Thursday, September 14, 2006

Today I Am Not Good with Words (Ver.3: switching to the epistolatory form)

Clouds trap the sky, threatening; the air is heavy with words. Words that have the weight of droplets; the kind that sleet earthwards, crystals breaking on the pavement, streaming on the window.

I confide in you, Monsieur, troubled by the writing we are immersed in. The air is steamy, damp. And the communities, internet colonies, are like flocks of birds flying in scattered formations. Today, mon cher, I am not good with words. I say what people already know.

You ask me to describe her? I trace patterns of words to read the braille she is. It is like surfing where the screen becomes a crystal ball of tides. Posts open and close like visions. Writing hides in an ocean continually closing over itself.

Her stories are long, drawn out, each paragraph a wave dissolving the sand, the shore, encroaching. She is the rising tide; it is overwhelming. My computer screen is splashed with spilling breakers.

Must I imagine her? Like seaweed, hair, dark, long, pulled back loosely with wisps softening around the face, I think. I've never seen her; shall never gaze upon a photograph. She wears only veils of words, an obscuring sea spray of a forcefulness that surprises.

While I want to stay in the imagery of water, Monsieur, the metaphors shift. Let us leave the desolate shore and come into the city of words. Where her house is and where she moves like an exotic figment, a flash of fabric and skin.

A blackness of cloth, surely, but not without red. Brooch of a poppy. Toss of bead earrings, like Native American dream catchers. Or that ruby rising out of a ring of melted, cast sun, the only one on her hands woven with pale veins and the delicacy of a musician's fingers. Open her closet and you will find on the floor red canvas tennis shoes, ginger petal satin Chinese slippers, patent leather ruby heels, flaming red slick knee-high boots. On the shelf, a vinyl orange belt, crimson silk sash, red opera gloves, a vermilion felt hat. Dragging down the white wall like Barnett Newman's "Lema sabachthani" series, a funerary dirge of black dresses, a heavy curtain of silk, cotton, corduroy, rayon, wool hung on cedar-scented hangers.

Her writing spills out of its unkempt garden, overflows with the redness of a sensuality that is both innocent and over-ripe, tended and unweeded. It is like Oscar Wilde's "Salome"; if she who holds the platter on which the prophet's head rests was a writer. Or Beardsley's version in black lines, but aged: white skin, black habit, and the blood red splashes that are uniquely hers. I smell perfumes and compost: perhaps her writing resembles a mass of cut flowers in varying stages, some dying, some bursting forth; floral, with dark passion.

But always the salt swirling about. It leeches the soil. Dying follows her. She's in a difficult economic situation, desperate really. How she came to penury is a tale that grows more strange in each telling. The publications for which she wrote were autumnal leaves that fell and floated away. Her fish bones were broken and reset crookedly. Yet she fishes, and scales mercilessly what's caught. Is she a victim? Or a perpetrator? I don't know.

One doesn't know the true story or if there are any true stories.

An onrush of waves now, from the sky, from the ocean, it doesn't matter. Salt water in my mouth. Monsieur, I beseech you, help me break free of the undertow. Why does she silence us - I, and the others? She speaks in the diminutive. Sarcasm of a sea-side parrot, words twisted in the ruffle of virid and cinnabar feathers, inside the sharp beak. Have I found someone to beleaguer my laboured writing? It becomes unbearable, the denouncer's voice. Do I imagine a fertile slope for my Sisyphean ball of letters instead of an ocean of caustic words? Why can't I turn and go elsewhere, where welcomes wait?

Monsieur.

Your beloved.

5 comments:

  1. They have seen the biggest planet found to this moment just this week. It is much, much bigger than Jupiter and so light that it might float effortlessly along the surface of the waters and so ethereal that you might fly directly through it, and so far off across our galaxy that we can only visit and rest on its warm clouds via our fiction.

    This universe of ours is mysterious and filled with words that chase thoughts that chase dreams that chase, perhaps, the yearning of our souls.

    These words that spill and pour, that crawl and fly, that repose and explode, they might represent unique ways in which the stars are shared. Are there victims? Are there perpetrators? Are there ghosts? Are there possibilities?

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  2. "Where her house is and where she moves like an exotic figment, a flash of fabric and skin." -- Such a visceral, motion-full image for me. The metaphor only appears to shift, for in my mind's eye she is floating....

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  3. Narrator, you have written a poem and it is simply beautiful. And so inspirational I hope you don't mind if I record it in my little "'moleskine'"...

    e_journeys, she is a strange character, I'm not sure who she is, but I know who she's based on.

    I think she's part of a very difficult mother story for me, and I can see why I'm feeling compelled to write it... my mother's almost the opposite of the character, she's not literary or educated or graceful, but she's caustic. The moment where one of my life stories and something that happened in the the streams of comments in a blog post at an anonymous site struck and ignited I found this story unfolding. I don't know if I'm ready to write it yet, but one day will attempt to - not as a personal autobiography but as something perhaps more archetypal, though the seeds of very real experience form the foundation.

    Meaning, I don't think this version works. The shorter version perhaps held together in that mysterious way poetic things do, kind of hovering words that nearly burst apart but don't quite and can take the reader into a mystery. This version's come untethered somewhat, I think. But I understand why- through this story I gaze at what is gaping and painful from my childhood and in a continuing very difficult relationship, and I obviously don't want to go there. Perhaps the next version should be about resisting what's pulling you in!

    And, it'll only grow in length - sigh... :)

    You are both powerful writers, and dedicated to your art, and I thank you both, just thank you... you know!

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  4. I love the idea of trying different versions, and the search for what pulls people in (and perhaps what pulls people in too far) is the whole thing... so this has, obviously, been a thrill to watch.

    Also, clearly, inspiring.

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  5. Narrator, it's interesting how this piece is growing the way a drawing or painting might - that's never happened to me before, adding a layer of metaphor to what's there rather than lengthening by adding another section. The sea wasn't in this piece before; it is now. And more is calling.

    If this is inspiring, well that's most wonderful to hear.

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A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___