Mina Loy - Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

Suddenly, I found myself “nowhere.”

“Fool,” I anxiously upbraided myself, “you’ve gone and let ‘it’ drop off”; spontaneously, as if it were quite usual for me to look upon my body as merely an instrument with which to contact one’s universe, rather than my whole circumscribed “self.”

An impression of physical discomfort where my neck “had been” soon ceased, but, for some time I seemed inescapably stuck in a solitary desolation: consciousness, with, never again, anything to be conscious of . This gave rise to terror so vast it exceeded my capacity for endurance, stemming from an uninterruptable impulse to contact, deprived of any contactual organism. A terrified conviction of eternal existence while left without means of conveyance.

My preoccupation with this terror of long duration was so intense, I was unaware at what point it diminished, only, at last I realised I was at ease, free, unafraid, serene in an empty universe.

Very gradually, very low down, on an horizon in profundity, a faint, dark light began to penetrate the nothingness; a sombre luminousness I compared to the bluish base of a steel J nib that had fascinated me in childhood.

My ease became absolute, transcending any ease of the body, as if I had entered an ultimate safety-zone, I looked forward with placid curiosity, to the different gamut of experience I knew awaited me. I felt no concern for the world I was lately involved with. That world had ceased ; the way a radio-television programme, once turned off, would no longer be conveyed to one.

I was stimulated by an innate assurance of high adventure for consciousness, when my rapt attention, focussed on that incipient light, patient for the intuited revelation, seemed slowly to be drawn aside toward some issue of little consequence.

The cause of this interference was the dim forewarning of a “click”; as if an echo should precede, rather than follow on a sound, a sound which, about to be audible, seemed to herald the arrival, at some distance from the point where I was receiving impressions, of a form, whose proximity gradually increased. Suddenly, a shaft of rushing “force,” with an impact-potential of incalculable tonnage descended from above upon that form. On its approach, I reflected, “The whole force of the universe! It will crush that body to infinitesimal fractions of atoms.” I knew the form was about-to-be-a body, for although I had no organs of sense, I saw it out there in the dark, its contours so vaguely phosphorescent, just as I could hear the tornado-like thunderous onrush of, infinite force.

I did not associate the body-contour, which had had no existence in my emptied universe prior to the annunciatory “click,” with myself at all, as I waited, totally disinterested, for the expected collision; but as that shaft of force contacted the area on top of the cranium which at birth is open, at once ceasing to be cognisable by me, it slid easily, ethereally through the brain, down the spinal column, as lightning down a lightning rod, only, instead of running into the earth, it reanimated that body, now standing beside me not more than a yard away.

At the same time, the click becoming more immanent, my liberated self, the body-contour and the intervening space telescoped into one another. While knowing what was about to happen, I inwardly exclaimed, noway surprised, disappointed or elated, for this “other” condition seemed devoid of emotion, only of absorbing interest, “After all I am not going to find out this time,” as though any time, owing to inevitability, would do.

The click concluding, I found myself “coming alive” again, as my leg, lifted in taking a hurried step, depending from a body that had lost control, crashed to the pavement, throwing my skull back again, as I heard it click (the almost timeless click of our usual time-perception) into its habitual relation to the vertebrae.

My companion, — -- turned anxiously toward me was asking, “Hadn’t you better lie down?” in the middle of a public square! “All at once you actually became a corpse. It’s inexplicable. There’s no mistaking a corpse.”

“Actually, I must have dislocated a vertebrae,” I laughed rather shakily, “Just for a fraction of a second.”

During my disjunctional nod of humorous acquiescence my blood had already almost frozen; as if one’s circulatory system functions somewhat in accord with that other measure of time. For quite a while I could feel the unbelievable force and celerity with which it zoomed from the top of my head, over my shoulders, down my arms, in glacial cataracts; and, biological curiosity, I could have sworn that a block of ice, little over a square inch, had been neatly inserted in either elbow; just, by the way, at the seat of the funny-bone.

– — – — –

So this was Life; being a sort of magnet to a sort of universal electricity, while in some deeper stratum of consciousness there lies embedded a familiarity with eternal existence withheld from our every-day consciousness; but the origin and nature of that, which, retaining its identity, experienced all this, remains as great a mystery as ever.

It so happened that some days later my baby’s nurse, reminiscing on her hospital work, mentioned how rare were cases of survival after arrested circulation. She also told me, how, in the few cases coming under her medical observation, there was invariably evident one outstanding phenomenon. Every patient entertained the illusion that blocks of ice had been inserted in their elbows. This, without my telling her of my strange little accident or having in any way brought up the subject.

The Russian ambassador — and King Edward’s mistress at the prime minister’s dinner table—

Said Mrs. Birthright—

I can’t imagine your reason for refusing promotion—

And the ambassador—

I prefer to remain. You Englishwomen are the best bedfellows

in the world—

Pure — so perfectly abandoned

I am proud to be able to say—

I have possessed every woman—

at this table—

My wish is never to leave London—

There isn’t a woman amongst us who hasn’t committed adultery—

And — mine — they

turned such a lovely pink!—

But Mrs. Birthright belonged to the old school—

She always spoke of her life as if she had “not been there”

had caused more scandal! —

And she was unassailable—

The only thing that gave her away for the least of her peccadilloes—

Was the stamp of royalty she bore upon her—

It never wore off—

More queenly than the queen as I watched her age—

She never faded—

but receded — somehow — ceremoniously—

Behind her regal presence

The avoidance of wrinkles had made her callous to the expression of the emotions—

And she was so damnably kind—

But when we reviewed the moral of the after-war

I could see as a cloud drifted across her eyes—

That she regretted having at least wasted— half her time.

The finest analysis of the moral order—

Is in these older women’s eyes

You can see them thinking

How frightfully unnecessary were all those lies—

From so many degrees of virtue — those women who mustn’t be found out — and the women who came to do it in Paris — and the apostles of England’s new criminal offence—

How different it all is—

They usen’t to dare

be seen with a man—

And now if there is no man they must at least consort with “something” that wears half his clothes.

And even the Night has lost its prohibitive mystery having become — the frenetic nursery of youth.