Wilson Harris - The Waiting Room

THE OPERATION HAD BEEN TECHNICALLY SUCCESSFUL — and though the progress one face made towards the other (slice of darkness towards pinpoint of light) appeared like a voyage of immaterial consolidation, it was equally consistent with a focus of flitting or submerged, even subservient, members of one body sometimes dense and reflective, streaming glass; sometimes bordering upon native crowd and crouch — the brute soul of solipsis: and if indeed “he” (the scaffolding of illusion she erected) appeared now to be in process of freeing her within a melting body, spiriting her towards him across a void of conception, deck, seal, lip of the abyss — it was because her fluttering breath became his flag of recension within capital and hieroglyph of flesh.

And his fluttering breath in turn — so curiously and indissolubly nailed to hers — could not fail to signal the community of herself in another raining and moving light of infinite sharpness allied to flight and dispersal, a crumpled knife or ball of flesh, a rag to be worn for its ultimate edge and frailty of condition. And this — in the very act of its being discarded, consigned to the domestic rubbish heap, as it were — served to wipe the monument of her eyes … clean …. Misconception of god … man … beast. It was a whisper, half-prayer, half-curse, which crossed her lips like fracture or paint. Blessing invoked as well as omen recalled. How had she once tricked herself into believing that he had been nothing from the very beginning but her tool and plaything?

TOOL. She shuddered with the gesture of one coveted and disrobed by an artist of death whom she had created at the heart of obsession: as if she had so habituated herself to manipulating him to mechanical perfection, erosive design — technical spirit, blood — that it was she who became addicted to his ground of nothingness — derelict machinery and salvage of response … serial puppet. Ironical master, passive mistress. Unseen hand shaped by and shaping the grind of the elements. Craft of possession and dispossession. It seemed now the pregnant compass, waiting room, she occupied — strewn by the ruined poles and messengers of love — had been freed and inscribed by him, after all, within and upon accumulative agency (material of destiny) so that, in clinging to him as to a bank of emotion, she grew to wait upon him — as upon the mill of god — for the denigration of all impoverishment and force — even if he were still her heraldic plaything … swine … signal load: and thus became the cargo and crew of what he was — minutiae of dense participation (representative divinity), terrifying oracle — degenerate snout and transcendental grain, heart of wood supporting him, since it discerned itself to be part and parcel of every involuntary member of his singing frame in a deaf universe.

Dr. Sage to Susan. Penelope. Circe. SOMETHING FLED. Shattered log-book. Jigsaw of the affections….

It was a curious vessel — mnemonic device — within the medium of which each “face” clung to the other like unwitting companions of ageless community. She it was who had descended into (or risen out of) his “deaf” crew and all things now appeared to have been wound into him as though to a voice above and below which exercised one soul of conviction. Resonance…. Bond…. Thing …. It was the only thread of ascent and descent into the hold of creation she knew to prompt him to bear the echoing coil of “herself” she drew like the snake of time in itself around “him”.

Thing …. And he knew himself truly bound … enmeshed in her wild close plea and spirit as he fled … to the greatest operative distance imaginable: the leash upon himself grew into such a mechanical fiend of proportion he dared to lean as never before (without actually falling) upon the abyss of invention and confront the technical blast and hollow within which she stood … mistress of the skull, “blind” socket.

They were now inextricably involved with the “dead” choirs of vision they had inflicted upon each other — tied together by one insensible crew of fate: one apparent vessel of flight through which they chose … struggled to escape from each other — he from the chain of lust she had ground into him until he grew aware how he still conceived it his sole harness and protection — she from the sovereign role and animal conversion with which he had invested her until she grew aware how she still conceived it her maternal shell … womb of fruition…. Thus it was that their very state of brutal relation began to usher in the fantastic irony of a common flesh.

For the implement (or substitute) they shared had become a secret transmission of energies (masked from and yet involved in the structure of each other) — energies they wished both to contain and set free within menaces which drew them to wrestle with each other in the heart of a fearful and apparent immunity from, and yet fearful and apparent attachment to, the instrument of their condition.

Mast of love, half-animal, half-human (saddle of earth, car of sky) — mnemonic cloud—“ground” of flight … compass of origins — convergence upon “concrete” travail — flesh — THING….

As if all one’s nature had been seized by a phenomenon of explosive self-containment, undivided area of tension but broken tyranny of response, contraction and exposure on one hand, relief and submission on the other, merciful unawareness and merciless awareness of a fleet ally, within which to sound and digest an essential stroke of duty and conception which bound one still to the fortunes and fortress of the past, in order to hold one and release one in the identical drill of the present from a most burdensome prison, perspective, monumental evasion of reality, fixture and administration of the gulf, insensible clasp….

Common flesh …. Instinctive bond like a great tightening … valley of constraint … singing in one’s ears…. Had the phenomenal mechanism of one’s world, fathom, hearing aid, sounding line, truly struck the shell of recollection, echo and choir of elements, macrocosm one had never dreamt existed in the wave-length of silence?

The “waiting” room — part-present, part-past, part-future, it seemed — was falling through the dust of space, axe of memory, chopping sea, flying chip or vessel whose strain, leash, trough and course had become participle of its own crust and loaf — headless plunge … ocean … devouring perspective, joint, ground (mill of the gods), “vanished” species, felled season.

MOUTH OF THE VOID…. Shroud of “subjective” fate torn by the irony and compulsion of freedom: two edged sword, teeth, which in exercising (while appearing to uphold every reinforcement and mistress of nature such as … mute skull … beloved flesh) sang for the first pointed incredible time, it seemed, out of its round and garment which had long appeared to demolish every miraculous bone and horn of protest in sheer animal voluptuousness: sang for the first incredible pointed time, it seemed; and one was drawn by the skinof the vortex into the other ’ srentand beauty of consciousness ….

Susan Forrestal stroked the curious horns of the antelope upon the wall of the room. They seemed to twist and wind their way through the palms of her hand as if they were intent on plucking her from their living grave and vortex. The sensation drew her into his arms again: the man she had loved who had abandoned and betrayed her a long time ago. Was it ten years or as many centuries ago? It was his gift which stood upon the wall like blades of water.