I am very nervous about posting this item. It is taken from the novel I am writing. I would be interested to hear readers' feedback (thegirlsonline@gmail.com).
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Where there is language there is often silence, and where no words are spoken, a thousand meanings resonate. Mixed meanings, sometimes. Misunderstandings.
There were no expectations, no over-hyped anticipation, just a feeling, a knowing, like the time I was summoned to The House, and I knew the announcement before it was made. I had sat down in the annex and written it, written my response, purged it from my system. So I was calm. And when we came face to face, we continued from where we had left off, which was nowhere – and yet everywhere. Like the announcement, like The Pond, like standing on the balcony in Israel: it was meant to be, and it was part of me. It was an oceanic feeling, and it was like the ocean; vast, clear, natural, sparkling, and just there. But hidden beneath, there is a destructive anger that can consume and kill and leave you helpless and drowning.
The words in The Rooms are all the same. We share the same Story, the same history, but the contexts differ. Although I am silent, my story is spoken for me in The Rooms.
My context is The Pond.
I experience my hunger now as something beyond a physical presence. I carry it inside me. It is there in my heart, scratching the wound that has not yet healed. It is there when I wake, there when I sleep, when I walk, talk, think, breathe… it is an ache, a yearning, a desire, and it engulfs me completely. It comes from the place in which I store my memories, my language, the feelings associated with that time. It is my temps perdu, and it has returned to haunt me.
She is emphatic: The soul does not leave the body until after the death. I don’t believe her, though. I know that we received an unspoken message beside The Pond.
It was beside The Pond that she took my hands, looked deep into my eyes and promised me that it wouldn’t happen. It did. 3 weeks later. It was driving alongside The Pond that I threw a lit cigarette out the window and it missed and lay on the back seat of the car, burning a hole in the upholstery, and I panicked and turned around and forgot to steer and almost crashed the car. Another time, I was driving past The Pond, circling restlessly because I hadn’t heard any news, and she called me and told me that it might happen, it might just happen, and she couldn’t bear to speak the words; her voice was barely a whisper and when I made her repeat them, she shouted them out. The words bounced off the surface off The Pond, like a painful bellyflop, and slapped me in the face. I nearly crashed the car that time too.
I want to be you, I think. I want to inhabit your body and your soul. I want to be in your life and to be your life.
Always a drama, by The Pond. When we were undercover, trying to be inconspicuous, and they found us and took us away, the sirens blaring. In the storm, navigating our way around in bare feet with no umbrella.
When he pulls me close to him, the outside world melts away. There is no sense of time, of past, present or future, no loss, no pain, no lack, no hunger, nothing to purge. There is only the here and now of the embrace. I am light, unburdened, unencumbered. As in the hospital room, nothing else exists; nothing else matters. This is all there is. Just… this.
The Pond is my link to the past, I think. Water is another transcendental element. Natural, powerful, flowing. It washes away. It extinguishes my fire. It can drown…
I have left my body. My soul is somewhere else. The hunger is now nausea, like an abjection waiting to happen, that I cannot control, that does not happen somehow. I cannot feel my body; neither sexually, nor physically; neither as too much, nor too little. It is melting away, but without my knowledge or consciousness. It is changing; I am changing.
There were no expectations, no over-hyped anticipation, just a feeling, a knowing, like the time I was summoned to The House, and I knew the announcement before it was made. I had sat down in the annex and written it, written my response, purged it from my system. So I was calm. And when we came face to face, we continued from where we had left off, which was nowhere – and yet everywhere. Like the announcement, like The Pond, like standing on the balcony in Israel: it was meant to be, and it was part of me. It was an oceanic feeling, and it was like the ocean; vast, clear, natural, sparkling, and just there. But hidden beneath, there is a destructive anger that can consume and kill and leave you helpless and drowning.
The words in The Rooms are all the same. We share the same Story, the same history, but the contexts differ. Although I am silent, my story is spoken for me in The Rooms.
My context is The Pond.
I experience my hunger now as something beyond a physical presence. I carry it inside me. It is there in my heart, scratching the wound that has not yet healed. It is there when I wake, there when I sleep, when I walk, talk, think, breathe… it is an ache, a yearning, a desire, and it engulfs me completely. It comes from the place in which I store my memories, my language, the feelings associated with that time. It is my temps perdu, and it has returned to haunt me.
She is emphatic: The soul does not leave the body until after the death. I don’t believe her, though. I know that we received an unspoken message beside The Pond.
It was beside The Pond that she took my hands, looked deep into my eyes and promised me that it wouldn’t happen. It did. 3 weeks later. It was driving alongside The Pond that I threw a lit cigarette out the window and it missed and lay on the back seat of the car, burning a hole in the upholstery, and I panicked and turned around and forgot to steer and almost crashed the car. Another time, I was driving past The Pond, circling restlessly because I hadn’t heard any news, and she called me and told me that it might happen, it might just happen, and she couldn’t bear to speak the words; her voice was barely a whisper and when I made her repeat them, she shouted them out. The words bounced off the surface off The Pond, like a painful bellyflop, and slapped me in the face. I nearly crashed the car that time too.
I want to be you, I think. I want to inhabit your body and your soul. I want to be in your life and to be your life.
Always a drama, by The Pond. When we were undercover, trying to be inconspicuous, and they found us and took us away, the sirens blaring. In the storm, navigating our way around in bare feet with no umbrella.
When he pulls me close to him, the outside world melts away. There is no sense of time, of past, present or future, no loss, no pain, no lack, no hunger, nothing to purge. There is only the here and now of the embrace. I am light, unburdened, unencumbered. As in the hospital room, nothing else exists; nothing else matters. This is all there is. Just… this.
The Pond is my link to the past, I think. Water is another transcendental element. Natural, powerful, flowing. It washes away. It extinguishes my fire. It can drown…
I have left my body. My soul is somewhere else. The hunger is now nausea, like an abjection waiting to happen, that I cannot control, that does not happen somehow. I cannot feel my body; neither sexually, nor physically; neither as too much, nor too little. It is melting away, but without my knowledge or consciousness. It is changing; I am changing.
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