Saturday, June 20, 2009

bubbles, spilled milk, thrown stones
















































I printed out this post on secrecy this morning, and then accidently gave it a bath in milk. Later I came across this on a similar theme and thought they made good Saturday morning book ends for the unnameable. I haven't had a chance to spill anything on the second post yet. But back to secrecy, maybe you've also noticed somewhere along the line that it's a fine thing when one can begin to have a relationship with something that can't be pinned down like a willing husband.

I've come across many models of the slippery stuff we call mind lately, sky, ocean, mirror, lake and moon, and most recently wax, which I appreciate very much because it calls the body, long abused and regulated to the category of the corruptible on account of its tendency to decay and perceived imperfection, into the mix of being. What is psyche without soma? Unlike the mind, the body doesn't lie, which makes it both dangerous and redeeming.

And every body, a sacrificial victim. In a book I found on the street lately I read a legend that presents an explanation for mortality. According to the story, the first woman created asked her maker "How is it? Will we always live, will there be no end to it?" So he picked up a buffalo chip and he told the woman, "I will take this buffalo chip and throw it into the river. If it floats, when the people die, in four days they will become alive again, they will die for only four days. But if it sinks, there will be an end to them. So saying, he flung the buffalo chip into the river - and it floated. But the woman picked up a stone and said "No, I will throw this stone in the river; if it floats we will always live; if it sinks people must die, that they may always be sorry for each other." The woman threw the stone into the river and it disappeared. "There," said Old Man, "you have chosen. There will be an end to them." p.128, Heart of the Land, Jack Welch, "The Far Away People."

2 comments:

Nicola Masciandaro said...

It's like a liquid palimpsest! If that makes sense. Or, if you time reversed it, a papermaking slurry that also a prints? I think this spill is really a beautiful allegory of secrecy, which I will continue enjoying without pinning down. And why spilling secrets?

amarilla said...

Spilling secrets, that's a good point. Makes it sound like they're just bursting to sluice out, but we do our best to fend them off with stoppers, plugs, ramparts, levee, storm gates...