Sylvianna
It's worth looking into why some people grab you. Like the other night, I had a vision (of a real thing) on the dance floor. Out of my element and all, I was playing the role of observer more than I normally would.
This girl: she had the body that looked like it would break, not because of malnutrition, but because of some hard-to-define etherial quality, like she'd just peeked in here from Plato's realm of Forms. And she was standing there, her face detached to the point that a passing Hindu swami would have been jealous, would have sacrificed his wisdom, his ascetism, his learning and his mortification of the flesh all at once. Full flesh, big eyes, black irises probably watching intently. If she were so inclinede, she could have seen the bloom of body warmth from my cheeks, my legs, my dan tien, the electrical buildup on my palms, back of my hand. She was ice, and everyone gave her wide berth, maybe two meters all around to just stand there by a pillar. No intoxicats to make it easer to stand here, as bass beats shook the floorboards, and the stomping of latter-day human tribal dances broke every little idea to dust. She was with some random; actually I coudn't tell that just by looking, because even though he was behind her, and "into" her, so to speak, she had such perfect composure that it looked like he was an unsuccessful salmon swimming upstream.
She disappeared soon thereafter, leaving me with my more open-than-usual emotional reaction, a bottle of beer, a mangled drink order, drinking like a dirty old man in a caver filled with sweat. Visions of clouds of flies drifted across the hazy sky of my consciousness. The biological assault on the ancient floorboards was palpable with every breath. Her name wasn't Sylvianna, but it should have been. Some unlived life, hanging out at the liminal threshold, wants it that way. That same life saw somwething in her that grabbed my attention to the point of exhaustion. Something un me wants beautiful waking hallucinations, something like Paul struck blind on the road to Damascus, or Ginsberg finding "God" in William Blake's reading of "The Sick Rose", or positive acid trips, or deep metidative pure consciousness experiences. Inside or outside, there's enough beauty and enough loci of meaning to latch onto in this world for everyone an astronomical number of times.
Consider: "The difference between a cult and an established religion is sometimes about one generation."
This girl: she had the body that looked like it would break, not because of malnutrition, but because of some hard-to-define etherial quality, like she'd just peeked in here from Plato's realm of Forms. And she was standing there, her face detached to the point that a passing Hindu swami would have been jealous, would have sacrificed his wisdom, his ascetism, his learning and his mortification of the flesh all at once. Full flesh, big eyes, black irises probably watching intently. If she were so inclinede, she could have seen the bloom of body warmth from my cheeks, my legs, my dan tien, the electrical buildup on my palms, back of my hand. She was ice, and everyone gave her wide berth, maybe two meters all around to just stand there by a pillar. No intoxicats to make it easer to stand here, as bass beats shook the floorboards, and the stomping of latter-day human tribal dances broke every little idea to dust. She was with some random; actually I coudn't tell that just by looking, because even though he was behind her, and "into" her, so to speak, she had such perfect composure that it looked like he was an unsuccessful salmon swimming upstream.
She disappeared soon thereafter, leaving me with my more open-than-usual emotional reaction, a bottle of beer, a mangled drink order, drinking like a dirty old man in a caver filled with sweat. Visions of clouds of flies drifted across the hazy sky of my consciousness. The biological assault on the ancient floorboards was palpable with every breath. Her name wasn't Sylvianna, but it should have been. Some unlived life, hanging out at the liminal threshold, wants it that way. That same life saw somwething in her that grabbed my attention to the point of exhaustion. Something un me wants beautiful waking hallucinations, something like Paul struck blind on the road to Damascus, or Ginsberg finding "God" in William Blake's reading of "The Sick Rose", or positive acid trips, or deep metidative pure consciousness experiences. Inside or outside, there's enough beauty and enough loci of meaning to latch onto in this world for everyone an astronomical number of times.
Consider: "The difference between a cult and an established religion is sometimes about one generation."
posted by A. D. at 11:28 AM
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