Daphne, Descending

Descending from your flight to madness, still shaky from the breathlessness of the tempest, you step down and plant your feet firmly on palpable ground. 

The air pauses in its billowing, the heart trembles, sighing, for a little while, still hopeful, still wondering: where things are found and held--could it have been where you were to have been found, and held, at last?

Is this where the hapless, aimless chase ends?

Somewhere,  a clearing.  Nearby, a promise. From the soul, a hunger, inchoate. The longing to stay. 

Oh, to stay. 

But the breeze turns, unannounced--a host of forebodings arrive, whirring with the wind, and the time for trembling, sighing, closes in, like all days do. To love so fiercely is to invite pain in; to love so madly is to lose yourself.

But it was so still in that last second, so still! How a moment--certain moments--can alter time so.

Still, the feet, reluctant, spring into a run. Gently, at first, then swiftly, as always. Only this time, questions weigh the mind, the heart down, willing the eyes to turn toward directions other than forward.

But that slice of brilliance, so lovely and luminous--

Run. Let the broken heart propel you forward, only forward, always forward. Step on those clocks, crush them with your pain. Summon your strength and keep your eyes where they should be--away, away. Light foot, you are good at this.

Run.

Daphne, defeated

Because I was afraid of the recognition my light had seen in yours, I ran, and ran. And as I ran, I threw shafts of darkness your way, conjuring erasure, willing the shadows to take over.

I did not know all this will come to be--I was so certain, my love, so certain. But the heart is wise in ways unknown to us.

I had consigned you to the shadows, but your light has shone through. Dazzled, I turned my turned back; dazzled, I stared. Dazzled, I allowed myself to be drawn in to you. Dazzled, I succumbed to your brilliance.

My nimble feet are nimble no more. The weak, blurred edges have given way to clarity. I now recognize what I have always known to be sacred, what I have felt to be more powerful than the strength I tried to break it with.

And now here I am, bathed in the glow of you. Breathless from running away, and scarred in the struggle, I recognize my defeat and lay my (erstwhile) hesitant heart before your feet.

And what now, my love? What now?

We/ are we/ random

A conversation is an overture to many things: the next conversation, kinship, love. Cross this out. We redirect, retract, swerve--we talk about the weather. We hesitate to talk about love because we are proud, we are strong, we are practical, level-headed creatures; we would rather talk about things that matter--the stock market, the upcoming elections, your neighbor's latest acquisition, my last meal, your next.

And inside our heads, a voice, cooing a soliloquy: But my love, you are my miracle.

We snort at sentiment. It is shallow, it spells weakness. We are strong. We do not talk about love. The world will turn without love. We insist.

Abdicate, my love. Because the world is ruled by numbers. Ejected by the maths, the story of Eros and Psyche remains a myth. Yet we die a little at love's facelessness.

We do not admit this. We would rather have plotless dreams when we are asleep. Or grind our teeth.

We concatenate one chance with the next, and come up with a kaleidoscope of flukes. Where do they all go? We wonder. We wonder, and wonder, and on the surface, we are placid bodies of water. Stagnant, too, the voice. And on and on, we insist--what is dilatory must stay hidden.

Serendipity is underrated (or is it over? I can never tell) -- you are here because you filled out an application form; I am here because I had nothing better to do. We will never walk the same line; this conversation is flimsy. It will never hold. Art is for the foolish, I heard somebody say. But he who is not moved by sunsets and violins must have some serious searching to do, yes? My teacher agrees. Even Euclid had feelings, I'm sure. But where is it written?

There is a mathematical formula for everything. Yes, even love. We talk in tangents; the parallels outrun each other. We measure and throw away the excess. Love is an excess. We throw love away, we erase it. Or pretend to, at least. And then we cope by subterfuge.

"There will be time, there will be time," wrote one T.S. Eliot, and "Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,/ would it have been worth while,/ to have bitten off the matter with a smile,/"-- oh, hapless heart, what do you beat for? Who?

Stop that sighing, the minutes are ticking, we do not have time.

We do not talk about love. Let Apollo chase Daphne to the ends of the earth. It is a myth, as love is. Turn off that music in your head, and let's be productive, instead, so resume brainstorming, snack on these data, reconcile those figures. There is no you, there is no me.

But look, my love, you have turned into a tree.

Variation on a theme: Daphne and Apollo

You have betrayed me, Eros.

You have sent me

my true love.

- Louise Gluck, "The Reproach"

Waning, trembling, loss of breath: the first signs of the permanence that will become the end of this story.

Picture woodland, Dear Reader, imagine trees with whorled roots, and leaning branches; picture sunlight and comforting shade; picture the occasional brook, silver rivulets crossing brown earth and clusters of green grass; the sky must be a blinding blue, for it cannot be otherwise, the mind will always insist on blueness; let the breeze be a delicious balm--in the beginning, at least. Isn't this how most stories start, after all?

Or imagine the city, if you will, the city with its absent stillness. I prefer the woods, but do what you must.

STICK TO THE STORY. A reprimand. There should always be a reprimand.

The mind is where the chase leads; the mind is where the chase is, and I begin:

The shadows lengthen as the day loses ground. Two shadows, they were, and one of them was faceless.

MIND YOUR TENSES.

At the body's swiftest, the limbs persevere, and the mind endures.  Soon, twilight, herald of night. Soon, the wind; soon, the truth. YOU ARE GETTING AHEAD OF YOURSELF. But it is a race, is it not?

IT IS A CHASE.

I erase a word and replace it with the same word and think that I am discovering newness. It is a form of madness. I look out the window and see a small, round moon. I think it is more yellow than white, but then I change my mind.

One shadow fleeing from the faceless one, from the impermanent one, he whose being is always a makeshift one. I come up with a list of adjectives: transient, shifting, short-lived, they. They is not an adjective. Impermanent, then.

And that was why I ran. An epiphany.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? A reprimand.

The other shadow, breaking, then, turning into someone else, breaks again.

Daphne, dazzled by a slice of brilliance, finds herself turning--

That was not in the outline. That sentence pushed its way from below, from somewhere unseen. That sentence was an insistence I did not foresee. It begs to be italicized, but I would rather look the other way. It was I, after all, who was dazzled, it was I who turned; it was I who mistook that slice of brilliance for light. There is no outline.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? There should always be a reprimand.

It never ends. I cannot have you follow me this way.

WHO IS THE You HERE? But must there always be a reprimand?

I have (finally, finally) taken the great myth and torn it apart.

You are the tree that I want to become.