Charlotte stands at her clothesline early one morning, a basket of washing at her feet. Her pink slippers are muddy and wet. She feels semi-detached. She hasn't done her hair yet. It is hard enough just to be standing. Yet it is easier out here where the air is fresh, and the world before her face is clearing. Her pale pink slippers shift in mud. So she steps into the clothesbasket to regain her thoughts. She begins to sink. She holds onto the clothesline pole for support. How she yearns for the mountain of this town. The sublime naturalness of the distance. Beyond the mountain into foreverness.
But she is too tired to dust. To even do her hair. Mundane amongst the insane. Trying to break free somewhere. But not knowing how and not knowing where to go. She needs routine and neatness, the comfort of control. She just can't breakdown and leave the norm. She will end up the same as the compulsive woman down the street who vacumed her lawn. She feels eighty-six-years-old. The dawn is cold. She looks down at her feet. The basket is sinking. The backyard is brackish and rippling with breeze. The mud of her years is well past her knees and threatens to cover her. She tries desperately to pull herself out of her new state of mind.
She chooses to stay within the mud in which she is drowning. She begins to remember the sea, to dream the sea, and her dream of returning. She focused her mind far away from the ancient swamp in which she is standing. Around her senses the world is changing. It is her own choice, this living and the swamp in her mind brings the ocean nearer. Yet there are still her children and her socially acceptable spouse. The tides of mudland swirl and rocket towards her house. Over her ankles and through her socks. Into her slippers and through her joints. Rivulet streams of crowded water. Twigs and small stones scratching her legs. She drops the pegs.
But her hold on the clothesline makes her complete. The house is lurching towards her mind. The neighbours must be blind. Her face plastered with battle mud and her eyes with grime. Will she have dinner on by the time they come home? Will she do her hair up nice for when her husband comes in? Will there be anything of her left by then? She turns in the sea wind and hears the seagull screams. Lost in emptiness and mortal pain. She has died again. Her house uprooted - flies past her vision - is finally washed away, off a coastal cliff, in a hydrogen fission - and in a flurry and hop, with a quick bunny hop, it bounces over the rocks and is never seen again.
