The long span, a slice of sky stretched from border to border, time ticked by a bird’s wing on the wind. Morning shuffling from door to door, knocking quietly with soft insistent knuckles, on the heads of the dream-enclosed. Spring has been chewing for a while, and finally it is getting to grips with the hard frozen meat. But even as it gets soft, it gets hot, and already the sticky throat of summer waits impatiently to swallow.
Circles anon, according to the rules as we best can explain, to be looked up and presented unpondered. Time is what clocks measure indeed, and from the three dimensions we struggle to gather, maybe more. Existential, the pull and pulse of sensation, light bouncing off a cold surface. Animal, the heat inside, anger under a dry tongue, heavy gulping breaths when the valves are all open. Social, labelled practitioner of a numbered generation, aware of the many strands of interaction.
Get into a corner and turn around. This is the law of the observer. Find the scenic view and fling words into anageing files, phrase piled upon phrase, body hoisted above the set as a distended specimen, a metaperson, curious creature who comes out at night.
And it usually rolls slowly. Rain pit pattering on a tin roof, and the sloshing of feet in wet wellingtons. The trees shiver and bend under the patrolling clouds. Distance collected and distilled, awareness again an oyster pearl hardened from some arbitrary speck of dirt. Don’t you know that the precious stones are from pressure born?
Answers gush faster than the questions, a sea of information engulfing simple fishers. How we lose our hooks and tackle, in the spinning sea of modernity. Adjust, adapt, take flight with simple fisher wings, up into the network on ladders of smoke and binary things.
Alone again, return to ground level until, the gnawing splices of new devices tear a tread into the rubber of your soul. Here we go again, the part is searching for the whole. I hear that what is unstable is more able to change, but there is only so many times that paper will fold.
Be bold, be bold. Tear a strip of the haunches of existence, grip it with your most stubborn molars, eyes alive on the bloody prize. But then, the bitten animal will buckle and tumble, knees helplessly dropping, cells bursting and the thin thread exposed to the edge. “Retreat to slumber,” calls the ship’s captain. “Only in the confines of the mind will we solace find.” “Oh dear,” you hear yourself mumble, “the nature of these days are unclear.” And before them too that long span still hung, the same bodies with different cloth.
All in the head. Wring from your hands the spoil’s juices, return to the corner to hang another faded banner, greet the morning with mild humour, mild banter. Forget what you just said. All in the head.
