- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 190
The Ace of Cups
Everything in their life is tuned to the key of C Major, ring the water glass - C - the wine glass - D - the Snifter - E - the Decanter, at three fingers more than half full - F - the champagne flute - G - the china cup - A, and the saucer finally B.
This is not by accident, this is the careful tap and drumming of teaspoons upon garage-sale crystal to the bemusement of the vendors; he plays it again, wets his finger and circles the rim, listens to the penetrating hum, he does this from time to time, she listens, awed, the tone resonates long after the finger has been pulled.
Lift it to your mouth, and with various expressions of astonishment listen to the tones penetrating your body, lift the glasses, set them all a whirling, the notes in and out of phase, chime the silver, again - knives at C, Tablespoons, D, Forks, E, and so on and so forth.
She listens, she hears, but she does not recognize this. It is a small miracle of his own contrivance.
Happiness has found them ill-prepared.
How often, wonder, does it find you and you miss it in the moment, fail to realize when things are perfect, we go to concerts, museums, for that space in our mind to appreciate perfection or beauty, yet how seldom do we pause to find that beauty or perfection has overtaken us?
The hours after work, when they are together and the sun streams through the window, the green promise of distant hills and adventure. Look out the window, at the blue sky and blackening clouds, at the crepuscular twilight rays that break between the clouds, a t the waning light that dapples the darkening fields and meadows,
Marvel that somehow, through idiocy or blind chance or perhaps through honest good intentions happiness has found you, only you didn't stop for that moment to gather your wits and appreciate it. Thank god that you found pause, a moment to breathe,
Or even passed us by while we look upon it vanishing in the distance, gone now forever? OR does it run on a schedule? Will it return?
He has found more than he was ever looking for - more, his expectations have in every manner been surpassed, exceeded, these moments of perfect harmony, convergence, when all the clocks in the house begin ticking together, when his breaths matches hers, syncopates, in opposite rhythms or beats, quicker, quicker, his in, hers out, they are breathing now one another, equilibrium, yin breathing in the yang and out the yin, their every thought and gesture mirrors the others, one breath begins what the next will finish, when to ask for more would be the very monster of ingratitude, and so used is he to writing of anguish and loss that to write of this, now, this superfluity of joy, seems impossible. He lacks the vocabulary. And he sits at his desk and the blank page looks back at him.
He is blessed. The value of all pleasure lies in the sharing of it with another who might appreciate it. In her he thinks he has found the one.
For her it is simpler, this is the expected, she takes it for granted. When did she have this before?
For him, it is complex, what right has he to this happiness?
And he questions this, how fortunate he is, and how so, and he wonders, goes into the quiet garden alone in the cool night air to look at the stars and wonder how perfect is this? And how to hold on to it? For she was made for him, of this he is sure.
She, she remains silent, smiles elusively and changes the topic.
Maybe he is the one. Or maybe we make love where we find it.
Music, the Tibetan Throat Singers, Bulgarian Woman's Choir, the classical stylings of Wim Mertens and Philip Glass, the more contemporary Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, the haunting, offbeat lyrics and melodies of Joana Newsom, these, they bring them together, they discover these listening at night to what would become a favorite radio program, a favorite DJ, a raconteur, a playlist that sufficed and then they would both perk up, listen, their ears twitching, they had found something new, worthy, added to their playlist, a rabbit hole to be gone down, a new artist, quirky, novel, and they would enthuse about it until the next time they heard something equally transcendent.
They built a library of shared experience, discovery, their lives together.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 203
Ridiculous things. He has things. She has things. They have stuff.
Antique Candlesticks, Georgian, Late Victorian, Some turn of the century curiosities that appear like a fabulous beast from a medieval bestiary, 3 clawed feet, feathered body, a neck that grotesquely curves to hold the stem in it's beak, Rococo.
Dolls, the old ones that tip and their eyes open and shut, porcelain or with cracked and blistering paint. A pair of old folk-dolls, home-made, shaped people sewn together and stuffed with cloth then features painted on, from a farmhouse.
Art supplies, drawers filled with things it would take a hundred lifetimes to use. Old oil paint tubes, foil, the life squeezed from them or dried up, labels, of wine they drunk and laughed to, the skull from a marmot picked from a high mountain scree. The rattles and fangs from a rattlesnake, found flattened on the road. Buttons, in every pattern, size and color, bits of yarn, string.
The collection, a map of their wanderings, the treasures found together and separate, their tastes, idiosyncratic.
A left-handed conch shell, having been told of Chirality, that in seashells this is rare, very, and that once upon a time it was different, all shells curved in the other direction - and so, this a commonplace curiosity that anyone could recognize but only a select few would appreciate.
The strings to an old violin, keys from a flute, a clarinet, mother of pearl from an old trumpet, old books with leather covers and spines, Catholica, reliquaries, a bottle of holy water from Lourdes, an old font, Antique printing boxes to show off their small collections; Box Number One: an ancient Bronze Roman coin with Trajan's bust, sea shells and brain corals picked from the beaches on tropical vacations, an ivory chess piece (knight), 4 Postage stamps (Paris, Berlin, New York, Prague), An antique postcard of an old bearded scholar surrounded by books, black and white, a quartz crystal, a tapered and flattened beach pebble with a hole drilled through the smaller end, a fairy point, an arrowhead, these artifacts found along the riverbank leading to an entire collection of artifancies, flint knives, spear points, Indian Hammers and rocks that surely were something, just feel how they fit the hand, but their purpose as yet eludes them. A whole summer walking probable creeks and watching the banks from which they might erode, beautiful fall nights when the leaves were turning, sunset glimmering on the creek, the quietude of one's thoughts. I digress.
3 Old Magic Lantern Slides - 3 Oriental Ladies enacting the "hear, see, speak" no evil motif, an old lead type letter P, a piece of amber with fly inset and what appears to be the furry leg of a spider emerging from milky clouds, a fossilized elk tooth, a robins blue egg, an antique skeleton key, Georgian probably, and the cast iron front-piece to a keyhole...
There are the Items that defy explanation, every-bodies life is made up of these; improbable things, fancies, ideas, lay them out like the bowerbird and see who finds value in them; the provenance as it were. The roadmap of their relationship so far. Box Number One - The Springtime of their relationship.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 214
That nighttime chaos that makes sense of the day, that third of our lives we remain insensible, add to this that fog of infancy and senility that bookmark the ends, all forgotten. In the morning they may float to the surface, the remnants of nocturnal sojourns, a disquieting foreboding, a prescience, a trigger might recall those events half-remembered, a Déjà-vu that you can't quite place, foreshadowed from this world or the other?
The day follows the dreamer into the night, all logic is seemingly discarded, broken up, fragmented, turned up-side-down and rearranged. Events, people, places, all fall past the dreamer like snow shaken up in a globe.
What rules remain? Perhaps this is the real world, those hidden ideas, relationships, symbols and narratives that are assembled upon waking, piecemeal, in a different world with different rules.
And yet, rejoin the morning, the day, refreshed, renewed, fresh insight, the night has served a purpose, the glue that binds the day. Or the days are the glue that bind the nights, since we came from the void and will be returning to it, and it's in the waking hours we have the fever dreams of science, of politics, poetry, language, logic...
"Sleep on it..."
Everyone knows the tale, "The Cobbler and his Elves" every evening despairing, laying out his work, impossible, the leather inadequate, insufficient to the task, yet by the morning the deft little elves will have woven, stitched and punched a perfect solution. These Elves, his dreams would by the morning have solved his problems, increase his wealth, and through his appreciation and gratitude the problems came eventually to solve themselves.
Skip the fairy tales, there are too many real-world examples - August Kekule and his dream of the serpent biting it's tail, which gave to him the structure of the Benzene ring. Otto Loewi's dream realization of the experiment he must try to prove that nerve impulses were transmitted chemically, killing two frogs with one experiment and winning the Nobel Prize to boot. Try Elias Howe, who under threat from a dream king to invent a sewing machine or die within 24 hours and having no inspiration, upon his being carried away noticed that the dream guard's spears were pierced on their tips, and begging the dream king for more time woke to invent the modern sewing machine.
And Mary Shelley, the mother of Frankenstein's monster, who had actually seen the character in a dream.
There are other, even more notable examples. The rags to riches dream Alchemy of Ms. Somporn Pinthong, not her stage name, who uncovered the numbers of 17 and 71 while playing with her shit in a dream, scatalogical as Alchemy often is, and playing those numbers won the lottery. As did an Unknown Baltimore winner, who dreamed of 3 magic 8 balls and playing those numbers won the jackpot. Alonzo Coleman of Virginia's dream of numbers all in a row, and too many more examples to list, show without a doubt that this world, the refuge of the dead and weary, that it runs and weaves into our daily lives in a thousand, million, unseen ways, tendrils creeping up from sleep, so our deepest imaginings, both of joy and horror, fulfill themselves upon the world.
*****
You can watch her sleeping and wonder what she is dreaming, if somehow you could meet her there, in whatever disguise she's chosen for you, because this, these waking hours together and her sleeping in your arms, they are not enough...
***
She dreams that she is floating, light, above Chagall's garden, with roosters, goats, doves and a luminous half moon, speckled gilt stars reflecting off of a wandering river, the domes and crosses of distant churches, gasping butterflies, a bride clutching a bouquet of roses...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 232
These books, films music, poems - pressed into the cracks, they are clay that binds their days together. He comes home to a garden filled with snapdragons, the voluptuous lips of "Psychotria Elata", the ballerinas "Impatiens Bequaertii" and the dancing "Orchis Italica", glowing ever so slightly in the setting sun.
When did they move in together?
He doesn't remember. Hasn't it always been this way? The world turning as it should? He doesn't remember, why should he. For all is right in the world and he has, of course, no questions.
They eat, dinner, she has waited, there is the main course, tonight, trimmed white asparagus with a pat of butter and pinch of coarse salt, potatoes whipped in heavy cream, a fresh salad and a filet (tenderloin, thick, encrusted with black pepper, rare, for him) and fillet of salmon (for her).
They will follow this, perhaps listen to the radio in the living room, talk of their days, of their plans, of what she is painting and of what he is writing, maybe a movie, or a walk down along the river.
Before bed he will read to her, not his own, never his own, but something other that he's found at the bookstore.
Where to begin?
"About the Author, (we're told) An 18th century nobleman with a seemingly incurable priape and additionally burdened with certain continental predilections not widely accommodated on Maidenhead or Gropecunt lane, finds himself recommended abroad to reform the morals at a certain convent in Paris. Wherein ensues many adventures, the nature of which he shares and discloses with the hopes of instructing the reader..."
The forward continues to assure the reader of the authors good intentions and recommends the tutelary novel or history as an instruction or fine alternative to those unable to afford said adventures on their own.
Beginning the first Chapter, Chapter I - A Young Man in London
"I, being restive, young and possessed of no small inheritance, found myself frequently drawn to those areas of London for which a small price could provide brief company of a sort that would instruct and prepare me for marriage. The enthusiasm of my tutors was to be applauded, and a great many small sums turned soon into a large fortune having been spent in the pursuit and mastery of that knowledge. This I regarded as a great investment in my future conjugal bliss. To a mind as curious as mine every experience merely opened another door on to those many things I did not yet know, and the diversity of experiences available soon made me realize that indeed I wanted not only to further my abilities and (I am assured) talents in this arena, but as well the application of them.
Unfortunately as a result of certain of these "experiments" I found myself with an incurable priape, and my imagination, feverish, was of no avail in devising a solution.
A friend in this advised me that I should perhaps look to Paris, where there would be the opportunity to acquire more continental tastes, and perhaps even a cure. She had a sister in a convent there, and wrote me a letter which I could deliver to her by way of introduction. My manners and presentation being fine this seemed an excellent pretext to continue my studies..."
As the Chapter closes the reader finds himself in a curious sympathy with the author.
And after, he holds her close and nibbles upon her ear, spears her shoulder with his chin, finds that spot that makes her shiver and arch in pleasure.
He whispers, tickles her while she half-heartedly tries to escape, pull her closer, they fall into the centre of the bed, the mattress
Was it ever better than this? Could it be better than this? How lucky is he...
Now perhaps lightly to sleep to wake again later and sport again, and fall asleep.
Outside, the dew falls, serein, the stars twinkle and fade and the world turns.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 205
This is an old dream. He can't remember precisely when he had it, he was younger, much younger. He - in mind, not body - is travelling through a storm on the ocean, the sky, the sea a deep ultramarine. Great waves reach up to low and ragged slate-grey clouds, fall back again as twisting waterspouts, giant Atlanteans, shrugging the clouds and rain from their shoulders.
In the water, great shadows can be seen moving beneath the phosphorescence of the billows and swells
There's a ship, a galleon, spinning in a hollow, and he lands upon it, enters, the wood glows from within as if lit by amber or flickering embers, a warm light in contrast to the maelstrom outside. Down into a cabin below decks and there is upon it a small iron-bound chest, and as he nears it opens to reveal within a dazzling silver hand, posed holding a pen...