cynthia macadams, woman in the black mask, 1974
31 January 2010
28 January 2010
27 January 2010
and she fell to her knees and looked up into the darkness above her. clasping her hands together in her lap she whispered the words - she whispered the words that had been resounding in the wind around her all her life. and through the rain she swallowed them whole, and knew, just knew by their taste that, this was the way it was meant to be.
17 January 2010
13 January 2010
i finished 'the bell jar' by sylvia plath last week and became interested in her life and writing - especially how she describes things in the afterword of the novel.
i bought her poetry book 'ariel' at the strand this weekend, and i was blown away by robert lowell's description of the imagery in her work. this passage absolutely blows me away:
"..what is most heroic in her, though, is not her force, but the desperate practicality of her control, her hand of metal with its modest, womanish touch. almost pure motion, she can endure "god, the great stasis in his vacuous night," hospitals, fever, paralysis, the iron lung, being stripped like a girl in the booth of a circus sideshow, dressed like a mannequin, tied down like gulliver by the lilliputians...apartments, babies, prim english landscapes, beehives, yew trees, gardens, the moon, hooks, the black boot, wounds, flowers with mouths like wounds, belsen's lampshades made of human skin, hitler's homicidal iron tanks clanking over russia. suicide, father-hatred, self-loathing - nothing is too much for the macabre gaiety of her control. yet it is too much; her art's immortality is life's disintegration. the surprise, the shimmering, unwrapped birthday present, the transcendence "into the red eye, the cauldron of morning," and the lover, who are always waiting for her, are death, her own abrupt and defiant death."
04 January 2010
pulling my hands out from the pockets of my black hooded cloak, i begin delicately attaching the thin coiled wire to each of your fingers as you sit, reclined in the metal chair held in place by the pliable sands of the earth. wires secure, i examine the contours of your face like a bible, taking note of its features. i begin to adjust the edges of the cloak in preparation. taking the gossamer material between the pads of my fingers, i roll it over and over upon itself past the expanse on the way to the elbow, stopping about half way to the shoulder.
the air is painted with a delicate coat of amber, everything moves slowly, carefully. i clear my throat softly, so as not to disturb you, and push my onyx glasses off the sea of my face back to the bridge of my nose. and bending my index finger on my right hand ever-so-slightly, i raise my hand in the air and look out toward the horizon in the distance, the universe, my home. and with a very delicate smooth motion of my extended limb, i submerge my finger, my hand, my arm, into your perched porcelain mouth.
your eyes shine white and glow with the blessings of mercury. you flinch only ever-so-slightly as my fingers search the interplanetary divide possessed in your breast. past the organic materials and fallible tendencies my fingers wade, guided by the lighthouse that is your soul, your universe, your home. after some time my fingers connect with an object, different than the flesh. the contact creates a hollow resounding sound that cascades through your body like a wave on the cosmic sea of serene.
arranging my fingers to better grasp the object i grab hold and nod, the universal signal to raise the anchor from the depths. and ever-so-slowly my arm retracts back to the top of the ocean, pausing on the divide to soak in the beautiful dual reality it occupies within you and the burning wicks of air we call home. and with the removal of my hand, the mercury evaporates from your eyes and resounds in the air within us like chimes.
you rise slowly and with care as the wires fall away from your body, your eyes locked on mine as i stand with the glimmering object at rest in the basin of my two cupped palms - my head bowed, in respect of the offering. i look up at you suddenly as you approach, your eyes unflinching, your body as milky white as sea foam on a cool, brisk morning. placing both of your hands carefully over mine, cradling the object and my cold, shaking limbs with your serene touch, blessed with your gaze, you lean in and whisper something inaudible into my ear.
the air is heavy, yet weightless, passing by us in great cascading waves as if we are submerged in a pool of viscose. and at that moment your hands met mine and your breath met my ear, the object let out a great muffled hiss like the sound of a landlocked twig exploding on a bed of fire. the hiss resounded ever-so-carefully across the ocean of air, permeating our bodies and interlocking our glances. as the sound dissipated our glances were sealed like molten lead hardening upon removal from the flame.
and as rapidly as the sound stopped and solidified our gaze, again it started up but in a different metric. now the emitted waves resounded in great echoes of short metered beats. a perpetual, persistent pulse. and in that moment, the object in our hands, it dissipated, turned to dust as the sands of an hourglass and melted away through our fingers. and as it fell to our feet and joined the beads of sand we stood on the tick tock tick tock beats remained, persistent and steady, echoing into the fog, the great expanse and faded into the abyss, our bodies. and under this cosmic veil of perpetual rhythm you clasped my hand with yours and we set off running, kicking up the sand, the seconds, with our feet, parting farewell to the beaches, and the oceans, leaving behind the sands of time for higher ground. towards the cosmic lighthouse, always towards the lighthouse, that is the soul, the universe, our home.
/erin mulvehill, 'fugue' october 2009
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