I can always enter
here. The screen is a pool, like looking down into fragments
of gold leaf stirred into water. Slowly swirling layers of antique
light. First the Michelangelo layers of living figures and random
architecture. Then the city eases through, absorbing me through
my clothing. I walk again in the warmth of its air, light as
blowing paper.
Soft breezes. Warm ancient stone of the buildings. Even the dust
on the sandy streets carries a faint erotic charge. Constant
reformation. Crumbling light. Dust of light and music seeking
new structures. Restless but infinitely slow, so no-one would
ever notice the intention of the dust as it lies in corners,
gutters, windowsills. Hold it in my hand, soft silvery sand.
Warm, dry, blows away in small spirals.
Hardly notice. Crowds go by. Your swirling faces. Losing me in
faint architecture.
A gradual dissolving and resolving in endless series. Like echoes
in a cathedral or the movement and structure of a tree in the
fullness of Summer. Branching out, reforming and dispersing through
myriad layers of shapes and shadows. Sending musical light across
the dusty floor. Translating me into light again.
Emerge to drink coffee at the other end of the entrance hall,
as if nothing had happened. Do it every day. Reassemble across
the hallway. Keep going across the floor, to the favourite table.
So dry that clothing starts to come apart after a few days. Shoes
begin to resemble crumbly old cardboard and the nose bleeds inside.
The Englishman pads by, not acknowledging my presence. Feebly
determined jut of the jaw. Pads onto the screen for many years.
Scratched picture kept in the cream painted cupboard with the
chalks and duster "Softly I go, pad."
Her face over the city of Lights. Moving through slums. Hollow
houses. Gold leaf flaking from the icon. Rubbish piled and piled
in the catacombs.
Face flickering. Slow motion, as if in a dream. The voice turning
to music. The music that is always in those streets, barely audible,
heartbreaking. If you try to focus, try to listen, it vanishes
in the surrounding murmur. The voice slowly turning to music
in a dream of slums delicate as fragments of gold leaf. Her face
moving like a torch beam, a dim pool of light drifting over buildings.
No-one else can see you, just me.
The streets open out into a piazza with a huge fountain at the
centre. Worn marble figures tangled in the cascade. People talking,
eating in the open-air restaurants. Just strolling.
A beam of light like a slow dream and the voice that becomes
music. Dark against the wooden door. The alleyways of Rome and
Venice will lead you here. Also certain paths by canals in industrial
cities in England, and cobbled courtyards in Paris. You will
get to know them. They will dissolve you here. Once you have
the frequency, you will always return, always the visitor.
Through the empty mirror, a Victorian marketplace under a cold
Lancashire sky. Walking alone in the swirl of your faces.
London vanishes in broken leaves. The weather moves gently through
my suit and ripples of twilight hush spread. Raise a hand as
if to wave. The cathedral's echo turning into morning light.
Birds wings making fast flickering shadows. Shown on the maps
as lights in torn paper. Tiny lights, barely visible against
superimposed neon and headlights, among leaves blown into the
corners, all blurring out of focus now.
Where do we go to like mist through eroded mirrors. Our Lady
of the Endless Stairway. Fog Madonna. Transparent in light, moving
over ancient stone, dry and crumbling, dissolving away into time. |
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The city is always
shifting, realigning itself. It is memory. There are cities which
exist only as fragments in other places, scattered among other
cities. You grow to recognise their properties as being distinct
from their surroundings. You hold the old maps in your head.
You see the new streets through them, through shifting layers
of memory.
As I walk the same streets over the years, I begin to detect
where time operates in a slightly different way, begin to feel
where the pools and currents and tiny edges of time are leaking
through. At some point everything leaks through into everything
else. You can put your hand on the stone wall and feel the movement
beneath.
This is simply the surface of things.
Spirals of dust on the street corner, glittering in the afternoon
sun.
Vistas shifting. Feeling slightly seasick now. Someone composed
entirely of angles comes near, making me vomit. Completely nauseating,
disorientating. Don't know which way is up, sideways, down.
Eventually perspectives clear, fragments resolve into pictures
of angels on sunlit walls. Blue flowers in big clay pots. Cool
shade of grapevines over the cobbled courtyard. Narrow stone
stairway open to the solid blue sky.
He goes up to his room. The steps are worn, hollow, reddish stone.
Old aspidistras with glossy, cracked leaves. The rooms are small.
Red stone walls, no window frame, just an aperture over the alleyways.
Pleasant somehow, this warm place. Bottles of wine, wooden chairs,
some books. Laughter lost in the noise from the big fountains
in the square. No matter how often I walked there, every time
I crossed the square, I felt as if I were embarking on some grand
adventure and wanted everyone to share it - so I could see it
through their eyes sometimes, to share the memories and talk
about it years later. I like to hear the stories carved, then
slowly become polished into perfect antiquities.
Bring them out after a few drinks, get the twists and turns pretty
as a Chippendale, eventually.
The Smoke turning to years. A waltz through all the cities. Filling
the cathedral with fog and flowers and visions all warm and moving
to where I am no longer. The hand that holds the door is fainter.
Feathers on the floor. The invisible kiss and lipstick tasting
of 1970. Aswirl in the wide sky. Train stopping. Burrowing down
again into layers of sunken streets, crowded parks and markets.
Strata blurred and busy.
Through this city you move along wide ruined avenues, passing
through the honeycomb of walls and rooms effortlessly, as in
a dream. Down long corridors hung with chandeliers, through tall
rooms, over stone bridges spanning the waterways.
A drifter. Just passing through. Hold my hand. We will go through
the walls like shadows. Down the endless stairway reflecting
in decaying mirrors like smoke among sunbeams. Traces of us in
fragments of light swirling in the streets.
The walls are flaking under the slow pressure of sunlight. We
have become the hidden frequency of the rooms, humming all the
intimate tidal harmonies of these places.
I am your voice in that moment, years ago. Look down among the
roses in the garden. As my hands lose focus, shimmer for a moment
in the sunlight, become smoke pierced by light through the leaves.
Something escapes like a sigh as we disperse. Translating me
into light again. |
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The garden becomes
overgrown. I am in the leaves and walls. Inside the dry fountain.
Very faint now, like music far away and fading across the twilight.
Can you hear me? You swirl slowly in flakes of gold through the
red light of sunsets, a glinting parade. The soft roaring of
light in my head. I will wait here for you in these gardens,
the lake, the houses. Moving with the dappled shadows, breathing
with the breeze. Where no-one knows. The glimmer of his reflection
moved in a gilt frame near the window. Dusk falling over the
square with its trees and fountain below.
He could see the priest crossing the far corner of the square,
going towards the steps to the marketplace. The sea glinted behind
the rooftops. A small ship on the horizon sailing between other
worlds.
Music and dreams stained into the surface of the ancient stone.
A breeze blew leaves and the scent of the sea.
He felt himself dissolving again. The gentle confusion. That
old Empire way. He looked down at his hands. Vague, indistinct.
One glance at the view again. A silent farewell...
The room going dim... Just speckles of light now... Swimming
to some far place... Tiny glimmers, winking out... His face merged
with the dusk, the horizon... Slowly, slowly Angel assembling.
Moving in some lost music. Hands on the trees. The river not
far away. Bridges across it through the old lost gardens, the
cracked walls. Dome of the cathedral under long streams of foliage
in the quiet of dawn.
Revolving point of view. Around the silent walls. Frequencies
of the walls shifting across each other. Veils of cascade. The
movement of small wings interrupting diffused sunlight. Some
undefined sadness. We cannot remain here. This is a place to
visit when you are not so lost, but you will remember it in glimpses.
The Angel's voice falls through rooms and stairways.
The lakes moving in time to the sea. Faint violet blue of a clear
sky. Shadow on the lips. Moving slowly towards some other shifting
place.
Becoming clearer now, as I drink this cup of coffee. Slowly moving
away from me. Some transfiguration lost from me in newspapers
blowing on the pavement.
A state of grace. The words appear like broken gold. Merging
with the dark sea. Washed away in liquid shadows. Worn by the
rain, blurred under layers of carelessness, of chatter, of neglect.
Things left in other rooms. A fragment at a time, imperceptibly
eroded, lost. A jumble of indecipherable words and instructions
falling through my fingers. Silted remains.
Gazing at the rubbish floating by under the bridge. Churning
and glinting. Who can separate what is precious and good from
this endless stream. He knew that the Angel had gone for a while
because confusion was closing in. Tides moved under the streets.
In the walls. Through his hands.
Swift transition of time and place...
Reassemble through Autumn leaves and slow music. I have become
only reverberation. Minute spiralling reflections travelling
out over white flowers glowing in late sunlight.
Dark storm clouds in the distance, though I know that they will
pass without breaking. Lightning flickers against the grey. The
fields are luminous, thunder green. I am only echoes, musical
tingles going through a city. The City of Sighs.
Walls of Roman red, a thousand years of flaking colour washed
plaster. Dusty paths, vineyards, warm ochre walls. Layers of
memory. Dust Madonna. Our lady of decaying Mirrors. I am only
footsteps, and smoke held in a network of trees. |
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A mist of voices.
Vapour choir. Through the city mixed with worn streets and crumbling
archways, fires glimmering in the twilight. Entering into the
endless cathedral. Wall of Angels. Wall of Lilies. Wall of tiny
candle flames. Stained glass sunset. A tumble of streets at the
edge merging into the garden.
The Guardian Angel. Long ago his hand touched my sleeping eyes.
A child in those lost Lancashire streets. Coal gas and broken
glass glinting in the dirty cobblestones. His hand touched my
eyes when I was asleep. Trains shunting in the sidings across
the allotments. Dreams of huge perspective I did not understand.
Glorious light on the fields.
He was in the market crowds, wearing a shabby brown suit. Trying
to find me through all the cities. My ghost coming home. How
do you get home through all the years? No passport, no photo
possible. No resemblance to anyone living or dead. Tenderly peering
into the windows. Sleeping in cheap lodging houses. A ghost with
leaves in his pocket and no address. The good face half blind.
A nebula of songs and memories slipping in and out of focus.
Someone told me he was there but it didn't register at the time.
The voices came unfocussed from all around. Still and quiet like
the shadows of an ocean in the moving trees.
Waving now and turning away. Flowers closing. Sunsets dissolving
across a thousand years. The moon coming apart in my hands, the
hands thin as air. Vapour now across thousands of miles. Certain
frequencies of mist and perfume and old stone. Faces dissolving
in gathering music. Slowly filtering down the galleries, blurring
words and motion. Take my time. The time it takes. Where to now?
Choir of millions singing gently in sleep. An ocean. Millions
of dreams in tiny sparks. Honeycombs of rooms in the cities.
Just a swimmer. Growing dimmer. In the glimmer. Of a Summer. |
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I have just returned.
Sometimes it seems as if only part of me is here. A feeling of
dispersal.
Glimpses from other angles. Other locations. The city is always
shifting, realigning itself. It is memory.
I constantly feel a distant kind of longing. The longest song,
the song of longing.
Walk the same streets like a fading ghost. Flickering grey suit.
The same avenues, squares, parks, collonades. Like a ghost. Over
the years I find places I can go through, some process of recognition.
Remnants of other, almost forgotten places. Always returning.
I can detect tiny edges of time leaking through. I feel nothing
is completely separate. At some point everything leaks into everything
else. The trick is in finding the places. They are slowly moving.
Drifting. You can only do this accidentally. If you set out to
do it deliberately you will always fail.
It is only when you remember. Only then will you realise that
you caught a glimpse. While you were talking to someone, or thinking
of something else. When your attention was diverted. Just a hint,
a glimmer, a shade.
Much later, you will remember, without really knowing why. Vague
peripheral sensations gather. Some fraction of a long rhythm
is beginning to be recognised. The hidden frequencies and tides
of the city. Geometry of coincidence. You will certainly find
yourself passing that way again. Perhaps not for a long, long
time.
Over the years, you gradually become aware of some slight differences
in the light, the temperature, the way things feel, like a subtle
change in the texture of a film. Faintly aware that time moves
in a slightly different way there.
The city is a place of tides. Tides move down every street. Time
does not move at a uniform rate here.
The relative speeds of various time pockets throughout the city,
all moving and forming subtle currents around each other. Resembling
an ocean, which looks uniform but is really composed of great
currents, contraflows, minor undercurrents, warm and cool streams
of different densities and temperatures, all swirling slowly
or quickly, affecting each other at every boundary.
The shifting city, the drifting city. You will be changed by
walking down this street. The angle of coincidence, of memory,
will alter other memories, make other connections. This street
will become other streets in time. It will lead to other streets
in time. Some streets lead to other times.
You almost expect to see your father and mother aged 21 walking
arm in arm towards you. Some are streets from your own life,
which you have not walked yet. They will seem different when
the time comes. You will not remember.
Endless. Revolving... You can not return. You will never walk
down that street again. Another time is another place. Turn and
wave. Someone almost there. Walking away now.
The streets lead into other streets where a glimpse of someone
who is young will remind you that they must be many years older
now. How did you miss them... How did you pass them by for so
long... Where did all the time go...
Some places seem still, quiet. Islands. A few leaves fallen on
the stone pavement. A trace of sunlit moss in a corner, an eroded
line of memory, a bench, evergreen leaves.
You can place your hand on the stone wall softly, feel the humming
beneath. This is simply the surface of things. It is shifting
slowly all the time, its molecules are moving, it is a liquid.
You can push your hand through the surface, you can flow into
it dispersing out. You can breathe the ocean. |
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It is composed
of music, echoes that take many years to return, to reflect,
to reverberate.
They never disappear. They fade, mingle, make a finer and finer
web of refractions.
The movement gently, imperceptibly spins your skin away like
candyfloss. Spinning skeins of you combine with the ocean over
years, over miles, over tides and times, until you become part
of the hidden frequency of the rooms, the streets.
It is a long slow waltz we are dancing down the cathedral. Turning
into reverberation and roses and shimmering light. Just wait
here for a little while. I will be back soon. Soft winds across
the lake, rain falling on leaves a thousand miles away, years
and years away, slow cascade of those empty places. Tides in
the lakes move in time to the sea. Spirals of dust on the street
corner, glittering in the afternoon sun. The cathedral nave leads
off into streets, canals, restaurants, corridors, avenues, parks
and arcades. A part of it is underwater now, a city beneath the
ocean.
He was looking at a picture in a travel guide from 1954. The
picture had the quality of an old Technicolor film still. As
he examined it, the picture began to change. Its surface slowly
fragmented, dissolved, until he could see through it.
Swift transition of time and place...
My hands are open... I am only eyes travelling over the overgrown
streets... through the buildings... down stairways, arcades,
squares, alleys, waterways... foggy, sunlit.
Rainy stars reflected in the speckled mirrors, down the hallways,
under the ivy leaves. The taste of rust and rain and there is
a cinema I can always step inside and see you moving, turning
slowly in the old sunlight and I can melt through on the Saturday
morning tides of light and I know that time is a great, shambling,
many roomed, ramshackle structure. Tall, flaking, endlessly fragmenting.
Myriad avenues. Waterways deeper than I can swim. Warm, revolving
and lost. The stairway leads on to bridges soaring across the
river. Smoke on the horizon, blue and gold among the fog of trees.
Everything is quiet and the dust on the streets and the stars
are slowly flowing through each other. |
|
|
|
As I walk the
same streets over the years, I begin to detect the places where
time operates in a slightly different way, begin to feel where
pools and currents and tiny edges of time are leaking through.
You gradually become aware of some slight differences in the
light, the temperature, the way things feel, like a subtle change
in the texture of a film.
The city is a place of tides. Tides move down every street. Time
does not move at a uniform rate here.
The relative speeds of various time pockets throughout the city,
all moving and forming subtle currents around each other. Resembling
an ocean, which looks uniform but is really composed of great
currents, contraflows, minor undercurrents, warm and cool streams
of different densities and temperatures, all swirling slowly
or quickly, affecting each other at every boundary.
You can place your hand on the stone wall, feel the movement
beneath. This is simply the surface of things, it is shifting
slowly all the time, its molecules are moving, it is a liquid.
You can push your hand through the surface, you can flow into
it, dispersing out. You can breathe the ocean.
It is composed of music, echoes that take many years to return,
to reflect, to reverberate.
They never disappear. They fade, mingle, make a finer and finer
web of refractions.
The movement gently, imperceptibly spins your skin away like
candyfloss. Spinning skeins of you combine with the ocean over
years, over miles, over tides and times, until you become part
of the hidden frequency of the rooms, the streets. |
|
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