sphere, dialectic of the vortex?
She cried to him of an essential treaty of sensibility they shared he could never break however far he professed he was at liberty to go. And yet in abandoning her was he not acting to fulfil the range and depth of both precipitate choice and agreement? Was he not freeing her—as well as himself—from the burden of hidden motive (one thing openly said, another secretly meant), with each step he took which made her see the necessary life of the soul within the material cult of dismissive opinion? She was blind, but she saw this collective treaty of feud for the first unravelling time of stars upon an eyeball of wood: sensitive borderline of a fetish they shared in which every dumb particle of conviction, splintered statement and motive, combined into deed and sphere. She had actually cried to him—stay or go. And he chose to go. But she secretly intended him to stay. No wonder she saw him still in the light of one she had not truly relinquished, quicksilver of obsession, barometer residing within her. Upon which she rode—as upon his pointer or scale—since she knew, or felt she knew, that he—in spite of his open dismissal of her—secretly desired her to leave all and follow him. Broken and cemented journey around the globe. Northern Lights. Shield of the sun. Holes for eyes. Through which they broke into Orinoco. Their first journey together long ago.
Now —after twenty years—was it still too late to recover an essential trace of their last—as if she had indeed overtaken him in the end—hypothesis and realm, river of gold? Fantasy of Eldorado?
He beckoned to her—frozen sea—wave and boulder. The strands of her life spun toward him—one form or another, conception or deformity of conception. Inventory of concrete and mystical instruments. Pursuer and pursued. Elusive pregnant model. Half-human, half-brute . Half-skin, half-wood. Half-song, half-silence. ENDLESS CREW OF FATE .
It was as if he had partly escaped her within ears that were deaf to her plea, and she was on the point of regaining him within eyes that were blind to her peril—sleep of the sun.
FOUR
Blast
T he sun appeared in the sky overhead. Then writhed, flashed, vanished across the minute clearing he possessed in the astronomical, glittering and cruel wealth of the jungle.
It may never have stood above him after all and the very clearing around and beneath him turned unreal as though its very isolation made it enormous and the immensity of space and bush surrounding it shrank into a uniform indistinct province.
He was waiting for his Amerindian guides to return and she (Susan) was turning into one of these. Skin of metamorphosis. She often felt his eyes upon her back but she knew herself masked by an ornamental stillness and indifference, catlike, slumbrous, smooth as stone….
He looked up suddenly and there she was—naked (his eyes knew) beneath the cloth she wore, bereaved and entrenched, alone.
She had come to sleep with him—both abstractly and intimately. To make herself known. Casual and reflective, yet deadly shadow upon his heart and lips. He could hardly believe his ears and eyes which may well and truly have been blotted out at this moment; and he knew he needed, as a consequence, to be on his guard as never before against the unreality and conquest of space.
The camp he possessed in the tiny clearing stood very close to a nameless creek which he had followed once for miles until the hills closed in all around and the water descended into a hole in the ground, to emerge a mile or two away upon the face of a cliff. The great casual boulders at the mouth of the cavern and within the subterranean gallery of the creek may, for all he knew, have been flung into position by some ancient explosion of the sun—they seemed to him so utterly remote from the very earth on which they stood.
He, too, and she, at this moment, as they faced each other, might have been equally alien
She cried to him of an essential treaty of sensibility they shared he could never break however far he professed he was at liberty to go. And yet in abandoning her was he not acting to fulfil the range and depth of both precipitate choice and agreement? Was he not freeing her—as well as himself—from the burden of hidden motive (one thing openly said, another secretly meant), with each step he took which made her see the necessary life of the soul within the material cult of dismissive opinion? She was blind, but she saw this collective treaty of feud for the first unravelling time of stars upon an eyeball of wood: sensitive borderline of a fetish they shared in which every dumb particle of conviction, splintered statement and motive, combined into deed and sphere. She had actually cried to him—stay or go. And he chose to go. But she secretly intended him to stay. No wonder she saw him still in the light of one she had not truly relinquished, quicksilver of obsession, barometer residing within her. Upon which she rode—as upon his pointer or scale—since she knew, or felt she knew, that he—in spite of his open dismissal of her—secretly desired her to leave all and follow him. Broken and cemented journey around the globe. Northern Lights. Shield of the sun. Holes for eyes. Through which they broke into Orinoco. Their first journey together long ago.
Now —after twenty years—was it still too late to recover an essential trace of their last—as if she had indeed overtaken him in the end—hypothesis and realm, river of gold? Fantasy of Eldorado?
He beckoned to her—frozen sea—wave and boulder. The strands of her life spun toward him—one form or another, conception or deformity of conception. Inventory of concrete and mystical instruments. Pursuer and pursued. Elusive pregnant model. Half-human, half-brute . Half-skin, half-wood. Half-song, half-silence. ENDLESS CREW OF FATE .
It was as if he had partly escaped her within ears that were deaf to her plea, and she was on the point of regaining him within eyes that were blind to her peril—sleep of the sun.
FOUR
Blast
T he sun appeared in the sky overhead. Then writhed, flashed, vanished across the minute clearing he possessed in the astronomical, glittering and cruel wealth of the jungle.
It may never have stood above him after all and the very clearing around and beneath him turned unreal as though its very isolation made it enormous and the immensity of space and bush surrounding it shrank into a uniform indistinct province.
He was waiting for his Amerindian guides to return and she (Susan) was turning into one of these. Skin of metamorphosis. She often felt his eyes upon her back but she knew herself masked by an ornamental stillness and indifference, catlike, slumbrous, smooth as stone….
He looked up suddenly and there she was—naked (his eyes knew) beneath the cloth she wore, bereaved and entrenched, alone.
She had come to sleep with him—both abstractly and intimately. To make herself known. Casual and reflective, yet deadly shadow upon his heart and lips. He could hardly believe his ears and eyes which may well and truly have been blotted out at this moment; and he knew he needed, as a consequence, to be on his guard as never before against the unreality and conquest of space.
The camp he possessed in the tiny clearing stood very close to a nameless creek which he had followed once for miles until the hills closed in all around and the water descended into a hole in the ground, to emerge a mile or two away upon the face of a cliff. The great casual boulders at the mouth of the cavern and within the subterranean gallery of the creek may, for all he knew, have been flung into position by some ancient explosion of the sun—they seemed to him so utterly remote from the very earth on which they stood.
He, too, and she, at this moment, as they faced each other, might have been equally alien
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