June 6, 2010
My mind is a toy basket
“A mother’s brain is an ort pile where the cultural guano of the ages of each of her children surives. A composted yellow slice on the bottom of Big Bird feathers and Barbie hair cut with Crayola scissors and old plastic market tubes and Tweety card decks, tiny little shoes, purses, belts, shimmery underwear and skates for Barbie, and the more politically correct stuff made of wood, the popsicle stick dolls and the blocks in every shape, painted, the wooden horses and the sets of foot-piercing dangerous jacks and red rubber balls and the miniature horses and the coveted big plastic horses and the Playmobil and Lego figures and math toys and sets of mazes and puzzles from about twelve dozen sets and the stuffed things– tigersnakelephantarantulapepigiraffeturleagle– and the marvelous tea sets that come in every china pattern and the little furniture and mirrors, the detritus of Vintage Star ponies and Wild Things and Seuss figurines and every McDonalds Happy Meal toy and then, well, all of this compacted together with old Halloween candy mortise into a solid-earthen basement floor of kid knowledge.
My mind is a toy basket filled with tiny, cheap, broken stuff.” –from Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
