Sardy - The edge of every day: sketches of schizophrenia

The pattern I saw as a small child when I closed my eyes: concentric ovals in purple, red, and electric blue, the oval rings vibrating around a few dots in the center, which vibrated too.

The sound of my mother sitting on a sofa in our quiet house late in the evening, rhythmically grinding her teeth.

A halibuts migrating eye after it has worked its way around to the other side of its head, where it is not quite aligned with the rest of the face.

The ash that fell from the sky and coated Anchorage in gray dust a few days after Mount Augustine erupted. It was as quiet as winter, but it made you feel uncomfortable and bleak when you looked outside.

The map of the world that my brother hung upside down on his bedroom wall, saying it is just arbitrary that we think of north as up.

The note I found on my mothers desk, written by an administrator for the British royal family, thanking her for her letter but assuring her that she was not the Duchess of Kent.

Once I caught a high fever and spent a day talking to the walls, which bowed outward from the corners of the room.

A lichen-covered human skull lying in a weathered coffin on an expanse of tundra, pushed up out of the frozen ground.

The balls of aluminum foil that my mother wadded onto the ends of our television antennae to protect us from radiation. That she would decide that foil could solve the problem, but not, say, rubber or Styrofoam.

The fancy plate of Asian glass noodles that my brother ordered at a restaurant in Hawaii. When it came, my mother said it looked like worms and wouldnt let him eat it. They argued about it for ten minutes before she made the waiter take the noodles back.

The crowd watching a parade that you are in. As you walk along, it feels like theyre the parade.

A homeless man in Santa Fe who had a rat he had trained to lie on top of a cat, which curled up on top of a dog. They would remain that way for hours. The man said he was spreading the message of world peace.

For a while my mother wore bandannas over her face, bandit-style, every time she was in the kitchen. The practice developed to include a second bandanna over her forehead, so only her eyes were visible through the gap in the fabric.

That some questions in this world come with answers, and some do not.

The glowing end of a cigarette thrown from the window of a car in front of you at night, so that the orange light bounces on the pavement a few times.

The bullet I found one morning in Santa Fe, the metal all crumpled and unrecognizable, after it burst through my roommates window and then the Sheetrock wall of my closet while we slept, landing on the floor beside my bed.

My dog, stuck in a tree.

The miniature rubber bands my mother stretched across her teeth for months, as homemade orthodontic appliances. She refused to go to a dentist, and I winced somewhere inside every time she smiled.

When a forest fire fills the air with smoke, and the sun glows large and red and quivers like the end of the world.

The swath of burn-scarred tissue on my husbands shoulder, the size of my hand. I have never looked at it closely because it is too painful to take in all the details of such an injury to someone I love.

The months when my mother didnt seem to eat anything at all except cheddar cheese and green onions. She would stand in the kitchen over a cutting board and take a bite of one, then the other.

The sheer volume of unanswered questions we carry with us always.

When a man said to me, I dont know what youre talking about, and I realized that nobody says that unless they know exactly what youre talking about.

In ski towns in winter, when the coldest air sinks to the bottom of the valley, so that on extremely cold days it is much warmer partway up the mountainside than down where the houses are.

My mother asked me, Do you ever hear people calling out to you, but you cant tell who it is? I was youngmaybe twelve.

What do you mean? I asked her. Like when somebody kicks a rock and it sounds like a voice? I knew I was reaching. I did not say, The voices you hear arent real. I had a feeling that by the force of my will I could bend the moment into something else. Like the wind blows, I continued, and it sounds like your name?

No, she said softly. No, not like that.

A ring of fungus that briefly invaded my forearm. When I imagined all the microscopic threads growing and eating into my skin, I felt violated and frantic.

The time I got angry at my mother for buying ice cream while I was trying to diet, and I put the carton in the sink and turned on the hot water over it. And as she reached to turn off the faucet she said, Dont be strange.

That songbirds pull their feathers out, leaving bare spots around the neck and shoulders, when they are constantly afraid.

Eclipses of my mind, which happen at times for no apparent reason. I am walking and then I am falling. But Im not falling. I have gone black for a fraction of a second, and in that time I lost my sense of my position in space. Then I become afraid that at any moment I will pass out and fall.