The entire reality – that “collective hunch” as Lily Tomlin put it – is “really” a sea we have created to see the ripples of TheReal in; as if the world were a mirror for the wind, the leaves the bright flash of its hair, the grass the cool sussuration of its skin. It makes itself up in us.
(All is vanity – actually a vanity, a mirror for the toilette of the unseen).
TheReal and reality cannot exist apart; they are what Romeo and Juliet mistook themselves for/became.
Because with every moment of the Thing, the Colour Out of Space, the Haunting of Hill House… there is always a morning after: a Midas who cannot bear to see his daughter wear yellow, but a Midas who all the same knows he “has” normality when he sees it interrupted by memory. A Lazarus who cannot sleep. But who nonetheless continues. A Schliemann standing at a little soiree, staring at the clean, buffed nails adorning his hand hard-edged with calluses won from shovel after shovel of Troy’s dirt… his heartbeats metronome the moments between explanations of the difference between Paris and Paris.
This is a love note – a little Cyrano deBergerac pen pal piece – from reality to TheReal: we love you.
Every time we take out the trash, we hope the bag will rip and some impossible piece of an artifact will fall out, half a crown, a map, a feather made of night. A blue bottle that sloshes full but weighs nothing. A snail shell in which you can see the night sky.
Anything.
We love you. We cannot live without you. We need not. Like Morrison’s Beloved, you return for us. Like a boomerang, nicked with the blood of some fantastic prey.
Every last breath is a waiting room for deus ex machina; a lobby always full before a door that might yet open. A thirst that might bring rain.
In our secret hearts, we always hope that the answer to “What now?” will be your face.
You are the wind beneath our world.
You are the glance that need not speak.
You are (,) beloved.
