Work In Progress

Anyone who has ever been in love knows the experiential properties of hell. I've held them in my arms, pinched the spry flesh, and felt the heat of their imprint in bed beside me. Its nefarious charm lay, I think, in the shrinking of the world into a glass of water, a grain of salt, an incredulous look; the glass shatters, she's cross, I melt away. And all that's left is the negative imprint.

 

And now it's gotten so cold. It was Winter before I knew it. In shirt sleeves, on the patio, my cigar hung lazily from my mouth. I had flung the pages open, underlined each word in pencil- "Brutus", "Cassius", "Judas", "ice", "stars", and closing the volume I felt the frigid air pass across my back. Judas. It really is so cold all of the sudden.

 

The wind has my eyes watering already. Through my tears the stars all bleed together. There are only fuzzy constellations in the sky tonight. As I look out at them I think of all the little stars that I can't see-how they no less solidify the shapes that I see unmistakeably, how time must work this way; all the moments in my life spread out in the night only gaining shape as Cassiopeia, Lyra, Crux, Orion...And yet I know the dawn is never far off. The stars will dispense, I'll be face to face with their absence. It'll be morning in no time. Then I won't have to worry about anything.

 

So that's what I have so far...Do you think I'm laying it on too thick with all the Dante stuff?

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Hey, sorry it took so long for the reply...But I like what you have so far, it's very poetic. As for Dante, I guess it's all a question of what you're trying to get out of it. My visceral reaction is that if you're looking for the parallel between a guy having a tough time dealing with a break up and Dante's journey through hell to provide the novel's basic structure then it's going to be sentimental and overwrought no matter what you do...Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. A lot of great books could be characterised that way. So I guess my only admonition would be to go with the flow, but without getting melodramatic.

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It all started with the idea that maybe heaven and hell have no definite space, no physical location-that they exist in a dimension of our own universe but that this dimension is not material in nature, and that as such, we can't physically find them, nor can (death) the state of our physical body be the thing which determines our access to them...But at the same time I think that there are certain cosmic anchors which tether us to certain perceptions, certain modes of thought...In short, certain states of existence...But it must also be the case that there are certain catastrophic moments, moments of shipwreck when you are naked and the sight of shore is lost...Moments when you might be free to access other states...It may well be that the nature of love itself is particularly conducive to such a catastrophe...So, I tend to think that the flip side of love is hell.

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Ok, but I'm still not really sure how you're hoping for it to function in the novel. I mean, I guess it's a compelling enough idea. You can certainly get a reader's attention with it...But what do you plan on doing with it once you have it?

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My backyard never stops for a moment. The grass, the weeds, the brook never stops, the flowerbed survived first frost but then the dog saw to it. The grass grows under foot. It's all in flux, all transmuting at all times. The picnic table is never the same hue two days in a row at this time of year. The same must have been true of when I held Bea; the thoughts in her head, a gesture hardwired in response, so that she turned over whenever she thought of the Scottish Isles; or maybe it wasn't the Scottish Isles but her family's house in Cape Cod...I do know, however, that the flowerbed in her mind must have never stopped for a moment, that the tulips must have grown to maturity, been carried though the yard in the dog's mouth, regrown, been frozen, unthawed, replanted, and picked for my sister's corsage. The flowerbed never stopped moving. And in the end, I think the soil all slipped through my fingers. It must be like trying to figure out a movie that never ends. No, the flowerbed never stopped for a moment.

 

And sitting on the patio, sometimes the afternoons are sunny and fine. I smoke cigar after cigar (mostly churchills), and try to take it all in (an impossible task); until finally, when my back is turned I can close my eyes and see the mint green, the turbid ebb and flow of human misery, my castrated tulips; though when I turn back: the tulips rejuvinated, the grass hay coloured, the dry of Indian summer. I'm a puddle on the ground by the patio furniture.

Reviews

[JRB]

its ok keep trying