Upon sighting land, we anchored in the mouth of a bay, which I called Santa Cruz in the glory and service of our Lord, before progressing inland to a larger bay. I ordered the men to set out on land by foot. We would get to the North shore one way or another.
We reached a scarcely populated province and, the entire party and expedition devastated, knew there was only one thing to be done. More than a third of our people were gravely ill. We thanked our Lord God when we found an outlet to the sea. There was our chance to escape, and He had delivered us to it through a long and arduous trek.
We resolved to leave this desolate land and escape back into the Gulf, so I ordered the men to fashion vessels in which we might leave. As we pushed off back into those uncertain waters, we knew not what awaited us.
Pool (n.)
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1. |
a small body of standing water; pond. |
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2. |
a still, deep place in a stream. |
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3. |
any small collection of liquid on a surface: a pool of blood. |
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4. |
a puddle. |
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5. |
a swimming pool |
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The signifier “pool,” is found throughout the narratives of my popcycle. In my family microfiction, the birthday party revolves around a swimming pool, and the ice cream cake melts, pooling around the edges of my paper plate. In my entertainment discourse, the characters of The Land Before Time struggle to free themselves from a tar pit, which my narrative has parsed as a pool of tar. Finally, my community microfictions explore Narvaez’s doomed expedition that began at the Charlotte Harbor; pool, though the word is not used explicitly, is signified by the bay, as well as the outlet to the sea that was use by Narvaez’s men to escape.
Cultural understandings of the pool as signifier rest on the trope of a body of water as a baptismal setting (spiritual cleansing through immersion), the metaphoric symbol of the womb or, as in dream analysis, a representation of the states of the unconscious mind.
the sanctity of the pool
a return to the pool
pool of the unconscious
The depth, space, and nature of the pool are important in establishing my subjective state of mind toward the pool as subject-object. The pools in my narratives are situated as sites of claustrophobic enclosure, public display, and the threat of submersion, drowning, and overall consumption of the self by uncontrollable natural forces. The narrative that best establishes this state of mind is that of my Entertainment discourse, which highlights the scene of lovable dinosaur characters being consumed, and transformed by, the primordial pool that is the tar pit. The pool, then, is a locus for change, a vessel, and a vehicle, but it is situated much too dangerously to be viewed and approached as such in a world that works itself inexorably toward only one end. Thus, the pool becomes a prospective drowning chamber, a proverbial watery grave, rather than a fluid medium for life.
The pool is also a space contained within boundaries, measureable or imagined, of physical or social construction. In American middle-class culture, the backyard swimming pool is a status object. This subject-position of the pool is evidenced in my Family story via the birthday girl (with notably nicer things than mine) and her pool party.
sanctuary
Her mother lets me retreat to her daughter’s room to feel better, allows me to play with her toys. I silently look through the girl’s things.
I sit on my knees in front of her fat, overflowing toy chest and wish it were time to go home.
I can take off the dress, but can I remove its mark?
The others can laugh, but not me. I’m waiting for the sticky stuff to slide off and make me more like them.
When it does I can swim, fly, tumble, and speak with the rest. Until then, I walk off to be alone, with my mark as my excuse.
Filed under: Family, Forum | Tags: childhood, Family, Forum, memory, microfiction, spectacle, toys
He hands me toys; new wonders, treasures of blue and red shapes filled with glittery tinted gel. I hold them, one in each hand, to study and consider more seriously. I don’t know what to do with them, so I stare at them to tell me.
When he finishes his hushed talk, he picks me up and takes me back out to the living room where everyone is waiting. He sets me in front of him. I stand, still staring at the toys, twisting my arm around to look at them from every side without dropping one. Everyone is gathered in the room around me, watching. Mommy is filming me.
My scalp hurts because my pig tails are tied too high and tight on my head. My dress is tight, too, and getting short for me. I feel pinched and pulled and arranged and it makes me itchy and empty-headed. I ignore everyone and look down at the toys in my hands, my purple floral dressy shoes with frilly bobby-socks, and then down to the floor’s expanse of speckled orangey-brown.
I stare at them to tell me.
The tree star is a bright, crisp green and it glistens with dew and rain water.
“It is very special,” Littlefoot’s mother tells him as she drops it and lets it glide down to the ground to him. Littlefoot recites the name and plays with the fallen leaf, wrapping it around him like a blanket, kicking it up and blowing at it to make it float above him before falling back over his face.
