J. Mae Barizo

The Frogs 

In the evenings I listen to the frogs. One often mistakes them for birds or even crickets, but I know that it’s the frogs singing from the pond, their rhythmic undulations. I used to be a musician, you know. I think of clocks and pendulums, devices to measure time. Or metronomes, swinging back and forth.

There was a woman I kept on seeing. Absence and then a swarm of messages and phone calls. Silence and not silence. Back and forth, back and forth.  

I live on a farmhouse and every day I do work on it. Painting, planting, installing the locks. The workers replace the gutters or lug the toilets. I watch them balance on ladders and scaffolds. They make me question everything. What is real? What is tender?

It’s not pleasant to lose sight of someone. 

Yet it has happened a couple of times to me, when I lost sight of them completely. Another time, I swung back to them before they could move out of my field of vision. The light around the farmhouse is gold; it makes it bearable that I have lost sight of some things. 

Also, what is desire?

The frogs. I rarely see them. I see the workers every day but that does not make the desire lessen. Just yesterday I saw them but pretended I did not. Sometimes when I hear them speaking I feel a kind of nausea and sleeplessness that is a signal of something else. It drives me straight to bed, but I do not sleep.

I dream of all those I am losing sight of. I try to keep them in my sights so as not to lose them.

Late at night before I sleep, before I start dreaming, a certain calm comes about. This is the time of the day when I can hear the frogs and I allow myself to wear comfortable clothes. Muumuus and leggings and socks that come to my knees. Sometimes no underwear. No brassieres ever. I have not worn makeup or cut my hair in many days. 

I told you before I used to be a musician. A violinist, to be exact. If you look closely you can see the calluses on my fingers and in the crook of my neck. A spot that should be kissed. The violin left its mark there. Now that I no longer play the violin I walk around with music swimming in my head. Always in the back of my brain. Like the frogs.

The music allows me to live in the country, away from the concert halls. But they are all boarded up now. The instruments are silent. The audiences are gone. So I don’t feel so bad being far away. Sometimes I dress all in black to remind myself how I used to look on stage. Ankle-length trousers or skirts, black velvet cardigans that slip easily off my shoulders. 

At midnight I sit on the porch in black clothes, listening to the frogs. I often feel guilty that I do not look at the stars, since they are quite distinct in the country. But I don’t care for the stars if they are not in my field of vision. I forget that they are there, looking down. But of course, if I happen to see the sky, I contemplate the stars. I try not to lose sight of the celestial things. Are stars considered bodies? Are bodies considered stars? I prefer to think of both in terms of light. 

I think of the woman who swings back and forth in my brain. The memories, at least, are never static. I am able to picture her in my farmhouse, singing or dancing in light-colored clothes. Her choreographies are precise but spontaneous. Since she is far away and I lose sight of her often, I let my eyes rest on whomever is near. Neighbors who are always milling in the yard; workers tiptoeing on the scaffolding, peering through the farmhouse windows. Plumbers and painters and people who are able to build things out of trees. I imagine myself a tree and someone sculpting something out of me. A bench, a bed, a bathroom vanity? 

Today I am a bird. Today I am a hydrangea bush or a slender book, made out of trees. 

I did not always live in the farmhouse. I toiled in the city where the trains carried me wherever I wanted to go. When I was young I fled to a conservatory devoted to divine music. I frequented opera houses and theaters so splendid that my ancestors could never have imagined them. Do you know what it’s like, being so far away from the music? My hands grow lazy and my fingers atrophy. My hands were once very agile. I played in the world’s most illustrious halls. But they are all locked up now, no one is allowed to enter.

When the neighbours have gone in to dine and the workers have packed up their things I often lie in the grass. Who was the poet who wrote about its splendor? I appreciate the grass, but it is the trees I love. The low-lying branches that brush against the porch, swaying back and forth. How far away the musicians are, I cannot even see them. And the woman as well, in her light-colored clothes. A cloud pulling up its skirt as the rain falls. I sit beneath the porch and listen to the rain’s steady music.

The concert, once. The invisible stars. The lights on the ivory domed ceiling, blinking above us. We wore black, like a funeral. There were women dancing in a frenzy. As if they were attempting to keep in their sights all of their wayward loves. I stay in that dream a little while but then I return to the farmhouse. I return to the mosquitoes and the frogs. The static of pink noise, such blurry music. 

As if not touching could make a sound.

My lithe fingers pressing down the strings. Dancing in the streets after the concert, the air slow and cool. 

When I hear the music the past comes back swimming. The painters balance delicately on the scaffolding.

I wave hello, the windows wink back.

It’s windy today, isn’t it, the painter says.

Too windy to be climbing ladders in the golden air. 

But the house, it’s bare still. When can we take the tapestries off of the windows? I ask.

The painter does not answer. 

The violin under my chin. The bow stroking the strings. The woman, like a pendulum, out of my sights. The frogs singing. Sometimes I imagine I am a Spruce tree. Something that grows tall and lives long. Its branches swaying, tenderly.