You are not here.

Her name was Cas. Same primary school. That time of life when so many trees arch over a sun-filled sky, and warmth hangs in the air, amniotic, filled with murmuring laughter, hums and faint calls, now somehow imbued also with sighs, or maybe just a sigh, one long sigh, extending far far back like an umbilical cord to history. Your history. Did someone call it sepia?

And we were the closest of friends. She lived a few streets away. I would visit her . Her parents weren't strict at all, but they weren't not-strict in that bad way. They let us out to play in the park. She smiled so much. I'm sure I did too. And when I see sunlight, sometimes, it's her I see. She was like a sister, a sibling. Her parents even loved having me, maybe felt pity, thinking of the I left so readily to visit them. I had no one else but her. During high school she left the country with her family. Gone, and for a time it truly broke me.

A long time. And one thing I tried, eventually, after realising that I had no way of contacting her, one thing I tried wasn't to think she was gone. Or rather, to think she was truly gone, absolutely gone. She had already been missing for such a time. From me. So I saw these fading memories, and fading smiles, and I imagined instead that she was dead, that she had died, because she had died, the girl I knew then, and I knew at the time as I do now that if I were to see her once more, she would not be the companion who had soothed the most jagged edges of my copper childhood, with whom I had shared so many stoney meadow paths overtaken by moss. She had died the moment I had stopped seeing her. So, that girl, gone, dead, was at least frozen, still, one thing not to be stolen from me, residing in some white-walled, cozy recess in the rooms of my mind. Still with me, purely by her absolute inexistence, her complete vanishment.

She died long ago, and even as I say that - as you have already guessed - I know I tell only half the story.

Apple Tree

I'm stood, hands in my pockets, in the garden of my family , watching my father pluck the underdeveloped apples from one of our thin trees. The earth is still dark in patches where the other trees burned.

He talks to me - amicable today - "You have to remove these smaller ones under the other apples. Otherwise they stop there being room for the fruit to properly grow."

And all I can think of is how very, very late it is. How much more you could have taught me, long ago, what you should have taught me instead of leaving me to learn. I should never have learnt some things so late on. And some things you should have stopped me learning all together. But today you're happy to ignore our past, and you smile like nothing ever happened between us. And for some terrible reason, I'm still here, stood in this garden, when I, too, should have left a long, long time ago.

But that was not how love was supposed to grow. Amidst the shards of another shattered love, handed bit by bit to an other, a shared story, collective fragments. Not to meet while such pain still rakes their throat each night, a pain they whisper of to this new one. At least not a healthy love, yet perhaps in the margins of that union, where one still carries the damage of another gone, they could have at least spawned something powerful, primal, if not lasting.

'Though here's a song they might of sung'

"Mad woman on another tour;
Everything she is she spits on the floor,
An old man tells me she's sicker than the rest,
God I've never been afraid like this."

Only Smiles Come And Go

There's this cat that hangs around outside the apartments. All white, except for a dark paw. I'm not sure if there's even an owner, people who live here just feed him whenever. He's pretty thin though.

I was on my way to a lecture, closing the heavy gate that leads into the carpark and the back entrance to the rooms, when I saw him loitering just beyond it. The gate's just bars, so it's not like he couldn't slip through, but there he was, sat forlorn, as if he couldn't get in. As I turned from the gate to smile at him, he lifted his tail up and brushed against my ankle. I've known him a while, so he's used to me.

When I bent to scratch behind his ears I saw the feet of a girl about my age stop by the cat. At first I thought she wanted to get past and into the apartments, but then I looked up and didn't recognise her.

"What's his name?"

I stood up.

"I don't actually know, but he lives around here."

"Like you?"

"Yeah."

She leant down, reaching out to him. Her hand froze. "He doesn't bite, does he?"

"Hah, he does actually, but his teeth just kind of hold your hand in them. He doesn't press in his teeth. And if he swipes at you he keeps his claws in."

She flashed a grin. "If he scratches me I'll do the same to you." She reached out, and the cat let her run her fingers down his spine. When she smiled, her lips drew back and showed gums. Her teeth were white. Her skin dark with the warmth of another day's sun. Perhaps another life's sun, an ancestor's sun. Her eyes, I'm sure, illuminated the most profound caverns.

She rose, and I saw for the first time the silent friend with her. She smiled again, leaning on his shoulder, entwining her arm about him. They walked off, and she turned briefly to wave goodbye to me.

When I finally looked back down, the cat was gone, and the gate had shut.

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"


-Sylvia Plath

How many of us have fallen for ghosts?

Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been having the worst dreams. Really tired right now, but let's look at the last few scheduled posts...

The 12th of June entry, like any mention of 'words caught in mouth' probably has the phantom of Sappho in it:

He seems to me equal to the gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
     to your sweet speaking
and lovely laughing — oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
     is left in me
no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
     fills ears
and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead — or almost
     I seem to me.
But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty . . .

(Fragment 31, trans. Anne Carson).

Though that doesn't mean I had it in mind. Maybe the world and the clouds held in in mind. Funnily enough, looking at the post now, "my gut grows sore" reminds me of another poem, also to do with that old Lyric:

Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?

Before a face suddenly numinous,

her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate   

again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss?   

It’s documented torrents are unloosed

by such events as recently produced

not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us,   

one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate.

My eyes and groin are permanently swollen,   

I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless

—and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.   

Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast,   

sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the rest

of what I want with you that scares me shitless.

(Marilyn Hacker, '[Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?]' in Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons)

Brilliantly visceral.

Come to think of it, there's a lot of Greek floating around in these few posts. And in my blog in general. It makes me think of a friend I knew a long time ago. Castillia, I think she was called. Back in primary school. I think around when we were eleven she moved to some island on the Mediterranean, near Athens. I don't know her anymore, and even if I managed to get back in touch, would I know her any more?

Oh right, Greek literature. So "The long unmeasured pulse of time moves ever[y] thing" is from Sophocles I think. He's mentioned a few lines later. Or maybe it was Aeschylus. An ancient tragedy writer, at any rate.

As for the image of the stairs, I tried searching by image for it on Google, but couldn't find a direct match. Just a hall of other dark grey and black images.

Tithonus] Chronos] " These things I sigh for and lament, but nothing can be done."

"The long unmeasured pulse of time moves ever[y thing]."

Half a year looms past, revolves, an ending turn. There is a terror and eventually a fatigued comfort in the days causelessly passing faster and faster.

Like a jagged stone worn smooth by sand and wave.

["Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery."]

Many by way of horror come to crumble in this sand.

A few black rocks still jut half-drowned above the writhing ocean surface,

But for how long I can discern that they are there
I do not know,
in the dying light the ocean grows - the sound of it, the unformed shape

A kind of everything.

Sometimes there's a great ache. It goes from the back of my throat to a sting in the eyes like smoke from a small fire, and then down behind the ribs, misty now, like dewy fog in a rainforest. But I've outlived many deliquescent achings and even if my bones creak and my gut grows sore I find another tomorrow beating me back into silence, though not tranquillity.

How awful must it be to be mute. But even with a mouth not sewn shut I find my words receding to a haggard limp before they ever fall from the precipice of my tongue.

I don't know about any of those. Okay well the second one down is from Only Revolutions, page 58. I found an awesome website that lets you search the text, like an online index. Pretty helpful for pinning down half-recalled words.

I read an interview with Danielewski the other day:

"Yeah, and I think that’s where it moves beyond just writing into a more vocational way of living. It encourages a practice of being open, of listening, and most of all finding a way of being comfortable about being uncertain, because it’s impossible to tell at a certain moment. Now and then you get these little gems, but often things that suddenly are important aren’t recognized as being important until maybe even a couple of years later. Say you had a moment, and you were open to the vitality of the story that was being told, the word that was being conveyed, but you didn’t necessarily place it somewhere, and nonetheless, two rewrites later, suddenly this moment comes to life, and that’s how it happens."

I have no idea when I must've wrote 'Chaos Magic'. It seems too calm for it to have been done that late on. It seems too calm in general. In fact none of these are using brackets, so I guess they were done a bit earlier or later than the initial bulk of scheduled posts I had made.

Chaos magic

“It won’t work unless you can behold the stars as individual points.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s just it; you don’t need to. You aren’t supposed to. Forget the constellations. Stop looking at it like it’s a pattern. Like it’s a painting.”

“Then what is it?”

“What’s left. What’s more than what you took from it.”

...

“Okay now take the knife.”

“Why am I doing all the work?”

“Because it’s your spell.”

“What next?”

“Pick it up first.”

“Okay.”

“Hold it.”

“I am.”

“Hold it.”

...

“Point up. Straight up. Now let it tug you.”

“What?”

“Point it up again. Okay. Now imagine a thread is attached to the tip. It’s made of something white and blue and cold but glowing. Picture that. It goes straight to the sky. Can you feel it?”

“I think so...”

“There’s a wind, but not the kind we have. Do you feel that? Can you feel the thread swaying in it? Pulling at the blade? Follow the thread with the knife. Every inch. Don’t let the cord break.”

“Chord? Like music?”

“You’re not wrong.”

“If my mum sees us...”

“Stay concentrated. The wind.”

...

“It’s all around us but it doesn’t make a sound. It moves slowly.”

“Yeah.”

“It won’t always change direction.”

“I’m not sure I feel it.”

“Imagine your feet are in a bucket of ice. Like all the water’s frozen over around them.”

“How’s that supposed to help?”

“It won’t, aside from stopping you thinking so much. Or at least it was meant to.”

“You said you’d done this before.”

“Kind of.”

“What?”

...

“Where’s it guided you?”

“Lower.”

“Than the stars?”

“Yeah. Towards the tops of the trees.”

“They’re part of it too.”

“Part of what?”

“Part of the pattern that isn’t a pattern.”

“The constellations?”

“Yes. Or what the constellations aren’t. The trees are part of that. Do you see how they lean into it?”

“Into the wind?”

“Yes. And into the stars.”

   "—You’re allready too late.
            Because I’m anarchy. Axes
  and raids. Find me at morgues and
                     bloodspattered parades.”

My strange reflection, when will I see you again?

Bachelard's Introduction to The Poetics of Space. I can't figure out why these lines always felt so familiar.

"In any case, harmony in reading is inseperable from admiration. We can admire more or less, but a sincere impulse, a little impulse toward admiration, is always necessary if we are to receive the phenomenological benefit of a poetic image. The slightest critical consideration arrests this impulse by putting the mind in second position, destroying the primitivity of the imagination. In this admiration, which goes beyond the passivity of contemplative attitudes, the joy of reading appears to be the reflection of the joy of writing, as though the reader were the writer's ghost."

That last poem was another scheduled post. Well, I say 'poem', but I recognise the italics as a complete piece that I wrote during a lecture way back in October. I think I added the rest at the time I wrote the post around February.


There was a certain night a while ago where I got really really drunk, deliberately, or that sort of half-deliberateness that constitutes almost everything if you let it, until all becomes a habit. But there was a habit I wanted to give up that night. I think. Patchy memories. Which is actually a really good phrase, because it suggests that there's been holes in memory filled in or covered by foreign fabrics, whether repressions or invented memories. And we all know how quickly recollection of recollection takes the place of real memory. As if 'real memory' were a thing.

What I remember a very enveloping darkness, just a crack of light leaking onto the wall, or was it the floor, it wall all blurred, and the words, repeated, hoarse, over and over, my voice, "Just stop. Just stop. just please stop. stop. just stop. just stop


..................................................................................

Something keeps reopening my heart.
Stitches stretch and burst.

I consider an opening future.


Siphoned down institutional corridors,
cordoned into corners contaminated by
I
thought madness was sight,
the downward path the upward pass
but before I ever reach a peak
the track disintegrates -
slips
            from my grasp,
passes
            through my wrists.

 Secrete a mountain river
(babbling)
through a saline bag.


I choke it with my hands.
My several fingers dig
nails into
its throat.
Close it.

If it lives it will writhe. If not, I won't need to breathe at all.

Dusk in a place of darkling green

The sky cracks                                       A company of drops

as if cataracts shave                             curtain the horizons

stones to ice. Some                                still promising their

shimmering awakes                               aubades, morning

night’s withdrawing                              songs gone awry

reverberations                                        below diminishing

of storm clouds                                      flecks of sound.

shot off, like                                          ‘Shhhhhhhhhh

a table cloth                                            hhhhhhhhhhh

inexpertly deprived                                hhhhhhhhhhh’ –

of its surface.                                         Dimmening leaves offer.

Sappho Fragment 23(?), currently trying to find the Carson translation

And their feet move
rhythmically, as tender
feet of Cretan girls
danced once around an

altar of love, crushing
a circle in the soft
smooth flowering grass.

Sappho Fragment 36, trans. Anne Carson