I
I dream of time, then, a paper strip twisted in on itself, doubly looping. And time in my dreams is colossal yet tiny—a single glance is a million years, a close examination exactly half a second; I do not want to wake, for in dreaming time I can make time bend to each and every one of my unconscious wanderings. Is there a morning when I finally choose not to wake?

II

Watch the skies closely, just before the morning peeks its head around the corner and the end of night is tailing off into nothingness. Perhaps a star or two will blink its eyes at you, carefully, being unwillingly hidden by the swooping spectre of shadow wildly careening across the skies.

III

The girl on the bench quietly sits, waiting for the summer breeze to pass her by. Riding on it will be her lover, a god as gentle as the feather on a day-old chick, and he will tend to her fancies: he is her drug and her solace, and she his most faithful worshipper. In sleep they lie chastely together, her scroll and flower tucked under a nearby rock even as the children play in the meadows, and laughter is their blanket and the air they breathe.

IV

The oranges melt in the heat of the marketplace. Every other fruit, however, remains unharmed.

V

Grass. Steep hill. Wind, clouds, sky as smooth as a baby’s hair. Lone figure climbing. Horizon acquiescing to the bold outline of the hill. Grass, step by step yielding under weary feet. Wind rushing by ears a strident timekeeper. Peak of hill. Lone figure stretches arms, and laughs: a laughter of loneliness.

VI

...tum tum tum the drums go, never resting for a moment, trying to speak their own language with syntax and meaning through their harsh-edged lips. We can almost understand, in the primitivity of it all but they have no tongues, and our liquids and approximants turn into plosives at that surface of the mouth we call a drum; what is language to them is only music to us.

VII: Recollection

There is a mist over the entire scene in this room, but it is warm. There is light from one corner, a warmth in a strangely bluish yellow, offsetting the shades of the wooden furniture and the whiteness of the sheets swathing the bed. The windows set mutely in the wall try to keep out the night but it seeps in and wafts like the scent of a kiss—

                —you are lying and never facing me, reticence showing along the length of your spine and the sultry curve of your ribcage and waist, nude and grained like the aroma of wood floating on the clouds that hang about the room. Sheets cover your legs and hips. The glowing light flickers to lick at the shadows in the ceiling and the penumbrous contours outlining your back solidify; a series of lines spreads gradually through the darkness toward you and onto your body and suddenly, you start to sing.

                I am also naked and I sit on the bed with you, by you. Meditative, your body is as my prayer yet your face is never bestowed as a gift to my eyes, and only your shoulders and slender neck are turned to me, silently refusing the teases of my sight while your sinuous song draws my hand to you, as if I should turn you over. But then I see the strings forming slowly out of the lines of your back, and all such thought disappears; then you sing the pitches I play with my fingers as my hands gently smooth themselves over your back, your spine, and the quietly delicate line of your waist, laid out before my eyes.

VIII

What is music to us is language to them: in dreams they speak and wend their way through arches of melody. But they have no bodies, only souls, and when any creature enters their world the sounds embalm its body and yearn to take it to hold the fragile soul of the voice, the voice softly caressing our minds to make us sleep each day.

IX

In a mute certainty the world of reality is always interchangeable for the world of dream, for sleep is waking when dawn calls and the first shreds of sunlight divest us of our vestments of slumber; then we must refrain from believing more than half of everything we feel.

X

Feel this silk around your body, your majesty: the purples and reds offset your countenance and the solemnity and weightlessness of the fabric are as the wash of colours at a sunset where your body is as the sands of the beach. Feel this silk like the waves of the sea, then, because you have stolen the blood from your people to make the reds, and the blue of the sky no longer visits your land—the tears of birds are awash set these colours in the lightness of your robe.

XI

This is a cup containing a storm. Give it to who you will, and bid him drink it; or imbibe it yourself, and let the power distilled into this absolute essence stream into your veins and toss and turn your body and wash your consciousness aground on the rocks of indifference. There will be no aftereffect and the entire experience will have been as a dream, a shining beam of happiness that brushes against your cheek for a second after the storm blows over, but the loss of that stark happiness will be the haunt of your soul for the rest of your future lives.

XII

Two worlds pendulate around each other, separation and togetherness their gravity and their bond. The gods will watch and interfere as they deem fit; but for now, snug in the knowledge that such an apocalypse is far off yet into a future they do not care about, they drink, laugh, and make merry while watching their clockwork creation dance its two-step.

XIII

I can see the entirety of time spread out before me, a single line thinner than the hairs on an angel’s back, and I am standing on the spot where I sleep. In front and behind stretches literal infinity, strangely curving upward at each end: and I know that we are all caught in a loop, forever going around in the same circle.

(that we are a risk is carved right into the finest tissues of our flesh; and it tugs at the deeper breath of my soul as we embrace. listen to the birds sing—closer to the sky it is maybe we can steal their wings in flight, you my angel and i the mortal thrashing out in my ecstasy to hang onto your back—listen to the sun as it rises softly through the clouds. you can hear the morning, and in sound it is more beautiful than in sight.

but it is in touch and the intangible that you are the most beautiful, and as i press my cheek into the soft curve of your ear it strikes me that we are, indeed, a risk. sometimes, dare to care not about the little things, and they will cease to matter. grow thoughts and feelings, and in the warm embrace of our furtive diablerie sight will fade away; and even if there be absolute darkness the hint of your hand will keep me sane.

in carelessness our laughter is scattered over the rough floor of this sunrise-shod rooftop like saffron on rice, tenderly carpeting our consciousness and taking us into words we can only imagine. i yearn, yes, i want i need i live, and perhaps you do too, as we play hide and seek among the many thousands of people. and yet we are as little insects crawling on walls, seceding peace to the infrequent footfalls pulsating beneath our skin as our hearts beat.

the wounds on our faces are healed by each other. as our breaths become on in the still early-morning air the scent of your being intoxicates me, and hungrily we kiss, desiring with such force that you fill my lungs and my self.

take me, my dearest, on your wings of song.)

I

It’s easy to spot these people in the midst of the night; their appearance is like a fixture of the landscape. Books gripped hard under the arm, the solitary figure walking along the road seems like a simple cliché. The sky is overcast even in this time of night, lilac on mauve in the darker purples of the world.

                He almost never reads from the books. To him they are his pillow, his rest in the night, when the stench of cigarette smoke wafts around his body the way his sweat hangs onto him in the humid weather.

II

There’s the car with the pretty pink-and-white bouquet tied to the bonnet on top of the BMW trident, and the pastel rose ribbons tied to the door handles and the boot, festively changing the mood of the sleek black metal. Passers-by grin knowingly at the couple’s intimacy and embarrassment, as the bride shyly tosses her own bouquet to the cheering crowd while being held tightly by his arm around her waist.

                And when they get into the car they have smiles pasted so widely across their faces, the groom in his suit of black and white and the girl in her innocent white, she flushed with giggles and him, sighing, unloosening his tie as he winds up the window, giving himself some respite from the deafening cheers.

III

The door opens with a hydraulic hiss to the bus interior’s cold atmosphere. Yet there is the cheery greeting: “Good morning!” just like that, from the childish face of the bus captain. He is the one who makes the most noise in this bus of the early morning. No one minds this noise; they find it uplifting, often leaving with smiles.

                What they don’t know is that this cheery face, this determinedly bubbly voice hides an interior of the utmost emptiness. With two dull eyes devoid of intelligence he looks at the road in front of him through the windshield; it is black, forbidding, unending, cyclical. The insipid glow of the headlights strike hard through the darkness only to fall, defeated, at the feet of the bus.

                The door opens again with the clang of the aged mechanics and the customary hiss. The man behind the wheel says again, “Good morning!” just like that, almost automatically, and the passengers siphon the joy out of his heart.

IV

The coffee cup leaves his lips, and he sighs satisfaction palpable as the brown-white swirls in the cup. The comfort he takes from this daily routine, sitting under the usual glass roof sipping his usual latte in the usual corner of the small café tucked out of corner in the depths of the small alley. In the exclusivity of these patterns rises his desire for life, a comfortable existence safely sheltered from prying eyes, and he treasures his solitude.

                But there is the phone that rings occasionally, a spear thrust aggressively into his quiet, and he answers that nagging buzz with false manners betrayed by the hatred in his treatment of the phone. And as soon as the conversation is over, brusquely dealt with, he puts the phone down, picks up his cup, and leans back in his chair contented and carefully taking the next sip of the brown, brown liquid of the morning coffee.

V

Allowing their relationship to deteriorate, their interaction revolves around their coupling: frantic and brutish, conducted in the strangest of places. She pushes herself on him in the midst of their journey in the train, and he obliges. They have no trouble doing it. It is already a habit—each knows that when they arrange a meeting they’ll end up having sex.

                She stiffens as he opens her again, pushing into her as they lean in the back of the carriage. They move slowly, pulsing with the rattling of the train on the tracks, and he feels her envelop him in a sensation not unfamiliar to his body; he embraces her in a twisted sort of protection, shielding her in the cocoon of their wanting.

                The passengers never notice them. With experience born of repetition she has learnt to suppress her groaning like an energy into her fingers which she sticks into the back of his pants, grasping him into herself. But he crushes his mouth against her hair, kissing the top of her head and, with tears lying snugly in the corners of his eyes, never lets her notice that he has stripped his entire soul for their shared sacrilegious pleasure.

I.

Filled with copper moonlight I stand on my balcony, giant leaps resonating several years past. Memory and prophecy come together like a jigsaw puzzle: deconstructionist, destructionist. The mystery of blue hardens quietly in the distance like a mountain. Foam and the solitude spill from the wide open abyss of my palm.

                As a secret my synthetic century coalesce from the blackcurrant clock. Tick, tock, tick, tock; the swan flaps its wings as winter turns so hideously Spring that, wintering it, one might be forgiven to think that April was the New Year.

                Quietly the stars breathe dust into my heart. With you, quietly the balcony crumbles, spreading its seed all over the earth’s unforgiving body. Our unchanging skies inhale the wind and wave of the night, quietly.

II.

Wine and water, god and man. Deity enriched with the wheat of an undeniable rainfall. Silent rowdiness of drunken stars, images coalesce into art’s green chords. Twenty voices chatter, speaking of birds while hidden in the strawberry’s verdure. Hark, the monster of our sanglant desire.

                Water and wine, man and god. Blinding darkness loud enough that the woodpeckers mistake themselves for butterflies, pulsating magnets spin in the night. I drink. Is it wine or water, god or man?

III.

I shelve each love by labelling my fingers Memories. Endymion wordlessly dreams, offshore whirlpools seduce Orpheus. Each word of mine a pouch with seven strings. Poseidon, futile at my feet. The misty dream of nymph and faun inscribe themselves coldly on the hearth of the badger. Arachne weaves the riots.

                My balcony is filled with copper moonlight, where I wait for the eternal Her. The restrictive body breathes quietly. Silk and skin and singing shudder tears through the entwined grapevine, resplendent in wine and illicit joy. A glance, and the moon extinguishes. We are left extravagant in torture, tension of an unheeded scolding.

                Love me you? the seagull cries invisibly. The scion of the depths roars but I hear not. My palm grows a deeper whorl of lines. The milk of midnight soothes my bed. Cicadas chirp. Torrent. Tempest. Torment.

IV.

What are you? The rains are here again.

Flurries of quavering wind, seeping through cracks, everywhere across the spectrum, window, flue, chimney, vent—faster than hell, more stable than iron, breathing, pulsating, palpitating; interrupting, breaking, commanding,

flurries of quivering sound, percolating through consciences, haphazardly everywhichway, high, low, loud, soft—singing, sighing, striking; gracious, forceful, detached, gliding—tugging at unknown depths of the soul, beating at the heart’s cold walls;

blinding light of day, take me in your warmth and your rays, shroud in your intangibility the quick of my marrow, burn it, sear it, cauterise these wounds from which my soul bleeds; take my eyes, my skin, my body, and toss it to the heavens,

quietude of silent night, take me in your solitude such that my weary self can rest, veil in your darkness my upturned music that drips down unto the earth in blueblood droplets of small letters, breathe in me, curse in me, wreak your peace in me;

oppressive blanket of sky, cloaking the earth all around, notbreathing notfreeing notsleeping, watching everything that happens around the world at the same time as everything else, simultaneous paradoxity of theory and colour and bent light,

soothing wash of sea, calming, slowly trapping, inexorably expanding shrinking, alive as the smallest mite in the dust, dead as the world once was, blue, grey, green, purple: lullcalm dullground where life comes from, sounding in the silence of the beach;

ticking hand of clock, slowly pulling at each life on this plane of existence as fragile as a newborn chick, gradually unsighting us, unhearing us, unsexing us with the tide of the unstoppable and the infinite, draw away the sadness and pain in the world,

sweeping hand of god, changing, moulding the face of the planet—by time forgotten and by man revived, ever one, ever many, many in one in many in one in many, cheating lying wheeling dealing with the least of life and the darkest of demons;

eye of the blind, what do you see—a whirl of colours missing your mind, a milky darkness inside your closeopen lids breaking the hardest of light, mixing in the milieu of iris lens vitreous humour the profanity of sight so lost,

ear of the deaf, what do you hear—a song of harmonies whistling through the cracks where your ears are not, a melody so beautiful coming from you and yet inaudible to everyone else, a nascent palmclap drumbeat ricocheting in the nothingness,

skin of the leprous, what do you feel—a million ticks borrowing under the surface of your unconsciousness, an unitching at the back of your neck, your hairs standing erected with not a thing to withstand the wind, a cut, a decay, an infection untouchable,

tongue of the insipid, what do you taste—a lost lover’s tongue beneath your own, never to be taken again, the soildry mouthroof coldly calling out its wasted curves, the stingpain of words spoken and never to be spoke, glass sand water bland,

nose of the anosmic, what do you smell—a fruit of nothings spiting your sense, a sweat clung on the littlest hairs on your upper lip being detached by your hand, an odour of past present future exploding away in the deepest recesses of your lungs;

vulgarity of white moon, virgin pregnancies month by month calling out to pubescents, stoically standing high up above as if to usurp the place of the sun, pathetically exerting shining screaming for attention, hid behind a cloud of indifference,

elegance of yellow sun, radiant unto invisibility, oil the rusted clockwork of this earth with your haughtiness and lies of other worlds above, take the sleeping beings and jolt them into awakening, tear the rains asunder to stoke your own fire;

cursed depths of heaven, where all the salvated go, unseeable unreachable, untelling the secrets of your palpable existence, to obfuscate to swindle the believing, to satisfy an arousal to quench animal instinct and natural religion, home of rebirthing,

hallowed heights of hell, yearning for each and every soul of this existence, stay in limbo the inveiglers and say in pride the causes of your being, where all that are true are raised to, in highest limits and infinities of time and wonder, sated lust fulfilled want;

love, take me from this purgatory so that flight will never be withheld from my tired wings that beat helplessly against the floodrealm of jester’s caps and fool’s gold: show me the truth, show me what is true, and when you tell me you do not exist—

hate, take me from this purgatory so that desire shall stain my body no more and wanting shall be left for the end: show me the truth of eternities and deception, that the autumnal rain of yellowgold and redcrimson and brownearth leaves know;

beauty fill my eyes, sadness fill my thighs: take my manhood and let it be where it will, take my heart and impale it as a beacon on the highest citywall in any universe: my head shall be a delphinic oracle and my eyes shall tell the future:

memory of the senile, walnutshrivelled and atomdecayed, radiate all lost wisdom into a higher kingdom where children feast on knowledge hid from them, pleurate your brimstone weights where the hungry cry for thirst instead of a filled stomach,

sodomy and fornication and unrestrained humanity precede the coming of the infinite star, pure and red as the colour of dreams, and there all the philosophy of worlds both ancient and modern will collapse into a spinning black hole without charge,

that this may be, if this may be, when this will be, vortices of vertices spiral into boxes where lives will be neatly categorised into: laugh cry cut sigh good cheery bad weary, and angels and devils alike will copulate a frenzy into the next sentence:

there is no syntax no grammar, no rule in the sentence, no period no flash, no overarching law of patterns and worlds and beads and ideas strung together on the gibbetic electric execution dartboard, the finest feeling of niceties and bound tape,

existences commingle and consummate in the antitheist god, where commentaries and contradictions cover their reduction from absurdity in the greater morass of solar masses; protons neutrons electrons quarks mesons twirl whirl eliminate annihilate—

this is the nonbeing in which we all want to be—

thus be, and in being, be saved: blood as flows through your body will flow through the gutters of life when death comes, because life is the affliction and death the cure.

The knowledge of the conspiracy trickled down to the students via careless teacher-to-teacher conversations, and also their recent Philosophy test, in which more than 70% of the cohort failed. It was noted that the people who failed usually excelled in many other things and were “valuable assets to the school”, as one authoritative source was heard saying.

Raffles Institution has decided to come clean about this conspiracy, seeing as it has already been revealed to the searching eyes of the national community. An inside source was quoted to be saying, “This is not going to be foolproof. There are people who fail tests only because they are stupid.” However, the percentage of valuable students captured by this conspiracy is expected to exceed 85%, in even the least optimistic estimates.

The Raffles Philosophy Course undertaken in the Raffles schools has a must-pass status: a student has to pass Philosophy (as well as English, Research Education, and Character & Leadership Education) to be promoted to the next higher level. Thus, with this wave of fail grades being handed out, it is highly expected that most of this year’s Secondary 4 batch will fall victim.

A high authority in the administration, who wished to be identified only as Mr Koh, has said that this ties in perfectly with the school’s ongoing upgrades. Thus it is clear what the newly-cleared Administration Blocks are for. Mr Koh says, “We have been planning this for quite a while now. It was already known to the staff that the new upgrades were to house the Secondary 5 batch of 2008, widely acknowledged among us to be the best batch since Lee Kuan Yew’s own.”

Also unprecedented is the decision to do so, given that all retainees from previous years were assimilated into the Secondary 4 class they were assigned to. This can be explained away by the large number of students expected to stay back another year, placed at around 300.

Raffles Institution is doing so to ensure it gains an advantage in academic and B-division sports competitions, in which it has not enjoyed its usual success as was expected. As to why such drastic measures were taken, none of those concerned in formulating this plan were quite clear about it. A Dr Leffrey Jee (one of the higher authorities) says, “We want to expand the knowledge base of our competing population.”

However, to appease parents, Raffles Institution will be teaching these Secondary 5s with the requisite A-level syllabi, such that they may go straight on to JC2 in 2009, having passed “the equivalent of a syllabus pitched at JC1 standard”. Students, however, are disgruntled, saying that this is cheapening their sense of progress.

The school’s official press release on allowing the students to progress straight to JC2 states: “As teachers, we understand the need for students to have social lives. Allowing them to be with their RGS counterparts at JC2 will, we hope, foster a working relationship that they will be slightly discouraged from doing so at Secondary 5, with the physical separation of classes in the Bishan campus.”

More news will be reported as information gradually becomes available.

Paupières et roses

S’ouvrent demi-closes;

Du réveil des choses;

On entend le bruit.

—Victor Hugo

The little clay men are many and diverse, and looking of all colours and shapes they rest, lifeless, on my table. There is a light dusting of powdered clay over the entirety of my workspace. Taking up space in their varied poses, hard as statues, they lie haphazard as the thoughts in my mind.

Each is the manifestation of a single one of my actions, the incarnation of a single one of my thoughts: and all are devoted to me. I live my life in the world seemingly remote from these effigies. Yet I make these things, involuntarily, and out of love, or hate, or joy or sadness.

These figures are a gift I give to the people around me, those whom I meet, talk to, bump into on the street, or even glance at through the windows of the rushing train. Each person thus sighted leaves a little mark on my mind, and eventually is borne out in another of these figures.

Little morsels of knowledge, hungrily consumed by my mind, are in turn effused into more and more of the clay figures. More and more of myself is borne out in the clay I so forcefully shape.

On my table, they look like little men fresh out of the firing oven. Finished but not flawless: each one is fragile from the heat and the power of the flame of my imagination. I know they will serve me, because I have made them to do so. Like a god I view my creations, albeit each of them surreally abstract; I have put my love, will, soul, into them.

Each of them—no matter how distinct from any other, how different—is me.

And just as Gaia breathed life into Man, I breathe life into them, and let them go.

Author's Note: This prose piece is a submission for the Julia Gabriel Express Yourself writing contest.

for laundryshapedsouls
----

I am lost to the world.

In flights of fancy almost eternal, swiftly I twirl with you high above the clouds, above the grey morning that calls for our closure—when, for the living of the day, I part with you even though, like Prometheus, part of me dies every time that happens. And, like Prometheus, that portion of me is reborn when night approaches, and I hear your whispers in the wind, sweet words—a goddess’ silent message—that cough to me stealthily and release me from the worries of the day.

My words fail miserably to do you justice. But in your loving me, I am made worthy—meine Seele, mein Herz! The dice that Einstein claimed God does not play with have been rolled; they pick us out, you and I, and when we walk down that lovely road to our land (a thematic profanity), it is as if the soundtrack of our lives have run together into this amalgam of violins and flutes: a melting profusion of sounds, pyrotechnics, appoggiature and anticipations.

Oh! j’en veux faire le nid,

Où ton cœur se pose.

Even Homer nods—what more us lowly mortals? To reembark on such a journey after falling, is like walking through headwinds and rains to find that pot of gold at the bottom of the rainbow. Impossible though it is, I have found it, and in it, I have found myself. That pot of gold is you, you who in my dreams take me through worlds unknown and ecstasies unfound!

It is because of you that I breathe; because of you, I live. Each minute is an excruciating delight, squeezed out of dreamy suffering and giddy serendipity. The pigeons of glass fly madly, blindly, trapped in the hourglass of our flowing collective unconscious. And even though there is still sand in the top bulb, sand that represents the remainder of both our lives, it does not fall—hanging in the air, individual grains blurring together into a quantum unresolvability, a curtain of solid Time frozen in its passing, just for me to love you.

I am lost to the world.

The sun exists, even though it is night. You are that sun, that shining body that I worship, I adore: threads of warmth run from you like the woven tapestries of melody adorning the cottage perched on that hill of dreams, vantage point from which we see the world. Reality bends around us into a crosshatch of dream: c’est l’extase langoureuse, c’est la fatigue amoureuse, and in the soft nasal murmurings of butterflies to the rooted flowers by the lane I hear your voice; in the mild evening visiting each blade of grass I feel your breath.

Frühling, sind das alle deine Blümelein?

Sonne, hast du keinen hellern Schein?

No words I say can truly say what I want to say: I look to the things that you have shown me—things I would not have known or seen, viewpoints quaint or abandoned, jewels precious and sparkling. Midnight is here, and I do not only see a dark sky dotted by six stars and lit by the moon through the curtains beside my bed, but I hear the breezes and I hear the nightsounds in far-off countries unimaginable, and with some effort I can tap into the dreamstuff of the dozing neighbours from inside my mind, perhaps even attempt to send a message to you through this stream of sleep.

And I hear you in the music I make, the music I like—intensely enchaining, I hear your laughter in each melody, your song. In the floaty lovemaking lies a rapid fingerfall of hammers at which everyone except you and I cease to breathe, indeed, cease to exist, and the myths and legends created by the music dance and frolic with us in dreamscapes of rainy light and light rain. Each note is a caress: —listen! —listen! It is I, it is Ondine who brushes with these drops of water the vibrant panes of your window…my song, sung only for you!

I am lost to the world. It spins, but Time remains unmoving in my dreams.

The fugues of the world’s mundane calling reiterates itself on the inside of my skull, beating out a frenzied rhythm. Yet when you are in my mind, as you are, always, the bright carillon of your presence drowns out the drumming; sound congeals and condenses to be the dew falling softly on a dormant rose, slipping quietly into a dreamy, innocent calyx, unstained, untouched. And you purify me with your love—all-encompassing, all-nourishing: I live it, I need it, I breathe it.

The stars array themselves in surreal patterns I cannot fathom; my eyes see you in everything I do.

You flow in my blood like the spirit of a sacrificial offering; your blood mixes with mine where the water turns to wine: in the beautiful intoxication I gladly succumb to there is a hope of being able to transcend time and space, to fly with you to the stars, where life will not interfere with us, and we turn immortal!

But my words bleed from my lips, flowing down my chin like so much spilled liqueur d’amour, and my impassioned cries are dust specks illuminated in the air on a morning where the shafts of sunlight break through the canopies covering my melting heart…

In this prayer to you, my goddess, my words are so small, so insignificant that I look to others to say what one as lowly as I cannot hope to…!

Notre amour est chose éternelle

Comme tout ce qu'un dieu vainqueur

A touché du feu de son aile,

Comme tout ce qui vient du cœur,

—Notre amour est chose éternelle!

My heart is yours, my life, my soul—oh you my muse, my love!

I am lost to the world, and you are the one that led me from this existence into a paradisiacal realm where love caresses us, and we sleep, soundly, forevermore.

I. Dawn

I walk silently under the heavy shade of the trees.

The soft crinkling of the dewed grass, left by the misty trail of night, is comforting to my sleepy thoughts and even meditative, hypnotic in effect. My shoes pad lightly across the dark, black surface of the dawning light.

I breathe in the sinking moonlight in the passing time of the rising sun. The horizon appears lighter through the trees, but behind me the yawning darkness of slumbering life still beckons.

I look up into the sky. It is purplish-grey in the dusky twilight of dawn, this pool of creation, and through the canopies silhouetted against that deep violet of the outstretched vision, I can see three stars, set like glinting diamonds against the firmament of the heavens. One shines more brightly than the rest; it stays high about the trees, twinkling violently in the dark delights of the rising sun.

I hear a dialogue of two horns not so far away.

The birds of the morning rise into the air with a massive chatter of sound, and they draw the light azure morning sky behind them like the curtain of light it is, and life bursts forth from the earth—suddenly the busy bustle of sounds and sights and coldly refreshing air blows in my face.

I bask in the weak glow of the morning blue.

II. Clouds in the Sky

I look up at the sky where the clouds are floating serenely in the huge pool of blue.

The fluffy patches of white, like cotton wool stuck on sheets of azure silk, are pushed around by unseen winds, troubling to the silent existence of the water conglomerations high about my head.

I try to find shapes in the clouds like what young children do. And as I crane my neck higher to look at the blinding sky, I seem to hear those high voices: I see an old man’s face! or That’s a duck! or That looks like one of my old shoes… and I seem to see those images, too, in the formless formations of water droplets.

The soft white cirrus stirs in the high altitudes, wispy fragments of dreams and thoughts.

And a large cloud bank floats across the sun’s golden face.

I shield my eyes with a closed palm, and strain my eyes slightly to look directly at the glowing cloud taking its light from the shining sun. The entire cloud is as a single light, with a radiant brightness emerging from every bit of the cotton fluff—and then it gets blown aside from the sun’s face, and the full light of the yellow star hits me full in the eyes.

I look down reflexively and blink to get the afterimage out of my eyes.

III. Jardins sous la pluie

The trees are misty in the softly falling rain.

It is curious to see how rain, being of water that is transparent, can turn everything grey. This grey mills around in the background, the faded greenery of shrubs and the hedge in the near distance.

Repetitive pitter-patter of raindrops on grass. Repetitive pitter-patter of raindrops on grass. Repetitive pitter-patter of raindrops on grass.

Each bead of water resting on the green folds of a leaf, each puddle of light blue on the rocky surface of the pavement, reflects the wet world around it, awash in turbulently circular ripples and waves, lost in regular crests and troughs and light grey shadows…

The even light of the nimbus sheds a dolorous atmosphere over this solemn scene, while the steady drip of the rain on my roof sets up a chaotic rhythm that soothes an overactive mind. The drowsy tails of water down the glass panes are interrupted by the metal grilles, pooling in long streams at the bottom like worms of transparence.

I turn from the window, removing my hand from the glass pane. The ghostly imprint remains, and as I walk away, it slowly fades, disappearing in the ostinato of the falling rain…

for Jlse

I. Lines

I see a mess of lines on the table. These lines, worm-like in their fineness and curves, lay stacked over each other, like needles dropped from a sewing kit, except that they are jet black, and are moving. They squirm like pick-up-sticks on a shaking table.

One changes. It slithers over the others, reaches the top of the vibrating pile of lines. Lines? The crosshatched pattern on the floor wobbles, shivers, like worms waiting to be baited and used... The one on top slowly unfurls itself, standing tall and straight, swaying slightly as I breathe, watching this surreal spectacle unfold in front of my eyes. It changes colour, slowly, gradually, fading from a deep black to a lustful blood red, then a bright orange, and finally a golden yellow, like the sun's rays at nine-thirty in the morning when you look through a pair of sunglasses at its huge shining face.

Another line creeps up, undulating its one-dimensional body as it climbs to the top of the pile. This line starts coiling itself around the first, changing colour as it does so, blackpurplegreenbluewhite, looking like a hair fallen from the wrinkled flower-seller on the street. It lengthens as it twines around the first one, still sedately glowing its agitated yellow.

I start to feel afraid. Perhaps it is this unnatural occurrence, or perhaps it is just that the lines are alive. I gingerly move my hand closer. The nearest of the pile skitter away from me, as if they were little dipoles repelled by a magnet. I move closer, the lines shift noticeably, curling, slinking in their attempt to avoid my touch. This moving of the pile disturbs the two changed lines, and they fall with a soft clatter onto the shifting disturbance of lines and activity, still furiously copulated in their twining, complexed like rope, unwilling to let go. And the first still shines yellow, the second pale next to its brighter counterpart.

I lift my approaching hand. The skittering stops, the pile reforms into a haystack, and three other black lines move to hoist the yellow-white flagpole back to its position, like a threatening finger pointing to the sky. There is a significant sound coming from these lines, these worms, sounding like the chitter of mice in a maze with too much reverberation and combined with the distortion filter of a telephone receiver. Soft, yet audible, it gradually crescendoes into an ugly panoply of dissonance and irritation.

I continue watching this spectacle, watching as the black lines start to pulse with a tangible darkening, a glowing of black and dark, deep grey. A few of them flash red, and black, and red, and black, red, black, redblackredblack. The red is as red a red as the poppies in full flower, the black as black as a night so dark that a person would be as good as blind. The flashing speeds up, drumming on my eyes, until all I see is a blur of colour, whorls and afterimages conflicting, fighting for my vision—

I cannot tolerate that sound any longer. I clench my fist, feeling my fingernails dig into my skin: I slam it down on the tabletop, right in the centre of the pile of squiggling material, with that yellow needle and the thread of white coiled around it...

My fist goes straight through the lines.

They merely wobble slightly, and it looks sickening, with that yellow thing sticking out of the side of my fist, through that piece of skin between my thumb and my bent index finger. I shudder. One of the lines from the bottom wriggles out, and coils curiously around my thumb. I expect it to go through, too, but it tightens, solid as a knife blade and sharper.

My senses explode in a paroxysm of pain. And in that instant, the lines disappear.

What does that mean?

My thumb bleeds, unsure at whether to say anything. The little circle of red, near the base of my nail, stares back at me, apologetic in its cleanness of incision.

II. Letters

The papers lie on the table. Peaceful, glaring white, stilled by the calming presence of the black curves disgorged by the haemorrhaging pen that I put down somewhat earlier. The nib, fine and silvery, glints in the bright light of the table lamp, giving the whole tableau a washed-out look, like that of an overexposed photograph.

The wind blows in through the open window, and I shiver. The chill of the night never escapes me. But the night is beautiful, as always; alluring and beautiful, every twenty-four hours, again and again. I look out the window, stretching away from my cramped position in front of the table. The light-mauve clouds are tattooed against the dark purple-grey of the night sky. Underneath me, the lights in the windows flicker on and off at irregular intervals, a changing pattern against the steady glow of the streetlamps. Cars fly past, indulging in the empty roads at this late hour.

My papers shift slightly on the table, disturbed by the breeze. I take off my spectacles and throw them onto the restless rectangles of black-splotched white.

The papers still. Lying there, I suddenly start when I see that my letters have collected at a corner of the topmost page, like marbles in one of those boxes where you shake about to make them fall into a pattern. I pick up that piece of paper, and notice on the one underneath that the letters have been jiggled around, too.

I stare at the one in my hand. The letters shake mischievously, black e's tumbling over a pile of vowels and consonants and punctuation. I grasp the corner where the letters are collecting, hard. The black shapes are forced upward like water in a plastic bag; with one swift motion I invert the paper. And watch the letters slowly slide downwards, viscous and sticky, toward the opposite corner of the paper, like snow in one of those glass-bowl landscapes.

The wind gusts again. My papers shift tentatively, like restless girls in a concert hall. The red-rimmed glasses press down, unsure as of whether to continue to obey gravity's call, or to fly with the breeze, to spread its hooks like wings.

The sheet on top flips its corners viciously at the wind, as if daring it to catch and take it away. And the wind accepts that challenge; the paper flies into the air, pulling my glasses with it. My glasses suddenly decide to follow gravity, after all, and fall to the floor. The paper takes a longer time—when it finally hits the floor after taking an aerial tour of my room, it is empty.

Blank. Untarnished.

The letters scurry about, flat along the floor, a crowd interspersed with the punctuation looking like dust mites. I stare. It is impossible that this is happening, I think.

As if in response, the letters rearrange about. Most still run stochastically around the edges. Some, though, decide to stop.

Do not disbelieve.

I get angry. I do now know what to do, except throw a fit. I have just lost two hours' worth of writing. My letters, the black curved lines, lie on the floor telling me to accept it. It is just too much for me. I clench my fist.

We do not usually behave like this.

Sounding apologetic? Impertinent? I do not care; I want them back on my papers. Yet I cannot do anything to them. In a sudden jerky motion, I stomp on the floor where that statement lies. The remaining letters scurry away like frightened mice, while those that I have managed to pin down lie unmoving. We do not u

I chase after the rest, shaking two empty pieces of paper. I do not even know what I will do when I reach them. They are fast movers, flowing in some space beyond the usual three, manifesting them as the output from my mind, my pen...

They disappear into the crack between the door-frame and the wall. Some stragglers are left behind. Stragglers? They spell out one very stark sentence:

You think too much.

I stop. Is there anything I can do?

After a while, I laugh. I do know the answer to that question. I laugh.

...I think too much.

III. Spheres

I am in front of my computer again, with a cup of tea sitting sedately beside the keyboard with its unfeeling rows of QWERTY, ASDF, and ZXC. My fingers are dancing furiously over the keyboard, making percussive clackings and incessant tappings. The space bar rattles each time I press it down.

Outside my window a hard, lashing rain falls. The pitter-patter of raindrops in already-formed puddles is pleasingly musical, plangent in the aural effects of thundercracks and windcalls.

The rain is like silk falling in sheets, turbulent in the air and graceful. The staccato rhythm of the rain beating upon my windowsill forms a very wet contrast to the dry sounds coming out of my computer speakers.

Strong winds coax the rain into my room, and the spray from the windows is astonishing in the power and fineness. Each little droplet I can see, reflecting the coarse white of the ceiling’s fluorescent lamp; each rise and fall of the wind is paralleled in the rise and fall of the spray, the internal flows and catchings like oil rising through water—

I am in an élan of creation, revelling in the flow of words, of thoughts. The vehemence of this flow, the strength, is intense and unstoppable. The keyboard continues clacking, and the words spill from my fingers.

The screen flickers. I tap it twice impatiently, and save my work to prevent any further mishaps. And it breaks up into silver globs of liquid crystal, floating away from the demurely grey containing box. I duck instinctively as they break away from the electric influence of the power line. Not thinking, I pull the plug to the monitor, dislodging the wire from its power jack. And more of these silver liquid flows out of the power line…

I roll on the floor away from the silver globes. They coagulate and float in the air, like planets around an invisible star, orbiting a point slightly below the ceiling. Within them they hold the colours, the light from the screen, and I can see the atrophied forms of my words in the reflective surfaces of the crystal globes.

Looking like mercury spheres on a wax floor, they hang suspended in the air as from a wire-frame mobile, silently reflecting the room around them in their concave surfaces. They remind me of stars, strangely, in their soft glowing light and their size—they look like those outside the windows, in the night.

I look back at the computer. The keyboard lies there, flat and rectangular, stark in its angles and dull grey colour. The tea sits there, too, undisturbed, unperturbed, with the small curve of light in the cup off the smooth milky-brown surface. The static view I see hangs in the air, too, reflected off a dozen curved mirrors, mercurial in their movements and stochastic as anything, and the rain from the outside continues spilling in, somehow never getting my floor wet.

The globes move. Little planets of colour, of electrons and light, of whorls of music and words, they travel to move around my head, blocking my vision as they whirl around, leaving little ghosting trails, flashes of light.

The rain continues pattering as I walk toward the window, unsure of everything and anything, and with the spheres ringing silently as they orbit my head like flies around a rotten apple. My mind is empty, and I cannot think clearly; I just stare at the little globes of silvery liquid crystal as they fly by, again, again, and again.

The globes present fleeting images to me. I catch glimpses of myself, of familiar faces. They do just that for a while, always giving me tantalising sneaks of visions arabesque and grotesque, as they pass quickly in front of my eyes.

I shake my head as if to clear the visions, and also to clear my mind. I want to think, I want to think for myself, and the constant irritation of the flying spheres does not help. I swat at one, connect, and find that they are really just liquid, after all, and not some manifestation of consciousness…

They fly out of the window, slowly, much more slowly than they were going about my head. And as they leave, I feel drained from inside, as if the spheres are taking away bits of my life—as they leave, they merge and flow into each other, like the neumes of a Gregorian plainchant, singing sadly, plaintively to themselves…

IV. Sheets

The curtains flap like angels’ wings as the wind beats hard against them. Curling and uncurling, the dirty-white sheets go pop and poof in little pockets of air. The wind is in a blasphemous temper, hurling leaves and twigs in through my window in swirling eddies of litter.

The papers on my desk shift uncomfortably, but are held in place by the stately thesaurus with all its thick gravity. The glossy cover of the nearby copy of Time diffuses the light into coloured patches, and I lean back in my chair, stretching after an hour’s hard thinking.

Clouds cover the sky as I look up, out of the window. I walk over to the yawning gap in the wall, bearing against small leaves in my face, and lean on the faux-wooden windowsill.

Coldly moist, the wind buffets my face, throwing against it all its strong fury, abusing the eyes in particular with its vulgar strength. I shut my eyes tightly, feeling the wind rush past my ears, howling in the curves and crevices; feeling the quick, stinging bites of the sharp twigs as they fly into my mouth, my cheeks, my nose.

The thesaurus suddenly yields to the urgent flipping of the papers’ corners and slides off the pile. And the sheets of paper rise up almost in unison, flapping just as the curtains do, looking for all the world like black-spotted white birds in flight.

I lunge back to my desk and try to grab the papers out of the air, but only manage to hang on to one in each hand. And they do not come to rest, even when I put all my body weight behind my pulling; they lift me off the ground, strong and unbending in flight, and I join the whirling of whites and little spots of blacks in the air, feet somewhat above my ground, vision totally drawn into the maelström of paper and wind.

I let go of the papers and fall the short distance to the floor, but forward motion takes me some distance from where I projected to land, and I hit the wall. Tumbling painfully into the middle, I decide to lie down and watch the papers fly around dizzily just below the ceiling, flapping their paper-wings and coasting on the flow of the disturbed winds.

The papers continue flying around, unperturbed by my closing the window. Flitting giddily below the stark white light from the fluorescent lamp, they cast moving shadows on the floor, on my face; and the shadows keep striking against me like they want to tell me something…

I stand up, taking a deep breath to calm myself. The papers still flutter merrily above my head, but now, when I take hold of one of the errant pieces, it stays still in my hand. Limpid and somehow intangible in my hand, it slumps, suddenly lacking its own energy in flying like it did.

I let go of the piece of paper I clutch, and it falls to the ground, slowed by the uplifting air; it does not attempt to fly again, and it lies flat on the floor, unmoving, untwitching.

Another piece of paper starts floating slowly downwards. Near my head it suddenly succumbs to gravity and goes the same way as the first piece of paper: the sheet that I grasped. It lands beside the first.

And another, and another.

The sheets float downward in a snowstorm of white, somehow leaving a wide berth around me as they descend chaotically in a shower of woodpulp and ink. Silent and still, they lie in neat tessellations on the floor, each sheet never overlapping another, always four corners at a point…

I pick them up, slowly, shaken. The black speckles are still steady on the page, keeping the writhing white in my eyes steady under their docile influence. My letters stare back at me from the depths of the thin white papers and I suddenly feel that they no longer belong to me, like they came from nothing, and that they might return to nothing…

V. Threads

I place my fingers on the neat columns of ebony and ivory, take a deep breath, and plunge in. I imagine the music coming from within me, flowing in the harmonies and in the melodies…

The shimmering ostinato tremolando yields to the sultry, seductive strains of the first subject, and the image floats unbidden before my mind, of a watery spirit singing her soft subterfuges—and the shimmering continues unabated.

The water flows on a bed of harmony and colours, jade-like in the misty moods of music. And the songs continue—a slow, soothing wailing through the rainbow-hued spray.

I breathe deeply at the end of each phrase, fingers striking the keys like they are air, yielding readily under each light tough. The watery music creates an envelope of colour around me, pulling at my heartstrings…

I weave threads of melody as if the piano were a loom, and I can see these threads rise into the air, twining, coiling and joining, forming a tableau of imagery and colour.

I channel my emotions into the plaintive melody, this melody subtly covered by the shimmering, trilling harmonies; the waterfalls of arpeggios slide in and out of focus, and the naiad’s song of yearning and desire coyly allowing itself to be heard, like birdsong at a riverbank.

My hands work to execute the sweeping arpeggios of water and spray, while the sad siren song continues unperturbed, calm and tranquil. And the tapestries of harmony continue weaving into impressionistic legends and tales of ghosts and spirits…

The music has my emotions gripped in it; I have made myself a part of this melody, made this melody part of me—and now the threads come from me too; I can see strands of white stuff emerging as from my chest, twisting and winding around each other, being blown about by an intangible wind like smoke from a chimney.

It pains me to make the threads beautiful. Yet I pour myself out, rolling in this music, revelling in the intensity of the pain and the beauty. The melodies continue, pulling the threads from the piano and from me, flowing among the harmonies and colours, resilient in storms of water and wind.

My hands fly up and down the compass of the keyboard, caressing the white-black contrasts and drawing the notes delicately out of the hammers and the strings. Each tone, each note, I draw deliberately out of the loom of this music; each thread, each strand, comes out of the colourful harmonies and melodies.

The music splashes in a sudden gust of wind, spilling in a crystalline spray of falling figures, while the plangent melody still continues, a low groaning as agitated as the geysers of glittering water—

The tapestry shakes. A low rumble sounds; the threads weave themselves into each other, frantically waving about in the turbulent air, twirling about as if lost in a viscous fluid, roiling in imagery and myth—

The storm unleashes its furious climax in loud flares of sound, in angry arpeggios and glaring colours, while in between, the tapestry’s threads lie like a dormant volcano, descending under the sky-high crests and the hell-deep troughs of notes. This world of water is a whirlpool, all-encompassing and immensely powerful; alluring in its danger and sheer beauty, it calls to me like the haunting swish, swish, swish of the silent waves…

The deep red sun lies low in the horizon, glinting shyly behind the clouds, as if shamed by the utter power of the water over its faraway fire. The ocean stills; ringing with a wistful sadness, it beats in flowing glissandi, while I, lost in wondrous worlds of thought, let my hands roam the keys on their own, and the threads still come, come, from the loom of the strings and the flax of my heart.

Still singing peacefully over the continued shimmer of the river’s ostinato, the plaintive melody shines like a golden thread in the middle of the musical tableau, awash with colours…

I let the beating ostinato rise in a cloud of sustained haze, and it glistens to nothing.

The pause is deafening—

and here is my melody for you. Will you take it? Will you take what I offer?

The music bursts forth again as I weep at the answer, yet I know that these tears are but nothing to the tumult of water and water-sprites’ laughter, as they rejoice in the languishing spray on my heart’s cold windows, and the tapestry dissociates into a wash of music and several glistening, spinning singularities…