The Traveller's Last Journey DEDICATED TO SHAI MAROM Z"L

Wednesday November 27, 2013

W

When I look at the moon I think of you.

You know that feeling – falling through the stars? Sitting in the park (the vacuum of the cricket field, the silence seeps from cedar benches bereft of players) or along the beach (I hope you’re there now, the ocean’s lapping is like a heartbeat and it follows us into sleep, through dreams),
gazing upwards (the land becomes lost, and gravity just a momentary tether) into that familiar vista become alien (the astronomer’s chalkboard disintegrated by the memory of our primeval inheritance: the infinite savannas when everything was new): see the great expanse (cobalt pitched darkness; sky) and countless sparks (denying count, distorting measure; stars), mayhap too the veil islets (sfumato topologies adrift; clouds) and of course the ever present ever hiding (when I look at the moon I think of you).

Have you felt the weight of solitude – I have – beneath the magnifying stars? I have walked home from a party too early but still late. The recent memory appears in garish colours. There were smiling faces emitting words and words and words and I wonder if that is how they communicate. And I left, because the music was too loud, like a sonic conflagration when all I wanted was a holy spark. Passing through the park, I left the path and also the evening behind me. The cosmologists believe that when they look outwards they are retreating alongside history; as I stare, transfixed by the patterns I see (reflections of the patterns I imagine) the universe I conceive expands, self-immolating

a grazing kiss (yours, if only I’d known then I could have known sonic orgy when all I wanted was i left the paths (because they never lead me anywhere I need to be)


The above is the beginning of a letter. Not all letters have recipients – intended or otherwise. This one does – whether she shall receive it or otherwise. I began it as a response to a mood that threatened to transfix my soul, pin my sorrow and anxiety and all that must coexist if only to be a foundation for those two states of knowing.


There is poetry in words whose meaning lies deep in the aether beyond seeing or hearing or things that can be touched or avoided, but not beyond understanding. Not completely, although I doubt that their habitat is the same, nor that one is the environment of the other.

Interruption.

Yet again I’m becoming lost in descriptions that evoke the desire for the depths that reside in every mote and ray of sunlight. But that, nor this, was what I’d broken off to behold. Instead, and this is admittedly (or at least, very much seemingly) is such a tawdry contrast that I blush to endure (except that I don’t – blush that is, I have no choice but to endure, no choice except that one which threatens all that I’ve been). What I am not saying over and over again, drawing lines in the sands in front of the waves that are approaching so that even this one will reach, is this: I wish to write the 750 words upon which this place (this site, paradigm, writing opportunity and enactment) are focused. This is despite so many things worth mentioning. And I shall mention none of them but perhaps just a few that slip my mind’s grasp. For instance, I do realize that obvious fact which is that it may be the case that his “place” (what else shall I call it, and how much can it matter in the transience of this thing, and the greater transience of all things before which I bow and conceded and forget) is “focused” upon a particular goal of a particular word count, but that is not the “point” (another word embraced by quotation marks, indicating an approximation of meaning, and an alternative vector of intention, towards a destination that might be reached by adequate metaphor, but whose precise coordinates lie in a map I’ve not yet conceived).

Tick tock tick tock. Every word is both a realization of this silly dance (I hesitated before the word, unwritten until now it is, “fraudulent”, but note the choice for another {note also another use for quotation marks, and I mention this only for due curiosity, and via a mechanism of verbosity impelled by flowing thoughts and made easy by desired count… I’d almost lost myself, but here, I’ve recovered [and at the same time, before this very set of brackets, achieved that arbitrary count I’ve become so myopic as a result of] my direction, I should add “limited”, which would have been appropriately done since the very theme of this [particular] bracket-contents is that of quotation marks and their alternative purposes and uses, and in particular the possibility of their use for similitude of meaning, yet fundamental difference, like a mirror image that is identical and yet is known to lack the other body’s consciousness}) and also an event unto itse [sic]

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By Pala
The Traveller's Last Journey DEDICATED TO SHAI MAROM Z"L

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