you've been treading some unsafe ground
Feb. 6th, 2017 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anonymousblackwe burst with fire, we burn at the seams. we fill the night sky with obfuscating matters. we see, we cannot see. we breathe, we cannot breathe. the smoke is heavy and fades the night's resolution to a smoldering palette of ash.
how long can i hold off on writing about ashes?
there's a story in it, of course there is, but maybe the story has burned through. there's a story in it, of course, but is it my story to tell? in a desperate hour, perhaps. in an hour made strange by the passage of time. in an hour anointed with holy oils and incense smoke, consecrated in a kiss on the crown center, chanted over, sang over, wept over, wailed over.
the clamor of death among the living, the noises it makes, the attentions it gathers. sirens and sirens. sirens and songs. here is another story about the dying. here is another story summoned from the land of the dead. we are witnessed, we are always witnessed. it is the indefinite purgatory of those with unresolved business to witness the dying and the dead, at least for a time. it is the nature of inconclusive terminations. why was this life stopped? why was that heart broken?
if i am a witness, if i am a witness from my own inconclusive termination, if i am here witnessing this stranger's end i can grieve them as one of my own: though i won't know their whole story, i will only know this small part of this one aspect of their conclusion, which is for the best because i will not need to negotiate my grieving around a larger context. it is only: this passage. this transition. this coming into going out of form.
who were you, lost stranger? what did you look like before this moment of your demise, scrubbed of context, of associations, of experience and desire? what did you enjoy reading? what did you like to eat? what had you accomplished in those years since birth, what did you lose out on? what broke your heart, broke your resolve, broke you and broke you again?
these witnesses, these alignments revealed only in death. these holy mysteries anointed over and consecrated through by what cannot be known. the world of the dead is not the world of the living. the world of the dead is not the world of the living. there are no guest rooms for one in the world of the other: only day trips, only nightly rumination; only technical tours with extremely limited access. intermediaries of unattended death. death conveyed in fragments. no one being has the whole story, especially not the one who dies.
this side of infinity's twist, i light a candle and enjoy its burn. i light a candle and shortly become anxious about the candle's impending death. so i witness the flame closely, doing what i can to prolong the burn. i trim the wick. i drop in wax from other candles. i snuff the candle out long before i am ready: and then i do it all over again. i lose my meditation to the tending of candle flames: this is because, long ago, far away, i lost myself on the in between. i let myself slip into a weird atmosphere, seduced bodily by the strangeness of it. i let my candles burn into five inch flames, burn long leaking wounds into each pillar's side; i found perverse satisfaction in the sick wax splatter onto the jeweler's traveling sales case that constituted my first unintentional altar. i laid on the floor. i brought my knees to my chin. i let the candles bleed or i left them anemic, weak, barely a moment left in each flicker, a horrible loop of the end that never quite comes:
and i became entranced. i became ecstatic with the carelessness of it. at last for once certain in my greedy burn. a goddess of willfully unknown variables: and then, the next morning, it became apparent what had happened to someone i cared about that same night while i was off by myself burning candles: it nearly killed me. i wouldn't light candles for a month after. a month became a year, a year became a decade and i still will not give myself over to candle flame, i still only rarely use pillars. at the sound of bleeding wax i go into a panic, i perform surgery, i salvage the wick, i tend, i tend: all this is anymore is tending.
last january, i called the fire. last january, i screamed the fire into form. "burn it," i screamed into a suddenly silent room. did i know what i was doing? do i ever know what i am doing?
oh, holy disconnect. heart performing that ritual the head is not ready to understand. my hardest lesson: sometimes i act in truest harmony with spirit before i even understand what i am doing.
we are
as we've been
as we always will be
(except not.)
how long can i hold off on writing about ashes?
there's a story in it, of course there is, but maybe the story has burned through. there's a story in it, of course, but is it my story to tell? in a desperate hour, perhaps. in an hour made strange by the passage of time. in an hour anointed with holy oils and incense smoke, consecrated in a kiss on the crown center, chanted over, sang over, wept over, wailed over.
the clamor of death among the living, the noises it makes, the attentions it gathers. sirens and sirens. sirens and songs. here is another story about the dying. here is another story summoned from the land of the dead. we are witnessed, we are always witnessed. it is the indefinite purgatory of those with unresolved business to witness the dying and the dead, at least for a time. it is the nature of inconclusive terminations. why was this life stopped? why was that heart broken?
if i am a witness, if i am a witness from my own inconclusive termination, if i am here witnessing this stranger's end i can grieve them as one of my own: though i won't know their whole story, i will only know this small part of this one aspect of their conclusion, which is for the best because i will not need to negotiate my grieving around a larger context. it is only: this passage. this transition. this coming into going out of form.
who were you, lost stranger? what did you look like before this moment of your demise, scrubbed of context, of associations, of experience and desire? what did you enjoy reading? what did you like to eat? what had you accomplished in those years since birth, what did you lose out on? what broke your heart, broke your resolve, broke you and broke you again?
these witnesses, these alignments revealed only in death. these holy mysteries anointed over and consecrated through by what cannot be known. the world of the dead is not the world of the living. the world of the dead is not the world of the living. there are no guest rooms for one in the world of the other: only day trips, only nightly rumination; only technical tours with extremely limited access. intermediaries of unattended death. death conveyed in fragments. no one being has the whole story, especially not the one who dies.
this side of infinity's twist, i light a candle and enjoy its burn. i light a candle and shortly become anxious about the candle's impending death. so i witness the flame closely, doing what i can to prolong the burn. i trim the wick. i drop in wax from other candles. i snuff the candle out long before i am ready: and then i do it all over again. i lose my meditation to the tending of candle flames: this is because, long ago, far away, i lost myself on the in between. i let myself slip into a weird atmosphere, seduced bodily by the strangeness of it. i let my candles burn into five inch flames, burn long leaking wounds into each pillar's side; i found perverse satisfaction in the sick wax splatter onto the jeweler's traveling sales case that constituted my first unintentional altar. i laid on the floor. i brought my knees to my chin. i let the candles bleed or i left them anemic, weak, barely a moment left in each flicker, a horrible loop of the end that never quite comes:
and i became entranced. i became ecstatic with the carelessness of it. at last for once certain in my greedy burn. a goddess of willfully unknown variables: and then, the next morning, it became apparent what had happened to someone i cared about that same night while i was off by myself burning candles: it nearly killed me. i wouldn't light candles for a month after. a month became a year, a year became a decade and i still will not give myself over to candle flame, i still only rarely use pillars. at the sound of bleeding wax i go into a panic, i perform surgery, i salvage the wick, i tend, i tend: all this is anymore is tending.
last january, i called the fire. last january, i screamed the fire into form. "burn it," i screamed into a suddenly silent room. did i know what i was doing? do i ever know what i am doing?
oh, holy disconnect. heart performing that ritual the head is not ready to understand. my hardest lesson: sometimes i act in truest harmony with spirit before i even understand what i am doing.
we are
as we've been
as we always will be
(except not.)
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no subject
Date: 2017-02-23 02:56 am (UTC)It feels like this is the point where it switches from being in the voice of your story in progress as Eurydice to being about you? Or not?
In any case, I love love love this line.