Green Again

The world is green again. Everywhere the vigor of green roars a universe of limbs and leaves hungry for the golden light of May and fair weather. Ants spill out of the sidewalks. Oars lift and plunge, lift and plunge, lift and plunge. The skin opens to the heat of the sun. I am no less inept, but there is grace within, and philosophies of fluidity in the movements of the air. I hold a mound of lather in the cup of my hand and believe it’s the weight of a moment, a dent in time.

I’m attracted, quite naturally, by levers, buttons, zippers, handles and knobs. Doorknobs especially. I like to open and close things. The illusion, however theatrical, is one of control. All the inventions of the Renaissance  -  printing press, telescope, gunpowder  -  appear to be at my disposal. I own none, yet they exist, tangible and possible, objects with intent. I, meanwhile, have no intent. What I do have are words, folds of air, objects molded in my mouth, shaped by lips and tongue, sauerkraut, trinkets, molecules. Intention? I intend ink.

Thought lives by expedient. Words and metaphors. It is by such apparatus that the tissue of thought is woven. Time and sensation are converted to gabardine. Swansdown, taffeta, jersey. Fustian, felt, and mohair.

Right now I’m wearing a wooden hat and a Platonic Idea.

Because the world is green again and metaphors grow on trees, fresh for the plucking. I would prefer it if it were money, but who expects money to grow on trees, apart from me? If money were metaphorical would it still carry value? But isn’t value itself metaphorical?

No one stands alone. Each identity is an amalgam of history, geography, and choice. Nothing is set in cement. The imagination is a saclike body located at points of friction between moving structures. After each mutation it returns to its original state, the bright orange-brown color in the pigment cells of its skin flashing, dying out, and re-appearing in another place, like sparks in tinder. When placed on a sheet of paper it becomes pallid and colorless, but as a finger moves over its pearly whiteness, it pulsates slowly, in such a way that new adjectives will have to be coined to adequately describe the variation in color, and a camera obscura for the cliff swallows.

Being is a defect in the purity of Non-Being. One can choose to wear such and such a thing, say such and such a thing, do such and such a thing, inhabit a place or idea, but the sole true reality eludes detection. We know it’s there, must be there, but what is it? It’s there in the varying temperatures and appearances of the air, a thing adrift in the thousand fragrances of the air, the presence of an absence, the ephemeral membrane of a gnat-wing, an invisible power (to borrow Shelley’s phrase) visiting this various world as summer winds that creep from flower to flower.

Mutation, atom, thorn. The prick of the real. Pointless, but practical. At least when it comes to occupying a world, straying out of its corners to say hello, look for food, a place to rest and sleep. The clouds above in their constant boiling, never a complete image, a form that thunders here I am, a scorpion, a dragon of heat lightning, the electrical charge of a celestial fusion. We below, morose, forgotten, helping one another to warmth, parcels of splendor, the carpentry of words. The drive of a nail in the fragrance of pine.