December 27, 2000
Anonymous

And so it goes. Perhaps somewhere, there is a place that it goes. Beyond the immediacy of the emotional impact there is most certainly a place that is scratched, a surface laid bare; a hollow ringing sound left over as if what was once holding things up somehow disappeared, and yet the thing continues to support itself maybe from sheer persistence or obstinacy. This is the moment.

Rarely can this be seen from here. The peaks are usually embracing the mist, and when visible, altitude and attitude render them out of context, and most certainly out of scale. The question of how big, or how brown, or how hot are not only questions of context, but of pretext; to know big, brown and hot, is to bring an attitude in to play. To see brown for the first time is the only way to really see it. And this can only happen once in a lifetime.

To see it from here is a gift; it certainly is. To have bothered to look for it in the first place is a good sign. Context. Sight. Sound. The actual sound. It makes a sound [or a lack of sound] that is often lost in the context of a big brown hot day; not nails on a chalkboard, or the sound of windshield wiper blades skipping accross a sun-parched window, or even the dead calm and slack jaw of pure and total remorse. Stop. It is near the surface now.

And so it goes. Not knowing where it went is just as disconcerting as not knowing where it came from in the first place. A gift given. Then a gift stolen. Is the loss any loss at all, or just selfishness? And the pain.

The pain it brings cannot be brought on by any blunt object, not by any physician's scalpel, not by any force of gravity. It is both wrenching and beautiful. The wild nights and easy mornings, long slow thoughts and languid looks in circles while the blood pumps nervously; every heart beat longer than the last. And then it stops.

Instantly the suction of time gone by eviscerates those deep penetrating eyes. Falling. The eventual sudden stop never arrives, while limbs and sticks the color brown bend and bow and reach for the bottom that never comes. The waiting and wanting and wishing and cursing. With an insatiable appetite and hunger that coincides with an emotional anorexia which causes a backward eruption and a metronome of endless, repetitious choking. Time.

Again and again the sensations build behind alternating layers of frost-caked snow and fiery pyrotechnics. The hot and cold and flashing lights with eyes closed; the wet and dry and hungry looks of blindness. The lazy sinuous cyclical arcs of bright clouds on the edge of night. It's a long way from here but it's brown; recognizable as brown at least - at least from here. Closer inspection. Closer to the inception.

Search. Begin to search; the obvious places first; then, with an archeologists precision - the scene gridded out in twelve inch intervals. No stone left unturned, the ground gashed and gouged, and scraped and stabbed. The smell of dirt and the taste of sweet old moments. The smile of an upturned trowel followed by a bucket tearing through the glass surface of a once still lake. The concentric rings reach out for obstacles unknown, and then try to retrace their steps, but tire too easily.

The rise and fall of lungs and the collapse and the fabrication of stories. The oath of insanity uncomforted by a preoccupation with wringing out the myths and dreams of days from now.

Love gained and then Love lost.

And so it goes.