This vertiginous mood, transcendent heat, a life reaching its climax and visions of decay heaped on decay. The placidity with which I’d waited on events fading away in the daylight. I lay mummified on bed for hours at a stretch. Parts of me are built to be awake and yearning to be both absolutely still and moving everywhere at once. The most ordinary sound outside seems oppressive as a bayonet rending my head. Even a beam of sunlight filtering through drawn curtains, intolerable.
I neither act nor withdraw, I simply wait. I do wait. There is the twist. As the tart taste of past prickles my mouth, I am beginning to recover just a little bit of optimism. Perhaps the experiment which never ended, is only beginning, it exceeds my understanding. My self-dramatizing mind had waited for more excruciation but something is different which forces me to recall those other startling and baffling metamorphoses I had witnessed. In another transition, I must have changed already in ways I dont yet know but I have with me my solitude. In the silence I can hear myself think. I’m making an effort to see and hear beyond the quicksilver talk of my mind. It is the surface, which leads to depth, lurching into blackness and vulgarity.
In this feeble yet euphoric state I’d envisioned only general scenes blended from million repetitions. The accusations, the stuttered insults, the invisible blows of abuse and torment that rose up to my tingling, jangling ear. The shrieking fight over the mildew somewhere, which was grey blue and deathly. Certain dreams, where people hadn’t named names, they had merely shown up with bruises, and informed that they were sorry, slouched and grimaced in such a way as to exude, I hoped, regret.
That is gone. What has taken over is daydreams, suddenly copious, reentering the life I had lost, not that long ago. And the the knowledge that it’s too late and so the distress, settled, bearable, sans pain. I remember me as a palate of conflicting colors, crimson in love with splotches of green, ultramarine in spirit or permanently mauve, with dark toppings and hazy strokes. I wasn’t seasoned; few more colors had to arrive, grays and purples. I was a mess. I know I am exacerbated, reduced to precisely what I’d been leery of at the outset. Now I am something faded but perfectly acceptable. I see no color outside, only glitter and I have long since reasoned, I would likely prefer authentic enthusiastic meanness.
I remain an amateur at life, smelling like a walking cigarette, flushed, perhaps alcohol induced, relying on my skills of misdirection, awaiting symptoms of infatuation, which sends me into paroxysm of exhilaration. Then I would throw my head in musical bliss, pounding fresh melodies. Presently everything around me is in its natural order; a life basking in artificially created atmosphere, undisturbed by the sunlight on panes, the same dusty lamp glowing on the table. I do write, it has no conclusion but just dribbles off in much the same way it begins. My imagination keeps on getting noisier and noisier as I get quieter and quieter.
