Winter kills. Cruxifies the imagination. I’m dying. I’m dying to. Place a finger on that piece of bone behind the ear lobe and feel the pulse of your celestial mind beneath the armour of your skull, amore. I’m dying too. Dark mirror, black, decayed reflection. I see you and I look again and you have vanished. No trace of you. Objects that seem to make bare rather than fill an empty apartment. Every photograph of you replaced by the same image minus your person. Your physical body.
Events unrelated. Diverse circumstances. When his day really began was around 10 in the evening. Roughly at that point she was deciding to hit the sack and navigate her way to dreamland. It would take her another hour and a half to finish tying up all the loose ends of the day. Get into bed then decide to shower. Whilst he committed himself to another glass of wine. Thought about a spliff. The one he hadn’t smoked for years and years. They never said goodnight to each other. For a while she said goodnight as he said good morning but that might just have been two different people in two different time zones.
At a quarter past twelve midnight she woke up. She needed vodka. Needed to observe other human beings. It was a frequent occurrence. At such a juncture she’d head a block down from her apartment to Bar Rock Bar. A very mellow after hours hangout that played lots of Bach with clientele who were engaged in fragmented minimalist conversations. If he was there she would not recognise him.
If she was there. If she was. Otherwise nothing. There she was, She was there. But that’s not say he was about to hit on her. She might have been out trawling for women. No, he would sit in a booth and hope that Bach’s Contrapunctus 14, the unfinished one, was on tonight’s playlist. He would order a glass of champagne to sip during and a vodka to neck in the closing bars. There was no going beyond that particular piece.
The way of the world is illusion:
I strive after true realty.
To be moved by earthly possessions is illusion:
I endeavour to rise above duality.
– Milarepa
Beneath the frozen lake he lay suspended looking up as she skated on the thin ice of superficiality. Dumb fool, he was eyeballing her panties.
the emptiness of longing 