migraine.
lying on the sofa blankly, low-level tv consciousness idling,
barely ticking over, staring endlessly at the big box of which i remember only
landscapes, not what was happening inside them. in the desert, on the ice
cap, under the rocks and stones a small world teeming with life, but nothing
but rocks on the moon - so they say in the papers... i dreamt of the moon
last night, it was a cold place with a bouncy surface, something like cheese,
but not green. now i am awake, still feverish, and the lamp throws shadows on
the yellow walls. i lie on my back beneath the light and cut the shadows with
finger shadow scissors, while words play shadow tricks on my mind, remembering
things -
rock, paper, scissors, darnit you always pulled the same one as me, every
damn time. uncanny. were we the same inside? did we work the same way, was
our wiring the same? that should have scared me but it didn't, it only brought
a lift of eyebrow, a shrug, a conspiratorial grin, each and every time
flick to the window, two planes rising slowly drawing diagonal parallel
lines across the sky. they shine like stars. this is what i want, to travel
like that, separate but parallel, never following or leading or fighting for
space but relaxed, and going at my own speed - just able to look round
occasionally and find that conspiratorial grin.
who goes there?
friend or
foe?
ah definitely friend.
hate this shitty cough, keep thinking of all the little alveoli going pop
pop pop and now i'm shivering
hot head = cold hands
short skirt = cold
knees
can't
stop
coughing,
feels like knives, hands clutch, eyes
water reaching blindly for the kitchen tap gotta get a drink or i'll choke -
shit! thump crash, and on the floor fallen broken almost perfectly in half a
thick-bottomed glass beaker. clear, beautiful sharp gleaming edge with a
blueness to it or maybe green, a sea colour, rippled like water. i lift it to
look through, careful not to cut myself, and see
here in my hand
sharp-edged, prismatic fragments of a world, and the
spaces between them
reflecting infinity.
late afternoon and already outside the dark is drawing in. here in this high
narrow house above the city lashed by howling winds, rain all around, i could
believe myself to be on the only island of living things in this whole bleak
place... the sky, rag-rolled three shades of damp translucent grey, slides
by as if i and not it were moving. like backdrops in old movies it rolls past
the window while the wind cranks it up faster and faster, whirl and spin of
leaves, of litter, plastic bags roosting briefly in the trees and flapping away
and all the while the frantic jangling of the wind chimes sounds like breaking
glass made tangled melody -
all is movement.
and i am the still point
at its centre, the eye of the sphere of chaos, axonometrically projected and
orbiting around me.
when i am not here, the world disappears, or reforms
itself in shapes of fire and shadow distorted by dream: we are all centres of
our own worlds,
this is how it should be.