When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!
When move in a sweet body fit for life,
And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife
Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!”
The God, dove-footed, glided silently
Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed,
The taller grasses and full-flowering weed,
Until he found a palpitating snake,
Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries –
So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,
She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
It was a day that should have shone with prospects of new things, of shining, happy events and plans. Diaries. The excitement of ink for God’s sake. Yet what could I say. I had enjoyed this skin and I loved its colours and texture. But now something shifted and I don’t want to stay as I am.
I can’t.
So here I am looking at the golden shards of what used to be me. Perhaps I should tell you that they are dusty, or scaly and just worn through, worn OUT so to speak. Have you ever done that? Looked at something just out of the corner of your eye and realised it said so much about you, so much that you couldn’t speak aloud.
It has to be. No more of the safe corners of my sand pit life. Such warm corners too. Basking has its upside and downside too. So today I started to look differently, small steps first and after that, well, who could predict?
Crimson was too bold, even for this sleepy place where everyone reused their plastic bags more than once.
A dove flew down and blocked my path. Truly a dove with some heart. Eyes that gazed without judgement and no blinking. Made me feel lighter too. The dove still didn’t move; it was the old me.The old gaze could hold any one transfixed until eternity. I allowed myself to blink in the new way and the bird nodded and flew away. The Dove was free because I was changed. Who needed blood when you could have love?
But I should go back to where it started because if this is a story, and it is, even from this side wards dance step of a beginning, then you might want to know something to make everything become clear.
That’s a clever reference to a story by Chekhov. It ends with a line saying everything became clear. But that was a kind of Russian joke. If you shake a lot of mud about in your life, then muddy water is what you get. True, if you leave it for a while it becomes a little less brown, a little clearer, but mud it still remains.
I digress . It goes with my nature, my innate nature with all that shimmering coiling self advertisement.
Everywhere I went, creatures parted company from their calm. I was incendiary baby. Sexy as hell in a touch me and we go whoosh sort of fashion.
So let’s start. Here, now and once again. Always been my virtue and my vice: a feigned movement this way and that. Like boxing with a shadow. Only the shadow is me.
I had lived 33 years with very little to disturb me. My colours were all there in designated spaces, and work, play and co-habitation were just going in the same direction as everyone else. I could attend anything and be accepted as my modest, slightly silky self, just as likely to let you have my parking space as the next one. Did I have hobbies? Did I smoke? Yes and yes and a little less than dangerous and yet more enough. You can tell I was struggling.
