Lesser Gods, Trumpets, Sights and Technical Divination.

A Confounded Letter after being inside.

 

Silence and little insider jokes about sizes and performances. Now less he sleeps in strange maggot beds and wears grotesque masks to gauge what sleep or dreams are had. No secrets from anyone now that the secret is out. Pipe procedures that take away all diginity afterwards.

Wondering about being guilty even though you know you are not. I can't imagine why you would do that. I cant believe you did that. Takes your mind around and around on a thoughtful passage through past times. Whilst in the institution the inmates wish forever for the clear high air. The high goal and the virgin path. Wish for the briny smell of rotting sea carcases popping with black flies. Wish for the Spring walk through rather than in the mountains. In this way you have a goal to test against these medical techniques rather than the festering thoughts that only seek to fatefully awake the unfaithful.

Taste now the opposites, the sterile and the clear, the crisp hospital sheet or the even crisper snow of the last winter still lingering in the coloured corries of what it was like. Climb high to fill yourself up with diginity once more.

Explore the outside as the inside has been with less systematic sympathy. Sweep away the desperation and relax those lines that are now sculpted in with fault lines of their own.

Be humble before the sight that greets, before the legend of the hollow mountain. The sky of forever remembering. Be moreso than the journey recent down the caverns of your own innards.

The practioners ask the protagonist impertinent questions in their professionalism. The protagonist proposes seeing as a way to live rather than watching what may or may not happen in worried anticipation.

Walk upon the traveller looking unfearful at what is only a ghost of what it was. A slip of a child taking the dangerous ways of the sky heights as fun and therapy before it becomes too late with age.

Waste long moments and hours watching what soars over this and that looking far better than you ever did. Have your destination set as not destination before you come surprised to the wishing tree high on the mountain. Finding the riches of imagination in copper blue green coins left for thoughts. Each one a trouble concerned. Each one a little bit of time spend hoping. The trumpet sounding clear in the air away from crowding and lonliness in crowds.

Author's Note

The Wishing Tree is in Argyle & Bute, Scotland.

Reviews

[holly]

Your language is so beautiful: " the briny smell of rotting sea carcasses popping with black flies." Who would ever think to describe the action of flies on a corpse as "popping"? Of course, you did, with your painterly eye and made me see and appreciate it (though I have to admit I'm not too anxious to smell it). I loved the imagery of crisp white hospital linens, snow and the long climb to reclaim lost dignity. But I always come back to the language. I think I've told you before that it's like reading James Joyce - you could drown in the language.

[...]

. oh ... that picture ... is one of my favourite pictures ever ... you've captured such a beautiful moment ... and then these words ... they have so many beautiful moments in them ... so many beautiful ways to triumph over unnecessary dilemmas ... so many paths to a beautiful and meaningful life ... this is a dose of hope and faith that i needed more than i can possibly express in words ... thank you so much for this post, monsieur ... i always learn so much from you ...

[emmajoy]

Every time I read one of your posts, letters, I feel as if i've been allowed into a very private world, this is more than private than most. It's as if you've been both the torturer and the tortured. The scale between the hyper hygience of hospital versus the stench of real life is so vast, it's cruelly abnormal and the longing for normality just screams out of your moving description.

The Wishing Tree has much to answer for .. but it does and will ..

[roarke]

It's about life, it's more than one thing, more than one dimension and it's always above us, waiting.

amazing how you can coax the words to reveal this. Excellent.

[Gandré]

I sense this is about surgery and pain and anxiety.. I liked this - Taste now the opposites, the sterile and the clear, the crisp hospital sheet or the even crisper snow of the last winter still lingering in the coloured corries of what it was like------------ because it is philosophical, we need the duality, we need the one in order to feel the other.. and it was wonderfully lyrical..
those letters are always bittersweet, it is the mood what they create.. this is the Kenn Simm-experience, it is unique.

[Emily B]

wishing you all the wishes that your heart could ever desire, you deserve the best that life offers . . . your words are beautiful and harsh and wonderful

[SM Davis]

The reader is reading something so intimate and painful...and yet, cannot take my eyes away for the beauty of the imagery here. Being one place, the worst of all for the protagonist to be and wishing and dreaming of being in the place that he calls home. Nature...in all it's harshness and glory... as opposed to laying on the crisp white hospital linens.

Again, you've displayed your gift. 100 peaches.

[E. L. Foley]

Delightful use of stream of consciousness. It flowed well, with good use of sound and I at least think I know what was going on in the story. Strange and unnerving and lovely.