Bones Come Rattling Back to Me
Re-assembling a writing practice from the edge
It’s on the edge of my consciousness. And the metaphor feels concrete now, having lost so many thoughts over the edge, into the unreachable, unknowable space. And I’m standing here, staring at a ghost of something, as in the midst of a deja vu – or like trying to recall a dream that hollows my gut like a punch, lives on my skin as goose bumps, but has no narrative.
I’ve read that narrative is what gives meaning to the body’s condition – so much so, it determines the consequences of an experience: invigorating joy, or the kind of stress that will take years off your life.
I read in yesterday’s news that as a young couple was having their first kiss, the man had a heart attack.
What do you do with that narrative – in the context of scientific theory? There is a smudging along the meeting points of science and belief. And maybe neither has any meaning before the narrative takes form.
Though there are days when I recognize my thoughts, I still don’t recognise my body in the mirror. I recognize the things I want to change in both, I suppose. Those things are starkly visible now, when perceived in contrast with the undetermined mental and physical aspects of this stranger. I am halved. Like a pitted peach.
Tell me a story, I say to myself. Fill the empty spaces.
Then make it true.
It‘s on the edge of my consciousness. The kind of thing that seems promising, until you touch it. Like an intense crush. A finish line. A pastry you saw in the window, that was almost muscular between your teeth when you finally took a bite. So I’m not sure I really want to grab it.
It’s a returning to the words. Not going back, but meeting up again now, at this point, walking along the edge of it all. Catching them before they fall away for good.
I am a neglectful lover of stories. Of wasps. Of a dead baroness.
Living things, in time
are eaten - or uprooted,
pip turning to stone.
Decomposed or petrified,
grinding our descendants teeth.
Great to have your voice back here, in my eyes and ears. I like this vision of meeting words again after having trodden different paths for a while, and not to have gone back to that point where the paths diverged. There's a whole story in that in itself. R