This is a past-unjumbling from November… Last month I ended up in a shop and there was a pile of soft-toy black cats ; I put my hand in the basket to pull one out, as even though I didn’t want one of the black cats, they looked really soft – and when I pulled my hand back out I discovered that the fluffy creature I was holding was… a BAT! A bat amongst cats – and it was SUCH a cute bat – and I looked at the label and read the words “I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me”… That was it; I knew I couldn’t leave the shop without it…and when I got home that day, I wrote this:
“I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me”, said the label of this thing from the post-Halloween shelf of abandonment; I didn’t need persuading. How could I be expected to read this and leave the shop without the creature? This is the problem with being an adult-child with a debit card. It means I’m able to get a Kinder Egg without having to persuade an adult, yet I’m incapable of sorting my own life out – and I HATE it.
It seems that the voices have been cleverly observing. They’re always listening, always psychologically analysing, always finding ways to trick and trap me, watching the ways that my brain-things tick and tap inside me, hearing the waves of the mechanisms of the ocean-brain chemicals stir and swish around me, leaving me to rock and pace and hum and shout and wish they hadn’t found me –
“I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me”, says a small voice from the cheese aisle, “I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me”, says a small voice from the chocolate aisle, “I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me” says the knife from the brain-imagined knife drawer, tiny Peanut-Bats staring, drowning at the bottom of the liquor-glass, Peanut-Bats running, falling from the edges of tall jagged cliff-monsters, “I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me” chants the plush army of fluffy cuteness, together at first, yet echoing slightly out of sync each time, longing eyes and longing wings spread open, ears perked up and lonely hearts awaiting love, I must look after them, or is them to look after me, what it is that they offer, what is it that they want, what is it that I’m drawn by – I am not fooled, they are not Peanut Bat, they won’t look after me – I mentally close the knife drawer shattering the bat-ghost – You are not Peanut Bat – I walk away from the liquor-shelves, dissipating the tiny bat-ghosts, You are not Peanut Bat, They are not Peanut Bat, They won’t look after me – I feel the gaze of two tiny eyes, glossy-glittery in a tiny gap of quiet – a small voice, solo, from the comforting fluff-ball grasped within my hands – “I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me” – is this Peanut Bat? I focus down at Peanut-Bat-Original whilst my surroundings blur into a haze. What if this is them? I remember them, an evil Peanut-Bat army hovering over my mind vision – ‘NO’ – they instantly shatter, a blur of bat-ghosts – Is this Peanut Bat? Perhaps my doubt is what they wanted. ‘Yes, you are Peanut Bat. I will look after you’. I hold Peanut-Bat close and tight, leaving the non-Peanut-Bat—Ghosts of deception and deceit in an array of non-acknowledgement.
Hours later, now upstairs in my room, I gaze down from the bed at Peanut Bat, who is innocently sitting on the floor in the foreground of a happy painting, staring up at the ceiling-air. My throat tightens as a swift wave of icy angst sharpens the atmosphere. Is this Peanut Bat? Is this friend or foe? How do I know? Did I want to look after it for it to look after me? Did it want me to look after it for it to ‘look after’ me, in a way I don’t want looking after, in a land where all my needs are swapped and altered? What if one of the other Peanut Bats had asked me first – “I am Peanut Bat, Please look after me” – I did not need persuading – I could not read this and leave without the creature. I could not leave without the creature, so many creatures, too many creatures, now the creatures will not leave me. A spinning strobe-torch of bright-dark thoughts flash round and round my head, then I stop to wonder: am I still so easily misled? When does naive disappear, how does manipulatable plasticine stop being malleable? I must end this cycle of abandonment, love, abandonment, love-abandonment; I must alter the sequence and free the bat-ghosts, I must learn the learnings, type the typings, speak the words, release unheard herds of sad-happy-sad angry rambly terror-tears from all levels electro-manic mood-switches, I must fight the fight and dance the dance, I must let the final bowl-child drink the bowl and sing into the peace-distance… but for now, small Peanut Bat Original, I must trust my instincts, assume ‘friend’ and do as I promised. You are Peanut Bat, I will look after you – and whilst I do so, I must also make a promise to look after me, myself, for the sake of all of the selves, the many selves – so that when I leave the human-body-creature, the echo-shadow-ghost-creatures may all leave me – so that when I leave this human-body-creature, I can finally be free.
(3rd November 2017)
Sumita: Unjumbled 