Menolly is a composer whose story is told in Anne McCaffrey's DRAGONSONG and DRAGONSINGER; she figures prominently in the THE WHITE DRAGON too. A musical prodigy born in a hardscrabble know-nothing village--and family. When she escapes into the bigger world, not only her hand is scarred, but her expectations. She's learned to think small. And stretching scar tissue takes more than patience and will. It hurts.

Born in suburbia, I followed her role-model: got out, tried to undo the damage... but it's not so easy. Rubbing lotion into the scars, and stretching them in pain.

"Your body is the scar of your mind"
-- Yoko Ono

Menolly the singer haunted me:
Mozart-girl in a foul fish town.
Her yellow family's secret slime
Scarring her hand, her song.

Shy and wild and guilty
Living alone like me.
Am I bad? Am I bad?
Run and hide, whipped prodigy!

Then I grew up and ran away.
Did I heal? The scar wouldn't stretch.
The fear wouldn't fade. Just etch.
Menolly, I fell where you ran.

You flattened into juvenile pages
A dragonback silhouette pasted on sky.

My claw-hands fused, and grew in,
My scars not so easily salved away:
A Thread-scored ruin.

I never finished much.
Too hard to limp through.
Unfinished this song,
This song to you:

"As you Turn away you fling

song like fingers.

Strums my skin.

As you Turn, shaking shone

Hair like Thread

that scores my bone..."

Winds of memory pluck that scar:
My heart's the hole in life's gitar.

Yes, I can spell guitar. The "gitar" is a distant Pernese descendant of that instrument, which Menolly plays. But names don't matter--guitar or lute or violin, the soundbox is what matters. For like a human heart, it won't work sealed up. Hearts and gitars have to be opened, and that can hurt. But you must. The hole in the heart's for resonance.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites