And When My Eyes Relaxed, They Looked to God
This is another prompt from the wonderful folks at Moye Magazine.
It was in Class 2 that I realised that I could change my view of reality simply by relaxing my eyes. I could split an object into two different pieces just by relaxing my eyes.
Of course, I was bored as hell. That was the problem, really. I had learned to read when I was 5 years old, probably before that, so anything we were doing in class was incredibly boring to me. I had long ago figured out how I was going to continue, with reading voraciously. So by the time I got to Class 2, with Sister Fidelis teaching us all about Wolraad Woltemade and the Great Trek, and getting us to read the very simple readers that we were using in class, I was bored.
So I would sit in the corner of the class, the back corner of the class, where I had been put because I had finished my work and I was meant to be carrying on with something else, and I would twist reality around me.
I remember the first thing I moved. I was sure that everyone would see it. It was a statue of Jesus exposing his sacred heart to the world. All in white, colourless plaster most likely, sitting on a little wooden table by the door, moved slightly so that his hands weren’t peeling back the flesh of his chest, but were instead reaching into his chest to remove it. It reminded me of the story I had read in a book of Mythology, of a brave Slavic hero who had led his people through a dark forest by removing his heart, holding it out in front of him to light their path and ward off the darkness and the wolves and the demons that were hunting him. I can’t remember his name, unfortunately, but I do know that he was Polish or Czech or some other Slavic nationality.
Nobody saw it. And after I had moved it with my eyes, it stayed that way. Christ reaching in to remove his heart.
I felt powerful, as I left the class that day, the statue sitting there unremarked, Sister Fidelis shepherding us out into the Eshowe heat of the afternoon.
The next day, having finished yet another task with a lot of time to go, I focused on another object. This time it was the cats-eye from the road to the Berlin Wall that Sr Fidelis used as a paperweight, that she had dug out of the road when she was there, when the wall was being taken down and everyone was celebrating. I find it difficult to imagine Sr Fidelis in that crowd, chanting and singing. Was she wearing her habit? Was she in her socks and sandals? Did she dig the catseye out of the road herself? If so, with what?
Anyway – I focused on it, and saw the pieces of Communist concrete buried in the bottom layer, the shining bits of quartz and the dull pieces of cement grit under the clear green of the glass. It had always troubled me, because when I had picked up the object for the first time the grit had scratched my hand. I had not liked it. It reminded me of a nightmare I had once, where there was velvet covering a million knives and edges and scissors, where I could feel the sharpness poking and stabbing and slicing me through the fake softness of the velvet. So, when I relaxed my eyes, I shifted the grit into a single mote of roughness in the heart of the glass. Like a pupil made of stone inside the eye made of glass. It pleased me, knowing that the catseye now sat smoothly on top of the papers on Sister Fidelis’ desk, in the sunlight over in the corner of the classroom looking east towards the distant sea.
This time, when I was leaving the class, I was bold enough to comment on the catseye. Sr Fidelis looked at me quizzically, then looked at the paperweight and frowned slightly, noticing that there had been some kind of shift there. She didn’t pick it up, though. I said my goodbyes in a hurry, and rushed out into the heaviness of the air.
The next day was a Friday. The humidity had gathered into a knot of electricity over Eshowe, crackling around me in charged ions that only I could see, relaxing and tensing my eyes in my walk from the car park into the classroom, with Sr Fidelis standing stern but kind at the door, welcoming us in.
‘Guten Morgen, Cullen.’
‘Guten Morgen, Sister Fidelis.’
She paused, and looked at me, and asked how I was feeling. I responded with the codes that we are accustomed to use, as we disguise our magical natures from the everyday world. She saw through the codes, I am certain of it.
Fifteen minutes into the last period of the day, I had finished all my work again. She gave me another extra thing to do, but I was determined to try out something new. I looked at the crucifix on the wall, just above the blackboard.
Jesus’ head hung heavily, the thorns piercing his forehead over straggling and matted hair. I could see his ribs sticking out, and his legs awkwardly bent over the brutal puncturing of his feet. I saw the nails in his palms, and the pain in his shoulders.
So I relaxed my eyes, and felt the universe shudder around me. Sister Fidelis looked up from where she was helping another learner, aware that something had shifted. The light outside the window changed, from the hot humid grey to a weird green, and then there was a distant rumble of thunder.
I relaxed my eyes again, and there was another shudder. She looked to me this time, and she started to move towards me, striding in her sandals and socks, but I had relaxed my eyes completely, and suddenly the crucified Christ was free. He was sitting on the top of the blackboard, relaxed and unwounded. A lightning crack rent the sky outside and struck one of the palm trees, and a felt myself falling back, hitting my head again the edge of the cupboard behind me before falling, arms out and unconscious, to the ground. And as I passed out, Sr Fidelis was there, asking what had happened.
‘He’s free now, Sister.’
uMabhengwane 