Diary #10

Mysterious whencefroms

I am far away from the room where things are happening, watching from a camera mounted in the wall like a peeled eyeball. This is the point of view the dead take, wafting around at ceiling-level. An executive stands in the middle of the field, talking to other executives. His hair mesmerizes. It is a perfect creation, sleek, delicately molded to his skull, the grey of a storm cloud, with a slight sheen of white, perfectly symmetrical, at each temple. I can hear only murmurs, and I see nothing but body language. It is easy to see which executives loathe one another, which ones are continually rebuffed in their bids for attention or dominance. I understand again the appeal of watching apes. 

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In drawing something outside of myself in the form of language, something else is lost. Whether that something else is within or without is impossible to say, as the gusts of absence refuse to let anything settle. I am diminished and my sight is clouded by some mirage of my own creation. Yet the infinite thing has been hooked upon the world and unfurls relentlessly. Words desire dissipation into what they depict (from the Latin pingere, to paint— one sees a tender finger stroking a stone surface). 

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I spend hours waiting to be called. I can’t leave the screen, or deviate my attention much, lest I miss some urgent movement or request. I wait, dividing and braiding my attention, chewing on its ends.

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I am still waiting to be called. There is a religion of the mountain here (a la “religïone / de la montagna,” per Dante in Purgatory) that dictates a route upward, at a steep and untidy grade. I see people far ahead of me above, flattened against the gale. I wonder at the gravity, and which way is actually “up,” or if all are deceived by their own urgency. The executives continue to move about in front of the eye. There is a gathering, a condensing, a stillness, as if In the moment just before an immense retraction. Soon the pressure will fissiparate and fizzle away. I wonder what else there is to squeeze out; what there is beyond the state of being-squeezed.

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I might venture a typology of people: snails, lions, owls. Or: light, heavy, sour. Or: magicians, wheels, moons. Classification is irresistible and dissatisfying, the potato chip of observation. I watch the meeting. Voices issue from nowhere. The sun has gone down long ago and there are two more weeks until spring.