Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disablèd
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
    Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
    Save that to die, I leave my love alone.

Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

“As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm”
Prayer is better than sleep

Rising from the torment of another restless night, Bouazizi wiped the sleep from his droopy eyes as his feet touched the cold stone floor.

Throughout the frigid night, the devilish jinn did their work, eagerly jabbing away at Bouazizi with pointed sticks, tormenting his troubled conscience with the worry of his nagging indebtedness. All night the face of the man Bouazizi owed money to haunted him. Bouazizi could see the man’s greasy lips and brown teeth jawing away, inches from his face. He imagined chubby caffeine stained fingers reaching toward him to grab some dinars from Bouazizi’s money box.

Bouazizi turned all night like he was sleeping on a board of spikes. His prayers for a restful night again went unanswered. The pall of a blue fatigue would shadow Bouazizi for most of the day.

Bouazizi’s weariness was compounded by a gnawing hunger. By force of habit, he grudgingly opened the food cupboard with the foreknowledge that it was almost bare. Bouazizi’s premonition proved correct as he surveyed a meager handful of chickpeas, some eggs and a few sparse loaves. It was just enough to feed his dependant family; younger brothers and sisters, cousins and a terminally disabled uncle. That left nothing for Bouazizi but a quick jab to his empty gut. He would start this day without breakfast.

Bouazizi made a living as a street vendor. He hustles to survive. Bouazizi’s father died in a construction accident in Libya when he was three. Since the age of 10, Bouazizi had pushed a cart through the streets of Sidi Bouzid; selling fruit at the public market just a few blocks from the home that he has lived in for almost his entire life.

At 27 years of age, Bouazizi has wrestled the beast of deprivation since his birth. To date, he has bravely fought it to a standstill; but day after day the multi-headed hydra of life has snapped at him. He has squarely met the eyes of the beast with fortitude and resolve; but the sharp fangs of a hardscrabble life has sunken deep into Bouazizi’s spleen. The unjust rules of society are powerful claws that slash away at his flesh, bleeding him dry: while the spiked tendrils of poverty wrap Bouazizi’s neck, seeking to strangle him.

Bouazizi is a workingman hero; a skilled warrior in the fight for daily bread. He is accustomed to living a life of scarcity. His daily deliverance is the grace of another day of labor and the blessed wages of subsistence.

Though Allah has blessed this man with fortitude the acuteness of terminal want and the constant struggle to survive has its limits for any man; even for strong champions like Bouazizi.

This morning as Bouazizi washed he peered into a mirror, closely examining new wrinkles on his stubble strewn face. He fingered his deep black curls dashed with growing streaks of gray. He studied them through the gaze of heavy bloodshot eyes. He looked upward as if to implore Allah to salve the bruises of daily life.

Bouazizi braced himself with the splash of a cold water slap to his face. He wiped his cheeks clean with the tail of his shirt. He dipped his toothbrush into a box of baking powder and scoured an aching back molar in need of a root canal. Bouazizi should see a dentist but it is a luxury he cannot afford so he packed an aspirin on top of the infected tooth. The dissolving aspirin invaded his mouth coating his tongue with a bitter effervescence.

Bouazizi liked the taste and was grateful for the expectation of a dulled pain. He smiled into the mirror to check his chipped front tooth while pinching a cigarette **** from an ashtray. The roach had one hit left in it. He lit it with a long hard drag that consumed a good part of the filter. Bouazizi’s first smoke of the day was more filter then tobacco but it shocked his lungs into the coughing flow of another day.

Bouazizi put on his jacket, slipped into his knockoff NB sneakers and reached for a green apple on a nearby table. He took a big bite and began to chew away the pain of his toothache.

Bouazizi stepped into the street to catch the sun rising over the rooftops. He believed that seeing the sunrise was a good omen that augured well for that day’s business. A sunbeam braking over a far distant wall bathed Bouazizi in a golden light and illumined the alley where he parked his cart holding his remaining stock of week old apples. He lifted the handles and backed his cart out into the street being extra mindful of the cracks in the cobblestone road. Bouazizi sprained his ankle a week ago and it was still tender. Bouazizi had to be careful not to aggravate it with a careless step. Having successfully navigated his cart into the road, Bouazizi made a skillful U Turn and headed up the street limping toward the market.

A winter chill gripped Bouazizi prompting him to zip his jacket up to his neck. The zipper pinched his Adam’s Apple and a few droplets of blood stained his green corduroy jacket. Though it was cold, Bouazizi sensed that spring would arrive early this year triggering a replay of a recurring daydream. Bouazizi imagined himself behind the wheel of a new van on his way to the market. Fresh air and sunshine pouring through the open windows with the cargo space overflowing with fresh vegetables and fruits.

It was a lifelong ambition of Bouazizi to own a van. He dreamed of buying a six cylinder Dodge Caravan. It would be painted red and he would call it The Red Flame. The Red Flame would be fast and powerful and sport chrome spinners. The Red Flame would be filled with music from a Blaupunkt sound system with kick *** speakers. Power windows, air conditioning, leather seats, a moonroof and plenty of space in the back for his produce would complete Bouazizi’s ride.

The Red Flame would be the vehicle Bouazizi required to expand his business beyond the market square. Bouazizi would sell his produce out of the back of the van, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. No longer would he have to wait for customers to come to his stand in the market. Bouazizi would go to his customers. Bouazizi and the Red Flame would be known in all the neighborhoods throughout the district. Bouazizi shook his head and smiled thinking about all the girls who would like to take rides in the Red Flame. Bouazizi and his Red Flame would be a sight to be noticed and a force to be reckoned with.

“EEEEEYOWWW” a Mercedes horn angrily honked; jarring Bouazizi from the reverie of his daydream. A guy whipping around the corner like a silver streak stuck his head out the window blasting with music yelling, “Hey Mnayek, watch where you push that *******.”

The music faded as the Mercedes roared away. “Barra nikk okhtek” Bouazizi yelled, raising his ******* in the direction of the vanished car. “The big guys in the fancy cars think the road belongs to them”, Bouazizi mumbled to himself.

The insult ****** Bouazizi off, but he was accustomed to them and as he limped along pushing his cart he distracted himself with the amusement of the ascending sun chasing the fleeting shadows of the night, sending them scurrying down narrow alleyways.

Bouazizi imaged himself a character from his favorite movie. He was a giant Transformer, chasing the black shadows of evil away from the city into the desert. After battling evil and conquering the bad guys, he would transform himself back into the regular Bouazizi; selling his produce to the people as he patrolled the highways of Tunisia in the Red Flame, the music blasting out the windows, the chrome spinners flashing in the sunlight. Bouazizi would remain vigilant, always ready to transform the Red Flame to fight the evil doers.

The bumps and potholes in the road jostled Bouazizi’s load of apples. A few fell out of the wooden baskets and were rolling around in the open spaces of the cart. Bouazizi didn’t want to risk bruising them. Damaged merchandise can’t be sold so he was careful to secure his goods and arrange his cart to appeal to women customers. He made sure to display his prized electronic scale in the corner of the cart for all to see.

Bouazizi had a reputation as a fair and generous dealer who always gave good value to his customers. Bouazizi was also known for his kindness. He would give apples to hungry children and families who could not pay. Bouazizi knew the pain of hunger and it brought him great satisfaction to be able to alleviate it in others.

As a man who valued fairness, Bouazizi was particularly proud of his electronic scale. Bouazizi was certain the new measuring device assured all customers that Bouazizi sold just and correct portions. The electronic scale was Bouazizi’s shining lamp. He trusted it. He hung it from the corner post of his cart like it was the beacon of a lighthouse guiding shoppers through the treachery of an unscrupulous market. It would attract all customers who valued fairness to the safe harbor of Bouazizi’s cart.

The electronic scale is Bouazizi’s assurance to his customers that the weights and measures of electronic calculation layed beyond any cloud of doubt. It is a fair, impartial and objective arbiter for any dispute.

Bouazizi believed that the fairness of his scale would distinguish his stand from other produce vendors. Though its purchase put Bouazizi into deep debt, the scale was a source of pride for Bouazizi who believed that it would help his profits to increase and help him to achieve his goal of buying the Red Flame.

As Bouazizi pushed his cart toward the market, he mulled his plan over in his mind for the millionth time. He wasn't great in math but he was able to calculate his financial situation with a degree of precision. His estimations triggered worries that his growing debt to money lenders may be difficult to payoff.

Indebtedness pressed down on Bouazizi’s chest like a mounting pile of stones. It was the source of an ever present fear coercing Bouazizi to live in a constant state of anxiety. His business needed to grow for Bouazizi to get a measure of relief and ultimately prosper from all his hard work. Bouazizi was driven by urgency.

The morning roil of the street was coming alive. Bouazizi quickened his step to secure a good location for his cart at the market. Car horns, the spewing diesel from clunking trucks, the flatulent roar of accelerating buses mixed with the laughs and shrieks of children heading to school composed the rising crescendo of the city square.

As he pushed through the market, Bouazizi inhaled the aromatic eddies of roasting coffee floating on the air. It was a pleasantry Bouazizi looked forward to each morning. The delicious wafts of coffee mingling with the crisp aroma of baking bread instigated a growl from Bouazizi’s empty stomach. He needed to get something to eat. After he got money from his first sale he would by a coffee and some fried dough.

Activity in the market was vigorous, punctuated by the usual arguments of petty territorial disputes between vendors. The disagreements were always amicably resolved, burned away in rising billows of roasting meats and vegetables, the exchange of cigarettes and the plumes of tobacco smoke rising as emanations of peace.

Bouazizi skillfully maneuvered his cart through the market commotion. He slid into his usual space between Aaban and Aameen. His good friend Aaban sold candles, incense, oils and sometimes his wife would make cakes to sell. Aameen was the markets most notorious jokester. He sold hardware and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Aaban was already burning a few sticks of jasmine incense. It helped to attract customers. The aroma defined the immediate space with the pleasant bouquet of a spring garden. Bouazizi liked the smell and appreciated the increased traffic it brought to his apple cart.

“Hey Basboosa#, do you have any cigarettes?“, Aameen asked as he pulled out a lighter. Bouazizi shook the tip of a Kent from an almost empty pack. Aameen grabbed the cigarette with his lips.

“That's three cartons of Kents you owe me, you cheap *******.” Bouazizi answered half jokingly. Aameen mumbled a laugh through a grin tightly gripping the **** as he exhaled smoke from his nose like a fire breathing dragon. Bouazizi also took out a cigarette for himself.

“Aameem, give me a light”, Bouazizi asked.

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

“Keep it Basboosa. I got others.” Aameen smiled as he showed off a newly opened box of disposable lighters to sell on his stand.

“Made in China, Basboosa. They make everything cheap and colorful. I can make some money with these.”

Bouazizi lit his next to last cigarette. He inhaled deeply. The smoke chased away the cool air in Bouazizi’s lungs with a shot of a hot nicotine rush.

“Merci Aameen” Bouazizi answered. He put the lighter into the almost empty cigarette pack and put it into his hip pocket. The lighter would protect his last cigarette from being crushed.

The laughter and shouts of the bazaar, the harangue of radio voices shouting anxious verses of Imam’s exhorting the masses to submit and the piecing ramble of nondescript AM music flinging piercing unintelligible static surrounded Bouazizi and his cart as he waited for his first customers of the day.

Bouazizi sensed a nervous commotion rise along the line of vendors. A crowd of tourists and locals milling about parted as if to avoid a slithering asp making its way through their midst. The hoots of vendors and the cackle of the crowd made its way to Bouazizi’s knowing ear. He knew what was coming. It was nothing more then another shakedown by city officials acting as bagmen for petty municipal bureaucrats. They claim to be checking vendor licences but they’re just making the rounds collecting protection money from the vendors. Pocketing bribes and payoffs is the municipal authorities idea of good government. They are skilled at using the power of their office to extort tribute from the working poor.

Bouazizi made the mistake of making eye contact with Madame Hamdi. As the municipal authority in charge of vendors and taxis Madame Hamdi held sway over the lives of the street vendors. She relished the power she had over the men who make a meager living selling goods in the square; and this morning she was moving through the market like a bloodhound hot on the trail of an escaped convict. Two burly henchmen lead the way before her. Bouazizi knew Madame Hamdi’s hounds were coming for him.

Bouazizi knew he was ******. Having just made a payment to his money lender, Bouazizi had no extra dinars to grease the palm of Madame Hamdi. He grabbed the handle bars of his cart to make an escape; but Madame Hamdi cut him off and got right into into Bouazizi’s face.

“Ah little Basboosa where are you going? she asked with the tone of playful contempt.

“I suppose you still have no license to sell, ah Basboosa?” Madame Hamdi questioned with the air of a soulless inquisitor.

“You know Madame Hamdi, cart vendors do not need a license.” Bouazizi feebly protested, not daring to look into her eyes.

“Basboosa, you know we can overlook your violations with a small fine for your laxity” a dismissive Madame Hamdi offered.

Bouazizi’s sense of guilt would not permit him to lift his eyes. His head remained bowed. Bouazizi stood convicted of being one of the impoverished.

“I have no spare dinars to offer Madame Hamdi, My pockets are empty, full of holes. My money falls into everyone’s palm but my own. I’m sorry Madame Hamdi. I’ll take my cart home”. He lifted the handlebars in an attempt to escape. One of Madame Hamdi’s henchmen stepped in front of his cart while the other pushed Bouazizi away from it.

“Either you pay me a vendor tax for a license or I will confiscate your goods Basboosa”, Madame Hamdi warned as she lifted Bouazizi’s scale off its hook.

“This will be the first to go”, she said grinning as she examined the scale. “We’ll just keep this.”
Like a mother lion protecting a defenseless cub from the snapping jaws of a pack of ravenous hyenas, Bouazizi lunged to retrieve his prized scale from the clutches of Madame Hamdi. Reaching for it, he touched the scale with his fingertips just as Madame Hamdi delivered a vicious slap to Bouazizi’s cheek. It halted him like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter

Lightning flashes,
only it’s not from the sky,
it’s from the hands
that break your fall,
the hands you use to crawl;
I saw them in your grip,
cellular migraines
surrounding me in the pit,
flashing out of control
like a industrial seizure on a roll,
standing perfectly still,
row after mindless row
like a haven of brain-sizzled zombies
recording priceless moments
to enjoy at a later time,
contaminated by a screen
pixelating a musical dream,
and that’s exactly how I felt
in the center of the attraction,
cord after lyric after cord
ruined by modern distraction,
and despite the following talent
being the pretty reckless,
it was still pretty obvious
we’d remain being
the pretty restful.

.
Its 2 am and I am so wired.
Why can't I just be normally tired?
As others enjoy some restful sleep,
I am in a place far more deep.....

And the abyss calls so inviting,
          a leap into the unknown and beyond.
With clarity I jump out and fly,
          an excuse for reality to quietly abscond.

Psychedelic nausea as the dimensions twist,
forcing me to a place where I do not exist,
a land in which I may be killed or kissed,
but certain my presence would not be missed.

The feelers take a hold of me,
     whispering secrets of antiquity,
revealing images of aeons gone,
     in spoken word, rhyme and song.
I have the histories of many worlds
     all in my mind strung up like pearls.
A line of lanterns alight once more,
     open and willing for me to explore.
And my pale blue eyes no longer see
     the images created by any reality.

It is secret knowledge of ancient times,
I receive in the script of cryptic rhymes.


© Pagan Paul (09/08/18)

As he walked through the maze of streets from the tube station he wondered just how long it had been since he had last visited this tall red-bricked house. For so many years it had been for him a pied à terre. Those years when the care of infant children dominated his days, when coming up to London for 48 hours seemed such a relief, an escape from the daily round that small people demand. Since his first visits twenty years ago the area bristled with new enterprise. An abandoned Victorian hospital had been turned into expensive apartments; small enterprising businesses had taken over what had been residential property of the pre-war years. Looking up he was conscious of imaginative conversions of roof and loft spaces. What had seemed a wide-ranging community of ages and incomes appeared to have disappeared. Only the Middle Eastern corner shops and restaurants gave back to the area something of its former character: a place where people worked and lived.

It was a tall thin house on four floors. Two rooms at most of each floor, but of a good-size. The ground floor was her London workshop, but as always the blinds were down. In fact, he realised, he’d never been invited into her working space. Over the years she’d come to the door a few times, but like many artists and craftspeople he knew, she fiercely guarded her working space. The door to her studio was never left open as he passed through the hallway to climb the three flights of stairs to her husband’s domain. There was never a chance of the barest peek inside.

Today, she was in New York, and from outside the front door he could hear her husband descend from his fourth floor eyrie. The door was flung open and they greeted each other with the fervour of a long absence of friends. It had been a long time, really too long. Their lives had changed inexplicably. One, living almost permanently in that Italian marvel of waterways and sea-reflected light, the other, still in the drab West Yorkshire city from where their first acquaintance had begun from an email correspondence.

They had far too much to say to one another - on a hundred subjects. Of course the current project dominated, but as coffee (and a bowl of figs and mandarin oranges) was arranged, and they had moved almost immediately he arrived in the attic studio to the minimalist kitchen two floors below, questions were thrown out about partners and children, his activities, and sadly, his recent illness (the stairs had seemed much steeper than he remembered and he was a little breathless when he reached the top). As a guest he answered with a brevity that surprised him. Usually he found such questions needed roundabout answers to feel satisfactory - but he was learning to answer more directly, and being brief, suddenly thought of her and her always-direct questions. She wanted to know something, get something straight, so she asked  - straight - with no ‘going about things’ first. He wanted to get on with the business at hand, the business that preoccupied him, almost to the exclusion of everything else, for the last two days.

When they were settled in what was J’s working space ten years ago now he was immediately conscious that although the custom-made furniture had remained the Yamaha MIDI grand piano and the rack of samplers were elsewhere, along with most of the scores and books. The vast collection of CDs was still there, and so too the pictures and photographs. But there was one painting that was new to this attic room, a Cézanne. He was taken aback for a moment because it looked so like the real thing he’d seen in a museum just weeks before. He thought of the film Notting Hill when William Thacker questions the provenance of the Chagall ‘violin-playing goat’. The size of this Cézanne seemed accurate and it was placed in a similar rather ornate frame to what he knew had framed the museum original. It was placed on right-hand wall as he had entered the room, but some way from the pair of windows that ran almost the length of this studio. The view across the rooftops took in the Tower of London, a mile or so distant. If he turned the office chair in which he was sitting just slightly he could see it easily whilst still paying attention to J. The painting’s play of colours and composition compelled him to stare, as if he had never seen the painting before. But he had, and he remembered that his first sight of it had marked his memory.

He had been alone. He had arrived at the gallery just 15 minutes before it was due to close for the day.  He’d been told about this wonderful must-see octagonal room where around the walls you could view a particularly fine and comprehensive collection of Impressionist paintings. All the great artists were represented. One of Van Gogh’s many Olive Trees, two studies of domestic interiors by Vuillard, some dancing Degas, two magnificent Gaugins, a Seurat field of flowers, a Singer-Sergeant portrait, two Monets - one of a pair of haystacks in a blaze of high-summer light. He had been able to stay in that room just 10 minutes before he was politely asked to leave by an overweight attendant, but afterwards it was as if he knew the contents intimately. But of all these treasures it was Les Grands Arbres by Cézanne that had captured his imagination. He was to find it later and inevitably on the Internet and had it printed and pinned to his notice board. He consulted his own book of Cézanne’s letters and discovered it was a late work and one of several of the same scene. This version, it was said, was unfinished. He disagreed. Those unpainted patches he’d interpreted as pools of dappled light, and no expert was going to convince him otherwise! And here it was again. In an attic studio J. only frequented occasionally when necessity brought him to London.

When the coffee and fruit had been consumed it was time to eat more substantially, for he knew they would work late into the night, despite a whole day tomorrow to be given over to their discussions. J. was full of nervous energy and during the walk to a nearby Iraqi restaurant didn’t waver in his flow of conversation about the project. It was as though he knew he must eat, but no longer had the patience to take the kind of necessary break having a meal offered. His guest, his old friend, his now-being-consulted expert and former associate, was beginning to reel from the overload of ‘difficulties’ that were being put before him. In fact, he was already close to suggesting that it would be in J’s interest if, when they returned to the attic studio, they agreed to draw up an agenda for tomorrow so there could be some semblance of order to their discussions. He found himself wishing for her presence at the meal, her calm lovely smile he knew would charm J. out of his focused self and lighten the rush and tension that infused their current dialogue. But she was elsewhere, at home with her children and her own and many preoccupations, though it was easy to imagine how much, at least for a little while, she might enjoy meeting someone new, someone she’d heard much about, someone really rather exotic and (it must be said) commanding and handsome. He would probably charm her as much as he knew she would charm J.

J. was all and more beyond his guest’s thought-description. He had an intensity and a confidence that came from being in company with intense, confident and, it had to be said, very wealthy individuals. His origins, his beginnings his guest and old friend could only guess at, because they’d never discussed it. The time was probably past for such questions. But his guest had his own ideas, he surmised from a chanced remark that his roots were not amongst the affluent. He had been a free-jazz musician from Poland who’d made waves in the German jazz scene and married the daughter of an arts journalist who happened to be the wife of the CEO of a seriously significant media empire. This happy association enabled him to get off the road and devote himself to educating himself as a composer of avant-garde art music - which he desired and which he had achieved. His guest remembered J’s passion for the music of Luigi Nono (curiously, a former resident of the city in which J. now lived) and Helmut Lachenmann, then hardly known in the UK. J. was already composing, and with an infinite slowness and care that his guest marvelled at. He was painstakingly creating intricate and timbrally experimental string quartets as well as devising music for theatre and experimental film. But over the past fifteen years J. had become increasingly more obsessed with devising software from which his musical ideas might emanate. And it had been to his guest that, all that time ago, J. had turned to find a generous guide into this world of algorithms and complex mathematics, a composer himself who had already been seduced by the promise of new musical fields of possibility that desktop computer technology offered.

In so many ways, when it came to the hard edge of devising solutions to the digital generation of music, J. was now leagues ahead of his former tutor, whose skills in this area were once in the ascendant but had declined in inverse proportion to J’s, as he wished to spend more time composing and less time investigating the means through which he might compose. So the guest was acting now as a kind of Devil’s Advocate, able to ask those awkward disarming questions creative people don’t wish to hear too loudly and too often.

And so it turned out during the next few hours as J. got out some expensive cigars and brandy, which his guest, inhabiting a different body seemingly, now declined in favour of bottled water and dry biscuits. His guest, who had been up since 5.0am, finally suggested that, if he was to be any use on the morrow, bed was necessary. But when he got in amongst the Egyptian cotton sheets and the goose down duvet, sleep was impossible. He tried thinking of her, their last walk together by the sea, breakfast à deux before he left, other things that seemed beautiful and tender by turn . . . But it was no good. He wouldn’t sleep.

The house could have been as silent as the excellent double-glazing allowed. Only the windows of the attic studio next door to his bedroom were open to the night, to clear the room of the smoke of several cigars. He was conscious of that continuous flow of traffic and machine noise that he knew would only subside for a brief hour or so around 4.0am. So he went into the studio and pulled up a chair in front of the painting by Cézanne, in front of this painting of a woodland scene. There were two intertwining arboreal forms, trees of course, but their trunks and branches appeared to suggest the kind of cubist shapes he recognized from Braque. These two forms pulled the viewer towards a single slim and more distant tree backlit by sunlight of a late afternoon. There was a suggestion, in the further distance, of the shapes of the hills and mountains that had so preoccupied the artist. But in the foreground, there on the floor of this woodland glade, were all the colours of autumn set against the still greens of summer. It seemed wholly wrong, yet wholly right. It was as comforting and restful a painting as he could ever remember viewing. Even if he shut his eyes he could wander about the picture in sheer delight. And now he focused on the play of brush strokes of this painting in oils, the way the edge and border of one colour touched against another. Surprisingly, imagined sounds of this woodland scene entered his reverie - a late afternoon in a late summer not yet autumn. He was Olivier Messiaen en vacances with his perpetual notebook recording the magical birdsong in this luminous place. Here, even in this reproduction, lay the joy of entering into a painting. Jeanette Winterson’s plea to look at length at paintings, and then look again passed through his thoughts. How right that seemed. How very difficult to achieve. But that night he sat comfortably in J’s attic and let Cézanne deliver the artist’s promise of a world beyond nature, a world that is not about constant change and tension, but rests in a stillness all its own.

A body still from excitement
Head to the sky, waiting
A whole frosted dance is about to appear

Earth’s colossal yet gentle hands grab the sun
And turn off the gleaming lights

Darkness
Restful darkness

The ample wind covers the area
Like an invisible curtain of chilled silk

Then a moment of calm
Everything is still
As if a single picture was taken

Vibrant silver angels in their white cotton
Fall from endless stage in the sky
Embodying the frozen air
Thrusting their ****** dance
As they float towards the ground

These suggestive pale dancers
Land on your still excited body
Using it as their new birthed platform

They use their sensual ballet
To send ice cold stings through your bones
To bring a ****** tingle to your mind
Until your heart ******* to a perky smile.

This is called the seductive winter dance
Able to make your mouth gleam
And your soul tickle

Embrace the frigid sensation
As you give birth to your inner thrill

The fault of our reality is not written in our stars
And it will not dance across unfavorable constellations,
Or dissolve into inconsolable fragments.

The fault, my love, is not written in our stars.
It is written in ourselves.

But how fortunate would it be?
To cast the providence of our unlucky affairs
Into the gloomy twilight,
Where the sky is so unilluminated
That we could close our restful eyes
And fathom a world where it does not exist?

But the fault, my love, is not written in our stars.
It is written in ourselves.

We are heavily folded sheets of stationary:
A collection of utterances
Bound into melancholy novels
By our mangled hearts,
And though spoken words
Still fall onto my turning pages
As tears do fall from my reddened cheeks,
I have yet to forget
The chapter you have left unwritten,
Because an unwritten chapter is one to be adorned:
It cannot end
For it does not exist.
And so we fumble through an amorous affliction,
Fabricated into a bittersweet infinity.

And at midnight,
When my restless fingers
***** the empty air for you,
And the reality of our desolate fault
Seeps into my hands,
I wish you were here.

But the fault, my love, is not written in our stars.
It is written in ourselves.

j.s.

Hello snorer, I hope you didn't sleep any poorer
when I stayed up all night typing this not-poem
I meant you no harm, but I had to stay up
Because I couldn't make music out of your obnoxiously loud cacophony of windpipe crap, er "music".  Time to not-pretend to absolutely hate your snoring under the guise of being perfectly okay with it for the sake of setting the tone a bit nicer to all who must hear it, so they can BEAR to, for otherwise it would be absurd.  Not as absurd as anyone hating to have aural drills applied to all their chakras all night, but still absurd enough to get a chuckle out of me (I hope it didn't wake your fine specimen here). It was never my intent, though it was always my ethical concern (if only everyone could be as reciprocal as you and I).   Oh, my not-pretend hatred is very thinly veiled.  I wasn't totally defeated by your snore-sound armies so that I couldn't type words, but I may have lost some of my desired effect due to the sometimes wincing distraction they caused to my piece of mind at this or that time when I needed it the most (even though I was awake, which is no crime if snoring at night and keeping me that way isn't).

Well, I did ask you if you'd mind if I typed,
I did tell you that you could tell me if its quiet purr of clicks would bother your precious sleep
But I never felt a need to be concerned, because whenever I
was typing, I heard you snore, and whenever I was in the heights of
some new discovery or epiphany, your sharp sudden thunderstroke of near death
corrugated metal vibrating in the torrent of some sudden gale force gust of wind.

These were signs to me of your restful sleep.  So I simply didn't worry about your sleep.  I was certain that my electronic beeps were every now and then music to your ears, just as they were to mine.  This is because in the midst of these I heard you snore, and when you snored, I took you to be asleep.

Ah but then again, then again, these are fanciful constructions which simply say that what is wonderful for me should be just fine and dandy with you, at a bare minimum, and on those grounds of very unsymmetrical attitude about right and wrong I would have to begin my music tirade of words as well.  But I don't view justice and propriety along such selfish lines as these.

What I see is that duplicity is your thesis.  I have anecdotal accounts which are marvelous to behold first hand, but the details of the absurdities cannot be done justice in the language of men, for the intensity of such insanity can only be borne lightly by the frailest frayed ends of my sanity for having lived through your acoustically maddening inanity.

You didn't ever admit to me that my noises were not music to YOUR ears.  Indeed  you claimed never to be bothered by them because you never voiced up against them.  I suppose you might as well voice up against them in the street as well if it turns out not all of you snorers-go-a-viking types like to hear my mouse clicking away like a tapping noises on a metal plate in your skull.  Sorry if it is another non-snorer-who-must-stay-up-late-and-so-be-occupied person whose nocturnal joys were misinterpreted as direct assaults on the dignity, spirit, or just basic mental viability of your wounded snoremonster troop of anti-late-stayer-uppers, because in fact, we used to be sleep-at-night-entities like you, but that was before you showed up, thoracic marching band in tow.  Marching bands are musical also, to some people.  And for some all hours of the night are perfect for a marching band.  Who am I to tell them otherwise.  

Well let me know the next time a marching band is given special permit to come through your neighborhood at night, and I'll be glad to point out to you the first Snorer'sville, because only they should be expected, in all justice to live with the macroscopic manifestation of their personal narcissistic paradises.

Let you all go to your own place and form your own nation, and see if you can consistently demand everyone else find music in your ****** and accursed racket!  But until then I expect some of you will have to take the damage returned by the growing number of people who are very much tired of living under the horrors of your infliction upon us, your demonic and evil tyranny of mind-crushing hate that is your ****** noise.  We will do yoga and breathe, and stretch, and some light calesthenics to relax and seek some focus and composure, whenever our spirits require, and this will be unchallenged by you so long as you are asleep, and it will be unchallenged by you so long as you are awake too.  For in the latter case you are already awake (and so still are we, usually) while in the former case it is far quieter than your snoring, both in its valleys and peaks.  And moreover it has not kept you up, but in fact I have noted that you wake yourself up with your own music when it reaches a certain crescendo.  

Unless you want to say that those crescendos are some sort of involuntary complaint about MY crescendos of spirit, when I start typing about 20% faster than normal, with perfect focus and accuracy while reaching an aesthetic pleasure approaching ****** as I realize that it is almost unerringly in the midst of such an experience that I hear your crescendo resound. And since it was no more intended to be a distraction for me, then surely my music must have also gone undetected by your ears, as well as your spirit. Or is it fairer to say it was the very cause of your crescendo, or at least its inspiration?

Therefore I needn't worry that it is I that is keeping you up, even if for only brief stints at a time, especially by comparison to my all-night vigils.  Not so, but it is you who are so enraptured by my occasional laughs or giggles as I edify my weary, sleep-deprived mind on some bit of morale boosting entertainment.  With headphones on of course.  It's also courteously plugged into the computer to prevent my favorite bit of Judas Priest from hurting your ear drums, or else overstimulating your music appreciation centers, which are verily attached to your ear-drums by a nerve bundle (and what nerve you all have there).  This means I've spared you too much distraction from any already-abundant music of the spheres effect you may be savoring which might have emanated from my bumbling around in the dark (to keep the lights out of course, after all people are sleeping).

Yes but that is a minority of you perhaps, who would lie about that and in fact who ought to say that our nocturnal emissions are not what you'd call restfully mind-relaxing crickets in the dead of night with an occasional hoot in the distance...  But they are a minority, the rest of you are so definitely in good faith.

But then why do I always run into those of your tribe who have strange and unethical habits, such as destroying others' lives by ruining their one perhaps most preciously personal and inalienable need second only to air and water, and that is sleep.  It is, in terms of acute necessity, in many ways more needed than food, though in the long term food catches up.  But food catches up only because not eating food is a  lot like not getting sleep, but just a lot more intense on the body when it drops to some critical point because we know from experience it is on raw nerves that we can go for a while in search of food, but if the food can't be found (perhaps because of our lack of sleep ruining our cognition in some way), then we will not eat, nor sleep, because we'll be dead.  

But either way, we'll be dead, for lack of sleep kills, both directly and indirectly, if suffered over a short time and/or in a diluted form over a long time.  That would be poetically commensurate to the sadistic similitude of the types of snoring sounds with the types of ways to die from being deprived of sleep according to two modes (acute and chronic), over many keys of incident, accident, lost opportunity and ill-stared fate, all of which can be mapped in some way back to that auditory persecution of our very souls of which your kind are in some swelling numbers quite proud.  Just think of all the car accidents, work accidents, altercations, fits of rage, inability to concentrate well or sometimes at all, and other life-damaging conditions of the mind, and also of the body, which accrue from lack of proper and healthy sleep at night!

Good thing for most of you though, right?  Because surely our music is also sweet, and I really hope I've inspired many to face this need for equality, and be on their guard against any unjust whining or groaning from those who seem in point of fact to value their sleep just a good deal more than they value anyone else's.  Not only because they really really love to get those zzz's but because they think that in the natural order of things, before people suddenly went mad and evil, people went to bed and slept well even partly BECAUSE of this brachio-esophageal orchestral lullaby.

But we'll be on our guard against those complaints, because we know you have plotted to take to the streets against us to defend your noisiness-all-night-every-night rights.  So we'll be on guard to defend ours, TO THE LAST FIBER OF OUR BEING.

Because you insufferable ******* are cruel, and cruelty no one should abide.  No one in my world, in my society of people, will be allowed to inflict cruelty on another person, nor be callously prejudicial in their own favor when injuries do occur because of their actions merely on the grounds that the damage it causes coincides with the fulfillment of a need on their own part, even while that fulfillment is of a need which is obstructed from satisfaction in the other part, and by THAT VERY SAME REASON, so that your sleep depends on keeping others awake.  UNLESS you can somehow con or coerce them into developing some form of Stockholm Syndrome and confuse the torment you inflict upon them with a sign of your love and wonderfulness to be around.

Yes, I know you hear me typing now, through your well-behaved proxy.  I feel it. If not he per se, then in a parallel universe not too far off, there's a version of him who does.  Perhaps not the one I know now, on day one of having moved into this room, but perhaps one represented in this universe by someone who has found himself in some sort of circumstances found later on during his stay, this mixed with the fact that familiarity breeds contempt... He'll start making some righteous demands of some kind, and I might not be in a such a good mood about that due to lack of proper sleep, and this will coincide with said contumacy against my own rights (such as to breathe, type, surf the net, or do other nocturnal things other than snoring which might keep others up).

As to that last point in parentheses, snoring is an activity which you perform in conjunction with your getting sleep, and it therefore means not well for your notion of fairness to say things as they are, and simply say the truth, which is that your getting sleep deprives others of theirs, but it can be logically deduced.

It can also be logically deduced that the don't give flying **** if you don't like the fact that we don't like your ear-**** night after night, which is a good name as any, but should perhaps at times be amended to body-demolishing soul-****** of a mortally sinful nature, and with an ethical incongruity to good character of a person to maintain it, all the more to sings its praises to us and call it "good poetry".

late nights and homesick hearts never make for a quiet soul
excessive coffees and quilted secrets make the heart beat fast,
palpitating, jumping, murmuring hyperbolic hopes

late nights and homesick hearts can only be softened
when one's soul is at peace,
hopeful,
restful,
joyful.

There
is.... a knarnley creature
resting, waiting, seeking
the pounce.
A lifetime of gold awaits thy
asleeps but under her blanket
restful slumber
Hark!
Oh the bells
the bells as they are ringing
in the steeple in the courtyard
She awakens
The knarley creature
aint feelin dat 10 a.m
fridgeworthy
solid
solidness
blender
of feelings
being mashed
mixer of emotions
like a mixed drink
at uptown
maybe a gin and tonic
idk...

In fields you walk with cloven wanderlust
With blankets carried on your back as fleece
Protecting fellow sheep-fold innocence
From devious behavior in the flock
Smiling as you bleat and stride as golden
Reflecting rays like sunlit drops of milk

A lamb of God your knowledge is your milk
Your curiosity breathes wanderlust
A message from the ancient one baas golden
Engraved upon your heart and curls of fleece
Observe the blessed range within your flock
Stray not for you may lose your innocence

A fog in hills may blind your innocence
Beware the wolf will take more than your milk
And with each day you bond among your flock
Behold the beauty of group wanderlust
We thank you for your warm and cherished fleece
That soothes us as earth's twilight breaks golden

Glory to the impossible golden
For myths of your spiritual innocence
Merely trumpets what liberates your fleece
The holy grail is your chalice of milk
Discovered in a cave of wanderlust
Restful within the shadow of your flock

What joy is raised in stables of your flock
An offering of ritual golden
Pasture of thirsty hearts in wanderlust
You teach us to hold fast to innocence
How precious is the richness of your milk
Our comfort is to rest our heads on fleece

A new dawn to behold an age of fleece
A new dusk to protect an ancient flock
A new day to preserve the gift of milk
A new memory to hold futures golden
A never ending age of innocence
A satiated age of wanderlust

Fruitful wanderlust of black sage fleece
Shepherds innocence to a white cloaked flock
Prepare ye golden moments with thine milk

© tHE tERRY tREE

In the heart, most people are temporary.
They roll off like tears shed and fall away,
Not forgotten, but finished.
But some people...
Some people have no horizon.
Some people are forever.

When I met you, you were vast.
I saw the ocean in your eyes.
I heard waves crash in your voice,
Rough and low and musical like the tide.
You're like a storm on the ocean,
And I drowned in loving you.

I didn't know what it was,
Didn't know what to do.
How could I?
You were the first.
Before I met you I'd never
Wondered if somebody's lips were soft to kiss
Wished I could reach out and touch anyone's cheek with my fingertips
Just to feel the warmth of life beneath their skin.
I never treasured the sound of anybody's pulse
As they hugged me
Until I met you.

I'm afraid I floundered,
Like a moth who had seen the moon in the waves
And tried to kiss its cheek
Only to stick to the mirror like water
And flutter madly, trying to stay afloat.

I learned, slow.
I grew.
I knew though, underneath I knew
I'd never get over you.

As the years blurred by
Like raindrops sliding down a windowpane
You were a constant in my heart,
Faint but vital.
As I shed my skin painfully and became...
Calmer, I suppose,
Less hopeful, less wildly passionate,
You lingered,
And the thought of you changed as I did,
But the love never left.

It's absurd, really, that I love so instantly
And so permanently.
But...
I saw your eyes four years ago
And my entire world changed.
I saw your eyes and I wanted to see only them
For the rest of time
The way I can stare at the path the moon makes along the sea
For hours and never tire of its subtle beauty.

I was afraid of you,
Of the power you had over me.
I just shrank back, stood aside and watched you be who you were,
Awed.
I quietly loved you like I'd never loved anyone,
And when you were gone I found that the thought of you
Was not.

And since then it has remained in my mind,
So constant and so quiet, like the white noise whisper of the surf on the sand at midnight,
That I hardly notice it anymore.

Back then, I could have fallen to my knees at your feet.
Back then, I couldn't help but be the fool
Who trailed at your heels
Because I was held there by gravity.
Back then, I couldn't hide a thing.
But now...
I've learned how to go under.

Many times since then, I've felt the fire of salt burn in my lungs,
I've lost my sight of the surface.
I've drowned in a love so deep
It soaks up all the light and consumes any heat,
Crushes the air from my lungs.
Many, many, many times I have felt death
Dashed upon the rocks by brutal storms and black waves.
And as I struggled
I saw your eyes in my head,
Grey and deep and beautiful
Like clouds finally breaking into soft rain,
Like a flower unfurling.
And I kept on.

And eventually, I learned to weather the storms and currents of my passions.

I learned.
To breath deep when my head breaks the surface,
Not to fight the undertow when it wraps its icy fingers around my ankles and yanks.
To show you what you can handle seeing from me,
And to accept that maybe I can't give you anything
But a reverence in my heart and a place in my mind
Where the thought of you will always be
Like a soft summer rain in the morning,
So light and fine that it hangs like mist for a moment before floating to the grass.

Some people are forever.
Some people never leave your heart, your mind, your soul.
Whenever I see you again,
It is like coming home.
It doesn't matter anymore that you don't love me.
I love to see your face,
Your eyes like a rainstorm,
Little lightning strikes of mischief or inspiration crackling within them.
Your little mannerisms and ways of standing that grab at my heart.
I love to hear you speak,
Notice the words you choose
That nobody else ever thinks to use,
And the rise and fall of your husky voice
With the rhythm of a tide against a shore.

I love to be near you
And appreciate every moment of you,
Here in my head.
I am good, now, at weathering the elements:
You see not the poetry that flows across my mind,
Words in a rush that break in swells over my head
And find a push and pull to sway me like a current.
You see not the magnetism, the urge to reach out to you,
Nor the tenderness that I've trained to lie still in my heart.

It only sleeps, you see, like a dog curled at the hearth:
My passion for you surrounds me when I see you,
In ebbs and flows and eddies,
But passively, dreamily.
It feels like standing at the bottom of the sea for a moment,
Anchored but suspended just barely
With my feet hovering on the sandy bottom,
Being tugged gently to and fro by the water.

I let it wash over me, my ardor, but I do nothing,
Only enjoy how soothing it feels, to know I can love so deeply.  
For I have learned that souls don't need air beneath the sea,
And so I have forgotten to struggle, struck motionless by silence and peace.
When I see you now, I treat you like the old friend you are,
Someone cherished, someone missed,
But calmly so.
And underneath loving you has become that.
I lived with my head above the water for so long,
Fighting, striving,
And now all it is is that I have realized
That that was only the surface,
And there is so much more.

I love you like the ocean.
Wild, desperate, powerful and chaotic
As the waves that dash themselves upon the cliffs, white and foamy and brutal,
But also silent, restful, calm and deep
As the underneath is, slow and blue and graceful.
The battle and the surrender,
That is how I love you.
Both at once, like the sea is.
Vast, like the sea is.
The fight hardly matters, the losing of it,
The nevermore-
I love you in a way that needs no possession, no validation.

Ever changing, but eternal nonetheless,
Like the sea is.

Some people have no horizon.
Some people are forever.

emerald, olive, viridian
oh how you perplex me
forest, jade, chartreuse
why do you tease me so
cyan, verdigris, moss
such excitement arises
to be a word
to be a meaning
is there such a thing,
to have a feeling
to see a vision,
phthalo, pine, teal
are you the same
mint, myrtle, laurel
you make me envious
to be blooming, to be healthy
to be young, to be clumsy
are you callow, how about credulous?
but such a conservationist
unquestioning, so trustful,
tenderfoot and common
the tree, the lawn, the willow
though ecological and crude
a sage in all but name
apple, spinach, pea
aren't you scrumptious,
lime, kelly, bice
are you nature, how about luck
you're pungently rotten
though with such dark beauty and hope,
love and lust ensues
you're the jolliness of balance
and the creative intelligence;
of evil, and decay of money and safety,
will you resurrect me, are you immortality?
such jealousy arises
high goals and honor
so so allusive
healing and vitality
you're calming though fast
lush spring stability,
abundant generosity,
vert vegetation; witchcraft
an aphrodisiac I hear,
are you youth or fading youth?
sunrise and life, growth and fertility
sacred ideology,
eroticized though shameful
so romantic and humble
I see the third ray
or is the the fifth ray, the third eye
are you truth, are you vision
it's becoming a science,
so much compassion
the fourth chakra, the heart,
the centre of us all
a higher consciousness
such a harmonious aura
a hunter, a nurse, a solider, an outdoorsman
villains and superstition
misfortune and prosperity
with toxicity, sickness and death,
recycle and reuse
oh so powerful
you exude auspiciousness
just a holiday
mystical fairies and spirits
though also devilish,
cancer in the stars
a renewal of paradise,
biliously tranquil
are you refreshingly soothing,
peacefully restful,
a naive novice,
very understanding,
is there truly a term for you?
what do you really convey,
countless representations
a definition of name,
or do you signify the feeling, the specimen
the aspect?
though some have no locution for you

here I am,
stepping around the issue
you are you, in any word
yet with a different meaning

Hustle and bustle is where we meet
The integrate city is what we greet
In the morning when we rise so early
In the evenings as we descend from glory

The day is long and hard,
But from our jobs we dare not part.
It is to pay a bill,
Or to keep one still.
An idle mind is free to its own devices,
in fact through its deeds might still surprise us.
We keep rather still.
A waste of life saved from living
Our dreams are worth what we've all been giving.

A restful peaceful night has come
And after one sleep again it is done
And once again the hustle and bustle is where we meet
And the integrate city is what we greet

Your shrill, yet oddly pleasant sound, echoes loudly down the long corridor.
I try to ignore you as the jaunty sound clashes with my melancholy mood,
Yet I find the notes and melodies cling to my mind like tissue stuck to a shoe,
Hanging on for it's own amusement,
Ignorant of my desire not to be teased nor humoured at this anxious time.

I feel I shouldn't like your racket,
My naïve ears and young years sense, not only an inappropriate comedy in your sound,
But also a daunting undertone,
Adding to my sense of having been plunged into deep icy waters.

Perhaps your music soothes those who are leaving,
Your high happy notes providing optimism and assurance of recovery,
Or of a restful sleep enveloping dear ones.
For me, however, at the point of no-return in my pilgrimage,
I hear only the low notes,
Out of time with my quickened pulse,
And lending a foreboding soundtrack to my slow deliberate steps.

But you play for no pay,
Busking in this hospital,
Doing good both night and day.
Yes, you are well known in this place,
Admired for the hours you commit to this space where lives can hang in the balance,
And where your instrument by day is a sharp sleek scalpel,
Invasive in its desire to alleviate suffering,
Your steady, practiced hand rehearsed and well versed in the methodically planned procedure of a surgical concerto.

But out of hours your instrument of choice lends you a voice,
Allowing flourishes and improvisations.
But were you aware that for visitors like me who visited repeatedly,
The clarinet would take on a significance beyond other instruments,
Taking me instantly back to bittersweet memories of visiting my family,
As, in turn, they aged and became unwell and recovered and became unwell again.

Now I am older and a little wiser,
I reflect and ruminate on this period;
My memories of family are more than just hospital visits,
And I wonder if I could ask one thing of you?
Why no Rhapsody in Blue?!

The big, lonely bed, stationary in all its essence, longed for her return. It resented the man now, biting and clawing at his skin. Although he had done nothing intentional or malicious to the bed, the bed held the man accountable and punished him for it.

The bed was nothing without the man's mistress. She had lain on the bed, dressed it with color and sweetness and light. She adorned the bed with her body, her being.
At times, the mistress and the big, lonely bed seemed to meld, to become one. And this had filled the bed with life. The big, lonely bed was not lonely yet.

The man never offered any of this to the big, lonely bed. He would come home late and drunkenly pass out on the bed. He would eat his meals on the bed and pay all his attention to the TV. His crumbs would find the recesses of the bed's matting and he rarely changed the bedding. Sometimes, he would ******* on the bed without a care.

It wasn't clear if the mistress missed the bed as much as the bed missed her. Or if the mistress even missed the bed at all. The bed never spoke of it, as inanimate objects are forbidden from such things. The big, lonely bed considered greatly her long absence now but couldn't quite fittingly express its pain.

The man began enduring several sleepless nights on the bed. He was too determined to admit why. Denial was his restful tool. But the bed did wake him. The big, lonely bed scratched at his comfort. Scratched at the man's contentment and resolve. The bed kept the man awake with pain and desire and awareness. The bed was not going to let the man just “use” it. There is a price to pay for sleep and the big, lonely bed was determined to extact it.

The man tossed and turned these early, restless nights. Embattled by the bed's desperate curse, the man continues to lose precious, precious sleep. He was too self-absorbed to know he was under siege by the big, lonely bed. He tried applying pharmaceutical methods and concocted psychosomatic cures for his lack of sleep. The man began to consider himself an insomniac and openly complained to his friends about it.

The big, lonely bed's desire for the return of the man's mistress reached new levels of retribution as the bed started to manipulate its springs and padding to muddle its very own comfort and purpose. Now the man could only list one way or the other on the bed. He thought about his lost love. And his lost sleep…

The man was also losing to the big, lonely bed. He longed for the slumber he so desperately needed. Without restful peace, he began to teeter near ledges, dangerous and desolate ledges. There he quietly mumbled her name. The man sobbed as he whispered the horrors he had played victim to by the very mistress the bed adored.

The big, lonely bed listened as the man cried his tears of missed opportunities and sincere attempts with the mistress. She had treated him badly. The man's tears fell upon the bed. And the bed absorbed the man’s agony. The bed had been blinded by its own desire for her, never considering the man's love for her and his subsequent loss.

The man was broken now. Broken in his reckless actions and his desperate thoughts to relive and repair the relationship, to fix it. To fix everything, to fix himself. He was broken without sleep.

The big, lonely bed began to sympathize as the man counted the periodic struggles he weathered when confronted by his mistress's manic episodes. The man had indeed survived her bipolar tirades when she encouraged her fueled rage with doses of antidepressants mixed with long-poured ***** and tall glasses of Pinot Gris. The bed remembered these exhausting nights and recalled the punishment the man endured for simply loving her.

The bed did witness the man's suicidal flirtations and pathetic attempts to blame himself. To blame himself for all of it. If he could only share just one more night with her. One more night on his bed with her… in his bed. Talking and laughing. Loving and planning. He could fix this. With the help of his big, lonely bed, the man could fix it all.

The bed did take pity on him.
The big, lonely bed understood now. And welcomed the man that night, lonely no more.

Kurt Queller uses narrative criticism to analyze Mark 3:1-6, the healing miracle story in the gospel of Mark.  Queller’s narrative criticism includes “echoes of the Exodus liberation narrative” , echoes of Deuteronomy’s covenant language and Sabbatical provisions , intratextual echoes in Mark , and independent echoes in the other synoptic gospels.  Queller uses these echoes to fill in the gaps he finds in the story of Jesus healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath.
In the beginning of his criticism, Queller lists the gaps in Mark 3:1-6’s narrative that he seeks to fill: the meaning of the withered hand, Jesus’ reason for healing on the Sabbath, His reason for considering the withered hand life-threatening, why it is a choice between good and evil, et cetera.  He begins filling these gaps by referencing intertextual echoes of Mark 3:1-6 in Exodus.  Jesus’ command to the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:5, “Stretch out your hand,” is echoed in Exodus 14:16 where God commands Moses, “stretch out your hand.” When the man with the withered hand stretches out his hand, his hand is restored. Likewise, when Moses stretches out his hand, the Reed Sea parts, resulting in the restoration of the Israelites’ freedom.
Queller’s reference to this echo in Exodus, paired with other echoes he mentions in Deuteronomy, helped me begin to understand Jesus’ insistence on healing the withered hand. Queller was able to use the echoes to fill in the gaps I previously could not fill. In Deuteronomy 15, God’s covenant requires liberal lending and debt forgiveness to the poor on the Sabbath year. God reminds the Israelites that He delivered them from Egypt in verse 15, and He claims that this is the reason for His liberal Sabbatical law. Thus, this Deuteronomic prescription for Sabbath observance is a continuation of the Exodus liberation narrative. Queller mentions these echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to draw a larger narrative framework for understanding Mark’s controversial healing story.
In my initial reading, I recognized that a withered hand is not necessarily a matter of life and death. Like Queller, this was a gap that I initially set out to fill. However, I was unable to fill this gap in a way that completely satisfied my confusion on the matter. Queller’s larger narrative framework for this passage led me to a better understanding of why Jesus considered the withered hand worthy to heal on the Sabbath.
According to Queller’s filling of the gaps, the withered hand is an affliction that can be compared to the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt. The withered hand also embodies the economic predicament of the poor, who remain enslaved to their debt to the rich.  Such enslavement could be a death sentence, which is why the Sabbath requires the liberation of slaves and debt forgiveness of the poor. It seems plausible to me that a withered hand could cause a man to be enslaved and/or perpetually poor. This line of reasoning, provided by Queller’s larger narrative framework, allowed me to truly see how the Sabbath could require Jesus’ healing of the withered hand.
Another gap Queller and I similarly set out to fill is the question of what constitutes as doing good and what constitutes as doing evil on the Sabbath. This gap also arises from Mark 3:4, in which Jesus asks, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to ****?” (Mark 3:4 NIV). In his analysis of this particular part of this particular verse, Queller points out a small important detail that I originally missed. Mark 3:4 does not set the frame for a passive, inner choice between good and evil.  The literal wording says, “to do good or to do evil.” The choice between good and evil on the Sabbath thereby requires action.
While recognizing that required action is problematic for the restful nature of the Sabbath, Queller supports his assertion by referencing Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 30’s prescription for obedience of the Sabbath repeats the active command, “do it.”  Queller illustrates the parallelism between Mark and Deuteronomy by placing Deuteronomy 30:14 and Mark 3:4-5 in a figure side-by-side.  Deuteronomy 30:14 says, “The word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, and in your hands, to do it.” With this commandment as the framework, Mark 3:4-5 spells out the Pharisees’ failure to do good; It says, “But they were silent . . . grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man: ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out.”
From this, Queller concludes, “The ‘word’ to be done is already ‘in [their] mouth’ – but they refuse to say anything in response; it is ‘in [their] heart’ – but their heart is hardened against it. It is ‘in [their] hands, to do it’ – but as Jesus turns again to address the man, our attention is directed back to an inert hand, that, in its current withered state, seems unlikely to do anything.”  From this I am now able to conclude that which constitutes as doing “good” on the Sabbath is acting on the word. The word is completely accessible to us, and we must use our mouths, hearts, and hands to act upon it.
This gap of good and evil action that Queller helps fill also provides further evidence for the necessity of Jesus’ healing of the withered hand. Since the hands are required to carry out good action in obedience of the covenant, the withered hand is an affliction that can breach said covenant. Queller asserts that the withered hand symbolizes “the tangible embodiment of [the Pharisees] unwillingness, despite the ‘nearness’ of the word, to do it.”  Jesus, by necessity, must heal this affliction to show the Pharisees how to act according to the law of the Sabbath; “The stretching out of the hand then becomes a ‘witness against’ those who have chosen to forgo or even prohibit action because of exclusively sacral concerns.”  Without the preceding narrative frame of Deuteronomy, such significance of the withered hand for the Sabbath covenant was impossible for me to comprehend.
Though Queller is certainly helpful in providing evidence that enables understanding of the withered hand’s significance, there are parts of his criticism that I find contradictory and unhelpful. This occurs when he references echoes in Exodus and Deuteronomy to provide a framework for understanding the Pharisees’ silence in Mark 3:4 and hardness of hearts in Mark 3:5. He first relates the Pharisees’ hardened heart in response to Jesus’ plea in Mark to the Pharaoh’s hardened heart in response to Moses’ numerous pleas in Exodus. In my concordance work, I also made this connection. However, Queller and I differ in the conclusions we draw from this observation.
Queller draws from Deuteronomy to provide framework in conjunction with Exodus for understanding Mark’s interpretation of the Sabbatical law. He references Deuteronomy 29:19, which warns against thinking one can receive the blessings of the covenant while breaching it in the inner wanderings of the heart. This passive infidelity of the covenant brings God’s curse to the innocent as well as the guilty. Queller uses this context to explain why his literal translation says Jesus “co-aggrieved”  with the Pharisees because of their silence and hard hearts. The Pharisees’ passive, inner breach of the covenant invoked God’s curse on them, as well as the innocent Jesus, according to Queller.  
When I analyzed Jesus’ reaction to the hard hearts of the Pharisees in comparison to God’s reaction to that of the Pharaoh, I realized that the same Greek word was used to describe Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath. However, the consequences of Jesus’ anger and God’s wrath do not relate as clearly as Queller would lead one to believe. As a result of the Pharaoh’s hard heart, God’s wrath leads to the Pharaoh’s ultimate demise. Jesus’ resulting anger from the Pharisees’ hard hearts, on the other hand, catalyzes his decision to heal the withered hand. This action ultimately leads to Jesus’ destruction alone. Jesus, the innocent character, does not fall to the mutual destruction of the Pharisees, per Queller’s argument. I see no destruction of the Pharisees at all. Instead, Jesus restores God’s blessing of the guilty by becoming the recipient of God’s wrath in their place.
This conclusion, though differing from Queller, is consistent with his interpretation of the withered hand. Queller writes, “The withered hand embodies covenant curses invoked against those refusing to ‘open [their] hands’ in liberal lending, instead killing the poor by freezing credit in view of an impending sabbatical debt amnesty” . If the withered hand embodies God’s curse against the Pharisees, then Jesus revokes this curse when he cures the withered hand. Furthermore, the larger narrative framework of Mark’s gospel echoes this conclusion. Jesus’ crucifixion ultimately pays the debt of sinners and liberates them from God’s wrath.
Kurt Queller’s narrative criticism uses intertextuality, a narrative tool that “evokes resonances of the earlier text beyond those explicitly cited”  and “requires the reader to recover unstated or suppressed correspondences between the two texts.”  Such intertextual echoes he references from Deuteronomy and Exodus provide a larger background for interpreting Mark’s healing controversy. This granted me the ability to fill many gaps in the narrative that I was unable to fill prior to reading Queller’s criticism. In a footnote, he explains that his “metalepsis” uses such intertextual echoes for analysis, and, “In narrative, the resultant new figuration operates at what Robert M. Fowler calls the ‘discourse level.’ Metaleptic signification is thus transacted between an implied narrator and an implied audience – as it were, behind the backs of the narrative’s ‘story-level’ participants.”
The intertextual and metaleptic tools that Queller uses for his narrative criticism have proven to be very insightful and helpful for my understanding Mark 3:1-6 in an entirely new way. Even as I disagree with Queller on certain parts of his argument, these points of disagreement pushed me to deepen my own individual reading of the text. In comparing my argument to Queller’s, I realized just how far my initial interpretation was able to go. This narrative criticism answered a lot of my questions and filled many gaps. However, most of my conclusions about the implications and ultimate consequences of the text remain unshaken.  
Bibliography
Queller, Kurt. “Stretch Out Your Hand!” Echo and Metalepsis in Mark’s Sabbath Healing Controversy. Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 4 (2010): 737-58.

Au(Or)al Tune
When (O)ppo(u)rtun(e)ity knocks –
            Ah, pour that tune into me
               n(O)t
just write or speak
            but
                        /zIg:zAg/
            gut--
                        --teral mut--
            --ter yarns
                        With
Mouth-churn--
--ing-beat-lick--          
                        --ings.


Half-grown seedling ([her]bal:e(X)ssen(10)ces)
                                    into sm(O)ke
adolescent (O)re worn from being p(o)(o)r—
                      it was nE(X)CESSary for:
battles
birds
beats
b(O)(O)ks
bottles
bucks
b(O)nes
boys
bei­ng(bad)


sm(O)ke-rings w(ear)y with surr(end)er      
      stripped
            v(O)wel
                    for
                       v(O)wel
thr(OU)gh the yawn: (O)nly
            “(O)h.”

             (O)h
              … foll(O)ws

                        the
You’re w(or)th-knowing-ONLY-(O)nce
            type of l(i)ke.
VERSE/VERSUS: the
You’re-w(or)th-knowing-AT:LEAST-(O)nce
            type of l(i)ke
VERSE/VERSUS:
                        for (u)s

it’s the worst type of verse
                        when it’s
            them:VERSUS:us
                     (verses)

likewise -- (O)r worse --
it should really be about//
      a bad in (u)s: Y(O)U:ME


(O)h after a
                        kn(O)ck
(O)h after a
                        t(u)ne:://
(end)-verse
for worse – it’s an
(end)-versus-us
                        type of verse.


(O)ppo(u)rtun(e)ity
            pouring
            ringing e(X)cesses
like
                     ear-worms to
                     hear words to
                     heat hearts.

Ah::rest that mouth-verse onto me.
            (restful//fluster)
Ah::rest that mouth
            (silent//listen)
soulless gall(O)w r(u)ng
lipless v(O)wel sl(u)ng
            like
ARTS::between::STARS
            then
VOICES RANT ON::into::CONVERSATION
            then
PAYMENT RECEIVED::yet::EVERY CENT       PAID ME

worst-verse:
           Y(O)u//like hanging
                        your dipTH(O)NGS
on (O)pportun(e)ity’s d(O)(O)r
            like
                        sm(O)ke-rings
            like
                        being(bad)
            like
                        Y(O)U:ME
            like
                        (O)h. n(O).

(end)-verse:
worst-verse:
            L(I)ttle.Kn(O)wn.V(O)wel::
            n(O)(O)se big for (u)s

            ALL.

Friday marches in.
Trumpets playing serenades.
Nearly last weeks end.
Banners flying high.
It's five o clock or there abouts.
Hark,
Delighted squeals and shouts.
Buildings locked, off we trot.
To the station, week forgot.

Saturday descends with her restful smile.
Chill at home just for a while.
Wake up in the early hours.
In dream state panic.
Forgot the day.
Thought work was calling me today.
Realise it's Saturday.
Turn over.
Drift back off to sleep.

Sunday morn.
A sleepless night.
Woke up at seven.
Coffee on.
Then it dawned on me.
The weekend's nearly gone.

Make the most of Sabbath day.
Monday's coming anyway.
When back to work.
Off I'll trot.
Satisfied sort of with my lot.
I truly hope Sunday doesn't fly to fast.
Sunday waiting for Monday is never a blast!
By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

This restful spirit longs
for love that measures
inspiring pleasures that might come
my restless spirit knows
that it will not be ...

Each day I wake
looking for my sleep
at night I sleep among my candles
that I light before my rest
of endless words ...

Putting my feet on the floor
I cry and cry for more
my restless figure
walks through the fire
wanting a new world to come....

Debbie Brooks 2014

My bones have become filled
     to the brim with lead
until each step I take
     is so labored
     I can barely make another.
I am exhausted
     to my very core
And I'm expending
     every ounce of my energy
     simply attempting
     to hold my eyelids up.
I can't anymore, I'm sorry.
I just can't, I'm too tired,
I'm going to sleep now,
that deep, restful sleep
     from which one doesn't awake.

Hustle and bustle is where we meet
The integrate city is what we greet
In the morning when we rise so early
In the evenings as we descend from glory

The day is long and hard,
But from our jobs we dare not part.
It is to pay a bill,
Or to keep one still.
An idle mind is free to its own devices,
in fact through its deeds might still surprise us.
We keep rather still.
A waste of life saved from living
Our dreams are worth what we've all been giving.

A restful peaceful night has come
And after one sleep again it is done
And once again the hustle and bustle is where we meet
And the integrate city is what we greet

At the rooftop whispering
I listened to her
Sharing nothing but the cold breeze of the wind around her
Stood calmly looking at the streets down below
A little I knew about her, a thing or two
To dig more was my purpose
Dive deep in her restful thoughts
And read more than I should
Like an unsolved puzzle trying to solve pieces together
But she failed to answer all the questions inside her little head
Young but burned with scars that she will carry for the rest of her life
Then I realized restful wasn't the word
She created her own word that I failed to describe
A word with the definition of juvenileness and complex

Colorado,Colorado,
I wish I was in Colorado.
Where  puffers stand in line
to have a good-old-time.

I wish you were in Colorado
and puff away your blues,
and have a restful snooze.

Where people laugh
out loud and make their puffers' cloud.

And people stop and stare
into thought provoking air,
and talk about the deeper things
in life.

Sensuous summer fills
my mind
between my munchies
all the time.
My tastebuds shout in glee
with popcorn near my reach
and soda made of peach.

Colorado, Colorado,
I hear you callin' me
forget about that tree
of good and evil be.
And smoke away-at times-
those nasty nursery rhymes
cramped between
folders made of black.

Colorado,Colorado,
I wish I was in Colorado
to get a mountain high.
Where puffers' stand in line
to have a good-old-time...

Since not allowed to light
we're allowed to write:
"Let the **** reign forever"

Photographs by Avedon

This was written in a friend's home in the Berkshire Mountains, on a Saturday morning, a few years ago.  Up early, I went exploring their bookshelves and found a book of Richard Avedon's photographs of average Americans out west.  Google "richard avedon photos of the american west" - then read the poem.  Please, for without seeing the faces, for this will make all the difference.  In the Berkshires, it is always chilly there, even in the summer sun.  This and other obscure references are better detailed in the notes.


Join my warmth and
my chill,
as the nine o'clock sun,
a 45 degree steeplechase
warms,
but still not
strong enough
to dispense
the lingering,
residual, remaindered,
breezy chill
of the prior eve,
that hides in,
emanates from,
the shadows
of the
deep wooded hillocks
of the
Berkshire Mountains.

Join my warmth
and my chill!

Upright jolted,
head kicked awake,
entranced and revolted,
excited and repelled,
emotive, yet, stilled.

For oh so casually,
this heroic city dweller,
brave and fearless
bookshelf explorer,
retrieves a book,
to find a new route
thru time and space
to the center of his brain.

Photographs by Avedon,
of my fellow Americans,
the Have Nots,
his "Havedons"
of the
American West.

These uncommon people
with whom I share
uncommonly little,
these drifters, the carneys,
the would-have-been cowboys,
busted blackjack dealers,
rattlesnake gut n' skinners,
coal and copper miners,
the hay truck drivers,
dirt so deep in
their pores ingrained,
colors and bloodies their souls,
browns their veins,
are the ones that
too oft,
go off first to
fight wars
in my name.

Photos untitled,
words unneeded.

In this far corner of our
shared contiguous space
called the
United States of America,
top of the line here
would be
insurance agents,
secretaries and maybe even,
the waitresses.

But their eyes,
oh their eyes!

Words I do not own
to fair share with you,
the clarifying gaze
of measured dignity and
immeasurable ache,
heritage pride,
heretical heartbreak,
that marks and unites
these disparate and dispirited
vessels of humankind.

Disjointed,
the noon suns finally,
raises my body temperature
browns my surface...

Yet, nothing eradicates
this ******* chill
in my soul
or calms my consternation,
as black and white
eyes discolor
my comfortable existence,
as I ponder
Avedon's words:

All photographs are accurate but none tell the truth

Pass over,
pass by,
The Evil Son at Passover
asks ever so sly,
what have they to do with me?

It is the Sabbath.
We luxuriate in our rest.
Rest is the greatest luxury

What is this Sabbath?
Heschel's cathedral -
existant both
in space and time,
and one enters
when and where
one can.

Do my distant,
(both in space and time)
American cousins
share my Sabbath?

Are they allowed
this luxury,
or is it endless exertion,
severity and deprivation,
all and every day
of their lives?

Constant risk every day.

Who cannot fail to see the
precipitousness of life
edged in the lines of their
hearts and minds?

Day to day hardens them
and teaches the
discipline of
severity unended.

Is the prudence of
self-forgetfulness,
their morning bitter pill
they must swallow
to carry on?

Among the resolutions
I need
to claim a
life fulfilled is this:

How to end this poem,
close this can of worms,
accidentally kicked open.

Will sunset end these
troubling questions
of which you have
your own,
more personal variations?
(what about the ...)

Perennials flower everywhere,
in Auschwitz,
along the Tigris,
even in Kabul and Somalia,
along the highways
that lead
to the mecca of
Las Vegas.

Perennials flower everywhere.

In warmth and cool,
in time and space,
they flower in my heart and
my brain and in
my prayerful tears.
flowing down my cheeks,
as I lay me down to sleep,
to dream these of
impoverished words

Havdalah^^ thoughts,
separations celebrated.

Distinctions noted,
even celebrated tween
holy and common,
light and dark,
Sabbath and
the six weekdays
of labor,
between sacred and secular
and
between me and
my American Brothers
of the American West.

I know
just one thing
to be true:

The Sabbath Cathedral is
open to all,
whatever day
you choose to
abide there

I await you,
my American cousins,
with wine and bread
and the
holy of holiest words
of comfort and sooth.

I will wash your feet and
lay you down to
restful sleep
in the
Sabbath Cathedral
in my heart.

Together,
at last,
we will be joined,
in warmth and chill.



August 29, 2010
Lanesboro, Mass.

all our little itches come out to play
I eat them aflame as if I were next

I know I am to be
next comestible girl thing

something, irritant beneath your back teeth

and you sit on your sofa and wonder
you fall down my stairs and look up

we sleep by the river and listen
to the frogs and the praying mantis
as they glisten

all that matters
as they walk a certain way

all that wonders
why you and I just

seemed to fade a——way

as I couldn't chew weeds
like the rest of them
as if a dog choke chain we rot
circus familiar to me,

smile like you feel it, baby,
grin as if you are inside those
photo graphs

see clouds of pink paint
descended of you
clouds love me so
love me more than you

I am what I am
a fog of knowing

knowing how you will love me
in your very veins is restful
eases me to sleep a rolling
train way dream each night

midnight wakes me
your name on my lips

I am a dark slick highway woman
moaning like a new birthed bird

I am never going to be yours

but you could borrow me
take all that  I am

I will be here sighing,
waiting for the true blue

****** of you

everything we could have been
never leaves us, that’s a myth
we see now, and it has no service

I choose for us a perfect ending
this is my living song
I just forgot
how to sing

really, I thought for once
we nestled in your
head

It was the hour of dawn,
When the heart beats thin and small,
The window glimmered grey,
Framed in a shadow wall.

And in the cold sad light
Of the early morningtide,
The dear dead girl came back
And stood by his beside.

The girl he lost came back:
He saw her flowing hair;
It flickered and it waved
Like a breath in frosty air.

As in a steamy glass,
Her face was dim and blurred;
Her voice was sweet and thin,
Like the calling of a bird.

'You said that you would come,
You promised not to stay;
And I have waited here,
To help you on the way.

'I have waited on,
But still you bide below;
You said that you would come,
And oh, I want you so!

'For half my soul is here,
And half my soul is there,
When you are on the earth
And I am in the air.

'But on your dressing-stand
There lies a triple key;
Unlock the little gate
Which fences you from me.

'Just one little pang,
Just one throb of pain,
And then your weary head
Between my ******* again.'

In the dim unhomely light
Of the early morningtide,
He took the triple key
And he laid it by his side.

A pistol, silver chased,
An open hunting knife,
A phial of the drug
Which cures the ill of life.

He looked upon the three,
And sharply drew his breath:
'Now help me, oh my love,
For I fear this cold grey death.'

She bent her face above,
She kissed him and she smiled;
She soothed him as a mother
May sooth a frightened child.

'Just that little pang, love,
Just a throb of pain,
And then your weary head
Between my ******* again.'

He snatched the pistol up,
He pressed it to his ear;
But a sudden sound broke in,
And his skin was raw with fear.

He took the hunting knife,
He tried to raise the blade;
It glimmered cold and white,
And he was sore afraid.

He poured the potion out,
But it was thick and brown;
His throat was sealed against it,
And he could not drain it down.

He looked to her for help,
And when he looked -- behold!
His love was there before him
As in the days of old.

He saw the drooping head,
He saw the gentle eyes;
He saw the same shy grace of hers
He had been wont to prize.

She pointed and she smiled,
And lo! he was aware
Of a half-lit bedroom chamber
And a silent figure there.

A silent figure lying
A-sprawl upon a bed,
With a silver-mounted pistol
Still clotted to his head.

And as he downward gazed,
Her voice came full and clear,
The homely tender voice
Which he had loved to hear:

'The key is very certain,
The door is sealed to none.
You did it, oh, my darling!
And you never knew it done.

'When the net was broken,
You thought you felt its mesh;
You carried to the spirit
The troubles of the flesh.

'And are you trembling still, dear?
Then let me take your hand;
And I will lead you outward
To a sweet and restful land.

'You know how once in London
I put my griefs on you;
But I can carry yours now--
Most sweet it is to do!

'Most sweet it is to do, love,
And very sweet to plan
How I, the helpless woman,
Can help the helpful man.

'But let me see you smiling
With the smile I know so well;
Forget the world of shadows,
And the empty broken shell.

'It is the worn-out garment
In which you tore a rent;
You tossed it down, and carelessly
Upon your way you went.

'It is not you, my sweetheart,
For you are here with me.
That frame was but the promise of
The thing that was to be--

'A tuning of the choir
Ere the harmonies begin;
And yet it is the image
Of the subtle thing within.

'There's not a trick of body,
There's not a trait of mind,
But you bring it over with you,
Ethereal, refined,

'But still the same; for surely
If we alter as we die,
You would be you no longer,
And I would not be I.

'I might be an angel,
But not the girl you knew;
You might be immaculate,
But that would not be you.

'And now I see you smiling,
So, darling, take my hand;
And I will lead you outward
To a sweet and pleasant land,

'Where thought is clear and nimble,
Where life is pure and fresh,
Where the soul comes back rejoicing
From the mud-bath of the flesh

'But still that soul is human,
With human ways, and so
I love my love in spirit,
As I loved him long ago.'

So with hands together
And fingers twining tight,
The two dead lovers drifted
In the golden morning light.

But a grey-haired man was lying
Beneath them on a bed,
With a silver-mounted pistol
Still clotted to his head.

It’s curious this looking business, looking at something you almost recognize as being what it says on the small white card next to the exhibit. Sand Marks. And these marks hang on linen-lengths two metres long by 40 cm wide. You don’t look at sand face-forward standing up with light pouring through the surface on which the marks are made. That feels unusual. The five linen-lengths are keeping each other company. A set of sand marks, marks in the sand. No. Marks from and of the sand. And why, She thought? What is this supposed to be about? Is this what art is? Grabbing images from under the feet. Their  making engineered, conditions in place to shape and colour, fold and crease, to hold and position rightly. Hmm, She reflected, and thought of her daughter as a child, sitting on the sand of some annual Scottish beach. She would watch her soon to be two-year-old moving beach sand and stones around with her hands, seeing tiny dunes and valleys and routes appear, and making marks. Yes, that would be it. All that watching, that as she grew up became observing and collecting and storing away as images caught in a moment and placed in the mind’s diary, then often lingered over later (as only children can) defining her personal curation of things natural.

Here she is now, her mother thought, all these years on collecting and revealing such sand marks onto ordered frozen surfaces. Would these collectively be an installation she wondered? How She quietly distrusted that word. It was part of a vocabulary She felt She might do without. When She looked at these ecru linen cloths printed and manipulated variously She saw her daughter’s beautiful (always beautiful) hands entering sand, making marks in the fabric of the beach – as a child – now as an adult. There seemed no difference. Just this summer She had watched her daughter mesmerized at the sea’s edge, seeing the sand marks wander, bend and twist below shallow water, just as these hanging cloths seemed to do in her gaze. There was movement in stillness. Her daughter would wait with her camera to capture just the moment when light and ripple came together in a previously imagined moment: a perfect moment she longed to seize. Then later, up on the computer’s flat, backlit screen, it would be shown like a moth caught in a net and pinned behind glass.

In this light-filled gallery, a gallery filled with the reflected light of the sea just a minute’s walk away, this often sombre contemplative work became light of weight and texture, lost its sombre colours, those non-colour shades of grey and canvas, earth and mud, and seemed to float, bathed in light, the colours washed and fresh, alive. It was a revelation that it should be so, and She knew She would carry this view of her daughter’s linen pieces ever after – changing her view of what she’d seen as a steady stream of similar often sombre images representing ‘a body of work’ – another term She disliked and felt was not part of her world of seeing. She thought, ‘I garden, but I don’t do ‘work’ in the garden. What grows under my care and attention somehow has to be and flows through and past me. I don’t own my work in any way. It’s not for sale as something of me. It has no price tag. Work is cleaning the house or dealing with minutes of a meeting.’

There were in this light-filled gallery other pieces to look at. Her artists’ books in a glass cabinet were quietly covered in lichen green board, some closed, others opened to reveal more captured marks, stains and prints. Open to touch and view She warmed to a pair of her daughter’s sketchbooks, delighting in turning their pages carefully, so carefully as not to shake up the often delicate flowing marks on the paper. She imagined – as She herself had drawn once - her daughter’s intense concentration drawing these wider scenes – across the sea to the horizon where a turmoil of weather took place in the changing incessant cloudscapes.

There was other ‘work’ too, other artists’ efforts taking inspiration from landscape. Strange too, to call these pieces ‘work’. Such a term seemed to give their collective creative industry authority and stature She wasn’t always sure they necessarily had. Much of it seemed more play than work. It was so often playful.

Her daughter, meanwhile, was deep in conversation with the gallery’s exhibition officer. Whereas She dipped in and out of this conversation, her thoughts revolved, grass hopping. She remembered hearing her husband speak of his concern about their daughter’s management of this still-fledgling career. A right concern about how family and career would be handled as recognition and opportunity developed. She shared this concern, but seeing her daughter glow at being in the very swim of this art making and showing did not for a moment want that glow to disappear. She knew she would manage, she had always managed and been resourceful, careful, and, She had to admit this, brave. Her condition of being a single-parent She, as her mother, had almost grown accustomed to; She felt She knew a thing or two about finding happiness and the warmth of companionship.

Those linen-length pieces hanging there seemed to intersect such thoughts. She found herself looking at her daughter’s partner who was carefully sketching the linen quintet. He had said to her once that he sketched (badly) to enable him to focus intently on an object, to learn from it. If you sketched something you gave it time, and came to know it as line-by-line, shade-by-shade, the image formed and your relationship to it. He was always careful in talking to her, and even when he began to tread across ground that She hadn’t travelled, he was so sensitive to her feelings. He liked to explain, to tell out his enthusiasm for books he’d read, for music he loved, for her daughter he so adored. She could see that plainly, his adoration, his wonder at her. He had wrapped this young woman round and round with his adoration, and this clearly gave him such joy.

It was getting on. Lunch beckoned. There was a signalling that this hour or so of viewing would gradually fall away. The exhibition officer said her goodbyes. Food was mentioned. She would give one last glance at the Sand Marks perhaps. The linen-lengths still hung there luminous in the vivid, brilliant, but cold light of this early April day. After lunch they would walk to the sea under the powder blue skies and feel that this too was part of such a glad day, a day She would take to her memory as full of the restful pleasure her daughter so often gave her. This dear girl – how often had She heard her partner use that word ‘dear’, knowing he addressed his letters to her with ‘dearest’. It was wonderful that it could be so, that her daughter was so loved. She wanted, suddenly, to throw her arms around them both, and let them know, without any words, that she loved them too.