Blue Undercolor
Blue Undercolor
A blueness; a kind of undercolor he could not place, whatever word there was to describe that particular blueness. Rather, it was a presence underneath that gave the hill a haze near purple as though you could see the water of the earth pushing to rain upward from the rocks into the sky.
Again he felt the need for words as though in not being able to describe what he saw, this was trapped with him. And more. For what he could not name, even to himself, the shades, the textures: the deepness there of the hill,as though even the color itself had depth apart from the hill -- the roughness, but not harsh, not unpleasant, a bumpiness but smooth, no, soft to the touch so that if only his fingers could move up and down over the surface, he could feel them working, feel with his mind what they would tell him were he able to tender the surface as of a bolt of cloth. Only it was not the knowing that he could never caress the mountain as a whole, for he knew well the aspect of its parts, it was this aching to name somehow within him the feeling he knew of the color and the hill as though not to be able to say what he felt now barred him from further feeling, and seeing. As there was a redness, too, coursing through, not spread out, not diffuse but in veins somehow. (He smiled.) Like blood through the hill, and the hill alive.
Alive? Beating? Was there motion he could not see? Was there breathing, a gentle rise and fall he could not see because he could not be still? (He held himself quiet.) Or was it alive with time he could never possess? Time long beyond his span, beyond his imaginings, where a beat would be years and the gentle rise and fall of breath the movement of a thousand ages. An evening gone.
And blueness in veins, too, large, distended with blood in the fullness of a breast painful with milk. As hers had been. And he had traced the blue with his fingers and felt the softness and the hardness, the milk quivering to stream forth, and the bumpiness, the smooth roughness of the veins different from the surface only part of it, and the fine gold and brown hair that fell over him as he lay. For she had given him suck long after he could run to touch her.
Before he could name.
"Jess," she had called him and he heard the wind, but he could call her nothing.
A blueness; a kind of undercolor he could not place, whatever word there was to describe that particular blueness. Rather, it was a presence underneath that gave the hill a haze near purple as though you could see the water of the earth pushing to rain upward from the rocks into the sky.
Again he felt the need for words as though in not being able to describe what he saw, this was trapped with him. And more. For what he could not name, even to himself, the shades, the textures: the deepness there of the hill,as though even the color itself had depth apart from the hill -- the roughness, but not harsh, not unpleasant, a bumpiness but smooth, no, soft to the touch so that if only his fingers could move up and down over the surface, he could feel them working, feel with his mind what they would tell him were he able to tender the surface as of a bolt of cloth. Only it was not the knowing that he could never caress the mountain as a whole, for he knew well the aspect of its parts, it was this aching to name somehow within him the feeling he knew of the color and the hill as though not to be able to say what he felt now barred him from further feeling, and seeing. As there was a redness, too, coursing through, not spread out, not diffuse but in veins somehow. (He smiled.) Like blood through the hill, and the hill alive.
Alive? Beating? Was there motion he could not see? Was there breathing, a gentle rise and fall he could not see because he could not be still? (He held himself quiet.) Or was it alive with time he could never possess? Time long beyond his span, beyond his imaginings, where a beat would be years and the gentle rise and fall of breath the movement of a thousand ages. An evening gone.
And blueness in veins, too, large, distended with blood in the fullness of a breast painful with milk. As hers had been. And he had traced the blue with his fingers and felt the softness and the hardness, the milk quivering to stream forth, and the bumpiness, the smooth roughness of the veins different from the surface only part of it, and the fine gold and brown hair that fell over him as he lay. For she had given him suck long after he could run to touch her.
Before he could name.
"Jess," she had called him and he heard the wind, but he could call her nothing.
Labels: differences in size and time, early childhood memories, images, textures
posted by TAWK Press at 9:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home