The view from the highest rung of the ladder

I go up alone, at night, to the top of the ladder. I cling to the air like a kite does. A kite is a kind of bird. It is also a hollow and vacant way to think of fun. Fly a kite, they say. They might sing that song, and go up a hill and imagine brick-stacks and smoke and strangers all floating colours into the plumish clouds. The wind blows, chomping up my hair. I lean into the space and let it happen. For added hollowness, I make a point of imagining how terrible I look, even though looking terrible (or looking fantastic for that matter) are not things I ever truly worry about. I worry about, for example, is the crop alright? Will my crops have the blight? Or flies of some sort. I worry, have I done all of it wrong?

And even then, it’s not a problem. They do not let you starve here. My credit at the corner shop is still good. Better than good actually, since I contributed recently to a village endeavour to redeem a fence. The fence had become gloomy and repetetive. People had taken up the habit of going there and walking the long length of it, treading the ground there into a wet mush. They were walking up and down along the fence, day and night. Compulsively they walked, foolishly revisiting gloomy experiences from their lives. I was not one of the ones who was drawn to it - these bones will not hollow themselves - but I saw them going and I understood the draw of a high grey barrier to drag a hand along, maybe drag away some knuckleskin. I could understand how on the other side of the fence, in their imagination, there might be everything they ever wanted, and everything that was kept from them.

Since the fence stands alone, and does not actually fence anything, they were walking all the way to the end - about half a mile, and then turning around and walking the other side, grumbling and working themselves up, churning the ground and saying regrettable, foundationless things. Whatever the boundary used to be has faded from meaning.

I don’t know how people got started walking the fence. Definitely there were many seasons during which the fence itself was totally ignored. I never even understood it to be a landmark. Someone new to the area might say, what’s that? And be told - oh, just the fence.

Wow, it’s a long fence, the newcomer might say.

I suppose, they would be told.

In other words, the whole length of it wasn’t worth talking about. Not at all. Then one day, I suppose, it became part of someone’s constitutional walk. A single person, we never established who it was, came here for a long, grumpy stroll. Dominic says he was with a group of people who saw footprints - more a track really, heading toward the fence from the main path. The group, he said, decided to investigate, but Dominic couldn’t be bothered.

The group had a really significat experience out there, it seems. The word spread, and soon this gloomy area became a sort of addiction. There were reports of a sallow emanation. A sort of vibe that appealed to that aching, dull part of you that wants to go back to another time and try again, and get angry again at the unfairness of life.

People experimented with the vibe. What if you went there with some wine from the shop? What if you went there after making love? They walked along the barrier. They peered over the top. A young man who calls himself Standard, spat over the top of it one day, and was reprimanded by Jackie and Lloyd, who were walking on the other side. Standard called them awful things. There was quite a bad fight, and that’s when it was decided that something had to be done to redeem the fence.

Redeemed is just a silly way of saying that we fixed it up. We repaired the raggedness a bit. We painted it a jolly colour and put sand into the mushy ground, then soil, then grass seed. As part of the redemption, the boy called Standard goes there every day to water the place and make sure it’s all ok. He says it gives him a great sense of peace. He says he can hear the sounds of the grass seeds growing. He is overwhelmed with the power of life, he says. He cries for no reason. He tells people like old Douglas how sexually beautiful he is. He says, Douglas, you are so old and sexy, and the universe loves you. Stuff like that. Deep nonsense.

Up the ladder I do not think of such complexities. I think of vapid, gaseous things, such as Standard’s lovely shoulders in his pale coat. And his long eye lashes. I think of sunny holidays, and remember once when I had the best time quite by accident when I talked to a family from Canada.

I still do not have feathers, but they will come. In the mean time, I feel sure the hollowing of my bones continues. I cannot feel my legs at all and around me only the sky in which there is no light whatsoever.

The fence, or something like it, as it was redeemed.