Past, present, and future merge again and again as we become.

We act and react, even when it's not in our best interest. We repeat the same patterns, even when they take us places we don't want to go. But we can change the course of our life.

"It matters not how strait the gate

How charged with punishments the scroll

I am the master of my fate

I am the captain of my soul."

William Ernest Henley

"The Brimful Collage"

— a memoir in fragments by Barbara Buckles

                      Collage:

A technique of art production. . .wherein the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating the whole. 

Excerpt:

I get home from school and am, per my usual routine, lying on the floor in the den watching TV when there’s a kind of noisy rumbling and the house shakes. Earthquake, I immediately think, and bolt upright, senses alert.

            Suddenly Larry and Daddy come clamoring down the stairs and into the dining room. I scramble to my feet, and my mom and Gaga come running in. We watch as they push and shove and wrestle, not knowing what to do. Daddy’s breathing really hard; Larry acts like it’s a game. Now Ricky and the twins have come downstairs and are also watching, expressions first amused, then confused, then scared.

            “…and as long as you’re in my house, you’ll do as I say,” Daddy is shouting, poking Larry in the chest.

            “Oh, yeah, and who’s going to make me, Daddy-o?” Larry pushes Daddy’s hand away, then shoves him on the shoulder.

            Now they really go at it and there’s no stopping them. It’s one thing to see a fight on TV, something else in person. All the bumping and thumping and grunting—it’s so, I don’t know, physical—frightening, shocking—and I watch with wide, terrified eyes.

            Daddy is furious, his face is red and a purple vein is bulging on his forehead. He lunges at Larry, Larry steps to the side to evade him and grabs the telephone from the stand nearby, holds the receiver in one hand and waves it threateningly.

            “Come on, Pop, make me,” Larry taunts, then swings the receiver and it hits Daddy hard in the forehead. Blood gushes.

            Now someone screams, either my mom or Gaga, “Barbara, go get help!”

            Panicked, not really knowing where I’m going or what I’m going to do when I get there, I race out the front door. I take a shortcut across the sloping lawn, but for some reason the grass is slippery and my legs have turned to rubber. I begin to slip and slide, unable to get back on steady footing. I think I might be screaming something like “Help!” and suddenly my mom is in the doorway shouting, “Barbara! What the hell are you doing, get back in here!”

            I run back in and upstairs as fast as I can and hide in the furthest corner of the closest closet, pulling the hanging clothes around me. I shut my eyes and try to disappear, but then everyone else comes racing upstairs and into the room. I peek out. Again a phone or something else is swung and it hits the ceiling light and sparks fly like fireworks. I dash out of the room, and so does everyone else, except Larry. He locks himself in.

            Things quiet down. It’s too quiet. Then from behind the locked door Larry announces that he has doused the doorjamb with lighter fluid and is about to set the house on fire. But he hasn’t really, and he doesn’t, and my mom begs and finally convinces him to open the door. He comes out and the three of them—Mom, Dad, and Larry—go into my parents’ room and close the door. Gaga goes back downstairs, herding the boys in front of her. I hang behind, then stand quietly next to the bookshelf in the hallway. I can hear them arguing. Then my mom is crying, asking questions in a mewling, desperate voice. I hear Larry shout, “I didn’t ask to be born!” I can hear my dad speaking angrily but his voice is muffled, garbled, and I can’t make out his words. I pull out my already well-worn favorite book and sit down on the carpet and try to read, their voices an intricate trio of tones that rise and fall and then fade into the background as I gradually re-enter another world, the world of Heidi, the Alps, and the Alm Uncle.

Heidi

Mixed media collage – Book parts, Polaroid, crust, and spunk

In my studio:  

Heidi, by Johanna Spyri, in which a young orphan girl is sent to live in the Swiss Alps with her cantankerous grandfather, the man the villagers call the Alm Uncle. As precious as it was to me growing up, no one is going to want my tattered copy of Heidi. Even at a yard sale, I doubt it would fetch $1.   

            I gently pull off the front and back cover as one piece—easier than expected, the bookcloth now fragile and the glue having lost its grip on the spine over time. Turning it over this way and that, a configuration presents itself that’s the perfect foundation for my collage: the illustrated book spine running along the top horizontally, and, below it, the worn red linen bookcloth as my canvas.

            I mine artifacts from what remains: the table of contents, the stained and discolored endpapers, and some crusty bits of spine and thread binding. I’ve also found a photo of me at about 11 years old, coincidentally looking very much like the Heidi depicted on the spine, from our hairstyle down to our white collars, with the distorted tones in the Kodacolor print echoing the colors of the book cover. Coincidence abounds: I notice that the table of contents has a chapter entitled “There is a Great Commotion in the Large House,” so of course, I have to work that in as well. I add some watercolor swatches and some marks just for visual interest and appeal.