IX

She felt that she was at fault. Not that she had done anything wrong, but that two parts of herself were scraping against each other and that violence was being done. She wanted a violence she could build on, like chopping vegetables for dinner, like hammering, like lava. She felt like she was at fault for not being able to decide if she should pull herself apart and make fires and catastrophes, or if she should push herself together and make mountains. The seconds rained on her like giant pieces of ash, and in her impatience she bubbled and churned, and though she did not relish an explosion, she longed to spew her thoughts so that they might run thickly down her sides and cool themselves in the ocean. "All the rivers run into the sea", she often liked to say. "Yet the sea is not full." Her thoughts whirlithed about continually according to their circuits just like the wind. Sometimes she could not rise for the time on her hands, could not sleep for the wind in her head.