Mental things are alone real: what is called corporeal nobody knows of; its dwelling-place is a fallacy, and its existence an imposture.
Willam Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment
Nip and Tuck.
As if the meticulous etchings of time upon a soul could be uplifted. Smoothed brow and purloined mouth. In intrigue with Nature yet in opposition bound to life in the cell, eternity's flesh recedes. So what misshapen subterfuge would dare outdo even life's meagre tokens, in such lurid light as bleaches them away?
Day 327
No, I would prefer not to get up. This liminal state suites me fine. This light on me, a dull, duplicated thing, a greyish pigment, pixels suffusing harsh rays. Muggy light, inconsistent with my rise. No, I'd rather not. Pim, the boy cat, inches closer, silky bristles brush my noseas he pivots, devilishly, to effect my wakening with whiskers. Soon I will have no choice, my rediscovered self broken by small motions, retreat of ghosts, and little empty bellies in need of filling.
Tune
Come voice to serve, some pang for fame, a light to guide the flight of garbled mind. and suture seeping wounds. If I sang a sembled tune, What Flight! Come song to sing, one bell to clang, a symphony of tolls to roll upon the air and quake a clogging mire. If I rang a shedding melody, Come Flight!
Beach
We slept for some hour or so only, before dawn. The night dissolved time. If I were to reconstruct events within the framework of hours, I am sure it would prove a puzzle without solution. I know that just after midnight we left the house and drove up over the cliffs and down to the beach. We walked along the sand. It was cold and there was no moon, only the stars, frigid in space above us; and the ocean, its edges swarming over our feet as we passed between unseen rocks. The cliffs behind offered up only vacant blackness – a beautiful, terrifying blackness that draws your attention and arrests it, erasing all other thoughts but a recognition of infinity.
I took off my shoes and followed the direction she’d passed into the shadows. I remember shadows, lots of them, but there could have been none, only the visual impression of stones and rocks against the sand. I found her perched on a rock, facing out to sea. I clambered onto the rock, feeling slightly foolish. There, holding my balance with difficulty, I put my arm around her for the first time. It was cold, and the waves that crashed down and unfolded before us sharpened the sensation. We spoke, but the words that passed between us were then, and are now looking back, unimportant as unfit to express our other perceptions, as anatomy is silent on the import of the brush of a finger across the hip as it curves into the pubis, or how the smell of skin changes with arousal.
It occurs to me now, although without a doubt, then too: we were completely alone. It seems so ordinary a fact, so simple and unexciting. And yet, without that fact, the entirety of the experience would be made pedestrian, perhaps even ironic, a cruel trick concealing that solitude is an unattainable state except through the lens of relativity and so not attainable at all. As we were absorbed into the darkness, like ghosts passing through dimensions, the lights of houses on the sea cliff seemed distant and alien. We watched them, we spoke briefly of them, but they were not really there. We walked arm in arm.
It is a constant failing in recording any experience at a later date that we cannot avoid the dislocation of event and memory, as if without a second thought our memories are assumed to be not the events at all, but the impression left by them, the footprints of experience if not the experience itself. We reach back in search of essentials. Events are merely the necessary skeletal fragments around which memories are wrapped. So we walked back, embracing, and I remember not each step we took or even the tracks made by our feet in the sand. I remember most of all feeling at peace.
Untitled March 3 2021
If it's been your way to reveal such things as may deter, and encounter only to discern, then now it must be mine (since with you no other role contends) to whisper softly my contentment while tired thoughts of isolation entwine, finally and drift away.
Riff on Clare’s Original
Where is the sun when I arise? I want some bird to sing To dream her song in sleep’s demise Each dawn is a birth For a moment’s ease, ceased burden The night’s release, unwelcome I love the sun, the beckoning glow That enriches everything It enjoins everything below Like swallow’s spiralled wing A motion magical, in flight, A glimpse and then, a parting light
Dear Russell
There is a great danger, I realise, in having spent too few days in a place in which I recently lived, in forgetting that I no longer make up part of the social fabric, and that I have no more right to become so than any tourist. The danger is greater, in fact, for having lived there and then moved away, than if I were ever only a tourist. This is a painful realisation, for I continue to feel stronger associations to New Orleans than anywhere else. All evidence of belonging will gradually disappear; my Louisiana driver's license, my former neighbours, the faltering looks of recognition on the faces of people with whom I had daily contact - until the time comes when I will truly 'visit' New Orleans rather than return, and the familiarity I still cling to will be wrenched free from my conscious mind and forced into that part reserved for sketchy memories.
Dutilleux: Toute un Monde Lointain
When I am Torn and Taken
When I am torn and taken by man’s and sun's talons, I, writhing small, squalling tears; a blessing light descends and beckons from my holy place, the garden. When I am torn and taken I return to the nesting place, cushioned by the rays of a golden eye, curled inward round the echo of a white womb; my soul spreads alar, barred from nothing needed I slip gently from the thrall of flesh and crisis.
