conception—from the world within and the world without (one man’s tax of despair, another’s theft of love).
The extraordinary thing was that on seeing a reflection for sale—“he” himself had once skilfully engineered—pause for an instant in the shop window within and without, he could hardly believe his eyes that she was his and could have sworn it was a trick, livid brush stroke of imagination—invention of the waiting room. Why should it be … indeed if it were the one endless skull why should “he” dream that it —his own fiction, disembodied light ning feature—was intent in the heart of the street on finding “him” half-cowering in this shell of a room?
The staring rims of her dark glasses as she retreated within the waiting room were endowed now with devastation in turning toward him and he was on the point of protesting when he realized…. BLIND . He should have known but he had forgotten so many things which pinned him still to her in agony or relief. It flashed on him now why she had paused at the edge of memory (street of memory) as if to solicit him, head bowed a little so that he failed to detect in the uneven spaces of light the blank focus of her gaze … sightlessness he dreamed was sight: each fold of her flesh was but the inhibition of another garment drawn around her in bitter community of fantasy. BLIND . There was now no shade of uncertainty about it. He had forgotten so many landmarks he once knew.
TWO naked women she seemed to him now—one, signal of flesh he had himself half-forgotten and endured, the other, despair of stone he had himself long projected and dreamt. Blind tall hallucinated mistress or sail and intimate squat fetish or deck plunged and addressed each other as if they shared a drunken tide of self-commiseration—running in the veins of their world—for “him,” the substitute gender and vessel whose stern and transported shadow they now were, standing, it seemed, both above and below to crush him ultimately into any shape they desired.
But surely it was “he”, stone-deaf and forgetful within the maelstrom of years, who would crush “them” to vanishing point or silence, even though, in the self-same instant of immersion, he discerned the finger of lightning protest, conviction and conversion on every reflective line and lip.
Mill of the gods, storm, cripple, address, wrist of fog, fist of cloud: chemistry of fury which curled and singed the appearances of conceit and the shattered memory of the waiting room. For they —the naked women of dead fantasy—were staring at him now from within vanishing point, beam, pole, inflicted on them long, long ago. It was he, they declared, who was drunk and obscene, solipsistic. Not they. In fact it was he who had robbed them and broken them down into “his” image and crew and engrafted likeness. Ironic displacement. Thief. Thief. Thief of their womanhead. Metallic. Flinty. Their parts may have been glued to “his” person for all they knew. And yet he would have them believe he was indestructible. Erect. Capable of overshadowing them and offering them the only accommodation they desired, tangent and repose, liaison with a god.
Susan Forres tal indicted him out of her sightless eyes. Every other creature of consciousness moved and turned away into one ground of buried existence. But she—invested now by a phenomenon of illusion and uniform reserve or strength—put him, or raised him with her hand, into the dock … convertible void of the waiting room … harbour … courtroom….
TWO
Thief. Thief
T he early afternoon faded and turned to gloom and twilight, faint ash, dust. The waiting room was now apparently empty save for its own instinctive burden of settlement: was it the blindness of Susan Forrestal which remained like a stumbling block upon which one fell and was stunned into deafness, archaic lover, sound proof wall? Was it absence, an absent mind one endured or a third nameless person
The extraordinary thing was that on seeing a reflection for sale—“he” himself had once skilfully engineered—pause for an instant in the shop window within and without, he could hardly believe his eyes that she was his and could have sworn it was a trick, livid brush stroke of imagination—invention of the waiting room. Why should it be … indeed if it were the one endless skull why should “he” dream that it —his own fiction, disembodied light ning feature—was intent in the heart of the street on finding “him” half-cowering in this shell of a room?
The staring rims of her dark glasses as she retreated within the waiting room were endowed now with devastation in turning toward him and he was on the point of protesting when he realized…. BLIND . He should have known but he had forgotten so many things which pinned him still to her in agony or relief. It flashed on him now why she had paused at the edge of memory (street of memory) as if to solicit him, head bowed a little so that he failed to detect in the uneven spaces of light the blank focus of her gaze … sightlessness he dreamed was sight: each fold of her flesh was but the inhibition of another garment drawn around her in bitter community of fantasy. BLIND . There was now no shade of uncertainty about it. He had forgotten so many landmarks he once knew.
TWO naked women she seemed to him now—one, signal of flesh he had himself half-forgotten and endured, the other, despair of stone he had himself long projected and dreamt. Blind tall hallucinated mistress or sail and intimate squat fetish or deck plunged and addressed each other as if they shared a drunken tide of self-commiseration—running in the veins of their world—for “him,” the substitute gender and vessel whose stern and transported shadow they now were, standing, it seemed, both above and below to crush him ultimately into any shape they desired.
But surely it was “he”, stone-deaf and forgetful within the maelstrom of years, who would crush “them” to vanishing point or silence, even though, in the self-same instant of immersion, he discerned the finger of lightning protest, conviction and conversion on every reflective line and lip.
Mill of the gods, storm, cripple, address, wrist of fog, fist of cloud: chemistry of fury which curled and singed the appearances of conceit and the shattered memory of the waiting room. For they —the naked women of dead fantasy—were staring at him now from within vanishing point, beam, pole, inflicted on them long, long ago. It was he, they declared, who was drunk and obscene, solipsistic. Not they. In fact it was he who had robbed them and broken them down into “his” image and crew and engrafted likeness. Ironic displacement. Thief. Thief. Thief of their womanhead. Metallic. Flinty. Their parts may have been glued to “his” person for all they knew. And yet he would have them believe he was indestructible. Erect. Capable of overshadowing them and offering them the only accommodation they desired, tangent and repose, liaison with a god.
Susan Forres tal indicted him out of her sightless eyes. Every other creature of consciousness moved and turned away into one ground of buried existence. But she—invested now by a phenomenon of illusion and uniform reserve or strength—put him, or raised him with her hand, into the dock … convertible void of the waiting room … harbour … courtroom….
TWO
Thief. Thief
T he early afternoon faded and turned to gloom and twilight, faint ash, dust. The waiting room was now apparently empty save for its own instinctive burden of settlement: was it the blindness of Susan Forrestal which remained like a stumbling block upon which one fell and was stunned into deafness, archaic lover, sound proof wall? Was it absence, an absent mind one endured or a third nameless person
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