Phil Kay
On his tod, talking to himself, getting existential and rather poetic
arked. he sat. with a chill wind uncomforting his
forearms like the distant. empathetic breaths of
aunties. No disturbance was necessary and he pondered how it would go. He wondered how different it was to wonder today.
Sometimes the gaps felt felt. and other times his mind was harpooned by the cramped aesthetics of their faces. the aunts. that disturbed and failed in their comfortings and purpose of knowing.
‘What can they know. what can anyone know of
anyone else. save that they are not them. they are themselves and the politics of their experience so utterly self determined." He ruminated a mind-spy.
‘And indeed . . .‘ Now the little blacklab pup of a beast of his pathetic automatic wrath was let loose. racing. dragging with the string lead almost overtaking it; you know the way puppies rtrn. ld est: ‘I am letting my verbal mind-rage loose and it seems to have no real weight to it. But a pup it is.’ He mused on.
‘So what even if it makes sense‘.”
Parked. he sat. with beehive administrations among
the stylish sky. And always the sky. Whatever portion of
it was over you. it was a fractal. accurate version. not like the inconsiderate stars that streak off on the slowest of smears in their centuries-long deceits. No. the sky is fooling nobody. That would be beneath it. The sky has no agenda. Nature never can manipulate.
All of a sudden. ‘(lngs don't digress" was out of his mouth as wording.
Already he was colder. Then there was the first pre- judder of a movement thought. And there were leaves
1' 45.x ugqrn to (in;
retreating which knew something he didn't.
There was lonely and there was lonely and there was this. Dull desert island of the soul. he thought. blah blah. Wander a beach caring no more for the damn footsteps that aren‘t in there any more and never were for there was no beach.
Did any band want his lyric'.’ ‘Doubt it.’ came out next and could have been heard by a passing jogger had there been one and yet could well not have been said if there had been a jogger there.
When you unfell a tree in the forest and put it back up quietly — rerooting and uprighting with tree surgeons called for their expertise in unusual bamboo scaffolding and hoists: with all-round landscapers and people to spiritually comfort the tree. ready to hug it and explain the actions: and with full-on lumberjack
_ guys in helmet and plaid — it I am lettlng makes less noise than one falling. m Yet still it raises the question
_y of whether being heard by a [fund-rage human is necessary for the loose and existence of the event. ()r of
whether our response to the
question — taking for granted our have no real consciousness as the be-all and _ end-all of exrstence — rs a truth.
Or just whether if we hadn‘t
evolved neither could trees.
He sired the evening. Dusk light shed the unwanted windy amore of it on these arms and replaced it. re-laced it with genuine dark temperature. He walked on. And the possibility of spaghetti rain htrng in the air more palpable than perhaps the rain itself.
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