Minima 2

Minima 2

Dense rich moist eternal compost sitting there forever turned into a diamond that is you, hard refracting cutting and beauteous even if just dust on the sidewalk of Brooklyn born by the wind.

Terminus, end point, location; a room with a view to the hills of Rome, each of us a sweeping vista of time, light and shade, flowing storm and clarity, breaking with lightning and thunder, convection, heat and cold, ice and dreams tossed in a physics with no container.

Later, lying on the sofa covered with Katherine’s blue plaid wool blanket, I listen to my heartbeat, the swish of blood through my body, and breathe slowly with its rhythm.   There is a sort of swooshing sound inside me and a vanishing as I enter the space between heartbeats with breath.

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko

Saturday, 20 March 2010

On Peter Handke’s A Slow Homecoming

On Peter Handke’s A Slow Homecoming

Where do our ears end, our hearing; or does sound begin and disappear? How do I hear without a description?  What order do I inherit, transmute and then reshape the world of time, space and the odds and ends that vibrate within it? 

Handke's characters open against their best judgment.  Suddenly they find themselves hearing, seeing and tasting, losing the order of what was thought their realm.  We travel with them.  The nature of thought, emotion, relationship; the sadness and beauty of the asymptote; never completely touching our longed for, completely okay, a confidence arises as this being. Standing alone with everyone this is a home beyond home or a dream beyond dreams. 

Walk in this new and strange land always here.  The slowness of arrival unbearable; if you are in a rush to get somewhere Handke will not take you there.  If you are already and find yourself inside the glacier moving unmistakable, the blue light, the instantaneous forever then his voice is home. You never left and without a choice share this heart.

John Bailes

Friday 22 August 2008, Prospect Hill