of paper dolls, not just one body flattened and about to go up in smoke, but a whole line of them. She had made such dolls as a child and had always begged her mother to burn them at the end of the day. Sheâd sit in front of the fire and watch them curl up and turn brown at the edges of their skirts and then disappear. Her mother wanted her to keep them in a box or wait to show them off, but she wasnât interested in anything but the making and unmaking, the pleasure of a long line of intricate and identical dolls, gone. She began with the sorts of scissors made for children, clumsy and with rubberized handles, graduated to her motherâs sewing scissors, and one Christmas was given a small pair of scissors in the shape of a bird. Finally, however, she had to use nail scissors, the tiniest of nail scissors to get the proper angles and proportions. The best cutouts had hair that stuck in peaks and looked thin and frayed; they lay there across the log tranquil and white, waiting for the match. It was and remained the most exquisite of moments, finally calm.
He began to write more notes for her than before, many more notes, but then they were mysteriously missing. He wrote and wrote late into the night, but then, for reasons she didnât understand, he took them away with him when he left in the morning, both shirt sleeves down and buttoned. On the paper pads left scattered through the apartment were, however, the pressings and indentations of his ballpoint, the short ones she could fairly easily make outâsoak the coffeecups or remember to buy coffeeâbut longer ones about some book heâd been reading, notes on the conquest of America or the practices of the Mayans, in which she could almost make out quotations. The impress was so strong and the pads so obviously placed for her to find, she knew she was supposed to know some version of a pleasure. If I match the markings with the books, she thought, if I find the quotation in a book, Iâll be able to read it there, if I can only match the swirls and curves, which she couldnât.
The text of the altar, carved on top around the edge, is eroded. It has been impossible to restore the carved stela to its original condition, as many fragments are missing. It is suspected that Postclassic peoples tampered with the shattered stela, or may even have broken it themselves. Although it is clear that the figure turned to the frontal position, naked but for loincloth and ornate slippers, is human, and that the profile is that of a jaguar, it is impossible to know whether it is a human dressed to be the jaguar, or the jaguar taking on human guise.
Something else changed. He adopted a new and, she found, quite disconcerting habit. Instead of hiding when she stared at his arm, he made himself available. He draped his arm across the arm of a chair, unbuttoned his blue shirts, so that his chest showed, hollow, white, his arm open to full view. Instead of having to work tosee the new designs, she found them put on display: curlicues and more bands with red and black flecks, faces caught in the filigree of leaves, hair that snaked across foreheads and lines that broke and joined and broke again. She could hardly stand to walk into the room where he sat, could hardly stand the blare of his arm. Animals she couldnât recognize bared their teeth, beaks clamped, headdresses coiled and feathered into the air. You look as if you want someone to burn you up, throw you out. You look as if you want to be thrown against the wall.
She sat down to read the newspaper. When she couldnât look any longer at the jumble of e âs and o âs and m âs in front of her, a story she thought about a recent plane crash, although she couldnât be sure, and thought, you have to have your eyes checked, yes, thatâs what you ought to do and she thought to write it down so she wouldnât forget, but felt herself drawn into the other room where he sat, moving
He began to write more notes for her than before, many more notes, but then they were mysteriously missing. He wrote and wrote late into the night, but then, for reasons she didnât understand, he took them away with him when he left in the morning, both shirt sleeves down and buttoned. On the paper pads left scattered through the apartment were, however, the pressings and indentations of his ballpoint, the short ones she could fairly easily make outâsoak the coffeecups or remember to buy coffeeâbut longer ones about some book heâd been reading, notes on the conquest of America or the practices of the Mayans, in which she could almost make out quotations. The impress was so strong and the pads so obviously placed for her to find, she knew she was supposed to know some version of a pleasure. If I match the markings with the books, she thought, if I find the quotation in a book, Iâll be able to read it there, if I can only match the swirls and curves, which she couldnât.
The text of the altar, carved on top around the edge, is eroded. It has been impossible to restore the carved stela to its original condition, as many fragments are missing. It is suspected that Postclassic peoples tampered with the shattered stela, or may even have broken it themselves. Although it is clear that the figure turned to the frontal position, naked but for loincloth and ornate slippers, is human, and that the profile is that of a jaguar, it is impossible to know whether it is a human dressed to be the jaguar, or the jaguar taking on human guise.
Something else changed. He adopted a new and, she found, quite disconcerting habit. Instead of hiding when she stared at his arm, he made himself available. He draped his arm across the arm of a chair, unbuttoned his blue shirts, so that his chest showed, hollow, white, his arm open to full view. Instead of having to work tosee the new designs, she found them put on display: curlicues and more bands with red and black flecks, faces caught in the filigree of leaves, hair that snaked across foreheads and lines that broke and joined and broke again. She could hardly stand to walk into the room where he sat, could hardly stand the blare of his arm. Animals she couldnât recognize bared their teeth, beaks clamped, headdresses coiled and feathered into the air. You look as if you want someone to burn you up, throw you out. You look as if you want to be thrown against the wall.
She sat down to read the newspaper. When she couldnât look any longer at the jumble of e âs and o âs and m âs in front of her, a story she thought about a recent plane crash, although she couldnât be sure, and thought, you have to have your eyes checked, yes, thatâs what you ought to do and she thought to write it down so she wouldnât forget, but felt herself drawn into the other room where he sat, moving
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