable urge to help. They would push out of their front doors with the intent to get to the subway station and their work cubical on time, but within the five-minute walk they would become absorbed in bestowing kindness after kindness. Rescuing insects that had flipped to their backs. Scrapping gum from the pavement with their fingernails. Speaking kindly to children and stray dogs. Emptying their wallets into flowerbeds and learning to whistle the melodies of song birds.
Obviously, this presented serious trouble for the market forces that regulate the standards of normality, and so the perfume was driven off the market and stores which ignored the fundamental threats posed to market health--preferring to make short-term profits and clear their stock of the perfume--had their greedy glass display shelves ransacked by rod-swinging lawyers / ad executives in anti-contamination suits.
“I never noticed there is so much real work to do.”
narajuna (the dragon)
i have never left her.
how would that even be possible?
and, by never, i mean never.
would it be possible to leave yourself?
how far do you have to go to get apart?
how close do you have to come to be together?
beyond a foot?
within 5 meters?
she is invisible--riding her sturdy tricycle, singing the song the city sings, translating its minute vibrations, like a record needle translates the groove into the speaker: her mouth, tongue, lips, lungs, teeth, breath, lexicon.
she is invisible.
i am invisibility.