13 December, 2006

Two compositions

Insomnia is a terrible thing. I feel trapped in the apartment, with the wife asleep, and only the company of my thoughts. It can be too asphyxiating to read, or at least read seriously, and yet there is little else to do. I work on some German, or on some auction catalogues. I listen to Ys for the fiftieth time.


When morning comes the world is of course irreproachable. Dawn has become cold even here, and from my balcony the fraicheur, and the vague forms of the distant mountains—so unlike what I have grown up with—and the exoskeletal plant stacks, with whose forms I find myself almost obsessed—all are caught up in the nets of cables overhead. The landscape of Tempe, in all its stripsprawling lowrise aridity, is dominated by verticals—palms, lights, beams, and the nearby presence of 'A' Mountain.


So walking home at night, past the playing-fields, the attenuated verticals come to assume the solemnity of men. In a pictorial frame, narrative is unconsciously created by imbalance. I have never crossed the two low guards on this path, nor will I. For to do so would make what lies beyond all the less mysterious.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have never crossed the two low guards on this path, nor will I. For to do so would make what lies beyond all the less mysterious.

Love it. I remember a young woman who, MANY YEARS AGO, rode the same train as I did. Every day. We embarked and debarked at different stops (I got on and off before she did). But we shared a common thread of track. We watched each other EVERY DAY. We smiled. She was BEAUTIFUL in a way that I particularly appreciate.

But we never approached one another. It was too good as it was. And "to do so would make what lies beyond all the less mysterious."

Anonymous said...

There are no unmysterious things. There are only unmystified people.

"Q"

Conrad H. Roth said...

Cute.