Basal Ganglia (2 page)

It is in the Prefrontal Chamber that Ingrid feels most comfortable. She casts her gaze from the pencil turning in her hand to the notebook sitting before her. The pencil wears a newly sharpened point. A point she will blunt with words. There are so many words living inside Ingrid and she wants to write them all. She wants to explore every possible sequence of words. She wants to know how words relate to one another. If words exist in conflict, she wants to observe the conflict.

Most of Ingrid’s words, in one way or another, find their way toward Rollo. ‘Rollo’ is a word she will never admit she remembers. Ingrid would never let Rollo read her words, but most of them are devoted to him. She seeks honesty with her words and often feels guilt at the contempt they reveal. During the brief moments they share, it is difficult for Ingrid to look at Rollo and for him to look at her. It often feels like an unspoken game between the two – looking everywhere but at each other. She wonders if the two should attempt a conversation that probes deeper than Rollo’s maintenance narrative, but knows it is unlikely. She fears any attempt to probe beneath Rollo’s most exterior layers will reveal love within him that matches hers.

Ingrid has noticed an evolution in her writings. They extend beyond words and have started including diagrams. An unknown fascination with concentric circles has developed. Ingrid’s hand seems compelled, beyond her intervention, to draw circles within circles within circles, concluding with dots wanting to be smaller circles. Were it possible, she would shrink herself down. She knows what looks like a dot must contain vistas of space in which to draw more circles. If only she were small enough to experience the extra space she knows is there. This space is wasted.

Beneath the circles she writes about her desire to shrink. Longing has been building within her for some time. Days are passed wondering what this longing might be, but instead of answers, she finds only an amplification of the longing. At its worst, she envies Rollo and wishes to lose herself in the same menial activities that occupy the totality of his mind. She thinks too much, an activity that at times strikes her as absurd. What purpose do thoughts serve when they lack a means by which to manifest?

She runs a hand through her beard and attributes to each bristle an identity filled with complexity and wisdom. She wishes Rollo had a beard and wonders why one does not grow. What lurks beneath the surface of his skin preventing it? Does he ever envy hers? Her hands would like to feel Rollo’s chin, but are terrified of touching him. The concentric circles on the page beckon her toward their center.

She writes the next in a sequence of numbers on the top-right corner and makes her way toward the Frontal Chamber. The Frontal Chamber belongs to Ingrid. Rollo does not know she spends time there each day. He believes this chamber disturbs Ingrid, but he is wrong. Within this chamber, darker than the others, Ingrid feels a symbiotic connection. Whatever might have occurred here during the construction of the fort married her to this chamber. In this marriage, Rollo has never had a place. This chamber is an opportunity for Ingrid to try and understand what it means to be her, severed from any dynamic attached to Rollo.

Within the Frontal Chamber is a cavity beneath the floor. She often feels as though the fort belongs to Rollo, which is why this space is so precious. By lifting the layer of blankets that comprise the floor, she is able to gain access. In this cavity Ingrid files everything she writes. She dares not stay inside the Frontal Chamber too long as time has a way of escaping when one is immersed in the self. When Rollo returns from his maintenance for supper, it is important to Ingrid that he find her in the Prefrontal Chamber – like always. It is a pattern he has come to expect and Ingrid knows he needs his patterns. Ingrid’s own pattern relies on the successful execution of Rollo’s. She allows herself to luxuriate in this forbidden space for a moment after filing the latest writing. This chamber feeds her in a way that defies expression. Thoughts that terrify her elsewhere fill her with comfort here.

When she returns to the Prefrontal Chamber, she wonders how long she has been gone, then immediately counters this with nonchalance. All that matters is Rollo is not back yet. The tryst between Ingrid and the Frontal Chamber remains their secret. For all Ingrid knows, Rollo has a space just like it for himself. She hopes he does, but knows with a great deal of certainty he does not.

 
3.

A limbo exists between the waking and sleeping world. The waking world has no place in the silent darkness. We exchange the day for a transition into a facsimile of death that masks complex explosions of biological function unfolding within. These functions wait for the mind to disappear. The limbo between wake and sleep is a ceremony that mourns the loss of another day.

Rollo’s childhood suggested insomnolence, but his sleeplessness was a considerable act of will. In a time when Rollo still had the ability to remember, he remembered the wooden crib that housed him each night. Placed down so gently, as though he were in danger of breaking, onto soft bedding replete with infancy’s understanding. His arms reaching for the arms that had just released him. Wet lips pressed against his forehead, leaving a dampness that cooled before disappearing. The warm, orange hue of lamplight designed to grant him peace.

The lips.

The light.

Then loneliness.

In this crib, the room contorted beneath the lamplight’s gaze. The light removed familiarity and replaced it with danger. His body responded to confusing messages uttered by the contorted environment, telling him sleep must come. Sleep must take today’s life and leave you helpless. Rollo feared the room around him, but feared surrendering himself to the room much more.

His blankets were tucked so tightly only seizures of movement would convince them to yield. When Rollo managed this, he burrowed beneath the blankets, remaining awake and hidden from sight. The world was different beneath the blankets. In the presence of such danger, this small gesture calmed him. The space was intimate and unique. It was his and granted entry to no one else. When he was not there, the space stopped existing.

Consumed in this world of blankets, Rollo remained awake, assured in the knowledge when sleep finally stole him, it would not be by choice. Of course… sleep always stole him, sooner or later. He would wake each morning tucked tight by loving hands. Hands that assumed his position beneath the blankets a mistake that needed correcting.

Night’s inherent danger evolved to mean many things to Rollo as his age and awareness grew. No matter the evolution, the central concern remained devoted to extending the limbo. Sleep remained an enemy. Waking life was a composition of the self, performed with certainty. Sleep signaled a pause in the composition and became free improvisation performed by the subconscious. This was a performance refusing to pay attention to any malignance that wished Rollo harm.

Waking life, although preferable to sleep, became a source of fear all its own. As Rollo accumulated more worldly experience, he saw the pernicious hue of infancy’s lamplight gaze draped across every facet. Each day held within it, just below the stretched skin, threat and harm. It occurred to Rollo sleep did not introduce danger into the world. The danger was always there. The limbo between wake and sleep allowed Rollo to stay both alert and protected.

…

A child builds a fort for many reasons. Common to most children is a drive to understand a world dictated by them. Within the walls of these basic structures are eruptions of imagination. A blanket draped over two chairs transcends its constitution, becoming limitless. It is a structure that garners meaning via the hands that build it. The eyes that behold it.

Rollo’s nighttime reveries soon oriented themselves toward the simple notion of a pillow fort. He would gather and form what to him were grandiose strongholds. His bedroom became a blanketed womb mapped with tunnels and nooks. It went beyond a familiar childhood pastime and became a statement of intent. The structure longed to break free of Rollo’s bedroom and consume the entire house. Within the heart of this shambolic architecture resided Rollo himself. Whenever his presence was not required elsewhere, he was in his fort.

School was important to Rollo. He was able to absorb many practical and theoretical worlds of experience that could benefit forts of the future. His hands were blessed with natural aptitude, able to solve puzzles of construction with detached dexterity. His mind was capable of deciphering the language of computation and engineering. The school environment was a source of potential danger that was outweighed by the skills it provided. Divorced from social concepts, his mind was given permission to focus on selfish improvement. His avenues of study extended far beyond the limited curricula students were expected to abide by. The structured imposition of learning was enslaved to equality, almost scornful of those who had hungrier minds.

Fellow students formed indistinct patterns Rollo had no interest in. The students in turn regarded Rollo with confusion and unnamable fury. In groups people devolve and subsume into a malignant mass. The mass distills into collective will guided by the lowest common denominator. The mass exhibits the fury of its most furious. The confusion of its most confused. Negativity swells and bucks, growing with the ease of weeds, choking out individual traits into voiceless morsels, pathetic and weak. This mass feared what the possibility of Rollo said about them. Rollo, without casting a thought in their direction, had stripped each one beyond nudity and revealed the weakness beneath the skin. The horror of being ordinary. In their ordinariness, they combined to become something less than ordinary. As one, they wore fear as courage and directed increasing disdain toward Rollo. The atmosphere was thick with jealousy and self-doubt, but Rollo never noticed. There were more important things in which to direct his concern.

Ingrid existed as a part of Rollo long before he became aware of her. She was often a member of the spiteful mass and knew she became a part of it with too much ease. When removed from the jumble she felt enriched, as if participation in the collective will diluted her as a person. Who was this Rollo that inspired so much weak rage? She moved in cycles of knowing and unknowing. Figuring the peculiar boy out and finding larger questions within her solutions.

Ingrid divorced the mass when she could no longer cope with the weakness it made her feel. In this gesture, she inspired a lesser form of disdain from the mass. Rollo’s existence drained too much of the disdain’s resources to attend to Ingrid in a satisfying way. Unencumbered, she watched Rollo through her own eyes. It became important for Ingrid to understand who this boy was and why he inspired so much jealousy and fear. He was someone immersed in his own trajectory and whatever it was, there was an aura of importance surrounding it.

This clandestine dynamic persisted for some time before Ingrid felt compelled to introduce her presence to Rollo’s trajectory. She engaged. He accepted and returned the engagement.

“Hi,” said Ingrid. “I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Ingrid.”

Rollo stared into her eyes, trying to understand what it was they conveyed. In possession of new feeling beyond words. Feeling that could only be understood via feeling.

“Hi, Ingrid,” said Rollo. “My name is Rollo. It is nice to meet you.”

They found words to share and became connected to each other. Rollo extracted a portion of himself and gifted it to Ingrid. She held it close and in turn allowed Rollo a portion of her. They nursed this portion of the other, allowing it to bloom within them. What they shared felt more than love. Their hearts pumped each other’s blood.

When Ingrid was first introduced to Rollo’s bedroom fort, she intuited its importance. This was more than a structure that Rollo sought refuge in. This was a manifestation of all Rollo was. He had erected his own heart and invited her inside. The knowledge Rollo had dredged from life was directed here. Understanding the danger her presence in the fort might represent, she embraced Rollo and became another blanket in which he could hide. He turned in exploratory tumbles before swimming to her depths, where safety existed in untold abundance.

…

The intimacy of pre-sleep’s limbo exists in its vulnerability. It is fed by solitude and grows with exploration of the reflexive self. Rollo handed Ingrid an invitation to his personal space. Rollo did not need to explain himself to Ingrid. When light became dark, she was waiting at the fort’s core. He saddled up behind her and shuddered with the unknown. In their silence, he could hear the thud of another’s heart, the exhalation of gentle breath. The limbic screech of colliding thoughts. In this space Rollo knew his safety was tied to the beautiful creature pressed against him. Their future was bound. His cells were merging with hers.

Each night, separate from any reality expected of them, the two would float through the pre-sleep limbo. They added further burrows to the bedroom fort and moved through them like blood through veins. Rollo became aware of Ingrid’s thoughts merging with his. He would voice thoughts originating in Ingrid that had not yet been spoken, believing them to be his own. Rollo understood Ingrid was now in possession of his thoughts too.

Ingrid and Rollo. Start. End. Circular movements. Spun on the same spool and blending their threads into something stronger. Individual fears set aside for shared fear. The limbo pushed away everything unbound to them.

School’s hateful mass continued to engorge and longed for a tangible manifestation of their disdain toward Rollo. He had not dwindled beneath them. He punished the mass by thriving in spite of them. A representative approached Rollo, blocking his movement, ensuring the mass would not be ignored. This collision startled Rollo. Who were these people and what was their business with him? The hands of another, shaking with physical violence, held him in place. How could such nameless hate exist? He motioned to move forward, the dreadful hands overwhelming him. These hands were not just owned by one hateful boy. They were owned by one seething, hateful mass. He was reminded of the hands that left him alone in the crib of his infancy. What right did uninvited hands have upon another person?