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TRANSCRIPT
THE ANATOMY OF
MELANCHOLY
Abigail George
The Anatomy of Melancholy
by
Abigail George
Copyright © Abigail George, 2020
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, retained or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
author.
Published by Praxis Magazine Online Website: www.praxismagonline.com
Address: No. 7 Joseph Street, Opebi, Ikeja, Lagos
Cover photograph: Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi Edited by: JK Anowe
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
Contents
Foreword ...................................................................................................... 1 Searching for the Missing ................................................................................ 2
The taste of summer wine ............................................................................... 3 Coming home Catholic .................................................................................... 5
The woman that was a starling ........................................................................ 6 The science of breath ..................................................................................... 7
On the writer sent to a mental asylum in Gatsby ................................................ 9 Stern curator of the ghost museum ................................................................ 11 Rain ........................................................................................................... 13
Wildflowers to tempt Jean Rhys into a good mood ............................................ 14 Not somebody’s wife .................................................................................... 15
The caregiver .............................................................................................. 18 Menstruating according to the moon ............................................................... 19 Coming back to earth blessed with wings ........................................................ 21
When exactly the #MeToo movement happened to me ...................................... 23 For you I would be insane and lovely at the same time ..................................... 24
Solar .......................................................................................................... 26 Walking through the city streets..................................................................... 28
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... 30 About the Author ......................................................................................... 31
About the Cover Photograph .......................................................................... 32
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 1 ~
Foreword The universe of Abigail George’s poetry is dipped and preserved in winter, so you can be forgiven for thinking that the mention of summer in the very first line of the
collection sets the context. Well, yes, in a way, if you consider that the poet persona only recognizes it as an anomaly, one that requires a cure: I glide and float away
thinking to myself/ of a cure to the warmth of the day. This is the world this chapbook invites you into.
The Anatomy of Melancholy inspires a perception of existence that revels in that loneliness within us all, even if we are always surrounded by a crowd of forces
shaping and interacting with our experience of it. It is this that makes the reader privy to the tangible and intangible pains that litter the consciousness of this collection. In this world, of which the poet declares, I don’t believe in hours
anymore, time is defined by an urgency to immediately historicize each moment that flies by; moments that move without break from the visceral to the temporal;
from odes to elegies; from heartbreak to falling in love. It’s an unpredictable story swinging between pain and death and loss and love and flesh and bone and ice and desire, all the while told through a consistent stream-of-consciousness, and
understandably so, because as we learn in “The woman that was a starling,” life through a bipolar lens is a mosaic.
A motif you will encounter in this chap is that of flesh and bone and how both elements of the human body composition seem to interact, sometimes in tandem,
with a unity of purpose—Flesh unto bone melting into thin air—and sometimes in opposition—In an instant I was/ flesh against bone, infirm and weak—a pattern
symbolic of the polarity that defines the collection. On one occasion the motif occurs in proximity with the word “prize,” in a way that leaves one with a tragic
sense of fate as we see in these lines from “Stern curator of the ghost museum”: The kitchen sink is/ my mother’s wasteland. It is her politics, her flesh,/ her prize. She rolls deep in her garden.
You may discover, like I did, that how The Anatomy of Melancholy excels is by
continuously giving. There is something new to discover every time you come back to it—a hallmark of art. It is drunk on its own journey; joyously drunk on its own language. To engage with it is to undertake the same journey into a world it
articulates as beautifully-painful, and indeed into the poet’s head, a place which is succinctly described in “Not somebody’s wife”: Inside the poet’s head lies a
multitude/ of unexplored supernatural links to the experimental.”
D. E. Benson is a literary critic, editor and poet.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 2 ~
Searching for the Missing
The falling leaves in the summer I think of the love songs on the radio
and think of you in a faraway city. In- side this mute space I have wings. I forget
the structural damage that comes with the despair love brings with it. I glide and float away thinking to myself
of a cure to the warmth of the day,
the vanishing of the birds, and the distance of the blue care of the sky. We angle justice our way. It’s an adjustment but
it is also an anthem for the landscape that has given birth to us. I think of the
shine of the day. The cold ocean washes my feet. I think of great lakes and rivers. Eating steak on a sunny day. Fire and myth. Automata.
The extraordinary day. I ponder the vacant,
the vague hour wondering when you will come back to me. Giving me back
the ecstasy of being in love with you, and it seems as if I’ve been kept waiting for reliable things. Caught in-between
crossing the water and wild geese calling.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 3 ~
The taste of summer wine Human frailties become sharper, at the
feet of heaven. Its blue lens is more remarkable in deep confidence. I’ve worked this out in my head and heart.
I don’t believe in hours anymore. Silence. The futility found in life. I’m
blissfully unaware of weariness, more forgiving. There are names that I don’t remember, but I will always remember
this. That my brother went for a haircut before my uncle’s funeral, but there was a
line ahead of him. I have a long memory when it comes to painful things. I remember every hurt. Every injustice.
Every wound. Every cut. It’s a cold winter that flashes falls across my neck, my
shoulder blades, and in my heart all that I can hear is doom, doom, doom. It was as if I saw my own life flashing
in front of my eyes. In an instant I was flesh against bone, infirm and weak.
Hardly able to walk, hear, speak, and yet my speech was still golden but all I had
was spirit. Joy comes in the morning. In my dreams I want woman. I want to fall in all her soft places. It’s only in my
dreams that I give into the world. Once, I saw the love of my life and he was good
and kind and beautiful. I think of the wings of the morning drinking rooibos tea. Flesh onto bone melting into the thin air.
Lover, you’re like dry grass to me now. Having a woman as lover comes easier
to me. She was kinder when she needed to be, or a dominant force when she wanted to be. She let me come and go as I pleased.
I gave and she gave. Love was a lonely, romantic game. She understood my
loneliness and my silence. The love I had for her when I was high or low. I’m just thinking to myself now how family didn’t
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 4 ~
offer to help when my brother went to
rehab. How they didn’t call, avoided us all a swimming pool in winter, but I remember
that no river is ever to wide to cross. In the end we triumph when we believe in hope.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 5 ~
Coming home Catholic You are the beggar man with your rosary
around your neck. You’re degraded by this material world’s itch in a thousand ways in a day. A hundred times at night. You, fool-
animal soul married to chains. When the wind sighs
in this city so poor you walk up and down streets feeling the breeze on your face. Be thankful for this
hot coffee. Accept this bread as a sacred gift. Put this food in your mouth. Feverish, eat! Nameless,
weary, lonely on your journey to nowhere you live like a stray dog. I see you’ve lost your teeth
somewhere on your journey. Your smile so mysteriously small. You’re in your own dark prison.
There are no windows for this hummingbird-philosopher
there. Even close-up I can hear your soul’s cries. We must accept its hunger, its sea, its spinning, its
psyche and intellect and isolation and trembling. Melody is sharp here and instrumental, wretched.
As a child you were sad, and as a man you are sad. Sister says this house is a palace. Brother was calm
today, and I, I wait. I wait for the white fields of snow that come in winter. I lock the backdoor at night.
Next as if you begin to appear to me like a beguiled ancestor.
Check all the doors. I drink sister’s tea. Brother made a cross when he came out of rehab. He fashioned it out
of fallen branches. A rusty nail holds it together. And very soon all our lives became like that cross. Brother
became determined to live, and not give up. He was the eye of the tiger, and we all lived to become theologians.
We became like chameleons, and all of our winters soon turned into summers in his hands. His tone cold earth. Plasma.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 6 ~
The woman that was a starling
Put the lion in his magnificent cell and
worship him there. In my dream leaves turn into milk quietly. Daylight crushed my dreams. Birthed the telephone-poet
with her flaming debt-free-volcano-lips. I’m a clone of that woman turning into a
starling while my hands smell of garlic. I am bloom, fossil, flesh and bone and prize. Didn’t eat bread today so that was a
good thing. Full of sleep. Full of winter the poetry was enough. The basil leaves
were enough. His voice is like clay in my hands. I make animals out of the clay. So the gin remained on the table. I tell
myself to wait for the lines burning-bright
to come to me to go into my future. I’m filling a suitcase with dead flowers
do you believe you can heal yourself what materials and tools should I use
inside my heart there’s too much rivalry too much competition gathering harvest
gathering driftwood by a restless sea in the absence of the absence of the absence of your heart for my heart my memory
is full of butterflies full of moths full of mother tongue silken throat sinful throat
life through a bipolar lens is a mosaic you mother are living in my bones again this is my love story for her i never wanted
to have those children during that phase of autumn in rehearsal mother you were a
difficult woman to love a woman with her own issues and secrets you’re the fallen kingdom you’re mine you’re mine but not
mine not mine all at the same time it came too late her love came too late i am master-
chef life with father is my vanishing tribe i send her all my love in my rice and meat
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 7 ~
The science of breath
I have made mistakes in my life. I’m still paying for that
dark interpretation. For them with half-malice and delight. How cold the stars. The heroic damsel in distress. Abyss
found in dementia’s shoebox. Abyss found in Dominica.
Stars are cold in winter. In summer they begin to warm up. Show their true selves. Goodbye my eyes, my swimming limbs.
Let me count the grains of sand with my hands. Let me travel slow then hard and fast in this country. Let me moan about the
unfairness of it all. Look here at this surface of flame showing off daylight. Flames licking at desire. Look at this earth-dream
that once belonged to the river and then the ocean depth of it.
I think of the lungs of London. The slow and deliberate inhale and exhale. The busy Amazon-structure to it. I don’t think that
men are safe anymore. Their body language tastes of liver and
sinful things. Marechera liked sex once. His body (shimmered) like a leaf. His mind a sweet-sweet-sweet journey of shades.
I’m ecstatic about the seed he sowed. The uncommon hero- leader he was. His anointing. Now, let me count the grains
of sand on this land called Zimbabwe. Ask why the sea.
Kindness is a seed. Obedience is a seed. Power is a fish. A seed with hope and expectation. The theory of love speaks
to me in Technicolor waves. Shattering clarity. The spirits
of this place needs us just as much as we need them. Love speaks to me. That theory of falling in love a phantom-sonnet.
You were a careless mistake. The earth moves (inside of me) like a woman now. Chirping birds gravitating towards
the warm ochre earth. This amount of love. The eternal song in his river teeth. I know where they are right now.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 8 ~
In the context of heaven. They’re found in a paradise for the lonely, parched soil, the swarm a language in your eyes.
I’m addicted to poems and funerals, roses and cacti. I can love you. I can harm you. I can’t promise you I won’t.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 9 ~
On the writer sent to a mental asylum in Gatsby Lungs struggle. My lungs are struggling against this
Bastille, feeling small, the girl, the girl, the girl, this avalanche in my soul, this single woman’s anguish.
Comrade anguish does not let up. She mocks my proper
English. I want someone to take care of me. I couldn’t place you at first. Foe, foe, foe or Robinson Crusoe.
Coldness is this desolate thing like plastic chairs in a waiting room. Champagne supernova I want to explore
you. But broken people can’t fix broken people. That’s a figment of your imagination. Our souls are clothed
in sleep now. Moonlight on our skin. We’re living
different lives now. Different cities but there’s still an obedience there, a love that can fit into a museum
like the straight fate of the stars. I know the challenges
of finding love on a long walk in a nature reserve on a Wednesday afternoon. You were a kind man. The glare
of light here is something flesh, something bone just flowing out of the sea like driftwood. It is dividing
the haunting. Dividing the trees into forest and border
of forest. I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of my sexuality, am I girl or boy, man or woman, tragedy or dramatic
artist (I’m trying to understand the speck of living with it).
My identity, the men and women that I’ve loved. Trust me. I’ve been left. And, so, love and friendship I write
about them in my poems. Dirt and grace and worship and praise. I’m a bird pecked to death by other birds. A bird
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 10 ~
who lives under a cold sky casting a net for freedom. I want to be a miracle. I want to be a miracle. I’m afraid
I’m failing miserably at it. I think of the bones of glaciers and how I can hear them from far away deep inside of me.
Their frozen waterfall, their icy-mirth in my fist. I close my eyes
and dream of glaciers, delicate Jonah in the whale.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 11 ~
Stern curator of the ghost museum A kitchen is never dead. It is a living thing. A
Jerusalem. There were no waves. No distant shoreline. Only a greenness passing through the
climate. Swimmers’ heads cut off from the rest
of their bodies in the school swimming pool and I wonder if you still remember me. Skinny
legs. Serious face. Nose stuck in a book. Seriously curly hair. Books under my arm. Nabokov.
Gillian Slovo. I never promised you a rose garden. Now you pass through me as if you’re passing
through a reflection. Take your medication.
Make dad breakfast. And then there is this struggle of loving men who prefer the company of other
men. You’re things that make me happy and
things that make me sad. You’re like a ray of light, my darling, my sweetheart, my love. I
love you until all my insides are raw, until my spirit has withered away into nothingness and nausea.
Until the house that I reside in, my ice house,
turns winter into summer. The kitchen sink is my mother’s wasteland. It is her politics, her flesh,
her prize. She rolls deep in her garden. That’s
her bliss. Her being honest. After the rain she’s Jean Rhys. During the rain she edits me
away, censors me, declares me Mrs Rochester. Her hands smell like spaghetti. These same hands
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 12 ~
that tear me apart. Ripping me apart until I’m raw. Raw!
And everything after that tastes metallic. I brush my teeth but it’s as if I’m doing
laundry or something. I can’t get the stain out.
And there’s a feast of winter in my hair while I think of Harlem and the African Renaissance.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 13 ~
Rain She’s graceful. A wall of flame. She’s beautiful.
She’s the lover that I will never have. The morning is vulnerable and open like the face of a beautiful man, who is staring at the woman he is deeply in
love with. I think of God when I think of her. Of course, He created her. The woman that I am in
love with. There can never be anything between us. She will go on to have fearless children. I will go on to write novels. She is married to a poet. (All men
are poets in their own way). We haven’t really talked. She admires me in her own way and I admire
her. In photographs, her magazine-hair is wavy. Luxurious. She looks like a film star. I want to mark
the return of the tragic hero and saint in her arms. I want to find the peace and harmony that I cannot
find anywhere else there (in her arms). I used to think about death but now when I see her, think of her, all I can think of is life. I want to come just
as I am to the breathy dream of her. The goal of her. She’s savage in her love (I know) and I already
know that I won’t be able to exist in that kind of world. All my life, love and the relationships
I’ve had with others have been supervised. First, by my parents. My mother’s instinct. My father’s silence. Then by a God that had to be feared. A God
that died for humankind’s sins. So, I flit and
flirt from men and women powerful and elegant in their own way. I know the world of prayer and meditation but I don’t pray to be with her.
I pray for her future happiness. I know the chaste world of hospital corridors. That universe of
doctors and nurses and patients and medicine. I’ve spent winters in hospitals (every year or so, when the depression returns). She’s changing
the world around her like a world seen through falling snow. She is body. She is soul. I am body too.
All I want to do is kiss her sweet open vulnerable face. Her moonlit shoulder blades. The nape of her milky neck. (Of course, I know nothing will come of this love).
She will raise fearless children (that’s the reality of the situation), and I will go on to write novels.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 14 ~
Wildflowers to tempt Jean Rhys into a good mood “Tea is better than sex,” said the Indian woman
on the television screen. It was a documentary, and she was travelling to Nepal to build wells. It was a documentary series on strong, independent
women who had their own money. Their own
rooms with views to the sea, or garden, or suburbia, or city-life traffic, and buildings, and motorcars.
And then I thought of Emily Dickinson, and what she would say about tea, and intimacy, and the
transaction of having her cake and eating it too, every rigour of stimulus, and impulse of trouble
at home, and I smiled, and then laughed thinking of
her loss, and my loss, her frustration, and mine. Always longing to belong to be the one rose in the courtyard
in bloom like the heavens, inheriting the wolf’s flock, inheriting the wolf’s religion, Sexton’s, and Kipling’s
poems too, and I thought of this waiting dance of
husband and wife that I knew nothing of. A universe filled with hungry children demanding to be fed, the
healing powers of whiskey, hungry souls longing for
a healing room. I go still. Think of Hepburn, and Monroe. James Dean. Jenny Zhang. Osip Mandelstam. Dorothea
Lasky, and how I continually find the source of the Nile whenever I am reading Russians, or, modern-day poets.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 15 ~
Not somebody’s wife Don’t let us go to the dogs. It's because you're in
love with the poem or life. You take the bread of hope, the time to reflect on it. With it being a modern fairy tale when it is read out loud or received by an audience
of other poets. Sober ones. Are poets ever 'the sober ones'? You're you. The poet undiscovered. The words are often
not there to describe the light of day, glare, depth, interviews. Inside the poet's head lies a multitude
of unexplored supernatural links to the experimental. There it comes in the distance. The barefoot lull of some
heart. Swim! Swim like a fish. Teeth let's go for it. Cave-diving for sharks underneath the sea. Let's swim for it. A river in your hair. Green-purple sea across your
shoulders. It's because the world is beautifully-painful
while myth and symbol at the same time are telling you to discover it. You tell yourself that this is vital. Energy is necessary for instinct, your success, personal development.
Poets drunk on the exquisite journey of an ingredient list or being joyously drunk on basic language. Drunk
on the seasons. Drunk on the birthdays of trees, of silence, of war. Drunk on the congregation of people on sandy
beaches or in church on Sunday mornings. Let me speak now of snow on winter branches. You are the mysterious.
The mysterious flame. Rings of people growing and growing, graduating to a circle around you the day of
your funeral. The universal order. You are an island. Nerves of steel and a glint in your eye. Part of the driven, committed, devoted, passionate few. This, this is not
goodbye. You burn right through me as if I am nothing.
I am looking for my father. He is the falling leaves in summer. Me, I found the two things I need to live. I have come home. Given up the mating rituals of the unbroken
city. I live in the Fort Lauderdale shadow of my sister. Here and there is an indentation of a man’s body in sleep.
The blueprint of his pilgrimage throughout this world, and beyond. His soul carries mine through a blue river
journal. The anatomy of melancholy here is bold and modern. People feel loneliness in different ways. I still
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 16 ~
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 17 ~
cling to the memory of him and somehow he still exists
for me on so many levels. I’m still in the phase of Eve. Desire like gold dust, pond life, coastal views. I’m left
here amongst the whales searching for a God to believe.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 18 ~
The caregiver Often people feel alone in different ways. Once
upon a time my father supplied all of my needs. In his eyes the smokiness of paprika. His limbs have a life of their own now. Now he brings me backache and A-Ha
on the wings and prayer of a dove. Leaves falling to the ground. Poet first and writer second. Futility
is complex. Gathering the declarations of an eternal-flame. I keep all the secrets of my heart. The feminine is subtle like chicken and soup. It is the masculine
that is the mysterious. My mother and sister. My mother waves us over to the table where she welcomes us.
Now I am considered an exile. Living between captivity and breath, gathering the subtle energies of pleasure
and pain. I delight in the seasons of music. Classical music and opera. The complexity of its mood. Sketches
of family drama and history. Museums and farms. Then I am yours, lover. To have and to hold onto. To cherish the familiar of you but you are not here and
a decade cuts through the separation. Cuts a divide. Your blood ripens and condemns me. Feeds, nurtures
me. Your flesh is a delicacy and so is your bone. I write from the valley. Mark a thin passage through darkness.
I long for your company but you are no longer here. I only know this heat. I only know this orange air. This
global warming. Hollow. Hollow is my voice. Is my life. My house. Overhead a feast of blue. A sea that
tastes like honey in the space of my dreams. You’re white and light and eternal. You belong to the hereafter. To the eternity. Your memory glows bright. Big with
love. Bright with an intensity. The sea is as important as the King Sun. Soon it will be dark and there will be
nothing but stars and moonlight out. And your face will bloom and bloom at will. I remember when I left home to see the world with your blessing father in my twenties.
Now in my late thirties I have undone everything learned there. The people I talk to now are ghost. Ghosts.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 19 ~
Menstruating according to the moon She’s mother up to a point. My heart bleeds
for the young. They move like wolves in a pack. The Indian- writer ladies never smile in photographs. They are so mournful-looking. I am always asked by photographers
to smile. I hate smiling for photographs. My blood is as dark as molasses. It flows like the sea monthly.
It comes from deep inside of me where an abyss grows and grows. My brother likes to build fires. Bonfires
that would light up the air in the dark. I wondered how other people lived if they did not have family. It
was love at first sight for me repeatedly. Teenage boys still have the ability to make me feel shy and awkward like they did in the corridors of high school. Standing
and watching for my humiliation. The boundary between
those years and now has outlines. I’m lonely. I have everything in the world but I still feel lonely, asking myself what am I living for. Now they’ll say I need a
man in my life, or a woman. The time has come for kingdom and empire, superstition and family to collide.
My legs are still thin. My voice is still thin and angry, hungry and mute. I have eyes and reading hands for
Gustave Flaubert, Beverly Rycroft, J.D. Salinger, Jane Austen and Jean Rhys. The kind of greedy love
they have for me is received with open arms. I fall for both man and woman. My distant mother with
her deep soulful eyes knows the bloom of health. I must begin to write the novel deep inside of me for sanity’s sake before the world as I know it comes to
an end. In our house we don’t talk about slavery,
even less about the minor earth of inequality. The tea is cold now. I’m a mad girl. Stay away. Stay far- away. My world is as cold as winter trees and as
harsh as Mars. I inhale and exhale that word Mars. I’m too old now to have children. To have a marriage,
and children. I have an atlas tattooed on my soul. I think of sound waves and tea plantations. I think
of India and Sri Lanka, the SA poet Athol Williams
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 20 ~
reciting his poetry. His words, his words, his words.
His words seem so prophetic like they have their own religion. Mine seem so emaciated next to his. In high
school I fell in love with Radiohead and the Irish band Ash. I fell in love with words, girls and swimming.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 21 ~
Coming back to earth blessed with wings Oh, my cousins were social up to a point. Even
then I called them the Johannesburg people. The noises are louder here. The sea is somewhat involved along with her compatriots. Of nightfall, boats,
the docks, the pier, the Boardwalk. All these people. All these people fighting for survival. Living to
survive. It would be a dream of mine to become a motivational speaker. To talk to death in front of crowds as lonely as I was. From childhood I
was writing poetry. Travelling is the antidote to ignorance. I've never really been anywhere. Does
boarding school in rural Swaziland count. It must count for something for I fell in love there. First- everything. I have this. I have the modern and bold
anatomy of loneliness. How quickly the heart turns bitter and cold. The world is filled with people waiting.
Waiting to be loved. Waiting to be saved from the twisted forms, and the personality, and shapes, and illusive particles of ego, and vanity. The omelette
is a puffed-up cloud on my plate. I think of the yesterday- sea leaving a cool trail of white shoreline ghost in
the air. Winter people figures in the dark. Winter people moonstruck-dumb eating hot soup ladled
into bowls. There are four dark figures sitting on the steps of the front of the house in the moonlight. They are waiting for me to return from the mental
institution. There is sad laughter. Younger brother, middle sister, deaf mother, elderly, and infirm father.
You see all is not what it seems. The child is gone. I mean the inner child. The child that lived inside of me was useful to me in high school. I needed her
to be brave. Her function was to endure. Where those four individuals went at night I could not go. I was a
ghost. Twice-miracles removed. I built a monument outside the school library in the courtyard, for the carrion hidden-deep within my soul. Swimming returned
me to a normal reality. And I became a glorious-Hemingway. A Karin Boye. I was both man and woman. It is
overcast. I want to remember all my days here at Garden City Clinic for the rest of my life. My father's odysseys at Valkenburg and Elizabeth Donkin. Rest.
Rest. I need my rest. This is all too much. This is
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 22 ~
war-writing. I don't want these memories. Can I exchange
them. I am writing with so much joy and passion now. How lucky they are, those four dark figures in the
moonlight. They’ll never know just how lucky they are.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 23 ~
When exactly the #MeToo movement happened to me (It happened 15-years ago. You didn’t speak about it
then, but you’re speaking about it now. Maybe that’s the difference.) You must forget, my father said. Forget about the past. The man in the workplace who grabbed
you, fondled you and stuck his tongue down your throat. You must forget for your own sanity. You must forget
the man whose name you can’t remember. The man who changed his son’s diaper in front of you. The man you went for coffee with. Had breakfast with. It was Natasha
who said he only wanted your body. Lebogang said she had the same experience. That he tried to kiss her too.
All these things you will remember for the rest of your life. This is why you left Johannesburg. Never pursued film-making. You were a girl then. Now you’re more
mature. A confident woman. Now you think to yourself, you survived. You survived. You survived it all to write
about it. You didn’t speak about it then but you’re speaking about it now. That’s the difference. But my father is telling
me to forget about it. (It happened 15-years ago. You didn’t speak about it then, but you’re speaking about it now. Maybe
that’s the difference.) I must forget, my father said. Forget about the past. The man who made an inappropriate comment
about ‘whipping me into submission’. The man in the workplace who grabbed me, fondled me and stuck his tongue down my throat. I must forget for my own sanity.
I must forget the man whose name I can’t remember. The man who changed his son’s diaper in front of me. The man
I went for coffee with. Had breakfast with. It was Natasha who said he only wanted my body. What he could do to it. Lebogang said she had the same experience. That he tried
to kiss her too. All these things I will remember for the rest of my life. It is why I left Johannesburg. Never pursued
film-making. I was a girl then. Now I’m more mature. A confident woman. Now I think to myself, I survived all of that shit. I survived. I survived it all to write about it.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 24 ~
For you I would be insane and lovely at the same time Here’s to looking at you at fifty. You’re
fifty still living in your parents’ house. You’re not happy. You’re living in the shade of your sister’s happiness. She
left you years ago, ventured out into the world on her own. You still think
you’ll get better in therapy. You still hate your own face, and sharp objects. Steak knives with their cool, clean, pure-
serrated edges. Masters of none-and- everything. Masters of Jericho, Ruth. Boaz.
The dreams you once had, you dream of still. They’re like paper flowers. And your voice is like the agreements
between them. Full of secrets, a fading sunlight of day paying attention to the
resonant branches and their tensing melody. You think back to all the hurt,
despondency, useless slipping-away- from-you-frustration, (honest), and it
moves inside of you like the first man who molested you. You go under the sea,
and become pure again (an innocent). Your hair is unkempt, and haywire all over your face. The road home all-pepper-
and-potholes. You’re still scared of the dark. Yes, yes, you’re still scared of
the dark. And you’re all feminine-and- masculine (girl with her hair cut like a boy). Still you long for the safe truth of women.
What did you do with the angels I gave you. I think of the coconut oil on my mother’s
hands as she combed and braided my hair when I was a little girl. There’s a little
girl in the advertisement I’m watching on television. It’s about hair. It’s about
hair. It’s about hair. African hair, whatever that means. Oil, sheen, relaxer cream, and I’m looking at the Portuguese man again who gave
me the eye in Johannesburg all those years ago. I think about his smile that lit up my face,
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 25 ~
his light-blue sweater as he leaned over
the counter, and I think of the hair on his hands, his arms, the hair on his chest
sticking out like a triangle. I think of his European-lover-face, and how I went up in smoke that day. How sexy he made me
feel, how beautiful, and desired, this Captain Fantastic in the paradise that was Johannesburg then.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 26 ~
Solar I think of fruit, good olive oil, pasta, and
tuna casseroles when I think of her name. I think of overripe tomatoes perfect for sauce. Of just how much I loved you, and how you
never loved me back. I chose writing, and
you chose pilgrimage. You chose to travel to exotic places, never sending me a postcard.
My hands are in frozen chicken pieces in brine. My hands, fingers are stiff with cold to
the bone. I’m going to grill this chicken. The streets are breathing after the rain while
I inhale, and exhale, this intellectual black sheep. Autumn leaves outside my window. You’re
not here. I wish you were here. I wish you weren’t here. Yes, I was always difficult to
love, and the writing is still an experiment. I’m reading this book by Don Mattera. I
want to know my purpose, my identity, my
heritage, where I come from. I’m more than of mixed-race descent. You taught me that.
You taught me to pray. To pray for a publisher for my manuscript. You taught me many things.
To sow the seed for meaningful relationships, and how to multiply seed. You taught me to hope
for my name to be known in every home, to reach for the stars, the sun,
the divine. I don’t remember the colour of your eyes anymore, the weakness in you. Only that you loved all of me for a brief summer.
The sun always shines on television and the
Americans are always eating red spaghetti.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 27 ~
Discern, discern, discern please between your
goals and dreams. I can’t take my eyes off you.
Your works of flesh, of prize and lit award. The wise will hear. So will the foolish girls.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 28 ~
Walking through the city streets Young foolish girls become like
dust too with their volcanic lips. (Mama! You taught me this. This is how I know this). The writing
of your name brings you back to me. It’s like a boomerang. A litmus test.
I sing this hymn. I know what empty vessels are. I’ve loved you in spite of everything. I eat fat
and hot green chillies. I dream of future projects filled with stories
of light and laughter. Filled with Rhys. This desire would not be complete without a wise man and a gathering
woman. A woman who gathers
absence to her heart and futility. Piety, tenderness and purity. An age of innocence. The first rain.
There’s a background blazing in the distance. All my life I’ve been
looking for love in the wrong places. Here even speech has a stem, charisma,
and propellers. Blazing drones. Longing has its own translation. Grassroots silence and talking
about politics. Brutal lectures on the poetry on nothing. Here’s to nothing
but acceptance, harvest and Oprah. You’re an image of autumn.
Here, I can still hear your song, your refuge. It whispers to me
of a brighter future. To forget my childhood. Forget words like ‘childhood abuse’, ‘lack of mother
love’, and ‘trauma’. I visited hotels with men, you see. I am
not proud of it. Where were you? Who taught me nothing about
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 29 ~
the shades of men and women? Mama,
You taught me nothing about men whose hands were as soft as the
roar of the sea. It is the young girl who suffers from anxiety. But no one ever speaks of this.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 30 ~
Acknowledgements
Once again, I dedicate this book to my brother, for all my muses, for all my loves, my parents, Gerda, and Ambrose Senior, and forever for the love of my life, my
sister. To the people that I love, to the people that I feel the most connected to in the world, that I relate to. To Virgil Bruiners.
To my editors, for painstaking mission after mission who redesign, reinvent, perfect my expression, inarticulateness, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and who edit my
work again and again. Thank you to all my editors (in no particular order). Thanos Kalamidas, Sam Hawkesmoor, Hugh Hodge, Gus Ferguson, Michael King, Michelle
Betty, Kyle Allan, Gary Cummiskey, JK Anowe, Tony Garcia, Tendai Rinos Mwanaka, Mikateko Mbambo, Dimitris Giannakopoulos, Ambrose George, Sola Osofisan, Naza Okoli, Sand Pilarski, and Chris Brunette. Thank you as well to LitNet Skryfwerk, the
curator of the South End Museum, Mr Cecil Colin Abrahams and Beverly Pieterse.
To the people, the working classes and communities that make up the Northern Areas. To Pastor Ignatius Koopman. To God, probably the singularly most important relationship in my life. To Him all the glory, all honour, and all the praise.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 31 ~
About the Author
Abigail George is a Pushcart Prize ("Wash Away My Sins") and Best of the Net
("Secrets") nominated South African blogger (Goodreads, link on Piker Press), essayist (Modern Diplomacy, Ovi Magazine: Finland's English Online Magazine, Ovi Symposium), playwright, anthologised poet, chapbook, grant, novella, and short
story writer (Africanwriter.com, Hackwriters.com), she’s a contributing editor at African Writer, editor at Mwanaka Media and Publishing, and the writer of eight
books. She studied film briefly at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg, which was followed by a stint as an intern at a television production company. She was educated in Port Elizabeth, and Swaziland. Her next novella is
one of both historical interest on the life of a reclusive American poet, and creative nonfiction entitled "Aspects of Emily Dickinson”. It will be followed by, “The elders,
matriarchs’, patriarchs’ of our community: Love Stories”. She is a Northern Areas poet, and has lived in the area nearly her entire life.
Her next novella will be published by Scarlet Leaf Review, “Don’t waste your pain, kill your enemies with kindness” due out in 2020/2021. There are more books in
the offing too, “Eating the breadcrumbs from the masters’ table”. It is based on the life of her black (of mixed-race descent who has his roots in Saint Helena) paternal grandfather, Staff Sergeant Joseph William George who served in the Cape Corps
(Regiment 39), and returned home a highly decorated war hero after the Second World War. Her latest book is “The Scholarship Girl: Life Writing”. She has two
chapbooks in 2019/2020, “Of Smoke and Bloom” (Mwanaka Media and Publishing), and “The Anatomy of Melancholy” (Praxis Magazine Online). She has been
published widely on online global platforms. She writes about women. Her writing has appeared online in e-zines across Africa such as Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Abigail George: The Anatomy of Melancholy
~ 32 ~
About the Cover Photograph The photograph by Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi featuring the very beautiful model
Anyasi Pearl was taken out of curiosity. It sought to be an inspiration to explain the relationship between humans and light. The image was created late 2018 in Benin City, Nigeria.
Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi is a photographer from Africa, based in Nigeria
precisely. He's exploring the art of photography as a tool to influence the society, and also as a business.
Connect with him on Instagram and twitter (@khannahblack) Facebook: Kester Kanayo Onyemaechi
Mail: [email protected]