Facing the future, I tend to drift towards the bygone predicament of the here and now,
as if the past were all that should concern me, yet I obsessively control each and every
passing moment as though a pocket watch I stole from my great-grandfather and carry
everywhere could keep them alive for a little longer. Then I wish there was more time,
often when it is too late for a little sleight of hand—the last trionfi card is already dealt.
Armed and determined, I prowl the interiors of my humble dwelling.
My weapon? A tightly folded premium kitchen towel. My prey? A fat,
buzzing housefly. But damn if I don’t feel like a real seasoned hunter.
And everything would be just fine if only I knew where the unsettling
sense of misplaced anger came from.
There was a time when I thought that there was a real possibility that life could be an act
of intentional cruelty, but now all I can say is that I no longer believe in the whole idea
of intentionality.
Any self-respecting hostage of life, slowly forgetting human words,
would stick to reflexes: dinner, long-dead Yeats, masturbation, sleep,
and so on and so forth, for if the French are to be believed, l’appétit
vient en mangeant.
If I had died captivated by the empty house of the stare,
where would my feathers have fallen? I remember that,
while calling me names and laughing, the other habitués
of labyrinthine school corridors were just as oblivious.
Forty years later, I barely recognise the nameless faces
staring back at me from the old photographs, but I know
that sedentary birds hold on just as desperately.
While remaining influenced by the grammar of motives, we never failed
to satisfy that morbid curiosity of ours, despite the awakening resistance
to unsettling habits, because of pride that could hardly bear the modesty
of demeanour. ‘So what?’ you ask, reading Horace or Ovid. ‘Barbarians
like us, unless they delighted in words, would admit that life is a process
of elimination.’
Perhaps we learn by constant repetition, but even when my nose bleeds, it is nothing
but watered-down ink dripping onto a creaky wooden floor covered with a cheap rug
pretending to be tapis polonais. One glance at Buster Keaton’s face, like a bookmark
marking scenes with bygone meanings, and I already know that there is no comfort
in the last feeling I want to experience.
I don’t watch films any more, just distant memories
of films I have already seen. Sometimes I even think
that perhaps Roundhay Garden Scene is all I need.
After all, what really draws my quotidian pictures
is silence.
hidden pilcrow 