colonist

excerpts from "the resident" by carmen maria machado - from the short story collection her body and other parties


i crossed paths with the others at breakfast, sometimes. one morning, diego told me about the previous day's social engagements-- which i had ignored in favor of lucille's social engagements near my novel's climax -- and in doing so he said a curious word: colonist.

"colonist?" i said.

"we're at an artist colony," he said. "so we're colonists, right? like columbus." he drained his orange juice and stood up from the table.

i suppose he meant it to be funny, but i was horrified. resident had seemed such a rich and appropriate term, an umbrella i would have been content to carry all of my days. but now the word colonist settled down next to me, with teeth. what were we colonizing? each other's space? the wilderness? our own minds? this last thought was a troubling one, even though it was not very different from my conception of being allowed to be a resident in your own mind. resident suggests a door hatch in the front of your brain, propped open to allow for introspection, and when you enter, you are faced with objects that you'd previously forgotten about. "i remember this!" you might say, holding up a small wooden frog, or a floppy rag doll with no face, or a picture book whose sensory impressions flood back to you as you turn the pages -- a toadstool with a wedge missing from its cap; a flurry of luminous autumn leaves; a summer breeze dancing with milkweed. in contrast, colonist sounds monstrous, as if you have kicked down the door hatch of your mind and inside you find a strange family eating supper.

now when i worked, i felt strange around the entrance to my own interiority. was i actually just an invader, bearing smallpox-ridden blankets and lies? what secrets and mysteries lay undiscovered in there?

*           *           *

in my cabin, i tried hard to focus. i stood out on my balcony and strained to see the lake, but i could not. exhausted by the weather, i lay down on the floor. from there, the room changed, utterly. i felt stuck to the ceiling by a force equivalent to, though the opposite of, gravity, and from here i could see the hidden spaces beneath the furniture: a mouse's nest, a stranger's index card, a lone, bone-white button tilted on an axis.

i was reminded, for the umpteenth time, of viktor shklovsky's idea of defamiliarization; of zooming in so close to something, and observing it so slowly, that it begins to warp, and change, and acquire new meaning. when i'd first begun to experience this phenomenon, i'd been too young to understand what it was; certainly too young to consult a reference book. the first time, i lay down on the floor examining the metal-and-rubber foot of our family refrigerator, wreathed in dust and human hair, and from this reference point all other objects began to change. the foot, instead of being insignificant, one of four, et cetera, suddenly became everything: a stoic little home at the base of a large mountain, from which one could see a tiny curl of smoke and glinting, illuminated windows, a home from which a hero would emerge, eventually. every nick on the foot was a balcony or a door. the detritus beneath the fridge became a wrecked, ravaged landscape, the expanse of kitchen tile a rambling kingdom waiting for salvation. this was how my mother found me: staring at the foot of the refrigerator so intensely my eyes were slightly crossed, my body curled up, my lips moving almost imperceptibly.

*         *           *

in the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. what if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? what if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it's all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? what if you get inside and there's no furniture? what if you get inside and it's just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket of your lap and humming a little tune? what if you get inside and there's nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?

what is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?

what is worse: writing a trope or being one? what about being more than one?

i walked to my cabin for the last time. i finally added my name to the tablet above my desk. C----- M----, i scrawled. resident colonist & colonizing resident & madwoman in her own attic.

i threw my novel notes and laptop into the lake. after the plush splash subsided, i heard the sound of girls, laughing. or maybe it was just the birds.