That moment when it all unravels, when word becomes flesh, when thought processes collapse alongside boundaries, when you can’t see and can’t stop and blindly throw yourself forward into the firing line or the abyss or the sky or the sea or the oncoming traffic and there’s no way to tell what is coming next but only that it is inevitable. Propelled by a force somewhere between epiphany and complete breakdown, running to or possibly from, a safe space to shed skin and share scars, coming to in a puddle of sweat, hurt and scared and distressed and mute and shaking and bewildered and above all grateful. You’re not the girl you think you are.
the above bit comes from zoo who hadn't posted in AGES but it was well worth the wait
I've got some great friends innit?
Is it just me who falls in love with people from their words? who reads philosophy with tears in my eyes? who shudders with excitement to meet other writers? who finds the mad midnite reading of others words almost as intimate as staring into a lover's eyes?
We burnt Lang's diaries this week. two of her closest friends. two friends who fell in love with her words, and ideas and dark secrets. two people who she showed them to. words to make your hair fall out. words that burn into you eyes and leave a dark sad stain on the soul.
she'd read one section to me nearly 12 years ago. We sat in Tamana's North Indian diner and her voice hardened as my eyes filled with tears and I shook. I don't know what book it was. I didn't want to look, didn't want to open up her secrets if she wasn't here to offer them.
She begged us to burn them. We promised we would if we had to.
I wish we didn't have to, wish we didn't have to sit, drunkenly, sobbing silently into the night, tearing out each page, not daring to look as we scrunched them one by one,feeding them slowly on the barbeque.
Half way - the skies opened and pissed down on the fire, the soggy balls of paper, our sodden faces. I bought more beer, we found vodka and sat in the rain and kept tearing. The rain stopped. we swilled vodka and splashed it on the paper, relit the fire and kept burning.
book burning.
how many books unwritten, sclerified in her crippling limbs, murdered by her pain. Her body choking on it's own memories, seizing up and finally killing her, her dreams, our dreams. sodden sobbing misery.
today we wandered down to waverley cemetery. the ocean was crazy, cliff crashing waves, thundering and spraying us beneath a rare slate sky. We threw the ashes down into the water. Let her words follow her flesh. Let her words follow the sanctimonious lies of he who cannot be named, we let her words follow her flesh, burning brilliant words, cleaning and being cleaned by that beautiful heaving beast of the sea.
Salt spray met my tears and I smiled. this was a fitting sendoff.
1 comment:
You know that you have a friend in a friend when you read a blog and find that it is relevant to you. Experiences of events so powerful can be quite difficult to express, maybe can never really be fully expressed. Yet, as I would expect your words are timely and also sensitive, appealing, truthful and very very powerful in the recreation. Thank you for being such an articulate writer about both the past and the present.
As for falling in love with words, I would have to agree that there is much to be said for the destruction of certain texts that defies the imagination when trying to phantom why such a need existed in the first place.
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