You are so beautiful with the bang. I would not put scissors to it. The spirit form has its waning moments. Occasionally, the corpus yearns so precipitously toward Coraline—that I feel the troops arranged in ranked battalions marching across my chest and it would seem a gasp were possible, would seem a man could make a sound even a woman speaking quietly to a doctor could hear, but strangely there exists no impulse toward sound, not in these lungs, not in this neck, still, still the lips are still, the teeth not even chattering, the laughter of the spirit form not heard as words pass back and forth in a stream of alternately compressed and decompressed columns of air, the laughter of the spirit form failing to compress or decompress even two molecules of that air. The spirit form alights on your nose and will stay there as you stride purposefully out into the blazing day. I shall indeed pursue you into your life, Coraline. I have nothing else to do with my time. Twenty years!
There is a flash between the corpus and the spirit form. It is always there, and yet one does not see it until there is a “crack,” a crack opened in the surface that was never there until the crack was opened. I flowed through the crack, and although my mouth was open with the ecstasy of gliding under, no sound was uttered. All the senses deepened into whiteness. The flash is spread over the skin. The gas erupts into the air and spreads over the flash. It all happens in the instant. A flash spreads across a gas that spreads across a flash. You will never understand it until you have alighted upon the prim nose beneath a forehead that will someday be covered in a bang that is so alluring a man might scream through his own skin as a spirit form alighting on a nose. You will never understand it. I keep speaking it, however, for the desperation to make you understand exudes as a thick liquid through my pores, which the nurse wipes away, dear her, but the spirit form may tell and tell into your ears even as you dream, and you will gain no knowledge. Not until you have alighted in a place that once delighted you, a spot upon her face that quickened the rhythm of a heart once impossible to ignore. So distant is the corpus, yet the moment of that heartbeat rebounds in cycles and epicycles throughout the orrery of the spirit form. My eyes captured the scintilla of a highlight no camera could have captured, and stored it as a keepsake of what is possible in the realm of beauty and perception. Imagine that a woman proceeds as a corpus through the world with all manner of substances falling down upon her, the rain of dust and vapor, the wind of chemistry that blows upon all matter, the gasp of breath in the form of light that emanates from a trillion stars and converges across all the webs and patterns of the universe into a speculum become white and tiny on the face of her body, but searing in the intensity of its reflection, and this is the moment you see the face. Oh, the shine is so brilliant from a trillion suns. You cannot imagine. Do not pretend. Merely accept. I am the one who tells this memory. You may or may not understand, but you will listen.
I myself am young. A cascade of chemicals. Liquids and gases gluing solid clumps together. I am a corpus. The spirit form yet nestled snugly deep within, no flutter of its spaciousness, nor quiver of its selfishness, in evidence as yet. A leg slices through the surrounding gas. A foot webbed through with delicate bone branches clomps upon the dirt. Arising from the earth are scents that coyly cling to their originators while even flying with a laugh into the breeze. Whispers of amazement from the leaves. A corpus proudly claiming ownership of all matter located within the arc of its massive swing. A body wheels through the spaciousness that contains its spaciousness. The spaciousness within vibrates to its likeness, even though no movement is in evidence. And the spaciousness within the woman vibrates back in resonance with me, the spirit form. I am Coraline! But truly, sweet one, I do not know your name yet! I have only just seen you now! The speculum, the whiteness! I have, yes, stored the image. Please, your name, what is your name? I am Coraline! But you are not. I have called you that. I have made it up. You make your visits, you sit so somberly beside me, you place your fingertips upon me, and yet your name, your name is a word unspoken for so many years, years I have spent among words grown rusty in the weeds of consciousness. Speak your name to me, sweet memory! I have called upon you for this very reason. I have need of you. The speculum is gorgeous, but set it aside for the moment, let it shine its narrow beam straight through the Solar System (upon the very eye of the Muse—interrupt her from her slumber! Disrupt her from her ecstasy! Her wakefulness the blessing I beseech from you who look upon me even still with a wary gaze and a jaded sense of words that explode in lieu of meaning). Give me the name I ask for. Not Coraline, such a wholly inadequate substitution for a name that is so real it makes you turn your head toward the one who spoke it. Could I make you turn your head, look away from the doctor, look toward me, not the corpus, but me, the spirit form? Shall I alight upon your nose, will you feel my tendrils grasping you? Shall I call your name from there, will you cross your eyes? Even just a momentary reflexive strabismus, seemingly aligned to no cause, I will accept as evidence of your love. Your name, speak it aloud! The doctor, does he remember you? Tell him. Remind him, I am—
It is useless. There is a flash between us. There is a film upon the flash, a squalid greasy sludge that smears more grimily the more you try to clear it.
Yet I can sweep through history on a thought, ride the image through time in all directions, yet I can find the high and low of sky and ground and even reverse the polarity of the planet for the sake of new birds that came in for a while from Halley’s Comet to roost until the parabola was turned, even so am I powerless to gain the name of Coraline. And once again, I will follow her through the door. I will sit on her neck throughout the day, even while my corpus reclines in the solitude beneath the sheets, under the machines, within the pulsation of light and dark that envelops everything that moves from a stance of exposure into a shadowed crouch.
There surely was a moment when the name was gained. The one memory I yearn to locate, and it is missing! Where is that moment? I am the boy who touched your cheek as the mezzanine roared behind our bench. Your glance took me in and discarded me in the space of a second that was stored in the form of an elixir that has been kept corked in a vacuum should any drop threaten to escape confinement. I am the boy who licked my lips at the wrong moment, just as you are emerging into the night from the doorway, the light behind you surging wildly against your back, which stands strong against the onslaught, causing the marauders to disperse into a million rays that splay outward chaotically beyond the edges of your form, your corpus donning the halo that has lurked in quiet darkness ever since beneath my kidney—oh, your eye captured the lick, I knew it, and the smirk you sent forth, however subtle, traveled down my spine to hold a sinister and perpetual convocation with the light of your glory.
The spirit form does not equivocate. Coraline held the power. Coraline issued the command. Coraline delivered the reprimand. Coraline shall be condemned.
Did your muscle quiver once beneath the smooth velvet of your legging? Perhaps a boy’s eye caught that movement. Did your eyelash score a spore unnoticed by Coraline? It is possible an inner pen scribed onto the paper of my corpus every detail that was captured in the light outside. I was a corpus then, a collector of memories, and yet your name did not survive. I did not neglect you, sweet one. I observed, indeed, observed each fact as it was presented and stowed that fact away inside one of many drawers available to me. I keep your tidings safe, Coraline. I maintain you even as you lose yourself to the life in which I am not also preserved. Or rather, my corpus is preserved in conditions unbefitting the spirit form, and the spirit form is unpreservable. So it is no leap to state the obvious, that I—what I am—have been lost to you, even when you visit. Your discussion with this doctor is interminable. Leave! I wish to follow you through the door. I wish to observe some more. I wish to see what you become when you are not a visitor. What smile lights your face when sunbeams careen into your surfaces? What sound emits from your chest when the unexpected crow caws?
A Decision
It was her de
cision to make. Harold had no family left. His mother had entrusted Cory with the power. There was a legal document that made it so. That was years ago. The doctor was gentle but blunt. Organs were on the verge of collapse. Homeostasis was breaking down. Time was of the essence. A persistent vegetative state was exactly that—it would persist. Twenty years already in a coma. The time spent. The pain of visiting. Endlessness. Memories. But he was her greatest confidante. Her secrets were safe with him. Her tears went unmentioned. Her dilemmas were received gently, their urgency calmed. And Harold was what he was. She had witnessed the accident. His ridiculous sport. But he was young, entitled to pleasure. The branch was where it was. His head made contact. His brain died. His body lived. So too did hers.
Her decision.
His body now was decaying. No machine could keep him alive forever. All living things disintegrate. Especially those in disuse. Her decision. The doctors could perform certain procedures. Additional machines could be employed. Forty years old. Cory was forty-one. She had enjoyed being older when they were younger. Now there was nothing to enjoy about it.
Trudging into the sunlight. A calmness descends from the sky. Embraces her body. She feels lifted up. But the lifting comes from below. A blade of grass in the pavement’s crack.
Her husband was a patient man. Ralph knew she was handcuffed for life to the man in the bed. She had made that clear from the start. Ralph did not necessarily resent the man in the bed. But Cory knew that a burden would lift from her husband’s shoulders when the man in the bed was gone. She loved her husband. Ralph had a smile for her when she came in the door. She woke in the morning sometimes to find him washing dishes. His right shoulder had a slope to it she had studied for many years now. She could identify Ralph from a mile’s distance by the nuance of his gait, the difference between him and every other man. A moustache rode his lip in forever-seeming danger of being thrown. It was good for a giggle of affection in the right light, at the right time. Occasionally, it was good for a grimace of contempt. A well-rounded adornment. Perfect for every event.
A bird called raucously from a painted line in the parking lot. She studied its black sleekness. The warmth of a smile filled her cheeks.
Cory padded toward her car. A green Pontiac. A replacement was due, but she was in no great hurry. She carried with her an affection for the car that dated perhaps back to a moment in which Ralph friskily pressed her against it. A hardness on her thigh. An elegant desire in his eyes. Liam already in the back, peaceful with his Gameboy, noticing nothing. A shared peace, a happiness, a transmission of something beyond longing. An innocuous moment on a non-eventful day that had become lodged in her image of herself. And in her image of the car.
She drove with music. The wind rushed through her hair. She loved the weight of her bangs. She loved their bulky lift to the insurgent air. A salute to joy. From above, the blue sky sent its legions of light rays in through the windshield. From the road, the peacefulness of a scene not yet entered into, gradually advancing upon her. Her arm calmly braced the window, beyond it a maelstrom.
Strange, the errands one runs. To call them “errands.” The sequence worked out ahead of time. First, the post office. Then, the body in the bed. Then, the supermarket. Finally, home. A quilt of productivity. In which stitch might one shed a tear or two? Could she sew that patch into her quilt? She would prefer the loneliness of crying in the car to the comfort of her husband’s shoulder. She knew the slope could handle the moisture, but could the sensation of betraying Ralph with tears for another man be avoided? At least, in the car, tears might flow genuinely in support of their object. Each tear could parade her cheek safe in the knowledge that its grimy track was created for the sole purpose of mourning. Not to be observed by a consciousness in conflict with itself. To be a simple tear. The sound of keening could echo off the windshield and the plastic curve of dashboard with a special force and a secret signal before escaping out the open window to her left.
The thought of crying occupied her mind all the way to the store. As soon as she parked, the tears came howling through. Her body seized up gratefully in the seat, enraptured by the procession of a holy feeling through her flesh. Her entire life was contained in the pressure of her forehead on the steering wheel. Her idea of herself writhed in the sweaty patch beneath her thighs, which began to itch. Her knowledge of Harold’s wasted life tripped gaily up and down the painful stretch of her back.
At home, she put away the groceries. Grateful that Ralph was at work. Liam at school. Her Tuesday off. At least once a month, she made time for Harold. Today, she regretted it. Her decision. How could anyone expect her to choose? There had always been an inkling that such a choice might someday unveil itself. The hidden room in which the choice had spent the time. Dark beads on a string across the doorway. The choice between life and death. Waiting in a room, gently abiding. Safe to look away. No drama there. Until the beads fall scattering. A rampant shape emerges from the dark.
Running faucet. Beautiful cascade of droplets in tandem. A million drops. A waterfall in miniature. The metallic shine of the basin. Scattered bubbles rising resolutely from a patch of scum.
Now and then, visiting Harold, being certain she was unobserved, Cory would reach beneath the blanket. The vessel filled. Even a persistent vegetable deserved relief. A body was a body. Whether inhabited by the glory of a mind and a heart or not. Resonance with past hardnesses would dominate her attention while she rubbed. The memory of a hardness in his Chevy. The full length of his body atop hers, his hardness within her. The memory of a hardness near an ice machine in an alcove off the hallway of a hotel on a school trip to a science fair. Two teenagers clothed in pajamas, the girl’s hand inside the boy’s pants. Eyes peeled for passers-by. The shock of it wrapped in her palm and fingers. The sweetness of it. Joyful tears as she brings off the man in the bed.
The lost life. The one she did not live. The one that was given to a bed in a medical facility. A boy she had loved. A young girl’s love never given the chance to wane of its own accord. A young girl with the name of Cory believing so strongly in the simple love she must give to the boy to whom she has declared it. That love never given the opportunity to ramify and understand itself.
Instead, frozen in state. Although not felt with the intensity of youth, Cory’s sense of Harold did not differ in form from what it had been at the age of twenty. She understood this. The absurdity. But she could not alter it. She loved Ralph, but differently, and it was not a question of the scale. She loved Ralph completely. There was no competition between the men within her. They occupied separate categories. Ralph belonged to the category of life proceeding from event to event. Sharing and appreciation. Measurement. The building of things. The destruction of things. Necessity. Prose. The process of objects and people intermingling. The peaceable leaving of the self in favor of the mundane details. Harold belonged to the category of life remaining in state. Observing every detail from within a carapace, a hard-backed hideaway preserving a carefully constructed nostalgia. Repetition. Describing to oneself the details. Examining the details. Laughing and crying in the same instant of time. The heart swelling and collapsing simultaneously at the sudden memory of a detail. Hunkering down with a bowl of hot chocolate and marshmallows. Poetry in absence of the poem. Being only and manically Cory. Identifying Cory in every detail. Examining Harold for some sign. A sign of what? Need there be a referent?
Bougainvillea draped over the sill. Purple raiment of the window. Light and regimented shadows cast by blinds. The slow drift of dust through the air. Brilliant white linoleum inlaid with soft blue filigree. The self-sufficient hum of the refrigerator. The rhythmic fountain in the dishwasher foaming across the mind’s eye’s porcelain treasures. A secret hovering in the atmospherics. A man in a bed, somewhere nearby, dying, awaiting her decision, not knowing for what he waits.
Cory reclined across the cushions. The meat of her leg flattened into an unsavory shape upon the sofa’s armrest. No one there to see it.
Evidence is required in a trial. The people’s attorneys never rest. A mother never rests. A wife never rests. A young woman waiting for her lover to arrive finds herself in a tizzy. Rest is the last thing on her mind! She cradles a phone from which the voice of her best friend, Tina, emanates in a recognizable style. The comfort of the recognition. The loveliness of the anticipation. The boy is famous for his biking skills. Tina reminds Cory of the muscular implications. Anatomy for the amateur scholar. Dirt bikes and cross bars. Dirty, sweaty boys. Chatter and giggle. The self-knowingness of the teenage style. I am such a girl. I am a girly girl! You will know me by my giggling. Even though I bear the true somatic curve of a woman’s sexuality, I delight in the childishness of my presentation. I cannot leave this image of myself behind, not just yet. Do not misinterpret my lust for you. I bring it forth for the sake of enjoyment. Entertainment. My body’s craving is not what it seems to be. I am a girl. Though I would bring you into me, Harold, I will not cast off my ironies just yet. I will remain virginal, if not properly a virgin. But please arrive soon. And there is the smile. The goofy eyes. The dimple. So cute. Tina agrees. A cute boyfriend. Excited. Shyness to start with, the conversation racing through a slalom course by evening’s end. The kiss. The press of bodies. The heat of pressure. The movement of a finger along the bone of a cheek. A palm drawn roughly down the fabric of her shirt. A tangling leap from within. A sharpness in the lungs as her breathing quickens. Her voice departing the locus of her control. Her voice the voice of her sensations now. Her voice the voice in Harold’s ear. Inciting him. His mouth a hot miasma at her neck. The power of incitement. The regal height from which she commands him. The rancid scent of sweat and chewing tobacco rising to her nostrils. The power of his lust. The commanding depths of his lust for her. Forgetfulness of what divides the body from the world. A vaporous envelope spreads, enclosing them, cloaking them. They trade their own heat back and forth, an endless and increasing volley. Even as Cory moans upon the sofa, seemingly asleep. In one world it is night, and the heat rises. In the sofa’s world, the evening draws near, but daylight still spills in over the tops of the bougainvillea. The light’s length upon the carpet is impressive, its yellow color more supreme than the flowers’ purple. The dream of youth and joy a sensation receding into nostalgia as Cory gazes into the mystic yellow blaze beyond the windowpanes.
Dadaoism (An Anthology) Page 12
