Wilson Harris - The Waiting Room

SLOWLY FADED…. And yet the waking “dying” pain — invoked out of the blissful operation of “living” unconsciousness to assume the proportions of a phantom globe, airless retina and property — so possessed and overshadowed her it seemed she stood now on an acute threshold of the cavern of reality which in itself would never succumb to distraction or disorder (or to attraction and order, technical fury, absolute mould, apple of one’s eye) within its own unpredictable room, unearthly function, blaze….

No wonder as the seal of light was torn, the ornamental atmosphere and curtain rent, that the very tatters and figments of recollection … preconception … seemed to wave and float within and above an essential bareness of conception, glimpsed — for the first incredible time — but this, too, in its inner conviction of reality, was slowly descending into the abstract blaze of solid darkness — immensity of frail distinction.

It was this distinctive night … light … the most curious awareness of self-deception, if self-deception it was, bordering as it did upon the black sail of reality — which cast a dying illumination upon a once familiar (now unfamiliar) series of landscape carved by the axe of the sea, rolling marble of ocean, knife-line of the rivers — iodine and grain of earth. Dying wound of illumination and yet the strange thing was that there emerged a frailty of convertible properties like a healing thread … design … which seemed to endure and outlast every shattered bone or region, stone or age, buried frontier or condition. How (the question arose) to accept such a scale of “dying” colours which seemed to obliterate all its former visionary purposes or motives and, in fact, to subsist upon the uprooted nail or canvas with which it bled and suffered…. It was as if one could point brush, fire palette, rifle carpet, flag, banner, curtain into the blurred shot of place — accumulations of flame and light so brilliant one learnt afresh the “blindness” of the sun; or plaster of cement that one greyed and entered a realm of mists like disconcerting rain, neither landfall nor waterfall but a ghostly mint — treasure— mirage of extinguished one —existential of the rain bow….

NEITHER LANDFALL NOR WATERFALL … but teardrop … existential of the rainbow — black sail upon which or against which one no longer appeared to fly … only to burrow, crawl…. In fact not even burrow, crawl, but cling … indistinct well, spectral wave, current, emotion. Drawn (was it up or down gravity’s blind face?) … held upon the fixed coil and station of the whirlpool … lip … blur … vacancy or eye … window-pane or ledge upon which, as one stood momentarily still within the fastness of space, the globule of the universe trembled and ran. Incredible that such an ancient feature — wellspring, singular tear — survived like indestructible evanescence, fragility, body of feeling whose medium or intangible vessel of premises was always in process of being refurbished or reclaimed within an imperceptible borderline…. Was it north or south, east or west, into which (or out of which) one broke and flew?

The uncertainty of shape or direction — ancient vessel, model of creation, ark or covenant — sprang out of an immaterial conviction, so residual and deeply entrenched (in spite of every material overlapping and formal protest to the contrary) that it acted like a hidden spur as well as naked pole, a dynamic and static concretion to which one surrendered oneself as to a “black” pilot, weathered masthead, phantom of flesh within but beyond the sound of flesh, the echo of self-regard, song of the sirens…. One embraced and was held in turn by this “deaf” mast to which one was truly bound and secured within the elements of distraction, paradoxical structure of liberation, and within a certain undefinable radius of which — acute coherence and conversion of the soul — lay the choirs of vision — sheer tenacity (even profane curiosity) of the “awakened” eye within the latent crash and operation of darkness, sheer relative beam, heavy and light, gravity as well as ironic weightlessness….

Out of this crash of darkness began to emerge one’s “light” craft … billow of the senses: lightning spar … canvas of surf unfurled … in the very teeth … grinding fury, thunder of engines … sea. How to reconcile mouth of the void with technical sail — eye of salvation with lifeline of fury? One was grateful — in the midst of everything — that one had submitted oneself to be nailed to negative anthropomorphic crew (eclipse of sight — or was it sound?) within which one was freed from the self-indulgent tune and frame of disaster. Film upon one’s eye. The shock of seeing one’s helplessness, in all proliferation, outlined and displayed as never before turned the submergence of reality into steadfast captain and ancient member … crew.

ANCIENT MEMBER — CREW…. What a violent contradiction of terms (fate and choice — vocation of unbridgeable consciousness) one relied upon for levels of support …. Or was it stunned erection, reflex of unconsciousness, to which one was truly (and unfathomably) bent and related as to a vanished spirit which still witnessed for community?

These were the two faces — appearing never to compensate but to cancel each other — whose confrontation, nevertheless, involved the birth or issue of operative pilot, soul … darkening climax…. Was this the ideal emergency and commission of fear — one desired above all persons and things — to prompt reaction within the vulgar senses towards uniform restraint, constraint, half-blissful stupor? Or was it an abstract precipitation — pure fact — omission — vacancy — which sustained and provided every composition of duress and sensibility with unpredictable relief ? …

It was as if … moving upon a calm sea or under a calm sky — upon which or within which choice and fate seemed identical — one grew into one’s vessel and crew of self-deception. Mushroom. Umbrella. Madonna of the Becalmed. In a field of glass no longer dark but resplendent …. The loam of the earth was slipping from her — Madonna of the Plough of the Sea —supremely captive, supremely becalmed, stroked by the tiller of the sun…. the sword of the void … the spit of her own clear element…. Spit …. Snarl…. Something fled … vanished …. Wildcat of earthen fury or cultivation of elemental spirit? Involuntary sail of consciousness or voluntary ground of unconsciousness — to uphold her, after all, in total perspective … cruel grace … relief? Madonnaof the Sword and the Sun.

SOMETHING FLED. VANISHED. Wildcat of earthen fury or cultivation of elemental seas and spirits?

Blatant … or instinctive … relationship?

Feminine instrument (investiture and sheath) or masculine paint (community of blood)?

Faces of re-creation, multiform puncture or nebulous brute each thought helplessly (or sought mindlessly) to skin … slay … domesticate … harness … appoint … scratch — patch — captain and shroud of their world.

SOMETHING FLED: headlong plunge, thread of weight …. The elements were stitched into streaming harness of commotion or commanding shock of station.

THE OPERATION WITHIN AND WITHOUT MASTHEAD HAD BEEN TECHNICALLY SUCCESSFUL — and naked pupil — eye of the sword — razor — thrust and severance, cross-section, waiting room — had come alive — primitive sun and reflection — deaf shield, animal mirror … perception of a dying scale which became the essential flash of new faculties within pregnant eye (which was “his” doing, after all) and crumbling pupil (which was her conviction, after all, of the unwilling threshold and conversion of the dramatis personae of the universe).