Madeline, Falling Over.

In case you weren’t already aware, Madeline is god. Here are some details about her: she’s crazy.

That’s actually the only detail that matters.

She hates oreos. She is afraid of cotton balls (when they are dry, they are too dry, and when they are damp, they are horrible). She likes to stare at her own eyes in the mirror sometimes; first, she looks at the outer rim of the iris, which is like the horizon line between the ocean at night and the sky at night; then, she looks at the iris, which is like an iris; and afterwards, she looks at the pupil, which is this dark empty thing that looks back at her, and if she tried to shine a light into it, it would blind her, so she figures eyes are not like glass, which can be looked into, but like green apples lying in green grass, which can be overlooked but seen. Madeline knows somebody who said, “This is a bad metaphor: When they met for the first time, they were like hummingbirds, meeting for the first time.” She also knows somebody who said, “Good.” Very sarcastically. I know these people, too, but Madeline and I are not the same person. I am not god.

Madeline thinks dreaming is like walking on a balance beam made of balsa. Something might happen to throw you off—you might, for instance, find yourself in a wobbly, Buchanan-era hoop skirt; or there may be a number of airplanes with very large propellers and very small  wings; or perhaps all the animals are laying down beside one another and conceiving liombs and porpoiscupines and other infertile, beautiful and deadly creatures. Her theory is, even after you wake up, if you wake up alone it may take a great deal of energy and arm-waving to regain your balance. If you could just reach out and touch something real, something that talks back, it would be as easy as touching a rope strung halfway along the balance beam—just a fingertip would be enough. But if you wake up alone too often, you fall over.

When Madeline was a little girl, she would talk to God. When she grew up, the two of them grew very close, and the closer they got, the more they talked, and the more they talked, the closer they got, until she understood that God wakes up alone all the time. He reaches out to touch a fingertip to someone who will talk back, and it’s like shining a bright light into the middle of the pupil—rip! the pupil is gone, and instead there is the pink, blind back of an eye.

God once had an awful dream, and the dream was James Buchanan, who lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and never married; God dreamt Buchanan was only elected President because he was untainted by intelligent opinion. Still, he could not prevent the Civil War. James Buchanan was bonkers. So is God. So, for that matter, is Madeline. When God and Madeline talk, they’re like two hummingbirds, meeting for the first time. When James Buchanan died, they made his home a museum and young Lancaster girls can visit and dress in hoop-skirts and wobble from room to room, laughing at how tiny the beds are and how a couple might wake up sitting upright next to one another, as if they had been awake the whole time. James Buchanan, having never had a wife, probably slept long-ways, lying on his stomach, and when he died, even he must have said, “Good,” very sarcastically.

~ by Ali on December 4, 2008.