Thursday, July 24, 2014
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
You cannot conjure up a past if there is no past to remember, but you can imagine a future a thousand times over and then a thousand times more. The time that has passed away must means stay where it is, but many change it and change it, and like the future we imagine, everyday the past is different. Yesterday she was the weeping widow. Last week she was the flower-girl at your wedding. A few months ago she swept the dust from the ages of your memory and was a bluebird in the sky of your thought. Today he will be the hero of a thousand nations as he stands up to speak for what he believes. Yesterday he was the broken man beside the road who knew not whence he came or where he was going. Tomorrow perhaps he will be the stranger whom you have loved for the rest of your life.
When there is nothing, or very little left, memory becomes all we have. If unattended it shall twist and turn itself into weird and fantastic shapes, and if allowed to continue unhindered will fold and fold on itself until it becomes wholly unrecognizable, the recurring stranger in the mirror of thought. Where have you been? Where are you now? Where will you go? What are you doing? They ask us these seeming questions day after day after day. There is a written thing somewhere that contains the correct and appropriate answers to all these, and more besides that we do not know of yet.
I cannot stem the tide of thought, nor curb the onslaught of memory. They spill into my dreaming and stop my eyes and ears. Folly to look upon these, maybe. Perchance they take my face away from me, and I am no longer what I was. Change betide me. Simple, simple fools we are, in these mists which they take to be happiness. Simple people in simple times, but that was a very long time ago when our grandfathers played at being boys, before they all went away to the wars. Before they filled by force the lungs of our peoples with black smoke and blacker poison, and the minds of the powers were worms in the dirt.
Sweet and bitter sorrow (that stops our mouths with distant words and fills our eyes with red tears) abide by me! Even the things which mattered seem not so anymore. There is always a fear of falling into incongruence, infallibility denied; the blankness dank and dark: the whiteness of pale and meaningless words like a storm in the desert by the sea. Still the yearning and the chasm yawning, still the beckoning away like a dream of a dream.
REMEMBER? REMEMBER WHAT?
When there is nothing, or very little left, memory becomes all we have. If unattended it shall twist and turn itself into weird and fantastic shapes, and if allowed to continue unhindered will fold and fold on itself until it becomes wholly unrecognizable, the recurring stranger in the mirror of thought. Where have you been? Where are you now? Where will you go? What are you doing? They ask us these seeming questions day after day after day. There is a written thing somewhere that contains the correct and appropriate answers to all these, and more besides that we do not know of yet.
I cannot stem the tide of thought, nor curb the onslaught of memory. They spill into my dreaming and stop my eyes and ears. Folly to look upon these, maybe. Perchance they take my face away from me, and I am no longer what I was. Change betide me. Simple, simple fools we are, in these mists which they take to be happiness. Simple people in simple times, but that was a very long time ago when our grandfathers played at being boys, before they all went away to the wars. Before they filled by force the lungs of our peoples with black smoke and blacker poison, and the minds of the powers were worms in the dirt.
Sweet and bitter sorrow (that stops our mouths with distant words and fills our eyes with red tears) abide by me! Even the things which mattered seem not so anymore. There is always a fear of falling into incongruence, infallibility denied; the blankness dank and dark: the whiteness of pale and meaningless words like a storm in the desert by the sea. Still the yearning and the chasm yawning, still the beckoning away like a dream of a dream.
REMEMBER? REMEMBER WHAT?
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
After a prolonged absence there is usually nothing anyone or anybody can do to ease the inevitable numbness that becomes everyday. Now, my darling, listen carefully. They will come for us soon. I can hear them with their sunday silver and polished plates of glass and their grandmothers' porcelain: the clink and the crash -- the dive and the dash. I do not have a lot of time to tell you what I have to tell you now. Under no circumstances whatsoever must you come to look for me. Soon I will pass away and only shadows will mark the place and time of my passing. Perhaps you will recognize me; I will not blame you if you do not. It has been such a long time, my love.
The words are in the books: they have taken the words and hidden them in the books that we dreamt about. You must be the one to look for them: you know what they are, and I will not be spared the time. The yellow one will be somewhere with sunshine (a travelogue on Tuscany, perhaps?), and the blue ones will all be on the bottom of the sea. They are too dark for anything like the sky. The red ones they will have all hidden in the written hearts of men, mark my words on this. Look in Nabokov and Dostoyevsky for the lost heliotrope ones that even we could never find at first. Then, Tolkien, unlikely as it may sound. Apparently they have a great and perverse love of hobbits. The deep and the dark will not work: it will fail us at the end. You must know this and go willingly. Too many tales have ended because of fettered mind and faint heart and I would not have you thus.
Know this: In the corner of the dark and deep (after the leviathan and the gorgon have killed each other for the heart you bear in your chest) I will be there.
Please hold on until then.
The words are in the books: they have taken the words and hidden them in the books that we dreamt about. You must be the one to look for them: you know what they are, and I will not be spared the time. The yellow one will be somewhere with sunshine (a travelogue on Tuscany, perhaps?), and the blue ones will all be on the bottom of the sea. They are too dark for anything like the sky. The red ones they will have all hidden in the written hearts of men, mark my words on this. Look in Nabokov and Dostoyevsky for the lost heliotrope ones that even we could never find at first. Then, Tolkien, unlikely as it may sound. Apparently they have a great and perverse love of hobbits. The deep and the dark will not work: it will fail us at the end. You must know this and go willingly. Too many tales have ended because of fettered mind and faint heart and I would not have you thus.
Know this: In the corner of the dark and deep (after the leviathan and the gorgon have killed each other for the heart you bear in your chest) I will be there.
Please hold on until then.
Friday, July 29, 2011
"But he was too healthy and sanguine to be wretched, he was too much alive.
Yet his soul was wretched almost to hopelessness."-The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence.
I am afraid that I shall go mad, or that I am mad already and do not know it, and so cannot fix it. I am afraid that I shall go so mad one day I shall eat myself up and disappear.
Yet his soul was wretched almost to hopelessness."-The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence.
I am afraid that I shall go mad, or that I am mad already and do not know it, and so cannot fix it. I am afraid that I shall go so mad one day I shall eat myself up and disappear.
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