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Mockingbird
what could there be, worse,
than shaking off the black dog
on the sunniest of singing, birded,
mocking spring days
I looked for you to come out from behind the clouds again
your hair waving like jettisoned energy
into the dark, trailing spirals,
matter,
into the blind
void of life, imagination
potential
spring.
The sky burnt, the clouds hung,
the sun shot,
the sea moaned, the cliffs fell,
the sand shrank...
the rocks were dumb
I was not.
You ceased.
Even the air failed and died.
Mind World
I am on the beach, with Don Chihuahua. He gives me a cigarette, which I take, since I am no longer able to withstand the contagion of futility. The world is no longer able to find him, or me, without the aid of the blue puff of smoke whorling time into infinity for a few definite moments.
The Don casts his mind back to a recent weekend on which his consciousness dwelt on the rim of the bath. His body remained in his chair, gaping at the live world, but his mind-in-the-world was tethered to the rim of the bath; the hand of his mind raised, constantly, the ideal blade, razor sharp and inches long, hovering on the crest of his will. The movement of his mind-body pushed its arm up towards its chin, the mental knuckles resting there while the blade grazed the polyp-ridden cavities of the neck. A mind-eye watches the wrist flick blithely across the tendons - they are closed in their own world, believing in tension, and oblivious to exteriority, which must disillusion them of their fond dream: severed, the head flips through a half-circle and the gasping of the revealed arteries and sinews traces parabolic out-leaping carnivals of spending blood.
Yet, the Don remains in this chair, breathing, pulsing, living, inescapably. I continue to blame him for my lack of courage, although this very blame is itself the more cowardly act.
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Fantastically complicated machinery
Don Chihuahua spoke, but not to me - he addressed someone who was, in his mind, leaving.
"There is nothing romantic or beautiful about depression. It is fantastically complicated machinery, and yet an arbitrary scribble over life. An old friend of mine thinks of it as an unsolvable glowing blue hovering spherical puzzle, which credits it with some kind of aesthetic quality it does not deserve. I might say it was a circle, since it goes round, and around. But the circle is ugly, imperfect, not circular. Not elliptical or ovular, but erratic. Repeating endlessly, enough variation to deceive, but not enough for hope.
"Do not consider my choices to be considerate. Choosing not to die now is not a kindness. Suicide does not signify a soul, and living does not signify hope for one. Might I have forced your guilt to be over me and my death, rather than for him? I am a coward. I am unable even to usurp with absolute selfishness, and yet it is not because I am kind, but because I am already half-dead.
"Something aesthetically pleasing can inspire pity. You must see this as mere ugliness. There is no such thing as a beautiful episode. There are only shifts in the location of nowhere. This will not make sense and I will not explain it, since there is nothing to explain."
I held him in my arms, only to feel his repulsion.
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Lady Godiva
It was the cold middle of night, and I was summoned by Don Chihuahua. He spoke to me in low tones, without break, and without expecting a reply. I still do not understand his words, and cannot explain his meaning, except to say that I could see he was moved; as to why he accused me of being a spectre of his past, I do not know. An empty whiskey bottle lay by the side of his chair, and his ashtray was overflowing. He was unkempt and clearly tired. I do not know what to make of it - but here, as I have ever promised, is my account of his words.
"Lady Godiva - you know her - has returned". He looked at me accusingly. "She has left the darkness of the past and reappeared, just as you have. I do not ask what you want of me - I can teach you nothing that will alter the choices you make and if I could, well, then I would not be here now to tell you. You cannot force me into a different course of life, and if you could, well...
"But you know Lady Godiva. You love her as I loved her. And for all that we are connected, you and I - you with your incomprehension, and I with my all-too-familiar understanding - yet we are worlds apart. You, as I in my youth," - he grimaced - "do not see where real and imaginary worlds divide. I understand, as you will one day understand, that the unspoken and unenacted imagination overpowers a youthful mind to the point where he must speak and act, regardless of the consequences. My mind recoils in shame at the disasters and tragedies that could have been avoided had I only understood that the world is not a fiction, that the people in our lives are not players, that there is no drama, no denouement, no irony, and no authorial destiny awaiting us; and that to write it into our world is sheer vanity.
"These are the mistakes that you are doomed to repeat. And when we have switched places, and it is you, sitting here, no longer a spectre of my past but myself as I am, and you face the young pretender, as I face you now, then you will understand that that world you have written in your mind is precious, pure, and fragile. Then maybe you will understand that it should be protected, not because it will be destroyed, but because it has the power to destroy. The real world cannot stand the contamination of the unreal; the fates that you pretend to unfurl will not be dictated; the facts of your life will not yield to your delusion of providence; and the people in your life will not be written as though they were your playthings, but will rise and fight - or worse, simply leave you to your ruinous fictions, as I was left to mine, all those years ago, by Lady Godiva..."
He had stopped, and, since I had no idea what I could say, made to leave. As I reached the door, he called after me finally -
"Understand, mind, as you go about your folly, that she is blameless. It is I - you and I - who are responsible."
He looked away from me, clearly finished with me. And now I must see her, my Lady Godiva.
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The Port
I spoke again to Don Chihuahua. A gathering of friends brought us together, in the moonlight and flickering illumination of an oil-drum fire, in which the scraps of shattered pallets glowed. The Don bore his soul like a cloak, as though to reveal everything were the greatest protection against the elements.
"When you find yourself in the world and see finally things as they are; when you realise that the world is an ocean of searching and that you are tossed as though you were no more than a fleck of spray; when the comforts of familiarity and safety fall from you like a spent cocoon, and the stays of civilisation are nothing but illusory shackles; when you feel the exhilarating freedom of knowledge - the knowledge that you are truly alone, and that all men are unknowable, and that the only sure thing is that sooner or later you will dashed in the waves and be gone utterly - "
He was smiling as he said these words, but the smile seemed to me complicated and not directed at alleviating the tense silence that had fallen around his voice.
"To what do you cling? To a god? To your fellow man in the hope that fellowship is enough? To gratitude that you have lived at all? To love?"
I think we all wanted to know what his answer would be. But clearly he did not intend to say any more.
For my part, I find his words push me to a precipice. I am unsure whether I envy the depth of his soul - since I am no deep thinker - or whether I am grateful that I have no insights into such matters, and am willing to seek out any port in a storm.
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