My Falling Down House

by Jayne Joso

  Right in this moment I am certain I hear the creature now as it enters this place, my senses on high alert. The shapeshifter, it comes. Making its entrance through a narrow window in the kitchen. I am sure of it. I keep myself still, tilting my head to gauge the sounds, not daring to move further for fear of alerting it to my whereabouts. The lightest, swiftest movements, the faintest sounds. Then a shuffling as though it makes itself comfortable. I cannot be sure, but my suspicion is that it is taking up a position on a long slender shelf through there. I have never been so sharply aware of it, the air still. My skin shivers. I need to unfold my legs, grown stiff, and I do this with the utmost care. My thoughts and perceptions might still be unreliable, and sounds bend about a place, but this is the best sense I can make of what I hear. I listen now for more.

  I must have laid my head down. But I cannot remember. What happened? It seems I lost consciousness. Did someone hurt me? I check myself over. Or was it only sleep? I look about. Was I made to drink something? There is the residue of something, I know not what, lying on my tongue. I wipe my finger over it. It is dark in colour, slightly thick. Medicine? Poison? Was something done to me? I don’t hear anything now. The shapeshifter? Where has it gone? I listen. Nothing. All around it is dark, and what amount of time has passed? Just the day? More? There is no vessel nearby, but I drank something. Didn’t I? Certainly something bitter passed my lips. My skin is wet as though I have some fever. Did someone tend to me?

  I search around again, my eyes pushing at the dark. I breathe. I try to recall the night. I remember my body. Hot and clammy. I remember sweat. Some liquid in my throat. I swallowed. I believe I have been sleeping for short snaps of time... I would wake, and each time I did so I was made to wonder just what I had been doing. Sometimes it was clear, boxes around me, my journal laid open, and I would surface in some awkward position, hat or pen in hand. Bamboo splints. But at other times I made no sense of my surroundings. No thoughts at all, and then too many. And were they even mine? I realise now, like mad rabbits, they would hop in, and spring out, or take up residence, choking the space up in my head, and never but never could I find what I was looking for. Never the right box. Always at the back. Dust covered. My mind – a warehouse. Inside are boxes. None of them mine.

  In the darkness now I lie on my back, arms behind my head for comfort, legs crossed. I stare at the walls. I consider the cruel way in which I have looked upon vagrants and migrants, those I took for criminals, or low-born pigs. I regarded them as though their very existence made me sick. I see that. I see the distance. The past. A stretch of time and space. And I? I, am sick. And so what? By now I despise even my own thoughts, and the part of me that wants to return to what I had before. I do not want to be as low as I am now ever again in my life. I want to be safe and comfortable, above the sewage of society, not even thinking of them in case it weakens and infects me and renders me the same. Not even looking down on the desperate, and the dispossessed, just not thinking of them at all!

  Box up the inferior. Close the lid. Push the box aside.

  I am a pencil-drawn man.

  4.

  If I had a fever, it has gone now. Still the faint residue of something on my tongue. I have taken water but somehow it remains. An unpleasant, viscous residue.

  I enter the kitchen, not sure what I might find, but there is nothing I can take as proof of intrusion, and no great clue as to the shape the creature takes, its presence still benign. No sign of Cat. I cook some rice, but only a very small measure, for the grains will soon run out.

  More than anything just now I wished I might feed upon this season’s fresh new rice. The last of this sack tastes all the poorer now that I witness the change in season, and know full well that far away back home the new rice would just have been harvested. Surely already celebrated and gorged upon. But it would sap my strength to grow too sentimental. Better switch the thought.

  Later, I laboured at the coding hardly making a sound so that I might listen out quite well. It occurred to me that this awakening of curiosity for the shapeshifter might signal a stage in my recovery. In the last hours I had certainly felt my senses more reliable. The speedy progress I was making with the coding also seemed a good measure of this improved state. Credible thoughts zipping along now nicely. And when the mind is in good order surely everything else will follow. I speculated that it might not be more than a matter of days before I began to see signs of a fuller transition, back to myself. I checked my head and body for hair, nothing yet, but for sure this would come back soon now. Truly, what a thought! And more than that, perhaps I would not simply be returned to myself, but emerge rather as an improved version, almost as though I had been myself in training all along, and so, in all regards, a prototype of self!

  I had to do whatever I could to aid this recovery, to capitalise on the energy. It might be the case that timing was crucial. I sat again, cross-legged, torso straight, I pictured myself, a soldier perhaps lost in a forest, the lone survivor of his kind, sensing the importance of maintaining strength and stamina. Of building, and rebuilding.

  Now was the time to push myself. To forge ahead, to push and push. Following this simple meditation, I then ran on the spot like a fiend, completed exercises with intense vigour, endless, endless press-ups. A headstand. The best I could, the very best I could manage. What happened to me? A quiet revolution? A violent riot? My mind raced about and I wondered what else might come! My heart pounded. I breathed and took some water.

  I settled myself in the alcove. Resting my feet high up on the wall. I thought of Cello.

  Sounds of movement in the kitchen.

  I rolled down quickly, crept close by and spied. I could not breathe. Excited. Afraid. Something bounded across the surfaces, then leapt to the floor, nudging the rice sack as though to remind me of its state.

  Cat.

  I returned to my activities, calmed.

  My thinking clear just now. My mind, sharp.

  5.

  This transitional spurt of mental and physical energy would neither last nor grow unless I found some other form of nourishment, I knew this and I needed a plan. I made the best use I could of this rush of clarity, focussing hard, but also freely. Then quickly finessing ideas, half filling a notebook, possibilities now almost running with themselves, leapfrogging one over the other, for what might I do next? What should be considered in order to rebuild the self? The box, as it had been, all flattened out, might not be reassembled quite as it was, indeed, something much better might be fashioned… why not? Thoughts spilled: nutrition, medicine, farming; movement, mechanics, stillness ... but they settled, and centred ultimately, and rather brilliantly, on the headstand. In a sense it was far too simple, but I could see now both a fabulous and natural way by which I might both stimulate hair growth and gain sustenance. And I called this:

  ‘The Planting’

  It was going to involve a certain amount of training. The ‘grand preparation’ – for I needed to build the strength in my arms in order to maintain the headstand for a good amount of time, and so, every evening following a general work-out and push-ups, I would practise, steadily increasing the length of time I held position by small increments. It was tough going, but I was surprised at how much could still be achieved in a determined, albeit theoretically weakened state. The sense of blood rushing to the head is something I found perturbing, and there was nothing here that could settle me well enough afterwards, and so I just had to bear the giddiness. And stand on my head I must.

  I don’t know a great deal about horticulture and am not well read on the subject of medicine (better to say that I know almost nothing), but I had to try whatever I could to stimulate further advancement. And if I didn’t take action now, I didn’t know how long it would be before I plunged into a ditch of slippery self-pity once more, perhaps this time never to climb out. Truly, this was my chance.

  Just a few more nights of practice, and under cover of darkness, I would set out into the temple garden. I
had planned the very spot, so to say: a blind spot, and there I would plant my head. For if I could not be nourished from the inside, then I would draw in sustenance by some other route. I would plant my head, that the earth and all its rich nutrients feed and restore me.

  As for the shapeshifter, it should know that eventually I would find it. I would find it for sure, for I would know what it is, and what it is about. For the time being, I had to let go. There was a plan to carry out.

  6.

  The night has come. I have prepared my scalp in readiness for planting, bathing it in water and patting it only gently so that the surface remains slightly damp and soft and therefore, hopefully, more yielding and receptive to the nourishment on offer.

  I have dressed in dark-coloured garments, I will not easily be seen, and I will wrap my feet in cloth dyed with ink, for it might look strange once I am in position should anyone happen to pass by or look out from the temple to see two pale feet seemingly suspended in the air – one metre, fifty centimetres from the ground. It would surely draw someone’s attention, and worse, it would raise the alarm. The person would fear they too had seen a shapeshifter and an investigation would begin. I would have the appearance perhaps of something in possession of supernatural powers, able to condense my being into nothing more than human feet. I might be executed on the spot. Whatever else it would result in my being found out.

  The feet, they are secure and wrapped now. I breathe, but too heavily. Aware that I must bring this under control before I step outside, I kneel awhile.

  It seems that I am fully prepared, at least, this is the best that I can do. I tell myself all will be well. I check my clothing one last time, the feet bound and ready, movement constricted to a degree, but I do not have to move very far and so I am sure to bear it. Sucking in the first of the air outside, I make my way. The lights on the temple side are never fully out, but I have monitored the situation for a while now and have become accustomed to the patterns and routines of life there, and I am confident that this is truly the best moment. There ought to be just enough light that I can find my way without stumbling but not sufficient light that I am seen. I must also keep my head entirely covered over until the planting itself or it will surely have the appearance of a second moon, or worse still, an airborne root vegetable. I have never heard of a shapeshifter taking on the guise of something like daikon before, and I would not appreciate being mistaken for such a thing.

  I must act with caution, with precision of movement, and with the silent tread of the most accomplished ninja.

  Out in the evening air I feel wired. More alive in any real sense than I have felt in so very long.

  The ground is curious beneath my bound feet. I tread carefully across gravel areas and step onto moss. Leaves have fallen. I had not factored that in. I had best avoid them though I would very much like the sensation of walking on their sharp crisp crackle, a reminder of youth somehow. I feel my breath and a tightness begins to bind itself about my chest. I take my steps cautiously, my head still covered and downcast so that my eyes do not give me away or settle on any distraction. I rely on my hearing to alert me to the presence of anyone moving through the garden; generally at this time the temple people are all indoors, and it is rare that anyone comes at this hour. I must relax my breathing.

  I realise there is the possibility that the shapeshifting intruder crosses my path this night, perhaps as it arrives. I have so far been sure that the creature enters each time through just the one window on the far side of the dwelling, reached by the shadowy street beyond, so it has no need of moving through the garden and risks its own exposure if it comes here. Just now it is the light-footed menace that is most likely to cause difficulties. I can only hope he doesn’t vary his routine this night, and keeps himself indoors. Despite my hope to gain nourishment from the ground, I will not be stealing in any literal sense, and though I have no right to be in this place, this time I enter only the temple gardens, I will not trespass further. But Light-foot would have no way of knowing this, and I can only hope that, should I be seen, my moves are not misinterpreted. Well, I must simply not be seen!

  I have arrived. My heart hammers. This is the spot. The place I had chosen from my window. It seems to be just as suitable as I thought, shielded partly by several rows of bamboo. The planting will require some feat of concentration if I am to make an elegant headstand, and that is only possible if I can do so without fear of discovery.

  In the first instance I must prepare the ground. I have no tools for this. I had considered using something from the dwelling, but this seemed too cumbersome. I only need to create a hollow capable of taking in my scalp, and I can do that with my hands. They make quite the roughest tools in any case, the skin has thickened and hardened so that I do not recognise them since I have used them mainly for rough chores and craftwork. Strange to consider the difference between these calloused, hardened spades and the rather soft fingers that once committed to no greater labour than casually moving over electronic screens or tapping at a keyboard.

  I dig away like a dog about to bury treasure, and the idea warms me, but it is more important than ever that I remain in control of my thoughts and energy or I will fail in this. Nothing that could be a distraction, no matter its amusement or warmth must enter my head now, in fact, I seek only to empty it, for I will fill it up afresh from the ground, and the earth will nourish me.

  There, my place is ready. A small and simple bed for a small and simple head. I take one last look behind the bamboo curtain, there is nothing, and a human would easily give themselves away on such a still and tranquil night. My home, in the distance, is just as I would anticipate, entirely undisturbed; the other temple buildings reveal nothing more than distant light, and I hear only the very fringes of light chatter as it drifts there far away, but no, there is almost no activity hereabouts. Alright then, I am comfortably alone.

  The shallow bed that I have dug is soft. I let a few tears fall, smooth and transparent, and watch as they disperse, drops of light almost. No sadness on my part. I am far from that. I think only to prepare the ground as best I can.

  I check the ink binding on my feet and ankles, all quite secure; and then perform my preparatory stretches. My heart light; my mind focussed on the task. Just now the cloth that hides my face slipped, I caught it, recovering the situation swiftly. A minor complication, soon secured again. I keep watch, listening out with care. The very last checks are made. Conditions are in my favour, but I must keep my wits. I breathe and, taking my time, I remove the cloth at the last moment, and make an elegant headstand.

  Clean movements minimising my disturbance of the world out here and drawing no attention; and, as efficiently as possible I plant my scalp in the ground that it might, for a short time, find itself tied to the earth whilst Takeo Tanaka returns for the moment to the womb, joined once more to his mother, loved and nourished there.

  7.

  I manage to maintain my upside-down position quite well. Making it last. But it should have occurred to me that since I lack any real knowledge of plant life, this experience was set to be something greater than curious. Attempting to plant my un-plant-like self is now the most unique event in my life. It is bizarre, and yet entirely comfortable. My head feels securely embedded and supported, but more than that, it feels surprisingly natural. I am utterly at ease. It is an upside-down bliss. So comfortable that it seems completely and utterly normal and the right thing to do. As peculiar as it might appear, I feel that I have done nothing more than follow some internal drive, my gut feeling, so to speak, my instinct, and I cannot imagine deriving such a feeling of liberation from any other activity.

  I would find it impossible to construe my behaviour as anything deviant or truly offending. I am harming no one and nothing, and cause no inconvenience. So, as peculiar as it would seem to anyone I might tell, and more so to anyone who happened to pass by, I feel no need to explain or justify this action. The sensation of moisture and soil against my skin is one
I would pay for. It offers an unusual comfort, a very particular soft warmth. So elated, I am almost glad for my hair loss in order to have the opportunity of this unique sensation. There would be no way to appreciate this encounter with the earth if there was hair to divide us.

  In many senses I feel as though I am truly naked just now (though I am still entirely robed; my feet still tightly bound); and like a babe, perhaps as yet unborn, I am fed and cared for, nourished as though from within; swishing gently to and fro in my thoughts as though in the tender confines of the womb; or as though I am nothing more than the tall bamboo there as it bows gently to the wind. Light rainfall slips and whistles around on a sudden and mischievous wind as it cuts in from the side. It echoes strangely in my ear. The droplets of rain sound heavy as they pass my ears so closely; they land heavily like overripe fruit, and water the earth. I feel a tiny river of rain as it travels the curves of my ears and it tickles. A shiver about my neck.

  It has fallen quiet again. I sense it is time enough in this position. I have been here a good and happy while, but I cannot risk being found. I must now gently return. I bring down my legs and tuck them in neatly, trying to leave as little impression as possible on the delicate night, disturbing not the air, creating no ripples that might draw attention, the least reverberation; if it were possible, leaving no trace at all. I am crouched down, and must quickly cover over my scalp, firstly to avoid being seen and secondly, in an effort to keep safe that nourishing and soil-rich caress, to maintain and preserve its restorative properties. Something rises in my heart just now and I must stifle a feeling of joy or it will surely escape from me, and I cannot vouch for this being unvoiced as I would like to jump to my feet and yell out for what I feel just now is pure elation.