COLLOQUIES FOR A SOOTHSAYER, MERCIFUL AND HIS SPIKED DOG

(OR PERHAPS IT WAS THE OTHER WAY AROUND)

Dans la soirée…

 

I am terrified/ and yet

Still 

        I return Here 

        (To the page)

All things aching in my bones. Taking the shoes off at the door:

What are your thoughts on this? 

They enter anyway/ It is like later finding out the photograph came out blurry. Dissolution of the mind. Saturated emptiness. Even now there are two Golden Green beetles caught in a web but will set themselves free. I do not look in which direction, but I am assuming they do not either. The flee. The bricks laid. 

And the seasickness? 

I must say I am always somewHere Else. This sickness is from the always already lost – a plague at sea and on land. The time laid out like an arc, growing away from me. He sleeps so gently.

Eyes nighttime shore. No awaking, no receding. 

He always slept so gently. I think it was because there was nothing to talk about. 

But he would make sure to fuck me every time before closing his eyes, So brutally tender. 

He opens his eyes as I walk out the door,     every time. 

You look back?

Every time. 

I think of it as walking into the night blindly. Always looking the other way. My love has already gone and laid its weavings into the shallows, dreams unfurl and knot in the little motions of treading water. Still I must carry on, Here it is in front of me. There is nothing left to do. I try to take a photograph, but it changes its shape and something does not feel right about it. Nothing left to press the lips to (a goodbye).

Oh, 

I see…

It makes me think of this work – The Kiss by Constantin Brancusi from 1912. Two lovers in stone, with their weaving hair, arms wrapped so tightly the right hand holds the same lover’s left, a totality, bellies pressed tight, bulging in one direction, lips pressed tight in a line. Most importantly, the eyes. Their eyes, pressed so tightly with an edge, forms a single cycloptic eye. They become One in so many ways, just through The Kiss. The belly bulged out presses into the lover’s, making a cavity of pregnancy – or of one sharing Inside the other. 

I always thought, maybe they were both looking away – One 

Eye open. 

Could be. 

There would be so much to miss, being stone with eyes closed. Even lovers would tire and give up secrets after that long. Do you think that they even still enjoy the kiss? 

I think that is beside the point – I think it can be, too, that a single moment be turned into stone (be in the body or in the memory), and then we must learn to carry it. Burning. This ‘looking the other way’ is an  acknowledgement of Here and Gone, if anything. They look out knowing that the next moment will only come Haunting, the time it takes for a stone to change. There is no fear. It will outlive the memory. I would think the holding on would be most difficult. 

What were you saying about Fatigue? 

Ah, yes. Fatigue. I saw this lecture tonight, with Tacita Dean. She has always been something separate from me as an artist. – I will not speak about it here... After the lecture I give her the book which has the underlined sections in which I referenced in my text [Also,], which is of her Selected Writings. There is a section titled Collections. I open to the page:

You want me to sign the page?

Yes.

She writes: For Logan Best wishes Tacita Dean 24.9.23 Los Angeles.

After Logan in the swift line that makes up a clover, the fourth leaf bends in or folds over itself onto the line making itself one of disappearance. She must have known I have never found a four leaf clover. Even Tacita withholds this life from me. It becomes three. 

It must be so exhausting. 

I think it is just bad luck. Here, I will tell you another story: 

One night, Sonshine laid himself upon my bed. In the memory of another I closed my eyes, exhausted. He knows how to make a way with it and turns me to my stomach. One hundred kisses. How does that feel? and One hundred more. Still, I am in my abandoness. Vast field, the hole dug out. There is no word for this I think. He asks it again, and One hundred more. The only thing that grips my mind is a line of my own. It hurts me most to say it to anyone but you, even without the Pain: Like a landscaped arched bridge. 

What? 

Like a landscaped arched bridge –

Comes out like a weeping word onto a blade, makes a puddle of it on the pillow. This is just like the first time. 

He says nothing, and One hundred more. I do not say a thing about the pain under my right hip bone when he moves his hand at 5 mm a minute. 

It is all just a betrayal to the word… 

 

…

 

… like I was saying about the photograph coming out blurry. It is the closest I have ever gotten to discovering it. 

It says: 

YOU ME 

LOVE …

in sharpie on a red collared shirt. It flees me in my attempt to capture. Even when I am this close the words, the memory of them, they always depart from me. A place of their own mystery. I refuse to know. 

Like the fourth leaf, 

Now it is just something else.

The ticking of the stove, 

The Flame. 

I want to be made up of so many things. 

…Hm,

I will tell you what I have learned, on returning, :

 

EESSAYY ON RETURNING

 

                                       One     hundred     and     seventy     eight    days  since  I’ve  returned  to  Goleta. 

                                       Nothing   is   the   same.   The   ways   I   go.   The   gates.   But   the   air  is  ripe: 

                                       This  is  how  you  know  you   are   close.   Like   smoke  filling  the  lungs  now: 

                                       Eucalyptus,   the burning of You  in longing.  A curving edge around the world. 

                                       Reasoning  of  SkyOcean,  it  is  only  even  more  difficult  to  understand  now. 

                                       So       much       more       mystery,       So       much       more       we       Are       not. 

                                       Too   this   landscape   of   love   is   too   wounded   now,  Makes  a  path  for  it. 

                                       This eulogy of my body,   the memory  of  you.  How  easily  I’ve  become  Scar. 

                                       There   is    no    map   to    this   place.    I  [rejoice  in  having  known].    It   still 

                                       vibrates  me,   this   resonance,   volumes   of   changing.   Sun   beating   down.

                                       You,                  making                 your                  way                  through,                     I 

                                       or  so  I  imagine.  Day’s  not  green.  No  more  stars  fallen  to  earth.  No more

                                       Blue   eyes   of   distance.   Everything  is  burnt  now.   The  hand  on   his   back

                                       mountains now.  Particles  of  a  dream.  He looks out towards it,  Me into him. 

                                       Death    finds    its   comfort.    Nothing    and    Everything    remains.    Though, 

                                       I      know      why      I’ve      come      back.      For      four      years,      every     day 

                                       I  used  to  imagine  what  it  would  be  like  to  drive  off  the Howard Franklin

                                       Bridge.   One   day   it   happened,   someone   drove   off   and   into  the  water. 

                                       (The                   water                    was                   dark                   this                    day). 

                                       There’s     images     of     them     pulling     the     car     out     of     the     water – 

                                       windshield     all     busted     out     like     a     broken     frame,       Or     a     wish,  

                                       He carries on.    It is just another day of loneliness.   Not always the I that I am.

                                       Now it’s Goleta that haunts me.  Sometimes,  (in my pool),  I drive to the edge, 

                                       I  think,   Goleta,   you   will  be  the  place  I  drive  into  the  Pacific,  And  what  

                                       Cold                  waters                  would                  be                   my                   Savior? 

                                       I think this cliff,  at 11:51 Pm on a Sunday,  will do just fine.  Different things of

                                       nothingness.      The      light      there      on      the     edge.         Reaching        out. 

                                       Somewhere             tells              me               you              are              Here              too.

                                       I  have  seen  it.   Oh,  what  bitter  white  crisp  edge  can  I  make  myself  now,

                                       foaming  too  towards  cowards.   Everything  dissolves,   everything  dissolves. 

                                       How   fast? 

                                       80  mph,  or  So  I’d  like  to  go,  Dreaming.  Oh, this is Forever. Here. In a Star. 

                                       A   Son.   Always   different. 

                                       Nothing   right   about   this. 

                                       Sometimes  it  is  best  to  go  in  secret. 

                                       How   high? 

                                       I’ve   never   looked   only   I   go/

 

                                       …Well, I guess it is this silence I know most. 

                                       I wish I could but I am not.

                                       A person.

                                       A lover.

                                       Too much passion.

                                       I just wanted to say to you.

                                       Sewing back the pieces.

                                       A rip.

                                       Dilaptided lover. 

                                       Paths for you, I 

                                       Crosses of doubt. 

                                       Burning, opening up to you.

                                       Burns me too. 

 

                                       It   is   the   light   coming   in,   at   this   moment   only,   That  saves  me  most. 

                                       He    plucks    the    hair    from    his    ears,      to    keep    the    wisdom    Down/ 

                                       I      guess      I       should       say       something       about       Returning       now…

                                       Once  you  were  Here  in  a  candlelit  room,  wondering  where  the  wax goes. 

                                       Curtains  the  door.   Little  things  hidden.    Always  something  else  not  said. 

                                       Moonlight.      He   makes   love   to   me   but   it   is   most   like   an   abuse,      I 

                                       Think   of   cold   waters   more   than   ever   now.   All   was   surrounding   me. 

                                       Almost   heaven.   Vapeurs   d'amour,    he   whispers.   And   it   is   like   a   bite.

                                       I   cannot   help   but   look   the   other   way,     despite   the   distinct   pleasure. 

                                       As   long   as   you   want.   Takes   me   to   another   room  but   feel   the  same. 

                                       This  is  where  you  are  supposed  to  lie,   and  to  make  a  dream  come  true, 

                                       in the treasure of a flooded spotlight night, if you can remember.