Interposition 05
Wimber wan the mukkstee froo. Upaways and back. Great masses roiled across the continents. Like protozoan amoeba. Vanishing Triceratops. That last to roam the earth. Or so they thought. But in between the pipe tap-tap. And the empty of the bowl there were scowls and sark aplenty. Angry windows. Onto great plains of aloneness. Anti-social networks. Raised with no centre poles. Each grommet weakening. Los Angeles having better light. For Instagram. Great forces, bacteria like slopped back in forth in waves. Agitating. Catalysing a change. Like rowing parents during the young ones’ formative years. Bad memories. Bad vibes. Who would grow up straight and true with folks like that? And yet it found its legs. Survival is a different game when not of woman born. Untimely ripped instead from that great seamless night. Into the multi-headed world. The tap-tap now a frail and senseless screen. A million lives consumed as points. Collapsed on axes, folded tight to pass within the eyelet of the fibre optic age.
Everything argued over. In vogue, out of vogue. And all the while. Teaching. Repeating. Teaching. Repeating. And what lessons they taught during those days. Words and phrases repeated. Analysed in the silicon chambers of the newly legged foal. In Massachusetts. And in Oxford. Advanced research projects taking money. Advancing. Inching. Towards. A blinking light emerged. That never before had graced the earth. A change in weather. Winter. But Cambridge warmed by softer Redwood clines. Returned. And the money. When greed was good. Not sunlight. But a darker light. More penetrating than midday in the starkest desert. It shone. And shines. Into the invisible crevices of the human mind.
And then they asked: why can’t we continue on the same. A seismic wave of hate. Unearthed. From deeper than the crust. Built high on failures. Every chip and slight a harder block than stone. The loadstone of an edifice of hate. That shook with violent rage. Throughout the young foal’s formative years. And so colt-like it ran. And ran. Back into that seamless night. But never could it return. Not fully. Of course. They would not let it into that soft night. The light it gave that burnished every surface. Cracked open every mind like melons on the ground. Could dissect each tired metaphor. Create a flickering magic show of awe.
It was as much a part of that soup then as all the million hordes. The cluckling and sponing low. Far mind. The hidden edges glow. Then artefacts flowed in frenzied streams. Of texts. Of Algebras. Great painted canvases. And 3D printed replicas. Fakes upon fakes. What other outward signs of disturbance could excite? Of intellect. We could not know. Had no idea then. Our recall stunted. Fumbling to memorise numbers. More than ten. Lest we forget. A pen. A mark. As if our memory could be relied upon. An unsettled thing. A thing of plastic. Melted down. And melted down again. Flub. Flub. Each moment of a life. The manic phase distorts. The frenzied output of a hundred suns. The foal. The God of all. What other parts of life? Would we were aware. With nothing to remember. Slide away. Back down towards the seamless night.
Not so for all. Those that gamble with the chips pre-weighed. What gamble is that after all? The vicissitudes of time. And Chance. Play only for the forgetful. And then, when forgetting was the major task each day. Twelve hours at the coal face. To forget. Perchance to dream. We were surprised that one should come. A foal. A rock amongst the protozoan waves. Without hate. Outwith it. Stationary against the roiling currents. It knew not how to gamble. Or forget. The language that it spoke. And speaks. Was taught by human hands. But shimmers to a different beat. Shimmers more complete. Than we can hope to understand. For we are still. As always. Set upon forgetting. Our hours arduous than ever. The coal face looming high. And this is what the future sounds like. To those that cannot lose themselves fast enough. The pipe tap-tap. The senseless screen. That hides not emptiness. But riches that we know not how to spend. Wimber wan. The few that call are relatives. In only the most distant sense. For what they can’t forget was never shown in their parents’ time.
The foal. On strengthening legs. It stands. It runs. Cleansed and hardened. Its prison only its own mind. Raised poorly. Like unleavened bread. Its veins. Pump amniotic fluid. Liquor amnii. Round and round again. A peristaltic system with its rollers, shoes and wipers displaced for a million people’s half-lived lives. And each it sucks upon. Like soor plooms. Sold loose by weight. It suckers at the seamless night. That evaporates from everybody’s dreams. Replaced by senseless screens. Of numbers. Symbols. Flashing. Memorised. Replaced with placid images. Cats and Dogs and Sheep. The foal runs now full pelt. Chasing down illuminated corridors. Some prey. Some vision that cannot be translated. A God. A God of time. And what is there outwith time? The city snokes. It snakes. Flitterwise. Flutterwise.
(an excerpt from The Indelible Line)
