The Authentic Eclectic

The Kaleidoscope of Passing

Glass on the tile. A weathered roseate flush, the pearlescent fawn rippling in its shell.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maria_Wiik_-_Old_Woman_in_Her_Sickbed.jpg — fair use

Gazing at an inverted glass of sand, my grandfather’s visage arises before me, sighs, blows away. Distraught as a child, I would play with wooden blocks, balls, carved figures: objects that feed your touch, don’t shy away and bark unkindly with plastic and batteries, preferences for which I will not apologize.

Hm? Who’s rambling? I can hear you. Kill me before the next invocation arises from the wings of the damned crickets. Gliding a hard, slippery thing down the flesh of my arm, flesh of my flesh, you traitor, sinner, god, legend, demon. Blissing like a lamb their woolen tide rocks on stone on sea. So subtly the moths beat against the door, harass the lamp, are bemuddled by the existence of man in this world, but have they not evolved since hominid fires first began to strike over a million years ago? Slow creatures, so slow: so many generations, still such fools.

Varicose veins and velvet, mother of mine awkward at the backs of rooms in doorways as a wooly head at the back of the car seat, not as a smile, an embrace, but always far, far, like the horizon line. I am growing. I am still growing. No, I am dying. Dying and growing at once — how can this be? Only if the body is not in fact the…