Thursday, January 26, 2006

 

My Grotty Chambers

The things that I pile up in my secret place are not saved for just anybody to look at I now realise. It is clear that many people do not appear to see the things the way that I see them. I have in the back of my mind, whilst keeping myself busy and occupied with important work, really, sub-consciously I mean, I have been marking time, waiting for a certain innocent and not too critical person with a sufficient left of centre turn of mind and an inclination towards the outlandish, the type with a good appetite for rummaging and digging discriminately through all things obscure. They will come in and inspect my mountain of things, dig out the hidden collectables that I have piled here with me in the grotty chambers.

Whether my things are suitable or not, about the right subject or not, contain decipherable language or turns of phrases to the prospective viewer or not, I can only guess at. All I can say is that I have collected and stored these things here and I continue collecting them, not unlike the way a small furry animal scuttling across the forest floor searches for correctly shaped sticks for its artfully sculptured dam construction. For then, when the visitor comes, a visitor that dreams of good stuff and intelligent finds, then I will be able to rest and relax, sit and read a paper, let them climb up my mountain, inspect the hills and just generally wander around while I glance over pointing towards them now and again.

Each time I complete a section I sit gazing at the vast accumulation of items, wondering if the mole will come and if not that's OK because I have all these wonderful experiences to look back on, don't I.

I have all sizes, all shapes and colours, you’ll see, some so obscure so that you will no doubt disparage me and maybe take offence. Pick one up and I will tell you all about it. If you were to open one up and look at its various sections you might find your imagination drifting, your hair loosing gravity and falling to the ground, but that’s OK. You will then ask me questions about where to go now and what happens at the end? Don't worry about that I say and urge you to pick up another one and another.

When you come back down from the mountain I will introduce myself, and then you will to me and after these preliminary rituals we can engage in a proper conversation. We can return language back to itself. We can feverously prepare words, make up sentences and pour the finished lines into our hungry mouths. We can find the best words and mix them together. We can take the best sayings and keep them for ever. We can dive around in search of the correct responses. We could travel years and not be bothered, cross the continents with not one penny on us!

Caught out as if I were the fake that I feared you thought I might be, I then begin grasping at straws, fighting against a slippery bank. My feet slide on a large rock and wash me down into a vast river stream, the current taking me away into a deep blue sea. I swallow gallons as I try to scrabble up the slopes of the ocean floor. You cry out that you don’t understand, drowning, hands thrashing about in the murky water, twelve fathoms down and away.

You hand it to me and I hand it back, insisting, earnestly pointing to try another instead and this time with great reluctance you peal off the seal, open it up and look in. It would greatly satisfy me to see you flipping through the pages with a frenzied curiosity, but instead your claws rasp at the edges with sudden animosity.




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