Parallax Shift
Weightless you descend. Dribbling thoughts propel you towards the edges of reason, when the earth was motionless at the very centre of the universe and even less was known than is now forgotten. You’re a speck whose nature betrays itself. Ordinary pulsing excrement that arrives with an uber serious crash bang exponential yet soon comes to its shoddy shameful fizzling with a mere inaudible lazy whimper. We had great expectations for your stellar movement. A fine performance, old as sky, solid as ground, fine as the silver dust we spread across the night in the shape of your name. When new dawn breaks over your horizons and the bright white light floods your dry, empty, ugly and unmoved lifeless rot inching towards nothing, the distance between us turns crystal. I’ll take my weightless flight now, if you don’t mind.
5 December 2007 at 3:03 pm
Me too.
I have been standing here waiting for the zero gravity ‘vomit comet’ to turn up for three days now, and the only thing that keeps arriving is a number 73 to Stoke Newington.
5 December 2007 at 3:46 pm
God, I see what you mean: universal reason, stellar movements, silver dust across the sky, crystalline distances… And then Mr Unreliable Witness injects a little gravity into the situation too. There must be something in the water.
5 December 2007 at 8:08 pm
No, don’t give up. Fail better, next time.
6 December 2007 at 7:59 am
I like astronomy and its imagery, in case you didn’t get that from my therapeutic trips to the planetarium. This was absolutely one of the most amazingly beautiful posts I’ve seen in ages. The universe’s conceit for anticlimax itself. Truly, cosmic pathos. Brilliant work, Ani. I don’t know whether to stargaze or cry.
6 December 2007 at 10:52 am
AUW: Make sure you stick your hand all the way out where it can see you when it arrives. I’d hate for you to miss it and have to start over.
Hg: Hello and welcome. He does have a way of bringing you back down to earth, doesn’t he?
Z: Mr Beckett, is that you? I just love your work…
Marcelle: Gosh, thanks. I used to dream of being an astronomer. The reality is that I was utter crap at maths. But please, don’t cry because if you do, I will too and they really won’t take me seriously then (not that they do now, mind you).
6 December 2007 at 8:31 pm
Oh Ani we do take you seriously. I do at least.
Parallax Shift, well, you’ve gone back to your William Burroughs truth-lies-in-the-toilet-bowl style, haven’t you? Not really my scene - I haven’t got the stomache for it personally. It expresses and communicates keenly, but it makes me want to lie down in a nice meadow somewhere.
7 December 2007 at 3:28 am
Lovely. I think I’m somewhere in that meadow tipping cows. All their comments might be my own, but I think I can say I liked it all by myself.
7 December 2007 at 10:39 am
Drodbar: Yes, I confess, Burroughs is one of my favourite writers. Mind you, I like meadows, too. I’d probably just bring some cigs, booze and a notebook with me.
2ndhandsoul: I’m glad you liked and can say so. :)