matter (energy) is neither created nor destroyed., neither was pinna
we just assumed different forms
these are some of them:
Today I sat in the world’s quietist forest;
sat still in a stream cut crevasse
indent on the side of a mountain.
It’s soundscape so light that (ricocheting through the silence) every sporadic leaf fall
perfectly audible
and my inner tinnitus
given centre stage;
“silence is deafening” as I was reminded of when someone on that TV program said it last night. and was reminded of again right then as I sat in the kind of place that before I’d only fantasized.
How many hertz? It didn’t matter.
Despite of it all I was
quite happy :
The healing process must first acknowledge the wound.
(s)
So I let them sing their little lungs out as I sat there in those woods, knowing that at some point soon they too would be silent, deflated and two dimensional at which point I could just take their flattened forms and file them
in drawer P (for past) and under FRNINHTDWYA (for fucking resolved now I never have to deal with you again).
That in itself made me happy.
So I sat smiling in the silence and listened to my whine.
I had very irresponsibly turned off the road and followed a stream bed up the side of a mountain, turning off at the sign which read (in Japanese (but the picture was sufficient for inference)) “Warning: Bears”. I had figured that the risk was minimal given the time of year (any good bear should have been curled up in its cave cradling a pot of honey and not out on the prowl for any potential goldilocks’) and had gone anyway.
I had climbed and climbed, following the stream bed up through a turbulent array of dead wood, proud fungus and washed out rusty leaves until I reached a barren and dramatic incline.
The stream bed (almost dry to begin with) was dead and gone, and now replaced by a wide expanse of loose soil, grit, sand, and only a staggering of the hardiest trees lining few and far between; a fair number of them rested brittle and dead in the dry winter air.
This was where I first met the creeper.
If I wanted to paint it dramatic I could say “at the point where I should have turned back” (which is what common sense would have dictated(it was a dangerous climb)) but I don’t (and I didn’t). Knotted and criss-crossed under the surface of the scattered dirt, the loose rocks and potentially fatal falls were a network of these sinuous creepers; winding and binding, up and out of the every which way but back down. They burst from the earth, desperately aggressive; clutching at anything they could to prevent their reclamation. Trees were the favoured grappling posts (victims / martyrs) and the creepers sprang to them voraciously; rubbed against them, touching them, caressed them, enveloping and entrapping them, and eventually strangled them into a slow demise through which they cradled them
all the way down until they died and lined the hillside with all the other hollow white silhouettes of what had been the hardiest of the arbes.
Half the times I reached a tree and with my hands begged of it a firm rooted, stiff trunk of support the tree was dead as and I was let down dramatically.
It was the creeper roots with which I pulled myself up to the top.
The forests of Japan have them a wild and untamed sight. The quaint deciduous ambleways of small village Kent felt (to one who’d grown up in them) nurturing, safe and motherly - woods I’d (I) happily walk(ed) through at night. These woods didn’t; there was a violence and a danger in the canopy which, as I looked closer saw was my friend the creeper.
It was as if the victim of some social ridicule had remedied their issues with angel dust and a biro and scribbled (with a violence) across the tree tops of the woods. Both the ever greens and the naked whites sat ensnared in this nightmarish mess (mesh) of a madman’s expression; of creepers who did anything but - for if in “creep” a subtlety’s implied – creep.
From a distance it looked an angry sea, and this is what I saw as I strolled along, looking down from my mountain tops. And I did this until realised I had too much perspective on the matter and again wanted to be close.
So I descended again.
This time I took the other side – a shallower decline in which that tree sea shored sooner.
Within minutes I was submerged.
This side was not so much the pines but that skeletal white shade of deciduous who were all desperately extending their blanched white phalangies towards the sky as if each imploring the sun to
“come back”
“we need you”
or
“help”
as they were overrun with the creeper (thick black and bicep-like at the base) snaking its way out from hell. The creeper wound round the trunks in ways that were almost ornamental – a barbershop pirouette, a trellis or a rose arch bind – but unlike a barbershop they didn’t draw blood (even if this was for no more a reason than trees didn’t bleed). They sprang from the earth, decorating white trunks with an uzumaki wind (the kind that doesn’t blow) which just kept going and going, constricting and tighteningandbindingandwindingandgoingn
twistingandraining
andsuckinga
ndleachingandgaininguntill
thetreedies
dead.
It was madness.
I was reminded of that film I watched a time ago (“uzumaki”) - it wasn’t very good
The wood’s painted its picture (so dramatic and) so much fucking better.
Nature is what man can only dream of
and represent only badly
and as much a romantic as I am
I am well aware
the limitations of my
art.
But I go on
trying to wrap words around
what cannot be contained
The creeper
bursting so frighteningly
(Initially)
then winding and binding
with an ornamental
beauty
sometimes
resolving herself
In a (silence is golden) locked curl
and at other times
bursting into a maelstrom of
death
wrapping round
death
f ragments trees
Shattered
scattered through the mes s of muscle warped(mesh)
Biceps w dead
twisted
contorted hanging lifeless
F
R
O
M
T
H
E
tree
: victims of the frenzy of braches breaking (trying to) free and just hanging there
like a strange fruit.
Sometimes the creepers wrapped around themselves.
Upon the descent through the skeleton wood, down the mountain whose silence was only broken by my footsteps (the leaves had long since fallen on this side) I noticed a reassuring glimmer of resistance to the creeper. One tree, a healthy grey; the complexion of ash (an) was fighting back. It had taken the form of the creeper’s bind, its branches (budding despite the time of year (were pimpled with black vitality)) had adopted the form of the creeper’s wind (not the kind that blows). Every time a creeper wound round a branch the reply would be to counter the wind with a wind; spitting the creeper’s warped vocabulary straight back at it, a dancing death like two snakes entwined in a byzantine ritual of a lovemaking in which one would always die at the end and she (my tree) always seemed to be the better off of the two. So mantis like I prayed her good luck in the biting off of her partner’s head
until I realised that my girl was just another creeper. : The elder ones were black and gnarled
the young seemed graceful saplings by comparison - which they were - of sorts
but tree saplings they were not.
There was no hope.
On the plus side
my inner tinnitus had been quiet for
well over two hours now
and I smiled at this
and left the woods
quite happy.
inside the chapel street bookshop
upon walking in
I was met with a familiar aroma of
nag champa
wafting through the eaves ; drifting across the stands , stalls , book cases stacked haphazardly tall but proud and stocked full of
high with an assortment of
books
whose pages smelt of nag champa
whose papers were browned and dusty (tea stained)
whose content was so varied I noted as I crept past shelves labelled ‘general fiction’
‘military history’
‘religious
philosophy’
as I tried to find the section in where I’d be most likely to have a happy accident.
a muted string section was falling through the nag champa
(from some speaker somewhere)
; this coupled with the haphazardly stacked shelves (towering so tall and proud), the vintage décor and the almost caricature of an eccentric librarianess who was busily sat inside a phone call behind a book strewn desk, who had on a cardigan and horn rimmed spectacles and was reciting the names off a long list of celebrated writers to someone somewhere.
‘this place knows how to set an atmosphere’
I thought
‘metasciences!’
I thought happily
‘why is bart simpson’s guide to life in metasciences?’
The store’s cat was stretched supine upon a cardboard box ; extending her paws into the sunlight, she distended her jaw in the most wonderful yawn.
I smiled instinctually and held out my hand to see if she wanted
a pat a stroke a tummy tickle
since she was presented that way
she took the most non-committal sniff I’d ever seen
before her eyes were again
swallowed up in a smile.
I hovered my hand
then tickled her neck she liked it
then tensed a bit I tickled her belly the tiniest bit she liked it then lazily put her back legs into the
‘I’m going to rake you if you persist’ position. so I stopped
and she purred and re exposed her midriff.
I left her alone to make up her mind.
chomsky is in religious philosophy I am
sceptical
so I leaf through
the nag champa warms my sinuses the back of my throat
I hear the lady behind the desk stating
“mathers … marshall mathers
M A T H E …. ”
I find it very funny
And the cat makes curious eyes at me as i
leave.
Standing on the sand I notice how
with every breath of surf I’m sinking into it.
I decide to see how long it takes until it absorbs me completely and stand motionless like some stupid, spindly, gormless monument on (and eventually hopefully in)
the beach.
I watch fascinated as my feet my toes are consumed by motion blur; exhale (the sea’s (constructive) ) deposits a fine silt over my toes
inhale (the sea being sucked back from its furthest reaches up the shore) ;
destructive ,
and with it I happily feel myself descend as the ground is taken from under me.
Those relentless rolling breakers off shore are vocalising
prehistoric .
They are dinosaurs relative to those that twinkle at my feet.
ripples
painting daintily, honeyed white lightning, slow motion
strikes fluid forms
snaking in and out of the
everywhich way of each other
and on their underside their shadows ;
(projections on the sand of the ripples intertwining, winding and and intertwining and
dancing ; )
every single ebb and flow, current and undercurrent, short shore / long shore drift is visible, depicted in the splittest second
transience.
In the shadows I can see what looks like cells duplicating and multiplying then dying and then
undying
all at the same time
I see everything
(the perpetual cycle of birth, death and rebirth and so on and so on being born (and reborn and unborn and deborn)) and dancing all over my feet.
process upon process ,
upon process upon
process overlay
overlay , one on top the other makes matter (makes love) makes whatever
dancing all over my feet
and I’m sinking proper now;
down to my ankles deep in
the sand which
has taken the form of the wave
temporarily (I notice) until the next tide comes in
restructures the peaks and troughs, peaks and troughs
compressions rarefactions waveform visualisation told in particulate matter.
sand dunes are
pulled back and forth peaks and troughs and peaks and
constant shift as the water pulls them
back and forth and side to side
and side to side with the sideward drift;
forwards and back and side to side ;
an echo of a landmass somewhere far off
manifest in the shape of the dunes
as they so fleetingly fix the movements of the water. I can see the landmass in the shadows of the ripples its absence projected on the sand;
manifest in motion in the shadows of the ripples
in which
dancing all over my feet
I see the moon and the earth and all the movements of the world
and I see my feet .
I can see what appears the building blocks of multiplying and dying again
and again everything
and again (it feels like a lot of responsibility) and
now I’ve sunk down below my ankles.
The silt brushes the hairs on my leg
skin cells
eroded from my shins
w a s h e d from my shins
in the same process of attrition which once wore rocks into the sands of the Sahara
and has so perfectly ground the pebbles
into the sands in which I sink and has
d e h s a w
them back over me
. . . . . . .
Now my feet are gone and I’m wondering with what words I can best relate this experience on paper . I stumble on poeticisms such as “the sea swims in me” and have an urge, a habitual impulse to refer to it as a “her” a “she”.
reductive wouldn’t come close.
I step out of my hole back onto
the sinking sands
where I substantially elevated
then watch fascinated as the sea fills my footprints carbonless
erisen by the tide
a fluid crest emerges small,
the retreating water is caught in the indent I have left, at first
these dancing streams of vibrational energy seem to gain a new entity ; ripples stream
dangling tentacles snaking spectrally along the beach
glittering with the sun’s white light
crystal twinkles little electric etc.. honeyed white lighting , slow motion strikes before
the sea comes in again, filling my absence and is then pulled out ( butterfly like ) with its dispersal pattern changed shape by my
absence fluid forms
glistening tendrils dancing out from where I was r a d i a t i n g
never has my absence been so present I wonder what the world will look like when I’m gone
the surf comes in again
stronger this time
waves overlap foaming at the mouth unable to contain
the presence of my absence is lost in a surge
but re-emerges with the
inhale destructive pulls hard tears streaming in reverse
down the surface of the shore
distortion erupts from the hole of
where I was distortion makes whole lot of
distortion dances from my absence in abundance
and I watch mesmerised , fascinated by just how dynamic the presence of my absence now appears.
I step back to change my perspective on my not
and to (inadvertently) birth another blemish on the beach.
White lines (honeyed white lighting) stream from the hole like a weeping in reverse
dancing all over the shore
fluid forms slow motion strikes
then down the shore slow motion
and then fainter
and fainter
till no more motion as the sea sweeps in again
and I stand back again to put this further in perspective
and birth (inadvertently) another blemish on the beach
I can no longer see the first where I stood
Either the shore has reclaimed it or maybe I just can no longer differentiate
My absence exists in the different ways of the water’s moves
dancing all over my footprints
the sand dunes will no doubt manifest their memory for
longer than the water
along with that of the
earth,
the moon
that speedboat
the echoes of a landmass somewhere far off
(
( and come tomorrow even these echoes will be gone )
(how long can an echo go after we’ve lost the ability to hear )
) no questions
no waves
and at last no
distortion
I’m happy that the shore has reclaimed its silence.
I’m happy to know that I am only to be a temporary
blemish on the beach