... The magic, the feeling, the sense, the life - whatever it damned well is - I feel it filling up first in my head, for that is where all things must begin in this upturned and holy vessel.
It fills me from the top and I am full of thoughts and so many words, so much ardent philosophising and theorising. I become a river of earnest young theories, a constantly babbling noise of poetry and free, unsung verse - it is, you see, monsoon season. The rains of life, of sense, of whatever, rain down: torrents of it rushing into my cold head and filling me toe to top. All this must surely spill out onto page and paper, into my husband’s halfturned ears. And so it does. And it is a glorious relief when those banks are finally breached, word flowing, unconstrained, as tipped ink.
The feeling, the magic - whatever it bloody well is - dares not taper off and vanish once its limpid matter spills over those banks. It is, instead, absorbed down through my neck into the hollow grounds of my chest. The cavern is now breached, but the most extreme of my forces, pressures and temperatures are there to meet it; the waters immediately evaporate, turning into steam upon first contact. But, O! Where can this steam, this feeling, this life, whatever, escape to! There is only one way out and that is through my irate mouth. All of a sudden, the riverine abstraction has made of me a hot spring. Every emotion hits at the walls of my breast and I find that I have anger aplenty; my seduction, too, erupts; rampant joy flings upwards, scalding the air like a manic screech. All of these, my elemental furies, throwing their steaming fists against the world, against you, against me.
This amount of energy can never last long. It is gone almost at the exact point of release. The rage is soon spent and the pressure that once rose so high now trickles coyly back down, forking into two directions: along both arms and towards my hands.
My hands (these hands). The life, the sense - whatever the f ck it is - now buzzes at my fingertips and I am forced to wield whatever tool is compelled into its electromagnetic grasp. Graphite, chalk and charcoal are the ephemeral instruments that are so often found vibrating across one sheet or another, connecting the lines that ensnare some poor flower or shore or bird that is waving in the field of my vision. Yet more pages - page upon page, and sometimes canvas, too - are filled in a heightening frenzy as the sense, the feeling, the life, whatever, is channelled through these dread hands. And then, suddenly, they are exhausted. They cannot hold the force of it for too long - they are overcome with weakness, becoming limp at my sides. So off it slinks, down into my womb.
We will not speak, here, of sacred things that happen down in the happy, tortured womb.
Days pass, I emerge from a sanguine daze as the magic, the sense, the life - oh, whatever! - passes my hipbones to meet in my thighs. Now, it has taken on a viscous quality that trickles further still. Trickles slowly into my bones, sinew, flesh and all, reaching my bent knees, making my calves sticky and curiously sweetsmelling. At first, my lower limbs are so thick with the substance, the life, the magic, whatever, that I must move heavily to a rhythm - God, any thumping rhythm! - that will unstick me before it is too late and I'm consumed, hip down. As it reaches my ankles, as it coats each tiny bone within my feet, I find that I have been in fever, swaying and stomping and sweating all along. I have found a way to move through this and it has begun to feel more like resurrection than mere ritual.
The magic, the feeling, the sense, the life - whatever it really is - has moved through my entire body, filled my whole upended vessel, brim to foot. 'What is this,' I have asked myself each time I feel the cycle beginning afresh - starting in my head, working its way through chest, throat, hands, womb, legs and all. 'What is this and why is this and how is this.'
Note the absence of question mark, the plenitude of declarative. Something primordial in me knows that it need never ask what why and how. All I know is who I am, who it makes me, what it unmakes in me. I know it as the way seasons show up around the year; it is the earth that roves slowly around the sun, the way bulbs wilt and spring eternal, seas run shuttles of rock against sand, flocks murmur across the same incomprehensible migratory paths over thousands of years. It is the truth and it is perfected in its very nature; it is always creating, turning, and always turning out something new from this ancient string of prayers we may stoop to call a soul.
It is, it is, it is...