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The weeks and months spent alone with himself were crowded by clamorous phantoms, speaking in unintelligible tongues, mercilessly badgering and taunting him, making his life miserable, until one day, in hopeless resignation, in helpless submission to their relentless demands, their incomprehensible commands, their obstreperous promptings, he began to compose books in his head, merely to appease them, to observe the offices of their irrational orderings, to come to terms with their gratuitous insistences, even while remaining all the while their vassal and fief, their servant and prisoner in the sleeping world.
The mental books he composed in the dense forests and desert wildernesses of their obscure urgings were mere mechanical compilations of animal lore, tales of the beasts of the wood, there was no lack of these, they had been here forever, waiting to be released from their cages, retrieved from the annals of the memoria, refashioned over and over, incarnated again and again, embodied, disembodied, captured, recaptured, lost and found and lost again in an endless circularity of sequence and pattern, of original and copy, of design and decay, of construction and disrepair.
Then came the morning when golden rays flooded the upper strata of woods around the cabin. The colours of dawn and flame bloomed upon the tufted throats of birds that piped their sweet mindless songs through the upreaching branches. The rustling of a distant stream washed away the chill of the night and life bestirred itself, yawned and stretched, as if the long spell of pensiveness and longing, obscurity and doubt, were finally over. Through a rent in the tall umbrella of trees, a bright beam of light entered the lower realm, exciting friction and conflict in his heart. Within moments a thought would burst forth, and the terror of the false sunrise would begin once again.
The mental books he composed in the dense forests and desert wildernesses of their obscure urgings were mere mechanical compilations of animal lore, tales of the beasts of the wood, there was no lack of these, they had been here forever, waiting to be released from their cages, retrieved from the annals of the memoria, refashioned over and over, incarnated again and again, embodied, disembodied, captured, recaptured, lost and found and lost again in an endless circularity of sequence and pattern, of original and copy, of design and decay, of construction and disrepair.
Then came the morning when golden rays flooded the upper strata of woods around the cabin. The colours of dawn and flame bloomed upon the tufted throats of birds that piped their sweet mindless songs through the upreaching branches. The rustling of a distant stream washed away the chill of the night and life bestirred itself, yawned and stretched, as if the long spell of pensiveness and longing, obscurity and doubt, were finally over. Through a rent in the tall umbrella of trees, a bright beam of light entered the lower realm, exciting friction and conflict in his heart. Within moments a thought would burst forth, and the terror of the false sunrise would begin once again.
Flying mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) and morning fog in Golden Gate Park: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2009
Canada geese (Branta canadensis) and morning fog in Golden Gate Park: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2009
5 comments:
Lovely, Tom — a milky, dreaming, even slowly rising wailing piece —
"Through a rent in the tall umbrella of trees, a bright beam of light entered the lower realm, exciting friction and conflict in his heart."
How can we help not to think of the good doctor, poem stethoscope curled around his neck, that knowing smile —
"If anything of moment results - so much the better. And so much the more likely will it be that no one will want to see it."
(Spring and All, WCW)
Between you and me — it's raining in the woods this morning. Cutie Pie (the kitten) ran to the windows to see what that was all about.
Bob,
The anti-hero of this skewed little romance needs a Cutey Pie at his window. For that matter, he needs a window.
Raining here today too, and three big riot control choppers hovering over the town, just in case of - or maybe to incite? -- a state of chaos.
Nobody knows any more what's going down in this neck of the woods. If anybody ever did. Friction and conflict -- "the truth about us" -- that text of the doc's an early prescient diagnosis, now that springtime's but a memory... a grey and sodden autumnal, something's in the air and
Somehow
it seems to destroy us
It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off
No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car
I am liking the feeling of this. The feeling of despair almost and yet hope.The battle between the two, I am reading this.
The images of the 'Through a rent in the tall umbrella of trees, a bright beam of light entered the lower realm' and then back to the 'exciting friction and conflict in his heart. Within moments a thought would burst forth, and the terror of the false sunrise would begin once again'
But prior to such the build up and images within hold my read in place.
And just to touch in a little more Tom from where you left off —
I have watched
the city from a distance at night
and wondered why I wrote no poem.
Come! yes,
the city is ablaze for you
and you stand and look at it.
And they are right. There is
no good in the world except out of
a woman and certain women alone
for certain.
We share an old man back 'n ' forth.
Parts of each day are staying warm.
We think of you both.
Bob
SarahA, despair and yet hope, what else have we got. And that battle in the heart. Conflict, tension... and then out of it all, something happens.
Bob,
The other night I hobbled up to Indian Rock, where the native folk ground acorns for mash once upon a millennium, and gazed out over the burning gunmetal haze across the bay to the glimmering far shore, like looking across the Styx. It is not ablaze for me. The characters in romances, foolish bumblers though they may be, are supposed to move in an arc from alienation to identity, but in this urban mundus interruptus the movement is all in the other direction. In one ear and out the other.
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