It wasn't the darkness so much as the darkness of the mahogany, the rustic oriental rugs, their patterns mashed together in a glowering silence. It wasn't so much the shock of light from between the heavily pleated curtains than the texture of the heavily pleated curtains, warm and matted like the fur of a feral bear (such imposition on light). It wasn’t so much the how as it was the why and the when. When and where most importantly. That particular day in that particular place. The rug, the curtains, the imposing desk. The imposing desk. The imposition of it all. Who had been behind that desk just a moment before? What would they possibly have been doing there? Were they hunched over work, their own shadow suppurating, oozing over the flitting shimmer of a fountain pen? Mere flights of fancy, flickering opulence, compared to the weight of the desk, the curtains, the rug (if there had indeed been anyone and their ideas there).
It was not the clarity of the glass so much as it was the opacity of death, the child ablaze amidst such reflection. The wisp of smoke that cannot be held.
***
Normandie by Forrest
In a day and a night I drank myself into sleep, into a room without light. In this room was you, I hope. In you may have been the winter I look for. When it is winter I always find myself at this hotel, and I am always meeting someone at the lounge since I resemble a business. A winter is an enjoyable thing when one has a drink with it; but then I must be meeting someone, even if nobody is business as well. A winter drink is more enjoyable with you whom I know and not her, whom I know less. With her it is admiring the black marble bar with its strong latitude, and it finding her fingers away from the drink. With you I see your fingers are curling into the snow winter leaves for the last person remaining. The lack of sameness is not disturbing to any of us should we all happen to lounge here at once. We have not been formally acquainted with each other’s experiences, and this hotel is slowing. I know this drink. The vintage where never enough must be my winter.
***
Applicable and Dark by Alan
He lived in some poet’s home outside of Brookmere. It was a museum in fact. A national historic site. And he was looking for a roommate.
A curtain is a kind of collapse of the soul. Because exhaustion, unlike a season of Birch and precipitation, clings like a muted flame in encasement, he’d wait everyday by the window whispering the name. The tall stranger he’d met at the landing. He had told him about his library and left an address.
A world of lettres might never be the same if only…this type of thing through a window of the heart. The heart a pulsing but too often quiet room. Repose, another country.
***
Agnes Martin, 1994, Taos, NM by Johanna
One day the snow fell six inches deep and the world was blanketed in white. Dog crap and mud puddles disappeared beneath the soft crystal winter fleece. The dilapidated mobile home next door and the abandoned Chrysler at the end of the road glittered, disguised in a serene mound of white and light. Wilting flowers, crackling grasses, dried out weeds, now powder blossoms and fluffy cloud sprouts. The world let out a sigh, ugly had been banished.
Agnes answered a phone call from a friend telling her that she missed her and, as she watched the snow falling outside, everything appeared perfect, pure and clear.
After that, Agnes painted white, everything white, perfect lucid canvases of white stripes on white. She painted into the spring and when summer came, she rested, the flowers and their wild decadence making a mockery of her peace.
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