All of the gin joints in all of the towns and you had to walk into this one*
Beginnings don’t flow as easily as they used to, they were a
Cup already overflowing, but still being filled up past the brim with words and sentences and laughter
Dirtying the floor with adjectives and phrases and jokes that I couldn’t find room for anymore.
Everything, everything, was joy and dreams and
Fire. It was a feathered bird peeking out over its nest and
Glowing coals being raked over a
Hearth that somehow smelt like
Ice cream and a muddy dog and salt water taffy
Jam. Beginnings are not meant to have endings, no XYZ. I do not quite
Know what has changed.
Life flows past me a little harder now,
Meandering lazily through bends where earlier it rushed past.
Now, beginnings are slow and hard and I question them. Looking out for
Obvious clichés and traps that will entangle me, ensnare me, take me down
Paths and lanes I am not ready to travel.
Questioning everything, everything that used to be a given.
Railings are made to trip over and Horizons are just lines
Separating me from where I am and where I want to be.
Time has turned the old words to ashes in my mouth, left me with burnt embers hanging off my
Uvula. The Blue of the sky turned into a
Violent violet and everything has
Withered.
*Line adapted from a dialogue in the movie Casablanca(1942)
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...
