the authentic is not a repetition
We moved from beside the post office to a place uptown in a small port town. The house had Victorian peacock feathers and glass wind chimes. It had wallpaper patterns that mesmerized. Floral seem to dominate, but other themes were dark and gothic.
It was the 60s and gothic gave way to rolls of vinyl with prints of mod and paisley. The colours lighter, blues and yellows, hues brighter, pictures of cars and cartoons. We rolled our own from the potato printer of carving into a hard paint roller.
Walls bore a vertical record of the pattern, over and over atomic pink and geometric shapes. I circled the eight-petal daisies as they appeared on the wall of time-stood-still. Fixed in place, linked by the lines of my pencil.
I sat on the spattered step ladder and it occurred to me: none of them were my daisy. There was one, on the roller, imprinted over and again. Those on the wall were eccentric and colourful. Those on the wall were people in a cave, flat images of the authentic.
