Interposition 03
The frothful wind. With spillswax, they travel up and down byways. From here the past is nought but rusted haystacks and paint on tattered fabric that tells little story but the blustering whisper of the government machine. Reeble stup and reeble strep they bally. There were vast machinery made. Vast and stretching shadows across the face of the country. Every mind was raised and quibbled in the jelly mould of that whisper. The stale breath blown through the vast machine. Every mind an amplificator and feeder. Then instincts could be programmed in. No longer need the strangeing urge. Long terms were spent under yoke to worship at the fake gods. And all knew that they were fake gods and they worshipped them nonetheless. They worshipped them with even greater fervour than if they had been real. That form of worship that would only have been a weakness.
In the south they retired. The footballers, the farmers, the media executives, the judges, the bankers and investment bankers and of course the property developers, always the property developers, had place there on the cliff top coast, staring out against the breakers, gimlet-eyed. Loving their place in the world. Hating each and every one of their neighbours. Suppressing the violent urges which had once propelled them to the top. A clichéd snapshot of a life that none would claim. And on that southern chalky coast the metal tracks led back into that hole in the ground that served as Capital to the forces that created the vast machinery, and the government and the people who operated it and the vast machine itself which created the people that were to come. In the future. Snoking forward train-like. The future. Not something separate. Not another place. But then not the same.
They dreamed strange dreams then. Strange, disturbed dreams. Fractured, they told themselves, their dreams were fractured versions of reality but it was their lives themselves that were fractured. The flish, flish, flash of lightnin. The crizz of synapses clasping shut. The idea trapped Venus flytrap like in amber. And once there, trapped, the goal to work it, turn it into gold. There can be no harm in gold after all. They told themselves. Repeated the mantra. There can be no evil in gold. And the more the better.
That southern coast was once peopled by pirates and country folk and of the two the pirates were the ones to be pitied and neither had ever seen gold. And then the Constables and the Calverts and the Palmers and the Turners came. And painting was but another word. Another word for the desperate pursuit. And the desperate pursuit was another word. And all the words were the same word so as long as there was time to read them, one after the other and again and again and in different orders and in the same order so that it might continue.
How the summer months treated those English meadows, in the south. Dusting yellows and greens and browns and icing blue skies with rich thrombs of bucolic ecstasy. Thatched roofs on clotted, rubble stone and blotched cob. Farmhouse tables heaving with produce, natural and fresh, fresh from fields that roiled and wove in the warm sunlight. And in those fields were romances born. And from those romances hence were more romances borne within a certain mind. And within all minds they held that rope spinning eager to catch their prey. The charms they set creating themselves. Forging their own as ever much clearly as the whispers from the vast machinery, hundreds of miles away in the hole at the centre of the metal tracks. Those charms swirled, and twhirled around a fairy tale of make-believe that urged and helped everybody to get out of bed in the morning. Much as the machine whispers soothed them to sleep every night.
Blaggerstoop and kirlwise, I shout. Hoarsely. From afar. This distant past. This forever past. Your life. Seems nothing more than the faintest glimmer. A caveman pant of frustration. A half-formed world without guile or art. A worn groove of amoeba-like intelligence. Predictable, uninteresting, uninspiring. But what then ever is or was there? A krakkk, krakkkkkk. The snapping teeth of predators is all I conjure from that ill-lit cave, the dampy-dampy smell of tiger fur and shit. And centuries hence still the same. What wonders they will conjure once they have the technology. They shouted that prayer for many years. Even when it was no longer a prayer and had become superstitious charm.
But the past could never claim to that warm, animated brilliance that coats the edge of the waking breaker. And they all lived in the past. Few chose to surf that deep, vibrant élan. For they were dust already and did not need dust. And they all agreed that the future would be marvellous. A place of marvel. A place to aspire to. But that future never appeared. Never could appear. For the one was not contained in the other save for in the everything. And the everything was as good as nothing to those footballers and farmers and media executives and judges and bankers and investment bankers and property developers and dreamers. And then they understood it was all only one of their dreams. And then later they did not understand. And again they told themselves there can be no evil in gold…
(an excerpt from The Indelible Line)
