objects aligned with studied negligence on shallow glass shelves.
Shafts of light supporting the ends of long afternoon hallways.
Motes hung above the carpets.
They were shrewd and manipulative at that time. It was the result of a cunning ancestor’s unscrupulous and patient accumulation of a jealous futurity.
Stocks and bonds.
It was a chained freedom but it was freedom.
I had always assumed wealth. What a shock.
The flattering placement of mirrors on landings at the ends of brief corridors above the mantel of the rarely used fireplace.
Her ears were indeed translucent. Paper nautilus of light.
The pinking shears on the formica table top. Zigzags of cloth. A hum and throttle of sewing machine. Domiciliary habits and cares the round paper lid of the glass milk bottle. Thumb and finger. A closing refrigerator door the breath of cold. That made one feel briefly warmer.
Snow outside.
Such happiness.
And when the rains came we dawdled in doorways and played endless games on the scattered rugs gin and monopoly and magic tricks and marbles and jacks for the girls and quarrelled because reconciliations were so nice and ran away though there was nowhere to run our universe was infinite and bound.
Tranquility over the waters of the Cher. Chenonceau my castle of murmurs. What a theater it is you said. What I asked. And embarrassed and happy she said our life. Oh yes that yes our life I said should we be grateful she said or ashamed.
The long climb out of the valley of nettles and ice streams toward the village on the summer plateau.
Pockets of schist and huge knuckles of moraine like the remains of.
The oblique angle of anticipation.
Although they were uncertain how their adventures would turn out and disaster was always a prospect.
The pleasure of not quite knowing what might happen next.
Politics.
The possibility of imminent collapse.
A shadow propped against a corner of the empty living room.
Why after a certain age one ceases to feel.
Unknown to them they had blossomed.
The beach was littered with fallen roses.
And the stones rose between the cedars in a gray pile of incoherent elevations and scrambled floorplans. You made your way through as though it were desire’s maze. Every corner offered an enthralling spectacle in prospect an illusory dead end. For pessimism was never entirely justified. Nor optimism though there was always hope on that island despite every setback and there were many. The roads you drove down were defined by the ditches you fell into. The tangle of mist resolved for a moment into a map a circuit board of currents carefully engineered to offer you a way out or at least the thought. Here was a door there a window we were given much scope. On the porch the rockers in the cellar a winter’s load of coal. A curtain in the draft. A statistical average of contentment between extremes of nightmare and ecstasy. Unsheathed nerves and the tenderness beneath the callous.
It was advised to render not too much even to the heart if you would know contentment.
A view of mountains seen before only in photographs and movies.
It was a vastness one could not even dream. Nor remember except as a stifled exclamation.
Cold and unbroken.
White heights.
The fishermen returned home at nightfall bearing presents from the sea. A shoal of blues had caught in an undercurrent past the windward islands and drove down the coast past the sparkling lines. The men with their waiting hooks. In patience the bait was a window the capture a charm. And possession a means of honorable seduction.
They flailed in the buckets but could not escape. Not then. The panting of the gray gills the flanks the spasms of hope the cold eyes in retreat.
Arc of terror.
To leap from your hands into the sea. To escape anyhow anywhere and keep escaping. As though the world were a bucket the sea a crowd of hands clasping them as they flee the medium of their escape their prison. In those eyes unmistakable panic.
We were the fishermen and the sea and the baited hook and the caught fish and the longing to escape and the hunger and the nourishment that fed us. A ubiquity of incomprehensible yet the charge was to discover. Slated in commands of chalk.
So she fed herself on her fear.
He sliced the fruit and raised each piece to her lips.
What he found in the book that he had removed without help from the high shelf in the school library was a maze and tangle of highly wrought phrases that described a cast of experiences by turns agonizing and ecstatic without clear cause enigmatic to the ignorant reader.
He was made to feel like a child listening to the incomprehensible conversation of adults the shorthand of an uncanny omniscience.
These were the beneficiaries of power.
His only certainty was that he would be put in the wrong and made to pay for it.
The penalties came randomly and severely.
You had to make up your mind though mind was what you did not yet have.
He stood on the threshold unable either to enter the room or turn on his heel and leave.
The darkness at each moment promised to break and did not.
Phase transition into being.
The war against reality.
It was like a dream and you wanted to awake and were not allowed to.
Words wedded in luminous arcs chains of laughter lightning and music promised a gift even as they dimmed to haunting possibility brightened in the air between two eager faces rose from the pages of an afternoon garden then out of nowhere broke like a pod eaten by parasites clashed in the twilight scattered like fireworks fell into pockets of ash and brightness memories of regard grails of understanding burned the ear with anger and fear shimmering in splinters of incomprehension.
All was in suspense it was thrilling at first and for long after not knowing or caring to know not seeing ahead more than the next curve in the road the spine of the next hill against a cloud forming on the horizon a charge of lights down a night road a crowd of shadows massing around your head your hand held out for an alm of the mystery.
But then one wanted it to resolve into something firm and clear a plinth of stone a crystal even a door of lead to batter against in exhausted frustration for it was mortally wearying to chase it over those icy meadows there was nowhere to rest there was nothing to believe there was nothing
