Tuesday, January 25, 2005
mercy hope, faith and love and treason...
The scene is set with the scent of fallen flower petals and the sounds of raindrops hitting the ground. The look in one eye, reflecting the Western sky against the setting sun and mountaintops, clear against the horizon remains still, shifting through raindrop cursed actualizations and focusing on my heart. Words will not intrude on this memory, nor will it be compromised by knowledge of what is to come. For this memory, little matters except the salve-feel of arms around my back, the silent notation of pleasure registered in an imperceptible smile and brought to life by a thousand positive replies.
There is always more to discover in the halls of my memory palace, etched into walls or pressed into momentary service as a rider on the storm, a cool place to watch the wreckage of cars, girls, and balls floating by. Every drug known to man struts by in an parade of unfeeling poses, masking agents to the harsh reality that the memory palace has limits, and these limits cannot be fractured, not by crystal javelins or tiny straws. Joe Henry sings in the background of the memory, protected as it were, a statue of an tough jawed Jersey girl still trying to figure out where to stick the saber between short ribs and rasped breath.
Knowledge and understanding grab me tightly, throwing distortion aside, and I see a girl with blonde hair in a green dress dance in the sunlight. The concordance of her movement towards me, ever closer, always Always, clear to me as the first glimpse of grass at Fenway, a sliver through the opening of the entranceway to the field. For a moment those arms are real, those lips still call against the better judgment of the sanest aphrodisiac, the freedom to choose from amongst the many possibilities that shout my name. Her avatar strikes me, and I can smell the sun and wind, mixed with her perfume and shampoo, and feel the dust kicked up by the Western winds against my face. Faster they seem to murmur, ever faster, ever farther.
The scent, falling off the engraved image like specs of gold pushing through the air to my nose, is warm, pleasing, totally ensconced by the positive associations pin wheeling through my body. Nascent tones overwhelm me, and for a moment I am standing in front of a ramshackle white clapboard house, holding something to my chest, pressure of a thousand hugs gone sour, battery acid in my mouth and on my lips. The house vanishes in a blaze of fire and smoke, masking the Western skyline rising from behind. The sun, for a moment so warm and inviting, a late afternoon nap or the tangled embrace of your missionary lover, fades against the darkness brewing from your house, there’s nothing I can do anymore.
Seconds later, my tears dry and the scene is replaced, the memory again safely stored away. The true nature of bittersweet reaches my heart, and for a brief moment, I wish I could be split in half, right down the middle, seizing some 19th century notion of ripping the evil out of the good, but this leaves me dissatisfied, and all I desire now is to leave the memory palace before it gets too late.
My own indiscretion at arousing this particular memory stands tall before me, and the innocence of the participants is only found in residual traces, scattered along empty doorways and blowing out open windows on winds I can’t even feel. My past selves cry out in agony, angered and saddened to be presented here to current me, living somewhere in a shell just beyond Appalachia. Each asks stinging questions that I can’t answer, all beginning with why’s and how’s, demanding Answers, and I have nothing to give but shamefaced looks and guilty smiles. A skeleton crew comes round to sweep this hallway of my palace, and I know it’s time to leave. The crew grunt past me, grimacing skull faces eternally cleaning up the drooping bits of blues and greens that swirl and eddy in the memory current, pushing in on each other, mixing precious symbols into paste, and rot delineations to nothingness.
My eyes opened, I am sitting in my chair, surrounded by things with clearly defined edges and sharp corners. There is a solid formation here, the remains of trees and ore, everything tangible in the sensation of touch. The sun is slightly lower in the sky, but still present, and waking appendages at me from a distance. A woman walking her dog by my window notices the strains of Joe Henry climbing through the air, and smiles to herself, never really considering what she saw.
There is always more to discover in the halls of my memory palace, etched into walls or pressed into momentary service as a rider on the storm, a cool place to watch the wreckage of cars, girls, and balls floating by. Every drug known to man struts by in an parade of unfeeling poses, masking agents to the harsh reality that the memory palace has limits, and these limits cannot be fractured, not by crystal javelins or tiny straws. Joe Henry sings in the background of the memory, protected as it were, a statue of an tough jawed Jersey girl still trying to figure out where to stick the saber between short ribs and rasped breath.
Knowledge and understanding grab me tightly, throwing distortion aside, and I see a girl with blonde hair in a green dress dance in the sunlight. The concordance of her movement towards me, ever closer, always Always, clear to me as the first glimpse of grass at Fenway, a sliver through the opening of the entranceway to the field. For a moment those arms are real, those lips still call against the better judgment of the sanest aphrodisiac, the freedom to choose from amongst the many possibilities that shout my name. Her avatar strikes me, and I can smell the sun and wind, mixed with her perfume and shampoo, and feel the dust kicked up by the Western winds against my face. Faster they seem to murmur, ever faster, ever farther.
The scent, falling off the engraved image like specs of gold pushing through the air to my nose, is warm, pleasing, totally ensconced by the positive associations pin wheeling through my body. Nascent tones overwhelm me, and for a moment I am standing in front of a ramshackle white clapboard house, holding something to my chest, pressure of a thousand hugs gone sour, battery acid in my mouth and on my lips. The house vanishes in a blaze of fire and smoke, masking the Western skyline rising from behind. The sun, for a moment so warm and inviting, a late afternoon nap or the tangled embrace of your missionary lover, fades against the darkness brewing from your house, there’s nothing I can do anymore.
Seconds later, my tears dry and the scene is replaced, the memory again safely stored away. The true nature of bittersweet reaches my heart, and for a brief moment, I wish I could be split in half, right down the middle, seizing some 19th century notion of ripping the evil out of the good, but this leaves me dissatisfied, and all I desire now is to leave the memory palace before it gets too late.
My own indiscretion at arousing this particular memory stands tall before me, and the innocence of the participants is only found in residual traces, scattered along empty doorways and blowing out open windows on winds I can’t even feel. My past selves cry out in agony, angered and saddened to be presented here to current me, living somewhere in a shell just beyond Appalachia. Each asks stinging questions that I can’t answer, all beginning with why’s and how’s, demanding Answers, and I have nothing to give but shamefaced looks and guilty smiles. A skeleton crew comes round to sweep this hallway of my palace, and I know it’s time to leave. The crew grunt past me, grimacing skull faces eternally cleaning up the drooping bits of blues and greens that swirl and eddy in the memory current, pushing in on each other, mixing precious symbols into paste, and rot delineations to nothingness.
My eyes opened, I am sitting in my chair, surrounded by things with clearly defined edges and sharp corners. There is a solid formation here, the remains of trees and ore, everything tangible in the sensation of touch. The sun is slightly lower in the sky, but still present, and waking appendages at me from a distance. A woman walking her dog by my window notices the strains of Joe Henry climbing through the air, and smiles to herself, never really considering what she saw.
