beyond oneself and overlap each flickering stalemate of apprehension.
The sun burned and faded like a rag on fire, intensity, luminous paint, stone, canvas: a shred of emotion which gleamed for an instant and grew into an address one felt one had made or actually deciphered in the heart of chaos. It was a borrowed shelter of vision, flaked, holed, animated façade, instinctive shock of recognition, number, letter of gravity. It was the minted incongruous mask one wore, whose features as they stared through glass into the street were equally stamped with a bodily and ghostly design shared by immediate figures of acquaintance and remote figures of antiquity. This was “his” main legend and business, the business of preserving someone (like and unlike himself), of disguising someone whose proximity to himself was as nebulous as dust and adamant as stone.
“His” relationship then to himself (and to her) was baffling. And if it appeared at times to spark into being a certain solid community, there were other times when it all seemed to hang together by the veriest shred of fellowship , emotional relief as well as entanglement. It was a question of the marriage of roots as well as branches and arms of dispersal.
The day was now darkening as “he” appeared to reside within and yet adventure throughout her skull of the world. The mushroom of an umbrella swam within the shop window above the pavement. And thus—almost against “his” will—began “his” transportation into her subject and object, alteration in the proliferate colour of living and dead relationships, animation and inanimation, the shadow within the moved stone and without the immovable flesh. “He” had been seized by her fear of “him”. As if “he” stood naked and receptive within the room above the thoroughfare. And the growing shelter and embrace he began to suffer turned, as the clock died and still ticked, into a total presence he regained and knew. Like a garment—necessary and binding and absurd—“he” had forgotten he still carried or wore, whose pliantarms held him in the void of time until they became charged with constriction and feeling. To be naked and still clothed (as he felt himself to be) was to cling to a stem … extremity….
She sat now beside him in the waiting room ( Susan drew the palm of her hand slowly across her face as if it had turned to stone )naked as he in the poverty of existence. *She drew him closer still within the skin of another incongruous skeleton they shared, flesh or wood, swimming in the glass of their shop window within and without. Antique display. Waiting room.*
It was the ornamental structure of her calves and a curious gravity of frame which appeared to strip her and give him bone and currency, blunt shadow, pregnant reality…. He felt he was being drawn into a revelation of unique and terrifying possession on entering the room and taking his place beside her. Was it the most curious rigidity of the past or most intimate fantasy of the present she fought and entertained?
The truth was she now believed he had been cornered and pursued by something or someone which paradoxically seemed to have vanished long before in the dust of the waiting room but now came trailing after. Ancient flesh or newborn shadow? Mushroom of sensibility? Or insensibility? He shuddered a little turning to glance at her…. Susan Forrestal. He spoke her name aloud as he endeavoured to keep her still at arm’s length. Arm’s length. Duel of the emotions. Thrust and counterthrust. He had last touched her ten or twelve years ago as if she had been indeed a painted cornerstone of wood. She was changed ( Susan drew a rigid hand across the marble of her eyes ) but not so changed he did not partly remember her. If he had failed to answer or come it might have been different but now it was too late. She drew him into her twin apparition, embodiment of hate and of love she felt he still imposed upon her—deformity of all
The sun burned and faded like a rag on fire, intensity, luminous paint, stone, canvas: a shred of emotion which gleamed for an instant and grew into an address one felt one had made or actually deciphered in the heart of chaos. It was a borrowed shelter of vision, flaked, holed, animated façade, instinctive shock of recognition, number, letter of gravity. It was the minted incongruous mask one wore, whose features as they stared through glass into the street were equally stamped with a bodily and ghostly design shared by immediate figures of acquaintance and remote figures of antiquity. This was “his” main legend and business, the business of preserving someone (like and unlike himself), of disguising someone whose proximity to himself was as nebulous as dust and adamant as stone.
“His” relationship then to himself (and to her) was baffling. And if it appeared at times to spark into being a certain solid community, there were other times when it all seemed to hang together by the veriest shred of fellowship , emotional relief as well as entanglement. It was a question of the marriage of roots as well as branches and arms of dispersal.
The day was now darkening as “he” appeared to reside within and yet adventure throughout her skull of the world. The mushroom of an umbrella swam within the shop window above the pavement. And thus—almost against “his” will—began “his” transportation into her subject and object, alteration in the proliferate colour of living and dead relationships, animation and inanimation, the shadow within the moved stone and without the immovable flesh. “He” had been seized by her fear of “him”. As if “he” stood naked and receptive within the room above the thoroughfare. And the growing shelter and embrace he began to suffer turned, as the clock died and still ticked, into a total presence he regained and knew. Like a garment—necessary and binding and absurd—“he” had forgotten he still carried or wore, whose pliantarms held him in the void of time until they became charged with constriction and feeling. To be naked and still clothed (as he felt himself to be) was to cling to a stem … extremity….
She sat now beside him in the waiting room ( Susan drew the palm of her hand slowly across her face as if it had turned to stone )naked as he in the poverty of existence. *She drew him closer still within the skin of another incongruous skeleton they shared, flesh or wood, swimming in the glass of their shop window within and without. Antique display. Waiting room.*
It was the ornamental structure of her calves and a curious gravity of frame which appeared to strip her and give him bone and currency, blunt shadow, pregnant reality…. He felt he was being drawn into a revelation of unique and terrifying possession on entering the room and taking his place beside her. Was it the most curious rigidity of the past or most intimate fantasy of the present she fought and entertained?
The truth was she now believed he had been cornered and pursued by something or someone which paradoxically seemed to have vanished long before in the dust of the waiting room but now came trailing after. Ancient flesh or newborn shadow? Mushroom of sensibility? Or insensibility? He shuddered a little turning to glance at her…. Susan Forrestal. He spoke her name aloud as he endeavoured to keep her still at arm’s length. Arm’s length. Duel of the emotions. Thrust and counterthrust. He had last touched her ten or twelve years ago as if she had been indeed a painted cornerstone of wood. She was changed ( Susan drew a rigid hand across the marble of her eyes ) but not so changed he did not partly remember her. If he had failed to answer or come it might have been different but now it was too late. She drew him into her twin apparition, embodiment of hate and of love she felt he still imposed upon her—deformity of all
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