it’s just another one of those moments some would call reflection, which doesn’t seem to quite describe a known past touching an uncertain future.
images and writing are both quite static, yet they birth a myriad of possibilities. if maybe just one of those could be a dream, but then dreams are seldom in writing.
writing certainly conjures up images, or isn’t it just a way of describing the images that were already there in the dream. it’s the conflict of my creative consciousness. a writer working to pen it down, pin it down. is ‘it’ all just flavoured reproduction? if the process starts with the mind’s eye and memory, why write, why not just produce imagery instead? can writing alone inspire or have the ability to call upon an image or evoke the senses?
the battle between imagery and writing in my head is a resurgent struggle which started again with a picture of you.
looking at that photograph and trying to own it, to own you. i saved it in a dusty box, put it onto my cold device and on the inside of my eyelids. it was 1991. i would see it, i’d try to remember the moment, but i only remember the image.
the effect is numbing me down, i’ve lost the grasp of the sensation; was it a surge of emotion, or a slow swelling tide, i forget and look at the picture again. i imagine we kissed or did we fuck?
i see again the message you sent to him. i deleted the others.
as i read through it again, mere words on a screen, it makes me intensely aware of how abandoned i felt.
i brush my teeth to get the taste of you out of my mouth; my gums start to bleed.
i have something to drink, i page through a magazine with the tv on mute. light, motion and more starts to fill the room. i imagine her face, an image of her face, a familiar face; which now has become part of my consciousness.
i call up a sequence of images. i was at this exclusive store (the type that’s not really exclusive but everyone thinks they are because they sell over-priced limited editions), i bought that book, the one i couldn’t afford, i wanted to impress you. the girl was just an impassive witness to our exchange, her face blank and her overdrawn lips a cranberry brown… but still, every time i see her, i see you.
