I leaned against the cold metal of the ambulance, hands in my pockets. Wishing she would show, wishing she wouldn't. I wanted to be lost. In whiskey or woman, sigh, so much blood, but it wasn't blood, blood was innocent, innocent as six months ago. Death from a distance is one thing. Death in your arms something else, almost pornographic, witnessing something you shouldn't be witnessing. You want to hold and look and close your eyes and run, run to stone, to spire, to the plaintive tolling of cold bells and warmly lit naves, of pews strange as the girl you never looked at twice. You learn to want what you never wanted before, to have what you can't have and to love in a water you've always been afraid to swim.I'd washed my hands six times, but blood don't wash so easy. As if, clinging. As if the blood wanted back in the skin, any skin, the skin of a brother. I'd scrub. Look. Scrub. And still, the memory grew, his voice, his eyes, that grip, that cry. How do you wash that away?
And there she was. Death and life. Quartered. Run from, run to, I just wanted to run, to burn whatever was inside of me, to exhaust it before it extinguished me. And there she was, moving mist, a snowy shadow, her walk hypnotic. As she came closer, it was not as if she was coming toward me but I her; I felt pulled. In her walk, each step, I slipped, sank. Twirling downward, like the snow, drawn inexorably to her gravity, her smile, and I breathed and it felt like I was breathing her in, consuming her in my need as the war consumed men, material, souls.
12 comments:
Such a detailed scene... like all your writing. Where did this come from??
Tree--are you taking a new approach? Recently inspired perhaps? :) I am so loving the new art!! And as always, your words are masterful! :)
--snow
Athena, I wish I knew. One moment I'm just sitting minding my own business and the next there is this surge to expel some demon within me, the words undigested within my nether regions, a jailbreak of nouns and verbs wanting their freedom. Nothing I write is premeditated. Nothing written in cold blood. My posts are crimes of the moment. Most of what you see here is first draft, with a few spelling and structural edits, but all in all, the expelling takes five, maybe ten minutes. And once posted, I feel a temporary relief, as if before I was nauseous and now I am gasping for air, looking for a wet rag to wipe the grin off my face.
Hey Snow. Somewhat of a new approach in that I've completely abandoned any and all rules regarding narrator, switching at will points of view, tense and any other structure I deem is in the way of saying what is bubbling forth. I want to lay the words out as they come, unprocessed by blackboard, chalk or skirt. As far as this series (1944), I'm just letting the story unfold as it is told to me. As always, thanks to the kind words. :-)
How you feel these hearts so intimately, one wonders, see through their eyes, feel as though you were wearing their skin, as though he were you, she were you, they were you, your hands were the ones washed, your eyes the ones witnessing. Elements you may say, but even so, the authenticity and presense is extraordinary, here as it has been with every person with whom we have come to be acquainted upon your pages. Additionally, it is one thing to see a moment, a series of events, a face, a soul in your mind's eye, but to simultaneously know how to present those things to others in a manner which we can only presume, given the depth and potency of what we behold, comes as close as can be to what anyone is capable of transferring from one mind to another. The comment written that I will always remember come what may is one that Liz wrote once, of having ...lived a lifetime on your blog... and I wonder at the wonder, of fiction of this quality, how imagined characters live richer and longer than most of us, more familiarly, reaching further, reaching more. Wishing she would show, wishing she wouldn't. as an example of the expressiveness, of show, of tell, of the two combined, of perfect balance, I could say so much of all the different parts that make up this whole, but what I will say instead is that for those moments, captured within I was. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful work.
Sweetest, here is how I might answer your question:
Blood for ink flows upon this parchment, not letters and words, not even of where forth I know, such the depth of what I can no longer contain.
In other words, I don't know. :-D
But I do know this:
Nary a wind could whisper as sweet as your honeysuckle comments. :-)
Tell me what it's like when you've gone there. When the first word has found itself. Tell me if you note a tension throughout, if suddenly your arms and limbs and fingertips are electrified with the current flowing through you. Tell me if you stop breathing. Tell me it isn't orgasmic. As if your seed's been expelled. And tell me, now, if you aren't already chasing the next one.
S., all that you said. And more. It is like heat lightning in that one moment, there is nothing but sky and the next comes from seemingly nowhere, a single word, thought, idea, that seed expelled, and from there, from that first line, everything flows, falls. The work is not in the writing--it is in that lightning, that first line, always, the first line. Nothing else feels like it does. Not the second thrust, or third, or forth. Nothing like the first violation of what is divine.
Even your comments my dear S, leave me gasping for more, more of you, more of the mind that can write with such graceful elegance. I still can't get the thought of becoming vine out of my mind. Become vine. Sigh. Yes, an ivy perhaps. :-)
"Death in your arms something else, almost pornographic, witnessing something you shouldn't be witnessing."
Exactly. I've been there in the room and watched death and it is indeed almost pornographic. Shameful yet natural.
Jen, I'd forgotten I'd written this one from Virgil's point of view. So nice to see that it actually fits with the more current posting of this same event from her point of view (night falling into moonrise).
As for death, yes. Such a hard thing to witness. You don't want to look, but you have to. You have to be with them till the last light.
To be frank i can't understand what are you trying to portray. Is it a horror fiction or a real incident.still whatever it is quite interesting and raises the curiousity to go to the next line.Your expression of the incidents is very dramatic and makes me speechless and just reading as a mute spectator.Excellent piece of writing..I am going to have some Cuban Cigars to come back to normalcy, such a soulful writing....
Michale, I rarely leave linked comments alive. But I admire your effort and it appears you read the post, so I'm going to leave your comment with your link. I can understand your confusion. You've popped into the middle of a 50 post story. Without knowing what has come before, this post, standing alone, would seem strange just as a small child without their parents in a park. Most spammers never return to their spam, but if you do, and if you have an interest in this current story, click the link at the bottom of the post (1944) and it will give you the story from end to beginning. All the best with your cigars.
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