Here is nothing that burns yellow
giving the light that raised civilisations and enabled following civilisations to see it happening.
Yellow, the colour of hearth, is the thing in which people see their deepest dreams.
But here it is dark – an unknown place in the depths of quiet continent of memory.
I am standing near a riverbank in moonlight; hills as old as moon are drowned in their own shadows. Trees are full of drowsing animals. Their tiny cold eyes glimmer now and then.
I rub my toes against pebbles to break the silence. And suddenly,
An inner feeling rises- I am the first man of Inca empire, of Nile. Leaves rustle, a sound comes – it is you. In agitation, I try to
conceive, realise, remember.
Each breath longer than an epoch, each concealing enigmatic songs, dances, wars.
Thousands of coloured faces pass by. Approaching open lands.
Passage after passage slowly I am in a pool of dim light. Awake.
Quarter past three. A pointless needle chasing its own shadow.
In the far-darkness a railway track, a head-light crossing the highway, few windows of the colony still open and lit, a sign of the running century – 21st.
After raising my body, I dream myself in front of the mirror,
a part of me opens the water tap, another whispers – sleep one more century, sleep one more millennium.
F
Fiercely Tender: The Simple Complex World of Michael Ondaatje’s Novels
Shortly afterwards in that novel we encounter a celebration of the body, grime and all, unimpeded by this abstraction called mind. While writing the body might seem not altogether unusual, my point is that you cannot simply assume its naturalness. Language, even fictional language, is so much of a mentally...
