Sinister: A life in an hourglass....

[Joan of Dark]

          When in your ears, forgotten, you find the sand of the noon and on 
the corners of your eyes, dried salts, but not of the sea, then you know….

           Every summer, anywhere I might set sails for, it’s always here 
that I cast anchor… On the lost continent of my childhood years, the 
mythical Atlantis of memories.  The shattered skies of teenage yearn for the 
faded images of my reflected self, the way they reflect through the broken 
mirror of memories.

            Here, the sight gets perched, looking for the girl with the 
short trousers and the knees that were covered with scratches, between the 
leafage of time and in the deserted alleyways where she was forgotten.

           What am I looking for, I wonder, and what nails me down? What 
magnet directs the north pole of my feelings?

           When melodies resound husky, as if from within your tired, 
troubled mind, songs forgotten or that never existed, songs that you want to 
convince yourself that you remember, so as to not let yourself admit that 
you are so utterly alone…

            When the hazy, weary notes harmonize with the whispering of the 
leaves in the summer breeze and the sounds, following the rhythm of your 
breathing, are discerned with difficulty ; the practiced ear of memory 
gathers echoes from the partings all through the years. A memory that 
flutters clumsily in the air, a moist nostalgia of return or repetition, and 
a feeling of absence that burns on the isle of indefinable desire.

         …Then, when Virgo was the constellation of innocence. Then, when 
names were  real and words held the true weight of their meaning. Even 
miracles were real then,
because I needed them to be. Because I believed in miracles.

Then. . .

      On the clear nights of August I would press my hands on my ears so 
hard, to hear the flow of the Milky Way that was spilled on the heavens, 
while in reality I was only  listening to the flow of my blood streaming in 
the veins of my arms. Such were the miracles that I believed in then. Yes. 
That the world was as wide as a stride of my childish legs, created to suit 
my size. That it was given to me as a present and I was challenged to win it 
or lose it.

        But now the pain inside me gets unbearable because I was told in 
loud shouts never to believe in these things any more, as they are the most 
vulgar of lies. And I feel deadly cold inside because I knew it all along 
but as always, I was too scared to admit it. Even to myself . . .

        Now the sun lustfully strokes my limbs but does not manage to warm 
the unbearable cold in my heart. Light changes angle and refracts, flooding 
my eyes, and a scent of mint and dried soil fills my lungs . . .

Then I know . . .

. . .That the season is coming to an end, and with it, the crumbs of the 
illusory dreams, which I kept feeding my emaciated soul with. I wake up one 
morning and I find out not that there’s nothing left to me, but rather that 
I did not leave anything to myself. That, like maybugs, I held my dreams 
tightly laced around their necks with strings too short, tied around my 
wrist. Left them hum insanely from anticipation and the false hope that they 
could drift me along, to fly with them. And in the end, one by one they were 
left to moulder in their shackles. Some of them managed to break free and 
fly away. As far as possible. From my crooked, arthritic fingers that 
strangle everything.

        The season is coming to an end and all that is left to us is the tan 
lines that carve our bodies trying to retain a memory, a faint scent of pine 
trees and sea-ravaged rocks, for as long as they can through the winter.  
But summer people are different than the ones of winter. They wear 
swimsuits, pretend to be Adam and Eve; they are immersed in the illusion of 
physical bliss. In winter, wrapped in their coats, buried in their worries, 
they try to forget, their eyes avoid meeting.

         Then you know that this is the end of a season. Its colour you 
cannot discern, neither its scent or taste. Only thing I am left with is a 
string through which the beads of my mistakes are pulled. A colourful 
ornament to wear around my neck. But my truths are kept elsewhere. And maybe 
all the things that I really loved where the ones that I let slip away from 
me, unable to bear their weight.

         My thoughts, weary, cannot even stand to reproduce themselves and 
fall senseless on the floor. I forget them there.

        Cast music on my open wounds. Sing to my festered scars to heal 
them...




joanna



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