{"id":36810,"title":"The Storm","description":"A short story by Molly Knight","content":"

Robin<\/span><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Robin was a mystery from the word go. Cut out of a wound that was not felt, with a knife that was not seen, his umbilical connection to her - flesh of her flesh - clamped and guillotined by a masked nurse whose name they would never know. Just under one hour into the world and he was plasticated - lying in an acetate crib, swaddled in a synthetic blanket (shrink wrapped), beneath neon lights that flickered robotically onto stark white walls, in a room that smelt of the noxious, malodorous emanations of bleach, scrubbed by the hands of another no-face nurse to clean the detritus of previous patients unknown.\u00a0 Sterility and facelessness were the dominant forces here - taking the most intimate and profound of human experiences and diminishing them into the fold of industrial production.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

His little hands spasmed; mixing invisible discs on invisible decks, as something disturbed his sleep. She stroked his forehead gently with the tip of her index finger to soothe him back into slumber.<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

\u00a0I hope you\u2019re dreaming of forests, little one\u2026<\/span><\/em>she whispered to his tiny form.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

The same form (give or take) that had in centuries past been born into the unique spacescapes of caves; individuated by the teeth of the mother tearing tenderly at her\u00a0 own flesh, swaddled in skins of bucks hand-slaughtered by kin and embraced,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 . \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 for love and for heat next to a fire\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0crackling and spitting hot embers into a black night,\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0exhaling tar-saturated emanations<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0to coil slickly upwards,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Licking with 100 shadow-tongues<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0cave-wall-chronicles\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0of every node of the<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0ancestral line -\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0hand painted in\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0emulsions\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0of charcoal,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0red earth,<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0and<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0animal\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0fat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

This is a creature out of his niche\u2026<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/em>She whispered into the night air of her hospital cubicle.<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Out of his niche.<\/span><\/em><\/strong> The words stuck with her.\u00a0 In the years that followed, she found herself mumbling them unawares - a mantra, cast up from her unconscious to soothe - looping over and over until\u00a0 meanings collapsed and words degraded into sounds. The characterisation of Robin\u2019s struggles as arising from his being located <\/span>outside of his niche<\/span><\/em> - an hypothetical yet possible ideal environment that would cater perfectly to each of his quirks - was calming to her, because seeing things in this way entailed that failure (when it struck) seemed not to stem from Robin alone, but rather from the world, for failing to provide an environment sufficiently eccentric to enable this embodied, life-enhancing, meaning-conferring, multicoloured idiosyncrasy to flourish. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 (Oh what a world).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

\u00a0For the first six months, Robin barely woke - sleeping for more than 23 hours a day, his limp, lithe\u00a0 little body cradled permanently to her chest in a Kangaroo-pouch sling:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Where are you ( sleeping beauty) .. come and be with me\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

she whispered, as she kissed his downy head.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Alice had readied herself for a tsunami of sleepless nights spent trying to coax the unknown creature into diurnality; for long days of fretting over whether or not she had bonded to a little lump of flesh who could neither see nor communicate other than to scream out the colic that was twisting its guts up; for chaos and radical, life-altering, screaming, storming change. But reality brought the inverse.\u00a0 In place of a force of chaos, noise and martyrdom she was hit instead by an eerie spell of calm, in which silence prevailed over sound, sleep over wakefulness and connection over disunion. The yang of this new life was <\/span>peace<\/span><\/em> <\/span>and all-encompassing love<\/span><\/em> - its bright light radiating out from her, as though her heart were the sun. But the evolution of her motherhood brought also a\u00a0 yin, and that was dark indeed. For in time, the prevailing silence - despite being in essence an absence - came to manifest as an aggressive presence; smothering her with a thick, dense blanket of nothing, devastating her with the contrast to the tumult she had been expecting, like a passive aggressive gift from the universe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

As the weeks progressed, the effects amplified. Robin\u2019s failure to wake and the sleepiness she had cherished in the early days began to create a vortex of alienation around her. Wherever she went, people were too kind to speak the thought that was invariably at the forefront of their minds:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Your child is<\/span> damaged<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Your child is\u00a0 broken<\/span><\/p>

Your child is <\/span>not all there<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

She had a knack for reading other minds. <\/span>Witchy<\/span><\/em>, her mother used to say - the way she could know the unspoken thoughts occurring within those secret spaces - eternally incarcerated within their ovoid entombments of bone and thus apparently screened from all objectivity. With insight bordering the paranormal, she could infer these private strings of unspoken words with near complete accuracy (give or take a twist of a difference in lexicon or form) from expressions and behavioural nuances many would have missed:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

A double-take<\/span><\/em>, when Robin\u2019s slumber remained undisturbed in the face of external stimuli capable of imbuing the dead with wakeful animation,\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

The falsity of a smile or the hollow tambour of a coo, <\/span><\/em>directed towards a sleeping form receptive to neither,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

The too-quick a passing back of a baby <\/span><\/em>who refused to wake to be adored in the customary tea-and-cake living room gatherings that were the unacknowledged initiation-ceremonies of all new arrivals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Despite being fully cognisant of the fact that her baby was repeatedly and silently damned as <\/span>broken<\/u><\/span><\/em> in the minds of those around her, in order to avoid the anxiety of engaging in an exchange for which there was no template (Is he healthy? Is he damaged? What do the doctor\u2019s say?), instead Alice entered into a hundred silent deals - (I\u2019ll spare you, if you spare me) - in which truth was sacrificed to comfort: she pretended, as did everyone around her, that <\/span>everything was fine. <\/span><\/em>But the price she paid for this shallow easement was alienation: just when she most needed to feel the support and warmth of authentic connection, she was shrouded from it by a veil of deception, from behind which no one spoke that which was most ascendant in their minds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

But as Robin grew, the horror of the early days began to recede.\u00a0 At around 4 months, his eyes opened for a little longer each day, letting reality in and letting his light shine out.\u00a0 A permuted Midas; the more he saw of the world, the more golden it became for them both, as his steadily increasing wakefulness banished the demons that had plagued her in the early months. Little by little came (first) alertness, (then) smiles, (and then) speech, until he was rapidly ascending the developmental bell-curve of life. And as his repertoire expanded, her sense of personal apocalypse began to subside, leaving space in its wake for joy - which, once ignited, coursed through her like heroine, lighting her up from inside, until all darkness was banished and even the differences in Robin\u2019s capabilities (differences the eventual fruition of which she had previously orientated herself towards with no small measure of dread)\u00a0 were illuminated and newly revealed to her as treasures. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>




<\/p>

f \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 f<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 f<\/span><\/p>

o<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 o<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 o<\/span><\/p>

r<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 r<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 r<\/span><\/p>

g<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 g<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 g<\/span><\/p>

e<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/span><\/p>

t<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 t<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 t<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

d<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 s\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

i<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 p<\/span><\/p>

s<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 u<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

a<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 r\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 c<\/span><\/p>

b<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 o<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 i<\/span><\/p>

l<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 d<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 a<\/span><\/p>

e<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 i<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 l<\/span><\/p>

d<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 v<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 n<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 r<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 s<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/span> <\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 s<\/span><\/p>



<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0T\u00a0 R\u00a0 Y\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A\u00a0 D\u00a0 J\u00a0 A\u00a0 C\u00a0 E\u00a0 N\u00a0 T<\/span><\/p>

<\/p>

Robin was adjacent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

As he grew,\u00a0 Alice sought to accommodate this temperamental adjacency by sparing him the sensory assaults of\u00a0 <\/span>meadows and woodland<\/span><\/s> plastic play centres, <\/span>streams and lakes<\/span><\/s> bleach-imbibed leisure pools, playgrounds of <\/span>trees<\/span><\/s> metal and <\/span>soil<\/span><\/s> rubber, and other artificial time killers erected by a society that had forgotten the caves and the wild from which it had come. Instead, Alice and Robin payed homage to their roots, spending their time in peaceful exploration of the wilderness that bloomed around the various stopping points of their train - the southbound to Sevenoaks - which, like a shuttle back in time, took them to unspoilt hamlets and villages in the Kentish countryside - vestiges of a more innocent time, in which human construction was less <\/span>metal,<\/span><\/em> less <\/span>concrete,<\/span><\/em> more <\/span>thatch-and-horse-hair lime-mortar <\/span><\/em>and still a mere embellishment on the landscape. During these outings, it was Robin's state of calm attentiveness that enabled him (and her through him) to notice things that were inaccessible to minds preoccupied with the roar and rush of interaction. Walking silently together, the universe unfurled itself\u00a0 for them:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Black branches cracking chickin-lickin through porcelain white and blue sky like cracks in a china cup,<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

A polyrhythmic brook babbling of broken ecosystems, overlaid by melismata shrieks for joy of parakeet-escapees;<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

Filigree frills of fungi feeding on fallen trees, performing silent miracles\u00a0 as they extract life from death;<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

A moment of mutual awareness: a beam of consciousness from a mother fox, which, despite colliding with their own in space and time, nevertheless came from a tooth-and-claw world far from the reality they themselves inhabited<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

Robin was umbilically connected to the universe.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

But the tranquillity Robin symbiotically emanated and required was not the bus ride to school - full of roar and rumble, judder, jounce and jostling, jolting bodies. It was not late night noises of parties in the flat above them, pounding through the floor in an acoustic invasion that transformed his room into a semi public space. And it was not a lunch hall full of children, letting off not steam but entropy, in an energy conversion that threatened to overwhelm and\u00a0 occupy him - conquering his internal environment like a possession.\u00a0 Darkness was then his refuge - safety in the blink of an eye, shuttering the world into audio-only. And later, when he learnt that closed eyes had repercussions, he regulated himself by focusing his attention so narrowly on (first) trains, (next) dinosaurs, and (more recently) cards, that everything else was on mute. Yet muting reality in this way took a great deal of energy: it drained Robin - who was cast into a circadian cycle of wilting and refreshing - returning to her each day a damaged and harmed thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

John<\/span><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Alice\u2019s capacity to love was finite. And so, as her connection to Robin blossomed and flourished -\u00a0 his presence in her life quietly exploding in colour and charisma into the centre stage of her affections, her husband was usurped and cast into the shadows. John often spoke of feelings of fading, disappearing and invisibility during that time. It was as though his full and continued existence were somehow dependent upon his being fully and continually seen by her - his sense of self contingent on her bearing witness to and attending to the details of his life;<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Existence-conferring-sight. It is the gift of the gods. It is the gift of the mother, whose infant forms its self-concept by observing its reflection in her eyes.<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

As the eldest son of a volatile and selfish woman, whose abandonment by her own husband in mid-life had triggered a succession of increasingly severe breakdowns, each a push closer to life\u2019s brink - John\u2019s break from his mother patricia was a trauma he had sought to spare her, much delayed, and so, when it finally came to pass - all the more brutal. The rapid and emotionally violent break was finally impelled by Alice\u2019s arrival, at age 19.\u00a0 For Patricia's love for her son was selfish and possessive,\u00a0 being unnaturally tainted and inverted with dependence -\u00a0 it left no room for anyone else and could not peaceably coexist with Alice, who was unwittingly cast into the role of <\/span>the other woman.<\/span><\/em> Shortly after Alice\u2019s arrival, a series of increasingly hostile exchanges commenced in which Patricia employed all the manipulative devices at her disposal in an attempt to ruin the love relationship that threatened her own. This dark sequence, in which patricia's shadow took hold of her daylight form,working and worked its black magic to convince everyone\u00a0 that the wrath it unleashed upon Alice was just and fair - culminated one summer's evening in a drunken phone call in which the elder woman accused the younger of attempting to usurp her, in a glorious display of the dark and twisted elements of the maternal love our society idealises as the most holy and pure of virtues. <\/span>Choose her or choose me<\/span><\/em> <\/span>\u2026<\/span><\/em> was the choice the old woman put to the boy that night, it was the whisper underneather the screams and the rage and the vitriol about things wholly unrelated to the true source of her wrath. And, so not as a display of courage, nor heroism nor love for his wounded bride, but in an act of self-preservation in which he chose to reject the life-long codependence and infantilization that any alternative pathway guaranteed, John took hold of the receiver and shamed his mother, disowning her and his inheritance and thus stripping her of her power to harm.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

But, once severed, instead of withering and dying (as all sick things should), the maternal link that had connected mother and son, had found instead another host and instead attached itself to Alice, unknown and unbidden, surreptitiously and parasitically, an umbilical tentacle suckering him to her, in the secret, hidden spacescapes of emotion. And so, just as the infant is first brought to self-knowledge by observation of the esteem or disregard in which it is held by its mother, so too had John\u2019s sense of self been sustained by Alice throughout the 15 years of their union.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

You poor man, John.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Although there was fading, paling and diminuendo involved, the end of their marriage was far from bring a gentle recession into nothing, for there was also anger, violence and horror:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

An unkind word at the breakfast table - the child of a three year muted scream born of unspoken feelings of rejection.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

A coffee cup placed down too slowly, to the backdrop off long, deep breaths\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

An accelerating series of thuds ascending wooden stairs<\/span><\/em><\/p>

The slam of a door, echoing on bathroom tiles<\/span><\/em><\/p>

The slide-and-click of a lock<\/span><\/em><\/p>

The banging of a fist demanding entry<\/span><\/em><\/p>

A knife<\/span><\/em><\/p>

A threat<\/span><\/em><\/p>

A scream<\/span><\/em><\/p>

The sounds of neighbours windows softly closing<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Weeping<\/span><\/em><\/p>

A head repeatedly banging itself against a mirror - each time closer to shattering<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

You turn me into a monster,\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

she whispered to her red and swollen reflection.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



<\/p>

But the rage and the turmoil were confined to their home, and - like some kind of dark, vampiric transformation - to the witching-hours of Robin\u2019s sleep.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Outside of that space and those times, they functioned more or less as normal. No one would have known. She dropped Robin to school. She chatted with other mums. She rode her bike. And she worried about other things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Breaking point comes sometimes not from a straw, nor from a nail, but from a glimmer of positivity and hope. For Alice, the glimmer came in the form of a house, which promised her a new life with her son. Far away from the city clamour and its sensory assaults.\u00a0 Far away from a marriage that was bitter, enraged and dying - harming all of those within its sphere of influence in its death-throws. Far far away, in a land in which nature still reigned as king.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Ode to a house<\/span><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

This old house has soul\u2026 <\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

It sparked all of her senses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


In the summer, its walls sweated the odours of sawn wood, thickening the air with emanations of the sap that had been its lifeforce,\u00a0 dominating the olfactory environment with chemical messengers, which to her were all - c<\/span>owboys in saloons, hunters skinning rabbits in shacks made by fathers of fathers iterated to the x, grooms bedding down horses in the stables of stately homes<\/span><\/em> - but which to a tree, were <\/span>sawn and severed tissue, danger and death.<\/span><\/em><\/p>


In the autumn winds, it creaked, moaned and swayed, lamenting its role as staunch protector, mourning the memories of the winds that broke the trees which now formed its wooden carcass.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

On winter mornings, its windows wept the condensation of precipitation from broths and stews, from baths and laundry, and sometimes from tears for everything she had left behind.\u00a0 The old, flowery wallpapers curled their lips at the damp that settled on them, wrinkling and greying their vibrant skins.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

On winter evenings, while an owl called out for love, the house clanked and thrummed and ticked and dripped as the pipes and boiler took over as the dominant determiners of the acoustic aura.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

And In the spring, the walls and the roof peeped and cheeped and sang with 1000 tiny voices,\u00a0 just as it had done when its multiple constituents were variously rooted in earth and clad in leaves, as it continued to protect and sustain new life.<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

This. old. House. Has. Soul.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

She whispered to her tear-dampened pillow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



<\/p>

Everyday things.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Of course stripping away the causes of turmoil is an action which brings its own consequences. For, as Alice well knew, absences bring their own violence. While their new life had none of those features which had previously caused them so much pain, it offered them very little else with which to fill their time... They knew no-one in this new place\u2026. They belonged to nothing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

I read once that If you deprive the brain of stimuli for long enough, it will start filling the gaps for itself. (MIND THE GAP). Like an hungry infant self suckling, it will simulate experiences to fill the void.\u00a0 Remarkably adaptive. Magical almost. But the magic was lost in the heinous nature\u00a0 of the fabrications thrown up, which - like a rip or a glitch between my mind and some parallel universe of horrors - were undoubtedly the manifestation of some deep rooted sado-masochism - the offspring and inevitable companion of a self loathing which had taken hold\u00a0 in childhood and embedded like an incurable rot.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

Every day - something new.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Every day - something worse.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

In days of old, she would have been burned as a witch. Or lobotomised. Or exorcised. Modernity\u2019s substitute for exorcisms came in the form of a diagnosis and a small white pot, filled with sugar-coated, blue pills. MAGIC PILLS, the label ought to have read. <\/span>For they<\/span><\/em> <\/span>were<\/span><\/em> <\/span>magic<\/span><\/em>. They served to purge the water system of the liquid that ran crimson from every tap in the house and left rust red dregs on white porcelain for her to read as a fortune-teller reads the tea leaves. `They served to banish the voices which, despite having no provable existence outside of her own mind, nevertheless seemed - in virtue of some mysterious feature she could never quite articulate - not to spring from her thoughts nor from anything internal to her, but from some unidentifiable, external <\/span>elsewhere<\/span><\/em>. And they served to quell the rage and the wrath, which gripped her periodically like a possession, creating the ultimate foe - the final, unbeatable boss - by turning her against herself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Although they were undoubtedly MAGIC, the pills sometimes failed her. SOMETIMES Robin would find her with her head in her hands, sobbing on the landing, for no reason he could discern. And sometimes he would have to accompany her to the doctor\u2019s office, for her to explain - through a face engorged and puffed with a deep, bitter sorrow that threatened to burst through her swollen and reddened skin - that she \u201cneeded something extra\u201d. But in time, these incidents became less common. For, under the guidance of the village Doctor, she learnt to boost the efficacy of the pills by adopting a routine that was sufficiently invariant and predictable that she was able to distinguish reality from the horrors of <\/span>the glitch<\/span><\/em>, and thus ignore the rips and slips between worlds when they occurred. Clinging to mindfulness to tame and subdue her personal demons, as others clung to religion to ward off evil spirits, Alice strove to metamorphose the monotony of their life into a soothing hymn to beauty - focusing her attention on the divine in the everyday, calling it out, soaking it up, letting the blessing bliss them up from the inside out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Two spongey crumpets each morning, soaked in butter and amber honey like molten gold\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

Sipping hot drinks\u2026allowing the familiar radio humm of words to lap over them, in waves sent from other minds to their own<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

Washing grease from the plates -\u00a0 it's oil-slick sheen parting mounds of iridescent bubbles - a mirrored eye looking back from each of the thousand tiny domes, watching her intently from bubbly oblivion,<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

Tending the garden with bare hands and gentle, nurturing fingers; encouraging all growth and all life; taking care to mind the feelings of each and every plant (\u201cit\u2019s not their fault they're weeds mum, plants have feelings too\u2026\u201d)\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

And so, Robin's childhood ticked by. They were happy, more or less. With the polaroids to show for it:\u00a0 the click-woosh, click-woosh, click-woosh of a thousand smiling, sepia moments in which Alice was only ever inferentially featured:<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Robin hanging upside down from the old oak in their garden <\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Robin sleeping with the cat on their stained and dusty sofa <\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Robin skating on a frozen lake, <\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Robin practising headstands on their sitting room rug <\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Robin at her parent's house on Christmas day\u2026<\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

ripping tartan paper off well-wrapped presents.. <\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

underneath a towering christmas tree \u2026<\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

laughing at a long-forgotten joke <\/span><\/em>(click)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>



<\/p>

And then, one day, without notice or anticipation, it was gone. <\/span>(Woosh)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>



<\/p>

SIGNS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

The signs that you are losing someone are often there before the loss, but it is only in retrospect that you see them for what they were, these markers of what is to come, seared into behaviour; manifestations of a hidden prophecy waiting to play out. These signs <\/span>might have been <\/span><\/em>subtle twists and slants in Robin\u2019s lexicon - indications of assimilation with a social group that had not been of her choosing. They <\/span>might have been<\/span><\/em> eye-rolls and side-eyes and long-sighs and the kissings of teeth. They might have been absorption in a virtual world, in which strings of 0s and 1s had become more meaningful to him than anything else.\u00a0 But not for Robin.\u00a0 For Robin, the signs were of <\/span>absence.<\/span><\/em> When she touched him, he recoiled. When she spoke, he stayed silent.\u00a0 And when they walked together, as they always had, through their favourite stretches of woodland - the regions of which were rich with memories from his childhood; a temporal tapestry of experiences overlaid onto the spaces - ghostly visitors projected from her mind's eye, apparition-like onto the landscape ,(a stretch of river they had paddled in (age 6), swum in (age 9), fished in (age 13), a tree they had climbed on (age 7), carved names in (age 14) , picnicked under (age 12), \u00a0he strode ahead, so that rather than proceeding in mutually desired companionship, she was cast into the role of stalker.<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

It was on one of these walks, one bright Autumn morning in early October, that it happened.<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

METAMORPHOSIS<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

As they picked their way along the winding path that fringed the river, so familiar to her now that it often featured in some distortion or obfuscation in her dreams, a dark mood came over the landscape. Such was the swift and radical nature of the change, that she was led momentarily to doubt the lucidity of her perceptions. For the atmosphere of fear and foreboding was so intense and so perfectly executed that it appeared to be the product of some intentionality - a curator of mood - and was thus more naturally classified as a theatrical fabrication of her own mind rather than a product of the random flux and flow of nature.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

As the sky blackened with dense purple-grey clouds, that seemed themselves possessed with the mood they invoked within her, the wind whipped up in counterpart, howling beneath the screams of the birds it battered out of branches\u00a0 which waved and thrashed in the air above them like limbs of some terrible enraged kraken of the land - rumbling out\u00a0 creaks and groans beneath the earth as they strained against the anchorages that rooted them in the rain-soaked soil. And so in this theatre of fury, each player performed it's part in a forest-wide symphony that was so singular in tone and so congruently expressed by flora and fauna from micro to macro, that the whole forest seemed of one mind.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

But robin walked calmly on; though flurries of fallen leaves swirling about him, whipping and marking his calves, through thorns which tore at his skin and snagged his clothes, through the reeling and the rage he continued at a steady pace - peaceful and profit-like, his feet on the hummus-rich earth, metronoming for the tumult about him like a heartbeat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

\u00a0And as the fluster and fury climaxed with the crescendo of the storm, he changed. Not a slow and agonising metamorphosis, in which the body undergoes a gradual and painful process of vandalisation and self deformation in which it gnarls, corrupts, buckles, bows and bends into a new distorted animal incarnation. (For this was not a film).\u00a0 But a change that was rapid, efficient, and wholly without pain:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Like tea leaves in a teapot stirred into a whirl about a central axis, the wind whipped leaves from the forest floor into a swirl about him;\u00a0 they tornadoed first around around his legs, then higher and higher in a spiral of umber, corn, ochre and saffron-gold, until they covered him completely.\u00a0 Momentarily cloven in a fine cloak of paper-thin skeleton of leaf;\u00a0 a draping of fallen sorcerers each of whom had played their part in the miracle of turning light into all life - he disappeared from sight for long enough for her to wonder if some magic trick or cheap illusion was at play, until - a moment later with a rustle and rush the cloak fell away and a creature stepped forth that was no longer her son.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

Some sights one never forgets, and the image of that animal was etched on the back of her eyelids, it was there every time she closed her eyes, and in all of her dreams\u2026 The coat of deep, dappled, russet-brown shuning and glinting a rich chestnut brown in the light-sabre beams of sun that broke through the canopy and gilded the antlers branching above his head in a\u00a0 crown of bone, hewn in the form of the branches under which they now sheltered. Two watery orbs of Amber and Burnt Sienna, mottled with flecks and smudges of brown, perfect in their random placement, like intentional speckles on lalique glass eggs. His eyes were beautiful, but no longer human. For in them she saw no hint of recognition.\u00a0 And she remembered the sound, of the frantic pounding of hooves on earth, whrn - startled by a sudden awareness of her human proximity to him, the stag turned and bolted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

And so, he was gone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



<\/p>

Storms\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

Though she managed to return to her home, in the aftermath of her loss, alice's grief took hold of her and dominated her entire being, leaving no room for any other part of her to surface. She wailed and wept and mourned her loss with a ferocity that scared her for it seemed to promise only one form of resolution. But as things played out, resolution - when it finally came- came not in the form of another loss, but instead from a storm akin to that which had claimed her child.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

It took a storm to make her calm.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

It took a storm\u2019s wild winds, galloping like a stampede of wildebeest carven from the air, askew and a-slalom between trees and scrub rising from the plain of land where suburb peters into country-scrap.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

It took the feeling that she was safe and protected , as the house, though it creaked and groaned in the ramming force of air that battered its walls and wailed like a thousand angry souls raging to be let in, stood defiant and strong, nobly encasing her, as it was built to.<\/span><\/em><\/p>

\u00a0It took the rousing courage of a lone blackbird bird, single-handedly maintaining the dawn chorus - calmly singing solo into the dark and empty space of her garden, its melody untempered by and floating upon the roar and rage of the night.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

BUt more than anything else, it took seeing the wildness that she kept inside, reflected and outdone, diminished, and dulled, by the wrath of the storm-prelude to the dawn.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

There are such things as storms.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

There are such things as storms\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

There are such things as rage and wrath,<\/span><\/em><\/p>

\u00a0as much a part of nature as the bird\u2019s song\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

and in all their instances they pass.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>

There are such things as storms.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>


<\/p>

And as the storm faded,\u00a0 the bird\u2019s song continued. And so it would be with her, she knew; the light and the beauty would return.<\/span><\/em><\/p>




<\/p>

Recovery<\/span><\/strong><\/p>


<\/p>

During<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>the years after his departure, alice sought solace in the ancient kentish woodland in which they had spent so much of his youth -\u00a0 in the calm, dappled glens of 10000 eyes, where every sound she made was heard by the crows in the trees above her, by the earthworms and the centipedes impregnatinf the earth, by the foxes and rabbits in their burrows below and by everything in between. Where her every tread was felt by the organic, tubular networks that laced the earth and monitored her passage through their realm. As she walked beneath them, the trees whispered to each other of the transition of her son and the flux of all things. They spoke of how all but the simplest of lifeforms are composed of many others and how - in that way - they are themselves systems like the forest. They spoke of how systems belong to broader systems - trees to families of trees, families of trees to forests, and forests to the whole world, and how no level is ontologically privileged or holds greater claim to being an articulated and united individual than does any other. They spoke of how the failure of any system is - through another lense - a redistribution of parts to other systems. Of how micro and macro can endure the failure of a part, as a fallen branch neither destroys the tree, nor the forest, nor the microcellular life within its sap nor the fungal rot that feeds on its limbs. They whispered of the gothic beauty of the\u00a0 metamorphosis of decay; the bloom and flourish of a thousands of new lives from corpses of the old.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

From the forest she learnt that flux, flow, transfiguration and transmutation are to be cherished above all things, as they are the only things upon which one can rely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>

And so, with its multi-faceted, multi-sensory awareness, the forest tended her wounds. And as the wind stroked the bronchiole mass of forest canopy into waves, it ushered her onwards, to new things, to new life and new systems. And she picked herself up and walked onwards as they bid her - neither healed nor restored but transformed.<\/span>


by Molly Knight<\/span><\/p>


<\/p>","urlTitle":"the-storm","url":"\/blog\/the-storm\/","editListUrl":"\/my-blogs","editUrl":"\/my-blogs\/edit\/the-storm\/","fullUrl":"https:\/\/daedalus.foundation\/blog\/the-storm\/","featured":false,"published":true,"showOnSitemap":true,"hidden":false,"visibility":null,"createdAt":1708516292,"updatedAt":1709453052,"publishedAt":1709453052,"lastReadAt":null,"division":{"id":315888,"name":"Deadalus Foundation"},"tags":[],"metaImage":{"original":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/zqgjfxo2cdra2ubzzreqkn8cq90fb1juzac5iwhvmbafvjjf.png","thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/zqgjfxo2cdra2ubzzreqkn8cq90fb1juzac5iwhvmbafvjjf.png.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/zqgjfxo2cdra2ubzzreqkn8cq90fb1juzac5iwhvmbafvjjf.png.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"metaTitle":"","metaDescription":"","series":[],"similarReads":[{"id":37550,"title":"The Problem WIth AI Safety Isn't AI Safety","url":"\/blog\/the-problem-w-ith-ai-safety-isnt-ai-safety\/","urlTitle":"the-problem-w-ith-ai-safety-isnt-ai-safety","division":315888,"description":"The problem with AI Safety isn't AI Safety","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/fxcbmw5vw2wiaozmgtefxlgor8eiqzmgu7s5kgjmv0xzcwx4.png.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/fxcbmw5vw2wiaozmgtefxlgor8eiqzmgu7s5kgjmv0xzcwx4.png.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0},{"id":36811,"title":"Gardeners World","url":"\/blog\/gardeners-world\/","urlTitle":"gardeners-world","division":315888,"description":"Change. Too little and we suffocate. Too much and we are lost in chaos","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/0hxsd81uwyzg8atdkbjqhogk0jevxxozkmjonvsvfbbxmtza.png.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/0hxsd81uwyzg8atdkbjqhogk0jevxxozkmjonvsvfbbxmtza.png.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0}],"labels":[]}