A
mud bath, the wash, sea-sand. A sleeping dog is folded inside a small
box made of stiff hessian as sludgy seawater flows over its’ body
and gradually, over an achingly unfolding period of time, before my
very eyes, submerging it entirely: an immersive nap or else a watery
grave. Zerry – a woman of uncommon mercy and a kindness that verges
on the self-less (a suspect condition of self-bondage) – she rocks
the stiff hessian casket/Moses basket back and forth in the shallows,
watching as waves lap across the contours of the dog’s body, the
water reconstituted as fingers that once stroked it, conscious in
their (the fingers, the waves) negotiation of shape, variations in
hardness and softness and the commune between flesh, fur and bone.
“His time has come,” she utters beneath her steady breath,
turning to face me, and I face her with incredulity, entranced, and
by way of this entrancement, unstable “in my self.” I feel stupid
and dedicated to nothing, no-one through witnessing this ritual of
submersion, this gentle articulation of a sleep that exists in the
tension between life and death. Shutting-down, as opposed to ending,
it is his time to retire and not to expire.
This
beach occupies the periphery of the school grounds, to which I have
returned to complete my education (as all must do). So many a year of
procrastination have kept me from this place and I find myself here
again, inevitably, for this return is inescapable, at the age of
“nearly 40”. Standing at the school gate, which never was locked
or functioned as a border between inside and out – a most permeable
membrane – I plead with the Mathematics teacher, a stocky man in a
shirt and tie, who I realize is approximately my age. He iterates:
“EVERYBODY must complete their education”, which I know to be
true, and this minor horror thus magnified by necessity and
gravitational return must be relived.
I
make my unsteady way through familiar corridors, they are etched onto
my deep memory like tattoos: burned there indelibly, but the rawness
and soreness reducing as years pass. The deep memory – encrusted
with scabs. I make my way with extreme caution – one never knows
who one may encounter on these unyielding passageways lined with
doors like mouths that store bodies until a separate wave of hunger
passes over, parting the lips to expel and to ingest: a continuum of
consumption and regurgitation. One never knows whom one may encounter
on spiral staircases with their blind-spots and the hierarchisation
of bodies by virtue of their position on the staircase; with their
multiple, invisible entry points. I proceed from the ground upwards.
I reach the halfway-point of the spiral, imbibing through mouth nose
and pores the sickly stench of cleaning fluid, this aroma seeming to
congeal in my throat, a sticky mass, producing a gag reflex that is
in spite of itself rather pleasant – body and environment
synchronised in the arena of the repellent. I consider the appeal of
an artificial floral display whose perfection draws one into
collusion with ones own deception: a vision of self-deception. I
detect the scent of toast through the fug and make my way (I had
paused) down the staircase to the ground floor (again), glimpsing the
image of Deanna through the exterior motion of my descent (the
interior and exterior steadiness has reversed). I detect the tight
blonde curls, the concave thighs and the complexion deliberately
masked with a velveteen patina of liberally daubed foundation and
compressed powder that fully suffocates the skin; a mask of
flawlessness behind which she (afraid, aggrieved, bereft)
dissimulates. I detect this girl, and the very awareness of her
presence in the scene, magnifying for my perception the power of the
CASUAL GESTURE coagulates into an erupting pustule of impotent rage
that remains imprisoned, for to manifest this as an eruption that is
detectable by her would only close the gestural circle, and render my
imprisonment external, or in the real. To echo the casual gesture, to
correlate myself, to remake myself in this constellation would unlock
lesser-mediated emotional boundaries. Opposition thus reconstructed
as alignment, I swallow the key. I did it then as I do it now,
“almost 40,” I swallow myself and in doing so reinforce the
organic conglomeration cell.
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