Diorama

The Coast

Days and nights are a dead silver. There is no end to land and there is no end to water. There is no heartbeat because there is no time. There is no wind because there is no cut in the stretching vault of heaven.

Days and nights are a dead silver. Any place is every place. Any thing is every thing. A single vast surface rests underneath a thick vapour. The vault of heaven is a solid arc.

The story of the crow invades memory. It is a fragment falling from a cliff, through thick fog, into a still sea. It causes regret. It does not sing up from the earth nor down from the sky. It is a story for children. The echo of its splash and ripple is the first deceit of childhood.

The story of the crow is one of fabrication. It is an accounting of trickery by means of a tricky account. It is not as simple as a story about a crow might seem to be. A bird does not come to life simply.

Days and nights are a dead silver. Time is in creation and creation is in time. At once a being comes to life. At once creation precedes and creation follows. At once a being arouses death and is in immediate danger. The world has no form. Escape is not possible.

A being comes to life and masquerades as a crow. A being comes to life and takes flight. All land and water and all plants and creatures emerge in the passage of its pretense.

There is no governing will. The present suddenly unfolds. The past radiates from the false make-up of the crow. The vault of heaven remains untorn. The dead silver surface of existence is soundless. Nothing is known.

You stand on the shore and drink in the sweet drops of mist. On either side of you the shore sweeps back behind your watch. You move your gaze slowly from one side to the other. At each extreme you see the shore sweeping back and away. When you look dead ahead, you see no horizon. You see a dark mirror, away from shore, and the sky is the water and the water is the sky.

Days and nights are a dead silver. There is no end to land and there is no end to water. There is no wind because there is no knife-cut in the stretching cover of the tent.

Days and nights are a dead silver and you are on the shifting edge of water and land. You measure the light and the dark and the shore upon which you stand. A sheer cliff rises behind you. Waves swell and break and wash. They roll up shell and pebble and rock.

Days and nights are a dead silver. A wave washes a stone shard onto the shore at your feet. You notice its sharp edge aiming skyward. You reach down and grasp this cool and wet and heavy fragment. You feel the sharp edge in your clench. You close your eyes and gather your strength. You breathe deeply. You hurl the stone up to the sky.

The wind is sudden. It rips down from the cliff and in from the sea. You steady your stance. You drink in the sweet spray of mist.

As the Crow Flies

I am the crow. I spread my wings and the wind transports my form. I gather my wings and rest on the cliff top above the shore.

The air is an ancient inspiration. It is a dead spirit. It entraps the particles of water and dust that rise up from below, only to return these to the surface of time. The vapours condense upon me as a silver film. The film forms and it flows off. My mock wings and feathers glint and quiver.

I move in the air. I move above the water. I move above the land. I see the ripple and swell of rock. I see the scratch and score of its surface. This rock is the indelible roll of time. It is the proclamation of being, cast underneath the firmament.

Time is in creation and creation is in time. I am not born. I fall to creation and I arouse death. I take flight as the crow and in one continuous motion this world unfolds. I mark the beginning of all things past. I sweep and I soar.

The air is an ancient inspiration. It is still and calm under the stretching vault of heaven. I sweep and I soar. You do not see me. You simply believe my mimicry.

I sweep and I soar above you. My flight is your deep memory. My flight is the word of your ancestors. My flight is the language of your hunger and thirst. My flight is the claim death makes on you and on all the others in this place.

This place is the elusive motion of horizon. It is the dark mirror upon which you stand. The sea forever unfolds the memory of conception and coldly pounds the shore of your daily lookout.

I sweep and soar and all that you see is grievous distance, your constant gaze never able to fix upon the vanishing edges of this world. All that seems apparent is nothing but reflection, an inversion of heaven, an inexplicable massing of fragments. The blast of stones on the shore is there at your feet. It is a mad observance that marks your death.

I sweep and I soar in the character of the crow. This disguise keeps me from death. My beginning marks the past of creation. I do not choose this past. I do not choose to be the beginning of your memory. I do not choose to begin your reasoning.

You pass the days and the nights of this place in wonder. You store food and water and eat and drink with the others. You exchange your wonder for the wonder of others. You exchange your desire for the desire of others. You gather up all that you can from the past and use it for the ceremony of the present. Your rituals draw dark images from those you bury. You cut dancing shadows from heavenly light.

My masquerade demands that I sweep and soar and cackle. My black crow cry moves through you. The day is a dead silver and you stand on the shore. You conjure the past in order to invent the present. The day is a dead silver and your measure of time is cast by time. You do not uncover your true self. I do not reveal my true being. The death that cannot penetrate my identity does penetrate you. Your ability to survive does not account for your birth nor for your death. Your ability to stir bits and pieces of the past does not account for me.

I sweep and soar and cackle. I am the story that you hear. I am the story that you tell. You stand on the shore and the day is a dead silver. You do not bring the light and you do not bring the dark to this world.

You stand on the shore and you clutch a sharp stone. You hurl it up to the vault of heaven. The day is a dead silver. A sudden wind drives the sea onto the shore. You taste the mist on your tongue.

The Pool

The bather stands alone in the center of the pool. The surface slices the body. The legs and feet connect to the light blue tiles. The water circulates from the rectangle of the pool through the filter to the pump and back. The bather does not feel this motion.

The bather stands alone in the center of the pool. The pool is in a vast chamber. Ceramic tiles cover the deck and walls all the way up to the stretching arch of the ceiling. The air is still and the temperature is constant. The skylights are a false expression of remote nature.

The bather stands alone in the center of the pool. The surface of the warm water is perfectly still. It encircles the body just above the hips. The light in the bath hall falls through a constant haze.

The bather remembers love. It comes like the morning sun. It vanishes in a sudden wind. The bather remembers love and imagines a forest, dark and still and green. At the forest edge, soldiers break camouflage and silently tread onto an empty field. They stand and survey the open ground. They listen for any resonance of settlement. They step back into the forest and disappear. Lovers hide. Children play quietly, close to home. The vocal cords of roosters are cut to mute their dawn call. A silent wind moves across low ground and swirls up a cliff slope. It suddenly blasts through the hair and around the ears of embracing lovers. The bather breathes slowly.

The air is warm and humid. The outside light enters from the cast iron and glass ridge that crests the massive arch of the ceiling. The bather considers the vast chamber. The building is a fabrication for memory. It is a replica of creation in time, a simulation of eternity. It is a disguise to deceive death. The bather considers the vast chamber. Love is the still water, artificially clear and latently responsive. The beaks of roosters open and close.

The surface slices the body. The bather stands alone in the center of the pool. The film of condensation on the tiles of the deck and walls remakes the steady blue of the morning sky into a constant atmosphere of diffuse light. There is no movement in the tropical air of the bathing hall. The sound of the city does not enter the building.

The bather remains still in the center of the pool and remembers a history lesson about an ancestral dance to the first sun of the bright season. The surface slices the body of the bather. Outside, the city streets fill with morning activity.

The bather stands alone in the center of the pool. The spread of stories is as difficult to trace as the path of the light that fills the chamber. The bather moves a hand to and fro in the water. The surface ripples and contours, outward, away from the body toward the pool edge. A fabrication and refabrication of peaks and valleys radiate from the bather. The motion shifts from immediate chaos to observable order, as it emanates outward, away from the body. The altering contours of the water surface concentrate and scatter light. Glimmers seem to collect and ignite in an instant, and then suddenly disperse like a mad school of tiny silver fish.

The Window and the Well

The floor is flagstone. No lamp burns in the interior. Sitting on a wooden bench, she rubs her sleeve against one of the small panes of the window. She washes this glass daily, yet by each evening it is dingy from the smoke and vapour of the fire and the stew pot.

Each day she washes these small window panes and each evening she sits and watches the light fade. The transparent surface is the membrane that maintains her orderly view of the cold nature of the days and nights that pass outside. Inside, the fire burns.

From this window, the well is in clear view, down a soft green slope, near the rock edge of the sea. Clouds coil and mass above the house and out over the rock edge in dark tones of blue, green and black basalt. The last light from the west cuts across the field and turns the wet grass and rock golden. A fine rain falls and coats the window.

Her stone house is one of several that remain along these green slopes. Each day, as she walks to the well, she studies the other houses and repeats the names of those who now live there, and the names of those who are now elsewhere. Each day, as she walks to the well, she looks toward the black and green of the far forest beyond the houses. Each day, as she walks to the well, she observes the rolling sea that stretches out below the rock edge.

Sitting on a wooden bench, she rubs her sleeve against one of the small panes of the window. She thinks of the men who cut the stone for the houses from the sea cliffs. The men use rope to haul the stone up to the high ground. Danger surrounds them as they cut and pull the giant slabs. The men often stop the work to peer into the distance. They shift their gaze downward, onto the rock fragments at the base of the cliff, there, where other men fall.

Sitting on a wooden bench, she rubs her sleeve against one of the small panes of the window. She recalls the story about her great grandmother as a small girl. The girl hides beneath the bench by the window during a violent raid. She hears the wild yells of marauding men, their bloody spears piercing the bellies of her brothers. She hears the screams of her sisters as spears and knives cut their legs and arms, as the wool and linen tear from their bodies. The raiders break open the doors of the houses and plunder what they can. She hides underneath the bench by the window. She trembles on the cool flagstone and closes her eyes. The door of the house falls open. She hears the gasps and grunts of a man. She hears the yell of her father and the strike of his axe smashing through bone. She hides beneath the bench by the window and does not move. The pipes rise and ring and the call of revenge blazes from villager to villager. She opens her eyes and the doorway is strangely empty. The reel of the pipes fills the air like smoke. She moves to the doorway and looks out. At the edge of the forest, her father and his brothers join the other men as they disappear into the black green wood. The reel of the pipes hangs over the trees like the rays of the last sun. Bodies lay on the ground.

Sitting on a wooden bench, she rubs her sleeve against one of the small panes of the window. The rain falls steadily, a constant mist, as she rubs the glass again and again. She must forget no one. She must imagine the others. She must imagine the time long ago. She must imagine the digging of the well, the hard labour of those breaking through the rock, always interrupting the work to look back over the dark wood, on guard for the chaos and destruction that swoops down upon them. She imagines the eerie peal of distant pipes. She must go to the well and pull the water to fill her vessel.

The Coastline

You stand on the shore and move your gaze slowly from one side to the other. At each extreme you see the rock edge sweeping back and away. You look dead ahead and see a dark mirror, away from shore, and the sky is the water and the water is the sky.

You stand on the shifting edge of water and land. A sheer cliff rises behind you. Waves swell and break and wash. They roll up shell and pebble and rock.

You stand and measure the light and the dark. You stand and measure the distance to the furthest points of water and land. You think of the time it requires to travel from place to place. You imagine the edge of creation that encircles you, where the sky is the water and the water is the sky. You open and close your mouth, taking in and shutting out the sweet spray of mist.

This place is the elusive motion of horizon. It is a dark mirror. The sea forever unfolds the memory of conception and coldly pounds the shore of your daily lookout. All that you do not know is a chaotic swirl of cloud. Your thoughts of time and distance are a fragment of rock, breaking from a massive cliff and falling through a rolling fog.

All that you see is grievous distance. Your constant gaze is never able to fix upon the vanishing edges of this world. All that seems apparent is nothing but reflection, an inversion of heaven. Time is an inexplicable massing of fragments. The blast of stones at your feet is a mad observance that marks your death.

Civilization

Land is the slow surface of time. Rock heaves and buckles and ruptures. It fragments and crumbles. Deep underneath the land is the heat of creation.

A mountain is the unfolding crest of deep memory. It rises up into cloud and frozen vapour. Snow and ice harden onto its peak. When the sun is high in the vault of heaven, water races down the rifts and ridges of the mountain onto the land below.

Land is the slow surface of time. A mountain rises up into cloud and frozen vapour. Water streams down the rock slope and tears the ground at the base. A mountain rises up and water streams down. It cuts the land and plummets over ridges. Waterfalls foam and spray. Water rages down into a deep river. More and more water flows and collects. The river churns through the land away from a mountain. It flows onto a fertile plain and widens.

Deep underneath the land is the heat of creation. Rock heaves and buckles and ruptures. Water streams and plummets and collects. A river forms and flows. It drifts through a fertile plain. The water slows and widens and moves through a great tropical forest and into a lush basin. Green growth overwhelms its shores and the sound of birds fills the wet air.
Land is the slow surface of time. Rock heaves and buckles and ruptures. A river runs down from high ground. It carries fragments of earth and rock. It courses across the terrain. It spreads through a boiling swamp. Rain slaps onto the broad thick leaves of trees and vines. Birds fall silent in the downpour. Sweet water spreads into the heart shape of a delta and pushes the brown of the land into the salt blue of the sea.

The Window and the Drought

He sits at a small desk by the window and brushes figure and colour alongside the perfectly set words. From time to time he lifts his head from the work and examines the light leaking through the cracks in the shutter. The wood is dry and no longer fits the window opening.

The sun is hot and high. A single bird circles endlessly above a shallow black pool. Cracks weave through the dry clay surrounding this remaining bit of moisture. The dark brackish water reflects the sun.

He sits at a small desk and light leaks through the cracks in the shutter. The wood is dry and no longer fits the window opening. The window looks down onto the compound. The earth is flat and hard. Slate walkways and low stone benches demark simple squares and rectangles. A high stone wall follows the lip of the ridge upon which the buildings and grounds rest.

He examines the light coming through the cracks in the shutter. The sun is hot and high. Below the window, a few chickens scratch at the hard ground. In a small pen, two thin goats nudge each other as they struggle to stand in a small area of shadow.

He sits at a small desk by the window and imagines the valley below the compound wall. The sun is high and the lake bed is almost completely dry. A bird circles endlessly.

He sits at a small desk and reaches forward and touches the wooden shutter of the window. He must maintain an order of place and purpose. The nature of the days and the nights that pass outside must not penetrate his contemplation and study. Vision is artificial. To speculate is unfaithful. The dry heat outside the window must not undermine the determination to believe.

The sun is hot and high. Life and death are not vacuous contradictions. Under the dry land roots and bulbs await the rain. The rituals of belief intermingle the four elements in recognition of all that is ever present outside of knowledge. Crops must rise from the earth up into the sun, rain and wind. Good and evil exist in the theater of nature. Drama is a natural invention that plays again and again. A dark brackish water reflects the sun.

He sits at a small desk. He lifts the lid from a tin cup and dips his brush. He replaces the lid and remembers the thick green growth of the valley. He remembers a local conjurer setting alight a bundle of sweet grass, sending up a dark smoke, dancing slowly in small circles around a large bowl of water. He remembers the conjurer singing in a low voice and then plunging the smouldering bundle into the bowl. He remembers how they all sip this water and then dream of flight. They fly up into great rolling clouds and unleash the rain. He remembers waking from the dream, his body wet with sweat.

Drought is a condensation of drama. It makes the story more simple and direct. Death outdoes birth. As the ground dries and hardens, memory shrinks. A simple seed remains in the surviving consciousness. Faith becomes duty.

He sits at a small desk and brushes figure and colour alongside the perfectly set words. Single strands of sunlight fall from the cracks of the shutter onto the desk and paper. He holds his brush and stares at the page. Outside it is hot and dry.
He sits at a small desk and a sound comes through the shutter from deep in the valley. Someone methodically digs the ground. In all directions, the long grass is stiff and brown. The leaves of shrubs and trees are dry firm curls. From time to time, a fiery air swirls and spins dust from the ground. Grass shakes. Hard leaves twirl on stems still clinging to waterless branches.

Someone methodically digs the ground, pulling the dry soil and rock up, fabricating a dusty mound. The hole in the earth deepens. There is no moisture. The drama is simple. Someone digs into the ground and the landscape does not seem to alter. This intervention is of no consequence. The action does not alter the good and the evil.
He sits at a small desk and brushes figure and colour alongside the perfectly set words. The sun is hot and high. In the distance, the sky thunders. He hears the roll and crack of the sky and waits. Again, the rain does not come.

Drought is a condensation of drama. Standing in a deep hole, someone scrapes at the ground and pulls out a long thick bone. Up above, dust swirls and the dry brown grass slowly moves. In the distance, the sky thunders. A fiery air swirls and spins dust from the ground. Hard leaves twirl on stems still clinging to waterless branches.

Standing in a deep hole, someone digs and uncovers a bone and digs and uncovers a fragment of a bowl. A fiery air sweeps across the top of the hole and another bone appears in the dry earth.

He sits at a small desk near the window. He dips his brush into a tin cup and replaces the lid. His work consumes scarce water. Again, the rain does not come. Faith becomes duty.

He sits and works. He remembers the green valley. He comes to the valley as a small boy. He listens to tales that describe a magnificent time. There is an ancient city and a marvellous people. There is a long lake in the valley. The harvests are great. Desire is easily fulfilled by meat and fruit, by wine and invention. A conjurer dances.
He sits at a small desk and dips his brush and considers his faith. A sound comes to him from the dry distance. Again, the rain does not come. He sits and works. A bird circles endlessly.

Down in a deep hole, someone methodically digs and scrapes and uncovers fragment upon fragment. In all directions, the long grass is stiff and brown.

Down in a deep hole, someone digs and a stench rises up into the fiery air. Dust swirls and the dry brown grass slowly moves.

Down in a deep hole, someone methodically digs and scrapes. Water begins to rise from the thick and dark earth.

The Crow

I am the crow. I spread my wings and the wind transports my form. I sweep and I soar. I am the crow and I cackle. I am the story that you hear. I am the story that gives you voice. I sweep and soar and cackle. Your voice vanishes in the wind.

The air is an ancient inspiration. It is a dead spirit. It entraps the particles of water and dust that rise up from below, only to return these to the surface of time.

I move in the air. I move above the water. I move above the land. My mock wings and feathers glint and quiver.

You stand on the shore and recreate the world again and again. You tell and retell the story that you hear. You give me voice and I speak all that you know. I sweep and soar and cackle. I take flight and the world unfolds. Time is in creation and creation is in time.

I sweep and soar and cackle. I am the story that you hear. I am the story that you tell. You stand on the shore and the day is a dead silver. You do not bring the light and you do not bring the dark to this world. You stand on the shore and reflect all things. All that you do and all that you are is a measure of time. Your birth is what deceives you. You are the consequence of all that you attribute to me.

I sweep and soar and cackle. I create the horizons that you can never see.

I sweep and soar above you. My flight is your deep memory. Your birth is what deceives you. Your memory is the claim death makes. All that you know plummets through the fog and falls into the salt blue of the sea.

The Swim

You look ahead from atop the swell. The water rolls out to the horizon. Again, you drop your gaze and stroke forward, away from all things, toward the certainty of water and sky, toward the final union of this world. You drop your gaze and you swim. You stroke forward and do not look back. The shore remains in time and in memory. You stroke forward and the sea rolls and swells, forever unfolding the conception of all that you leave behind.

You swim and the past remains. Each new stroke is a completion of the last stroke. You look ahead from atop the swell. The water and the sky roll out in all directions.

Your story is one of fabrication. You come to life and arouse death. Time is in creation and creation is in time. You swim and the past emanates outward, away from the body.

Above, the vault of heaven is as silver as the surface of the water. In every direction clouds shift and reshift in a dispassionate order from thin streaks of light vapour to thick upheavals of fear and black horror. The arc of the silver sky is a dead background to this relentless teeming and dispersal of water in the air.

You look ahead from atop the swell. Again, you drop your gaze and stroke forward. The shore remains in time and in memory. You swim and the sea rolls and swells, forever unfolding the conception of all that you leave behind. You swim and rain falls through the air. You swim and each stroke is a completion of the last stroke. You swim and the union of sky and water is the measure of your body, as you stroke forward, reaching through the horizon, again and again.