Sunday, August 23, 2009
So with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolled around, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in, brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom or drawing room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped, wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china, tarnished and cracked.
What people had shed and left – a pair of shoes, a sports cap, some faded jeans and coats in wardrobes – those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with buttons and zippers; how once the mirror had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, a door opened, in came other people, rushing and tumbling; and went out again.
So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted, solitary like a pool at evening. Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and among the sheeted chairs and jugs, iterating and reiterating their questions – will you fade? Will I fade? – pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should be answered.
But beauty is not everything. Beauty had its penalty – it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life – froze it. One forgot the little agitations; some light or shadow that made the face unrecognizable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after.
What was that? Oh, just a spark...just a spark...
fire and ice clashed at [10:19 AM]