Saturday 29 December 2012

on a tide of time



















I’m so conscious of the evanescence of experience, so conscious of the fact that everything we do, everybody we know, is carried along on a tide of time and will disappear, that I have a strong sense of wanting to pin experience down before it disappears.


Frank Auerbach
















nothing can be pinned down, though~



















Tuesday 25 December 2012

after christmas eve







i woke up in the middle of the night and, unable to go back to sleep, i went into the living room. after candles had been lit, presents exchanged and candidly opened, wishes made, laughter heard, candles blown out, doors shut behind, everything lay now before me, left to itself, in the quietness of another life, unseen, unknown.











this is what the christmas tree - what everything - looks like when photographed in the dark, camera held tight against my chest - our real nature revealed: light.












under the tree, there lay the puzzle we had completed together, before going to bed. i could have thought of some symbolic meaning, the setting was right for such deep, important visions. yet all i could think of was how beautifully the world glimmered in the dark, and how dangerously frail its unsteady contours appeared - dream-like.













there i found her shoes, too. she had insisted to wear these ones, fond as she was of the little white stars on the straps. you cannot see the stars now - but this is how it always is with stars, perhaps. they are never to be seen, only to be imagined, especially at night.













these are the rail tracks of a train which never stops running, even when bridges between here and there have broken down. 












later, when she finds out that all trains eventually stop, she will hopefully have a friend to sing for her: When darkness comes / And pain is all around / Like a bridge over troubled water / I will lay me down / Sail on, silvergirl / Sail on by / I’m sailing right behind / Like a bridge over troubled water / I will ease your mind / Like a bridge over troubled water / I will ease your mind.

for now, she and her best friend chilly willy are still unaware of the big, important task which lies before them (and at which they will fail, i know. i would like to believe, as some say, that failing is part of the music, but here - i honestly don't know). 












things have been falling apart, recently, and how quickly. and now, i wonder at how still and poised they are, peaceful, unto themselves, unaware of grace and falling, all these things that we don't know how to look at. 












you called me the other day and told me that my voice - you had always said about my voice that it had "the sound of bells", and i would always laugh about such silliness - puts you at peace with the world.













i remember how, every time emily left, bagpuss and all the others would wake up. yet here, things hadn't come to life, they were motionless and quiet, as they always were. 

still, among them, in the dark of the night, some stir of life, slight as the drifting of a curtain, came into being. perhaps it was i, and not things, that was coming to life, unawares. 






Monday 17 December 2012

and the whitest of orchids









no matter how  - and the whitest of orchids is ashen cloud against my glow -
no matter how warm, how bright, how pure -
i have failed. one always fails. i have asked, just once, just this time, for a different law: that i might be allowed to cross the bridge. that the radiance of what i am, the entire constellation of what is called, i suppose, "myself", could reach you at the other end, fill you like a beam of light. you, shattered with recognition, my orchid thrusting its roots into you, growing out of your mouth. the only possible path for what is, and cannot be any other way.

no. the truth of a person cannot be lifted, as one would lift a piece of luggage before a hasty departure, cannot be transferred and placed into another, to grow there, quietly, like a seed. one flower, and only one, carried within, inscribed into itself, from the beginning. the truth of the seed cannot be broken, cannot be warped into anything else. yet no matter how i hurry to reach your arms, the one who looks at me from there, invented by you, grins back, her face an ugly, pitiful mask.


there is nothing more treacherous than bridges. they give one hope, one ardently takes one step after another only to find oneself, at some point, suspended above the abyss and the other waving
welcome, just one more step and i will catch you, i will hold you, beloved, unaware that the defilement is already at work, in each word, in each gesture, that the fall into time has already begun.

















Thursday 13 December 2012

Monday 10 December 2012

by unfolding my flowers








they had promised there would be snow the next day. 
i woke up and ran to the window, to no avail. so i had to let my flowers rise and take over the grey, indifferent expanse. iridescence of snow, even on my skin. i knew you wouldn't notice them and yet i was longing to hear your steps, crushing them on your way to me. in the end, though, i also painted a green rectangle in the snow, perhaps i meant it just as a reminder that i should invent you like this, ruthless steps and all, every time i would be tempted to think that i could keep, by unfolding my flowers against the world, grief at a distance.














Sunday 9 December 2012