sangha
01-19-2010, 05:26 PM
(for those who don't know, patration is the completion or perfection of something, it's not a common word - this is also my first attempt at writing anything formally, at least beyond vague ramblings)
And after all that, all that was left was me. Me and a moustache staring into the depths of my soul and, winding around it, choking me. It curled twice, at both ends, and pointed off his face. Lots of things were pointing at me: the moustache being the most prominent. But there was also a bolt, some strands of light, a few words, some feet, a nose, and a pair of aggressively bland eyes. Forget the crossbow and his oblique nose; his moustache dragged me down into the severest of depressions, reminding me of precisely where I was not.
Where I was, was a brightly lit cubicle just as suffocating as the moustache. All four corners were draped in shadow and all my secrets were piled up in them. All my work, my life, was stacked in neat mountains in the darkness. There were drawings, there were doodles, and there were journal entries. Everything that constituted my mediocre vocation could be deduced from those valley-less mounds. My vocation? That of a man who lives in a city of clouds, dreaming about being firmly sown into the rough, brown calicoes of life, giving meaning to words.
Each lace of hair billowed from under his hawkish nose and layered atop the others. It all reminded me of a river for some reason. And rivers remind me of a woman I met a long time ago in a bar on a hill in Rio de Janeiro.
She was very much a woman. With her dim waist-length hair and cloudy almond eyes, she shocked me. An angel of earthly proportions, she was drinking from a glass of water. I’m not sure what she was doing in Rio, nor do I know her name. But I did see her and I did see rivers in her.
I’m sure now that all her thoughts did lead to the same waterfall and the lake below was stagnant with perfection. I glanced at her, hugging her stolid eyes, but turned away in fear of warmth where there should have been only abyssal lust.
“The bar used to serve only alcohol, but I’m a fan of temptation so I asked for water.” The first words which I ever heard flow from her concubine lips.
“And I’m a fan of long life, so I take a slow poison and toast to it.” I answered quietly without looking back at her and sipping from my scotch. I hope she smiled. I hope she at least added that clever comment to the stream of her thoughts.
Sadly, those were the only words we ever exchanged. The woman from the river was involved in rocky business and men bigger than I had staked her virtues into the ground.
After some portion of ineluctable fate had passed, the woman’s eyes swam to meet mine. I felt endowed with the divine knowledge that the time for the woman’s passing had come. She slowly rose from her stool, like a minor wave, and crashed down upon the earth beneath her, echoing nothingness throughout the room and leaving only a dim impression of longing, primarily among the stools of the room.
I paused, feeling the longing of the stools, and then rose with her to perhaps find medicinal words in her departure. She flowed across the room, giving life to each inanimate object she laid her eyes upon. The flow opened the hinged, saloon doors, caressing the embossment, varnish, and artistry in the rustic gates.
We stepped outside and her beauty and grace radiated outwards until no one could tell from where it began, not even me. She became unimportant and uninteresting; she was drowned by the subversive sublimity of her true Mother.
As we turned to depart, a single trickle of thought must have been layering her mind, slowly becoming a stream; it must have been, I saw it reflected in her previously clouded feline iris. The chaotic, azure deluge once again drowned me in fluid memories.
I was seven years old and reclining alongside a small rubber duckie in my porcelain throne; I was bare, accentuated by the stagnant water, and my every movement was streamlined and beautiful, though it disrupted the cleansing torpidity of my bath. Each limb, each thought and motion was fragile, exerting just enough pressure on the world to prevent my collapse and subsequent implosion.
My grandfather, face gouged by centuries of distress, stepped across the last impermeable threshold and he…
The final threshold was of no importance. There are trees on the horizon of the padded white twelve by twelve room. There’s concrete behind the padding it is diffusing through the padding and forming a plushy type of concrete I don’t know but want to; I want to know it; I rush at it, making myself known and crash into it, leading with my temple, tortured by the soothing cry: be known! and the cry succeeds, an onyx eye envelopes the moment and scythes its metal eye’s together; now known I won’t be forgotten.
I fall over, silently, like the statue of a tyrant king might, drowned in the roars of a body all rage and catharsis. I curl myself up, cushioned by ever more padding, and my knees stretch to my chin, a reflex I could control, but don’t, and begin to laugh.
I’m laughing because the padding is finally slipping off into Ginnungagap and the trees from the horizon are dancing nearer. Each strand of hair, curling down from amongst those emerald monarchs, falls on me. Terrified by the warmth of their jade caress, I begin to shriek: “The winds will blow thee over. A storm comes and the flames of your waning youth will rage and be throttled until they scream and…and can do no more than dance merrily, rooted in the solid earth of their anguish.”
And let it be known that the trees did listen and they did recede to the depths from which they sprang. And their roots did tear the ground and mock the melancholy weather as if begging a storm to pass.
The trees left a void, empty and dry, which seemed to draw upon the form, function and, perhaps most importantly, meaning of the substance from which it was begot. Its form was that of a road, layered by jade bricks quite possibly synthesized from the muscles of the forest’s stewards. Its function was much simpler, roads may have several forms but generally necessitate one function: to be traveled. Doubts lay only in the meaning. Should I find my Sense at the end or somewhere along that thunderous green road? Would I find the woman of rivers? Or perhaps I shall find that pale king, that charmer of…and defiler of…; that man who had so long ago slipped from my memory and cleared the last horizon.
I step onto the path and rear a steady pace, carrying on and having forgotten what I expected to find. A scarlet begonia on my right begins to grow a beard. It straightens up from its defeated, empty life and I see eyes. I see a snout and teeth. The teeth gleam in the forest like frozen stalactites with no purpose. And then the head elongates and the stalactites gain a purpose. Staring at me is an onyx cat and its jaws are open and the muscles in its legs are quivering.
I close my eyes and remember the cat I had a long time ago.
His name was Slot Machine. He was the color of mud with white lines of blow pigmented into the top of his head and leading a few inches past his ears. His claws had been removed for fear of him tearing up the furniture or scratching the eyes out of my then decadent grandfather. That pale king, who knew so well the art of living, now lay supine on a cot with only the floor beneath him. His only enemies who hadn’t succumbed to forgiveness were Slot Machine and his various others. Slot’s sole desire in la terra felin was simply to claw the eyes out of old men.
That pale king. My own fury is ignited by the utter failure of a ****ing feline. I’m back in that god-forsaken, infernal dystopia with all its clandestine concrete and shiny padding. I run screaming to the corner and perch vigilantly in the pocket of the room. The onyx eye’s scythes are blinking constantly, but not missing an instant, and the recording of my sanity are preserved in a few wires behind even that last barrier of concrete. Behind that barrier, I imagine, is an ocean and beyond the ocean is a woman squatting and contributing to the ocean with her streams of thought. I’m sure I met her sometime…but I can’t remember when. The trees are back, Slot Machine is back, the prostitute from Rio is back; the pale king has returned and the concrete breaks from within the walls, indistinguishable from the white padding.
“Ciao.”
Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the crossbow.
And after all that, all that was left was me. Me and a moustache staring into the depths of my soul and, winding around it, choking me. It curled twice, at both ends, and pointed off his face. Lots of things were pointing at me: the moustache being the most prominent. But there was also a bolt, some strands of light, a few words, some feet, a nose, and a pair of aggressively bland eyes. Forget the crossbow and his oblique nose; his moustache dragged me down into the severest of depressions, reminding me of precisely where I was not.
Where I was, was a brightly lit cubicle just as suffocating as the moustache. All four corners were draped in shadow and all my secrets were piled up in them. All my work, my life, was stacked in neat mountains in the darkness. There were drawings, there were doodles, and there were journal entries. Everything that constituted my mediocre vocation could be deduced from those valley-less mounds. My vocation? That of a man who lives in a city of clouds, dreaming about being firmly sown into the rough, brown calicoes of life, giving meaning to words.
Each lace of hair billowed from under his hawkish nose and layered atop the others. It all reminded me of a river for some reason. And rivers remind me of a woman I met a long time ago in a bar on a hill in Rio de Janeiro.
She was very much a woman. With her dim waist-length hair and cloudy almond eyes, she shocked me. An angel of earthly proportions, she was drinking from a glass of water. I’m not sure what she was doing in Rio, nor do I know her name. But I did see her and I did see rivers in her.
I’m sure now that all her thoughts did lead to the same waterfall and the lake below was stagnant with perfection. I glanced at her, hugging her stolid eyes, but turned away in fear of warmth where there should have been only abyssal lust.
“The bar used to serve only alcohol, but I’m a fan of temptation so I asked for water.” The first words which I ever heard flow from her concubine lips.
“And I’m a fan of long life, so I take a slow poison and toast to it.” I answered quietly without looking back at her and sipping from my scotch. I hope she smiled. I hope she at least added that clever comment to the stream of her thoughts.
Sadly, those were the only words we ever exchanged. The woman from the river was involved in rocky business and men bigger than I had staked her virtues into the ground.
After some portion of ineluctable fate had passed, the woman’s eyes swam to meet mine. I felt endowed with the divine knowledge that the time for the woman’s passing had come. She slowly rose from her stool, like a minor wave, and crashed down upon the earth beneath her, echoing nothingness throughout the room and leaving only a dim impression of longing, primarily among the stools of the room.
I paused, feeling the longing of the stools, and then rose with her to perhaps find medicinal words in her departure. She flowed across the room, giving life to each inanimate object she laid her eyes upon. The flow opened the hinged, saloon doors, caressing the embossment, varnish, and artistry in the rustic gates.
We stepped outside and her beauty and grace radiated outwards until no one could tell from where it began, not even me. She became unimportant and uninteresting; she was drowned by the subversive sublimity of her true Mother.
As we turned to depart, a single trickle of thought must have been layering her mind, slowly becoming a stream; it must have been, I saw it reflected in her previously clouded feline iris. The chaotic, azure deluge once again drowned me in fluid memories.
I was seven years old and reclining alongside a small rubber duckie in my porcelain throne; I was bare, accentuated by the stagnant water, and my every movement was streamlined and beautiful, though it disrupted the cleansing torpidity of my bath. Each limb, each thought and motion was fragile, exerting just enough pressure on the world to prevent my collapse and subsequent implosion.
My grandfather, face gouged by centuries of distress, stepped across the last impermeable threshold and he…
The final threshold was of no importance. There are trees on the horizon of the padded white twelve by twelve room. There’s concrete behind the padding it is diffusing through the padding and forming a plushy type of concrete I don’t know but want to; I want to know it; I rush at it, making myself known and crash into it, leading with my temple, tortured by the soothing cry: be known! and the cry succeeds, an onyx eye envelopes the moment and scythes its metal eye’s together; now known I won’t be forgotten.
I fall over, silently, like the statue of a tyrant king might, drowned in the roars of a body all rage and catharsis. I curl myself up, cushioned by ever more padding, and my knees stretch to my chin, a reflex I could control, but don’t, and begin to laugh.
I’m laughing because the padding is finally slipping off into Ginnungagap and the trees from the horizon are dancing nearer. Each strand of hair, curling down from amongst those emerald monarchs, falls on me. Terrified by the warmth of their jade caress, I begin to shriek: “The winds will blow thee over. A storm comes and the flames of your waning youth will rage and be throttled until they scream and…and can do no more than dance merrily, rooted in the solid earth of their anguish.”
And let it be known that the trees did listen and they did recede to the depths from which they sprang. And their roots did tear the ground and mock the melancholy weather as if begging a storm to pass.
The trees left a void, empty and dry, which seemed to draw upon the form, function and, perhaps most importantly, meaning of the substance from which it was begot. Its form was that of a road, layered by jade bricks quite possibly synthesized from the muscles of the forest’s stewards. Its function was much simpler, roads may have several forms but generally necessitate one function: to be traveled. Doubts lay only in the meaning. Should I find my Sense at the end or somewhere along that thunderous green road? Would I find the woman of rivers? Or perhaps I shall find that pale king, that charmer of…and defiler of…; that man who had so long ago slipped from my memory and cleared the last horizon.
I step onto the path and rear a steady pace, carrying on and having forgotten what I expected to find. A scarlet begonia on my right begins to grow a beard. It straightens up from its defeated, empty life and I see eyes. I see a snout and teeth. The teeth gleam in the forest like frozen stalactites with no purpose. And then the head elongates and the stalactites gain a purpose. Staring at me is an onyx cat and its jaws are open and the muscles in its legs are quivering.
I close my eyes and remember the cat I had a long time ago.
His name was Slot Machine. He was the color of mud with white lines of blow pigmented into the top of his head and leading a few inches past his ears. His claws had been removed for fear of him tearing up the furniture or scratching the eyes out of my then decadent grandfather. That pale king, who knew so well the art of living, now lay supine on a cot with only the floor beneath him. His only enemies who hadn’t succumbed to forgiveness were Slot Machine and his various others. Slot’s sole desire in la terra felin was simply to claw the eyes out of old men.
That pale king. My own fury is ignited by the utter failure of a ****ing feline. I’m back in that god-forsaken, infernal dystopia with all its clandestine concrete and shiny padding. I run screaming to the corner and perch vigilantly in the pocket of the room. The onyx eye’s scythes are blinking constantly, but not missing an instant, and the recording of my sanity are preserved in a few wires behind even that last barrier of concrete. Behind that barrier, I imagine, is an ocean and beyond the ocean is a woman squatting and contributing to the ocean with her streams of thought. I’m sure I met her sometime…but I can’t remember when. The trees are back, Slot Machine is back, the prostitute from Rio is back; the pale king has returned and the concrete breaks from within the walls, indistinguishable from the white padding.
“Ciao.”
Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the crossbow.