etna smoking

by tremens

It is queer – that always we fling ourselves over balustrades and railings, that there must be violence and pain and horror whence we angrily extinguish ourselves, wilfully subdued, ghosts. But last night i have had a dream in which gently i tiptoed to my death off the twelfth story of a flat running cold-water. Right after the release there is a stutter of trepidation in the heart – but nothing more, blood being the gentleman he is and politely with silk handkerchiefs displaying scrawled telephone numbers and district pipes, rows of faces left behind and indexed projects beside lapel inflorescence. It is in this moment that one has a wonderful insight, one is suddenly able to make life-saving decisions in half a second, the body knocks at the door of the mind, insolent squatter he is, and asks in perfect grammar to be left out of any hazardous plans, that it is afraid of the pain that comes of having Everest dropped on his head, no matter the consolations of brain &co. , that his atoms shall need no condolences but a napkin would be nice. This epiphany will flee – it is not. Ankles shall be found by the will and by told to let go, to keep walking into the air like a cartoon character, falling comically only after looking down and realising itself unsupported by cliff or roof, as five second prior. Here the mind forgets. There is no sensation of air, no sensation of flight, nothing at all but an incomprehensible puzzle of innumerable seconds – half? eight? a thousand? – before suddenly the surrounding blackness wakes to itself. The body has fallen in, and now is a blancmange, nothing distinguishable. A dull ache reverberates across the entire disconnected blob, but the sensation is unremarkable, just the tickle of having an old bruise lightly pressed upon by the gentle family physician, no clue as to cranial fissures or imploded brains or shattered pelvises. More remarkable is the sensation of moisture that is lost somewhere between the concrete and the skin, so now it seems to cover everything and has seeped into every breathing particle, a gentle wash in a tidal pool, overwhelmingly wet but not cold, in fact just slightly warm, the sensation of a dead shark dropped into a tank of saline. And then even this small light blinks out.

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Reworking of a dream a long time ago, spontaneous-writing style. Recent contemplative quality in words perhaps influenced by heavy reading of Calvino (Italo). Experimentation with punctuation and order of words. The black death. What do you think?