Basal Ganglia (6 page)

Alt, approx., beg, bet, BO, CA, CB, CC, cdd, ch, cm, cn, CO, cont, cross 2 L, cross 2 R, dc, dec, DK, dpn, EON, EOR, FC, fl, foll, g, g st, grp, hdc, hk, in, inc, incl, k, k tbl, k-b, k-wise, kfb, k2tog, k2tog tbl, kll, krl, LC, LH, lp, LT, m, M1, M1A, M1L, M1R, M1T, MB, mc, mm, no, oz, p, p tbl, p-b, p-wise, p2tog, p2tog tbl, pat, pm, pnso, pop, prev, psso, pu, RC, rem, rep, rev St st, RH, rib, rnd, RS, RT, sc, sk, sk2p, SKP, sl, sl st, sl1, slik, sl1p, sps, ss, ssk, ssp, sssk, st, St st, tbl, tog, won, wrn, WS, wyib, wyif, yb, yd, yfon, yfrn, yfwd, yo, yo2, yon, yrn.

These all mean something to her. Each can be decoded and acted upon. Knitting is a language Ingrid understands; it is only now that she discovers she understands. Ingrid’s mind is flooded with a burst of memory, too voluminous to parse. It can only be experienced in separation from the drive to know detail.

Ingrid cannot locate the origin of the memory. Like anything born of an apparent nowhere, it is assumed the ‘nowhere’ is a fallacy. Something indicative of possible discoveries to come. The needles are held with certainty. She performs something she understands to be ‘casting on’ with a technique she understands to be the ‘thumb method.’ With the light green yarn fastened to the needle, she casts stitch after stitch, covering the needle’s length. The unencumbered needle joins its partner and begins picking at the stitches, working its way into a loop. The method continues. Rows are formed. Slow commencement becomes steady adherence to an understood pattern of movement. Cognition relinquishes control to the unfolding pattern. Ingrid allows the process to push her aside, content to witness the fluidity of her movement and dazzle at her ability. Ingrid’s pattern is the womb in which their child is forming.

…

Rollo is denied access to the Prefrontal Chamber while Ingrid knits. Without her consent, he decides to watch through the security mirrors of the Occipital Chamber. Her reflection is diluted as it passes from mirror to mirror, eventually arriving as a barely distinct shape before Rollo’s eyes. He can tell she is seated and her arms are lost in activity, but the important information found in the clarity of detail is absent.

Rollo has been told a gestation period is in progress. Something that must occur privately between mother and child. The father’s presence can have no place here. While knitting is performed, access to the Prefrontal Chamber is restricted. The knitting seems ceaseless. Rollo is unable to determine time passed or progress made. He leaves the Occipital Chamber and lingers just beyond the Prefrontal Chamber’s entrance, listening to the rhythmic click of excited needles. His proximity to the restricted area inspires feelings of guilt.

When Ingrid becomes aware of Rollo near the entrance, she ushers him away. Forbidding his return until dinner, where their child in progress is locked in the bureau drawer. He knows he owns the strength to force the drawer open, but something intangible prevents this action. A role has been assigned and is abided by for no other reason than the existence of the role. He makes a point of not looking toward the drawer, projecting an aura of distraction, as if his thoughts reside with maintenance rather than his diminishing importance. Truth does not align with his faux-distraction. Maintenance is falling behind. Daily tasks no longer occur daily. Infrequency becomes a normative state.

He thinks of nothing but the baby. As the construction process evolves, greater levels of intensity are directed toward the thought. When the two sit to eat, Rollo is full of questions without voice. Ingrid is full of unavailable answers. His baby in progress resides so close. It would not require exertion to reach over and touch the bureau. He can feel the polished surface of the drawer. The intricate brass of the handle. The waft of enclosed scent escaping as the drawer slides open. The assemblage of wool, day-by-day becomes his progeny. Strands binding together, becoming more than themselves.

Ingrid’s hands are not Rollo’s hands. Ingrid’s hands orchestrate creation’s performance. Without maintenance, Rollo’s hands do not feel like Rollo’s hands. Rollo’s hands belong with the baby. Rollo’s hands could produce a baby too. It would likely be of higher quality than what Ingrid’s hands are capable of. To what use does she put her hands? Little more than dormant flesh in the world of work. Her fingers belong around a pencil, guiding the production of words. Rollo is a builder. Rollo has aptitude in his hands. They understand the patterns of construction. The language of production. Perhaps if the child could be built with words Ingrid would be most suitable. This process of baby construction is no different to refilling a pillow.

…

Discontent continues to mount. Rollo feels he would have finished the baby by now. Confining himself to the Occipital Chamber he continues his vigil. Clarity refuses. There is nothing he can see but a shape representing Ingrid. The dominant feeling is exclusion, of which the baby has become a symbol. A baby that exists as little more than concept. His resentment struggles to find a comfortable destination. At one moment it sits with Ingrid and another, with the baby. Anything resembling the life he had enjoyed prior to the baby concept has lost strength and fallen victim to replacement thoughts wearing dread. Rollo no longer feels the significance of insignificance the daily patterns once instilled. Without the meditation of pattern, Rollo has nothing.

…

“What gender will the baby be?”

Rollo has been building to this question. Of all the questions left unasked, this one fought hardest for his voice. The affectless delivery belies its importance. A gender cannot be attributed without his influence. He cannot allow it.

“I don’t know.”

Ingrid shifts in her seat, placing a protective hand on the bureau. Asking the question introduces a sense of danger.

“You must know. You are building it.”

Rollo pushes the point, elevating the danger. Ingrid moves her chair, obscuring the bureau completely, denying Rollo a potential line of sight.

“I really do not know. It is not up to you or I to decide the gender of our baby.”

It does not make sense. Rollo’s belly rumbles in response to the inexplicable answer. Ingrid is denying the existence of her agency. Suggesting something beyond her influence will determine gender.

“I want a girl,” says Rollo.

Ingrid assaults Rollo with her gaze, flooding him with violent mentality. She pours her will into it. Giving everything she has to the task. Rollo acts in direct opposition, tempting her focus to falter. Manipulating her away from the bureau and taking the baby. Finishing the baby. Forcing a gender of his choosing upon it.

“We might have a girl. We might have a boy. It is not up to you or I to decide.”

The whistling sound of Rollo’s thought increases in pitch and volume. Ingrid counters, attacking him with psychic babble.

…

The entrance to the Prefrontal Chamber has been sewn shut. Until Ingrid has finished the baby, Rollo is not permitted access, even to eat and sleep. She has covered the mirror that allows visual access from the Occipital Chamber. He has been told access will be reinstated when the baby is ready. Time, an ambiguous notion at best in the context of the fort, seems to cease its passage. Rollo’s exclusion finds stasis.

Ingrid keeps one eye on the entrance and the other eye on her work. The baby now exists as several components. Two legs of slightly differing lengths sit plump with stuffing. Two arms are about to undergo the same process. The torso awaits its limbs. Off to the side sits their child’s head. Rudimentary features illustrate its face. A line of black yarn for the mouth. Straight. No applicable emotion. Two red circles of yarn for eyes. Subtly raised eyebrows suggesting the moment prior to surprise. Another straight line. Vertical. A slight curve at the base. This is the nose. Clustered yellow strands have become hair. The head will wait until all other elements have become one.

She would like to dedicate more time to the assembly, but fears Rollo will not allow this. She knows something about the baby Rollo does not and feels it will displease him. Contrary to Rollo’s desires, the baby is a boy. He will think Ingrid is responsible. It is only by virtue of her hands this is true. Cognition played no role in the gender. She is convinced of it. There was no awareness of the developing male characteristics until after the characteristics emerged.

Ingrid senses, at some level, she knew their child would be a boy. She feels greater kinship with the male experience, but does not know why. Some things are just known as so. If forces beyond her deigned it appropriate she should influence its gender somehow, in what way could she be blamed? The wool in Ingrid’s hands is more than wool. The baby exists beyond a collection of sewn shapes. The baby existed before Ingrid existed. The determination of what has become is of a chain extending further back and farther forward than time conceives.

This, like anything, can be calculated as so. This is more than Rollo. This is more than Ingrid. This is more than the fort.

8.

The readings suggest universal change in atmosphere. Numbers congress in unfamiliar order. Rollo examines readings past, searching for precedents. It becomes apparent the numbers have found a new order. One beyond Rollo’s capacity to calculate and comprehend. It cannot be determined whether such an order represents jeopardy. Rollo is unable to dismiss the notion of the baby as pathogen, infecting the fort’s bloodstream. A movement toward slow death. His journey through past readings stretches back, detailing the evolution of understanding. Early readings are incomplete. Tentative in penmanship. Rollo conjures an earlier version of himself, overwhelmed by data. Unsure how to document the deluge. At a loss to decipher what they wish to convey. Numbers are crossed out. Re-written. Doubled over. At want for comprehension. Wilting beneath the power of his ignorance.

The development of aptitude often defies perception. It exists in steps, the ascent of which can only be viewed from a detached distance. The transition from step-to-step rarely feels like transition at all; it is like a rectilinear continuation. One assumed trapped within shiftless stagnation. It is here most will forfeit a pursuit. Too many incorrect notes distract from the increased instance of correct notes. It is only when one is prepared to experience failure, to bury themselves in the heart of its heart, that achievement can be found. It is only with the detachment of time’s passage that ascent reveals itself.

In the history of his readings, Rollo becomes aware of aptitude’s path. The rise of true confidence unattached to the façades erected by ego. He taught himself to understand numbers by force of will. These new numbers seem to mock his aptitude. Any translation appears lost as those attempted in his early records. Nothing he already knows is applicable to now. Ingrid and the baby have knocked his focus off-balance, rendering the required will impossible.

Rollo is immured in the non-Prefrontal Chambers, forbidden access to that which he wants most. This is the reality in which he broods. He remains with the indecipherable readings in the Cerebellum Chamber, forgoing food and water as though this forced decrepitude will punish Ingrid. The slowly ticking numbers are obsessed over. As obsession increases and ignorance screams, the less the numbers mean. Inquiry is replaced with projected outcomes of foreboding. Lack of understanding is a blank canvas on which to paint paranoia. Everything unknown is danger and harm.

He vacillates between directing his resentment toward Ingrid, then the baby. As the pendulum directs blame at one, he feels great sympathy for the other, until the swing shifts and attitudes are reversed. In one reality the baby is an innocent tool used by Ingrid to manipulate the fort’s dynamic. In another, Ingrid is the tool, being used as a conduit for an external malevolence in the baby’s form.

Logic attempts to steer Rollo toward reason and probability. Probability suggests neither Ingrid nor the baby intend harm upon him or the fort. It is natural for one to seek the continuation of life, the advent of legacy. Were it not for the drive exemplified by Ingrid, life could not continue. How can one place blame on a baby for existing? These logical tangents only add guilt to Rollo’s mounting paranoia. The logic is not powerful enough to vanquish the paranoia. The two dance about Rollo’s skull, one gaining the upper hand before losing it to the other.

He stares at the numbers. Through the numbers. Waiting and conflict define him.

…

Ingrid need only attach the head and her baby is complete. A sense of peace prevents the execution of this final step. When the head is sewn into place, the baby is born and Rollo must be permitted access. Ingrid feels compelled to protect the baby from all potential harm, which, to her horror, includes Rollo. She assumes this is maternal instinct, which is a reasonable protective mechanism, but the guilt refuses to diminish. Rollo would never cause her baby harm. She knows this. It is his baby too. Any involvement he enforces upon the process is the result of love. Of excitement.

Her hands glow with the vitality of creation. The nearly formed expression of life exists as a testament to what she is capable of. Who she is. What she can achieve beyond Rollo’s intervention.

She holds the unattached head aloft, rotating it slowly in her hand. Experiencing its existence. Her eyes drink in the details to ensure an intimate understanding unlike any other. This is Ingrid’s son. A manifestation of her. She brings the woolen head toward her face and rubs it against her beard. The head longs for attachment to its body. Ingrid longs for this attachment too and knows it cannot be delayed. Life wants what it wants and she is in no position to control that.

Thread pinched between excited fingers. Needle accepts thread without complaint. Thread tied to needle. Body in wait. Head in wait. Ingrid in wait. Head positioned above body in ghostly detachment. Brought closer. Head kisses body. Body kisses head. Ingrid bows and kisses both. The weaving needle trails the thread, binding via its passage. Ingrid sews tight stitches. Stitch sitting against stitch sitting against stitch. The crowd of ordered stitches form a strengthening bond. Space between each stitch must be eradicated. Thread is pulled. Head tightens. Straightens. Joining the body in greater unity with each needle weave. Her breath trails thin wisps of carbon dioxide from pursed lips lost in concentration. A circle of stitches destined to meet, heralding new life. Circle formed. Thread sits against thread. Between the kiss of Ingrid’s thumb and pointer emerges the needle. The trail of thread is severed with Ingrid’s gentle teeth. Two lengths of thread now exist. One length encircles the spool. The other is frozen in the stitching’s complex path. The spool is placed aside. The thread sprouting from the stitching’s complexity is tied off. Baby is born.