The colours faded with distance and time, the cliff had been scaled on threads of life; blue chokers of raging silence, silver slices of pain inflicted, golden shreds of arrogance indulged, red blinkers of longing for unimportant things. Once breathing freely on the plateau the colours reached equilibrium with her life. The icy rages were tamed by surprising new opportunities into the lush green of goals. The quick silver of her mind was beaten into iron for every day use. She found glory not in the trophy fleeces of gold but the gentle carding and spinning of her experience into the modest white handkerchiefs and bandages applied to hurts. Most importantly the red ran into the black and was absorbed, the time of longing became one with the time before the longing. The black had reached back, and brought her more than she had sought.
The flashing, astonishing years of her travels and her return had so obscured parts of her own essence that when she was finally still and balanced, her true nature shocked her profoundly. Luxuriously housed within herself, freed of the emotions that had driven her on, she found that the black had been there before she understood it. The light had always reached her, had always blinded her enough that she did not have to confront the inescapable fact that the dark had been there first. As the after images of the fading colours cleared, the black at her core dazzled her. She tried to avert her eyes and even resorted to seeking the lacerating colours again, but finally the black was truly hers.
Try as she might, there was no more avoiding the task before her, the dedicated shaping of the dark into the forms that were the only safe way to carry it with her. She pinched the dark; stroked, twisted and placed the dark into the places that it must rest; between her thighs, between her fingers, between the burning white pages. The truth of the black was that it was lover, teacher and pupil in one; the only satisfying companion, the only goal, the only outcome.
She did not understand the black as she recorded it. When she wrote did she patiently cutting the white page into letter shaped holes through which to see the dark? Did she take the raging, battering dark and persuade it to crouch, waiting, on the page? Did she take the dark and whittle and carve it until its true shape lies free on the white? Did she capture the more bearable currents of the dark in the closed rock pools of letters, letting the black become still water between the white channels carved from the paper? The light meets the dark; white edges keeping the black corralled, formless grey at the point of meeting. Or is it rainbows that line the space between the light and the dark? Perhaps some people see their life as the grey between, others the colours of the spectrum leading from dark to light? Perhaps some people never see both the dark and light at once, sitting only to see one, allowing it to become their only horizon.
Prowling the black, her desires padded across the borders of acceptability and greedily sank their teeth into the luscious fantasies dancing, sentences after sentence, through her mind. Long before sexual gratification there had been literary gratification, literature had brought her to orgasm long before a man. The demands of her fantasies had robbed her lovers of almost all the satisfaction they could bring her, and as the years passed her satisfaction was entirely her own to command. The words pulled her nerves, tightened her muscles, rolled her eyes back in her head and pushed the air out of her lungs with pleasure.
The power she wielded, the self-denial she delighted in, the indulgences she unleashed made her drunk with the intellectual power she could harness. Nothing more than her best work was done every day to dazzle those around her, helpless in their praise of her habits and conceits. While she bathed, she drowned and as she shared, she stole. She was incapable of anything short of a passionate flood of caring that devoured all indifference.
The flashing, astonishing years of her travels and her return had so obscured parts of her own essence that when she was finally still and balanced, her true nature shocked her profoundly. Luxuriously housed within herself, freed of the emotions that had driven her on, she found that the black had been there before she understood it. The light had always reached her, had always blinded her enough that she did not have to confront the inescapable fact that the dark had been there first. As the after images of the fading colours cleared, the black at her core dazzled her. She tried to avert her eyes and even resorted to seeking the lacerating colours again, but finally the black was truly hers.
Try as she might, there was no more avoiding the task before her, the dedicated shaping of the dark into the forms that were the only safe way to carry it with her. She pinched the dark; stroked, twisted and placed the dark into the places that it must rest; between her thighs, between her fingers, between the burning white pages. The truth of the black was that it was lover, teacher and pupil in one; the only satisfying companion, the only goal, the only outcome.
She did not understand the black as she recorded it. When she wrote did she patiently cutting the white page into letter shaped holes through which to see the dark? Did she take the raging, battering dark and persuade it to crouch, waiting, on the page? Did she take the dark and whittle and carve it until its true shape lies free on the white? Did she capture the more bearable currents of the dark in the closed rock pools of letters, letting the black become still water between the white channels carved from the paper? The light meets the dark; white edges keeping the black corralled, formless grey at the point of meeting. Or is it rainbows that line the space between the light and the dark? Perhaps some people see their life as the grey between, others the colours of the spectrum leading from dark to light? Perhaps some people never see both the dark and light at once, sitting only to see one, allowing it to become their only horizon.
Prowling the black, her desires padded across the borders of acceptability and greedily sank their teeth into the luscious fantasies dancing, sentences after sentence, through her mind. Long before sexual gratification there had been literary gratification, literature had brought her to orgasm long before a man. The demands of her fantasies had robbed her lovers of almost all the satisfaction they could bring her, and as the years passed her satisfaction was entirely her own to command. The words pulled her nerves, tightened her muscles, rolled her eyes back in her head and pushed the air out of her lungs with pleasure.
The power she wielded, the self-denial she delighted in, the indulgences she unleashed made her drunk with the intellectual power she could harness. Nothing more than her best work was done every day to dazzle those around her, helpless in their praise of her habits and conceits. While she bathed, she drowned and as she shared, she stole. She was incapable of anything short of a passionate flood of caring that devoured all indifference.
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