Category Archives: ECHOES

Conversations with another – 6 Beneath the Verdigris

Sirene – Gaston Hoffman 1926

‘She can’t hear me, and I cannot understand her.’

‘Who, lad?’

‘The woman of the sea. I see her in my dreams. She writhes and wiggles beneath the blue, seaweed wrapped around her lithe hips, sparkling like a million pennies slipping through my fingers.’

The old sailor studied him beneath the brim of his weather-beaten hat.

‘Lad, are ye struck with fever? The sea has got to ye. The ocean can play tricks on a man’s mind, son. Best be going below deck and resting those weary thoughts.’

‘No,’ he said, his eyes fixed upon the black horizon. ‘I think I will stay a while. The moon shimmers, and tonight I’m sure she will rise again from the depths. I can hear her distant song. I don’t know her words, but it is beautiful.’

The old sailor shifted uneasily.

‘Oh, aye. Them sirens have got ye all right. I canna stop ye from staying, but make sure ye come down soon. And nae more talk of her in front of the other shipmen. They’ll be spooked enough without tales of sea-women creeping into their dreams.’

The boy smiled, though his heart had already drifted far beyond the ship.

And soon enough, she came.

First, there was only the song.

It slipped across the water so softly that he thought the wind had begun to sing. The waves began to shimmer beneath the moon, silver spilling over their dark crests. From somewhere below, a pale shape moved through the blue-black depths.

Her smile ascended before the rest of her.

Then came the shimmer of her skin, and the graceful curve of her tail as it circled through the waves. Seaweed clung to her like a gown woven by the ocean itself. She rose and fell with the tide, never quite touching the world he knew.

The melody deepened.

It was the voice of the ocean, like waves breaking against distant shores, of moonlight trembling upon the water. Each note seemed to wind itself around his heart, drawing him nearer to the rail.

She was saying something.

Her lips formed words he could not understand, words from some ancient place beneath the verdigris depths. Yet somehow, he felt their meaning. There was longing in them. Loneliness. A question carried across the water between two creatures who could see one another, but could never truly speak.

‘Who are you?’ he whispered.

She tilted her head.

For one breathless moment, the song stopped.

The sea grew still.

And beneath the moon’s cold, silvery light, she smiled at him as though she had heard every word before descending beneath the verdigris.

Conversations with another  – 5. Witch of God  

“The Witch” (1893) by John Maler Collier

Her footsteps, dusty and worn through the rocky precipice to her hut trudged tired after the long journey. No matter how much grace she had given and asked for ,the wild herbs were bitter to the taste and just enough to remind her that no matter how she tried to escape him, God was watching. And though he always protected her, she felt the lessons, harsh and unjust. Many disagreements did they have over the years. Long silences and torn apart words. Many times, she looked up at the sky and threw up her fists. But not once did she take down the crucifix from the mantle. Love and Anger for her service and the punishments of others. Her fingernails torn to shreds. Her skin browned from the sun with textured lines in her frown. The gate heavy in her return with thistles and screaming felines at her heels. Their teeth tearing into the vermin she threw at them, ripping apart fur from skin as the blood stained the stone floor.  

The words hours before sickening her mind. 

‘This is what your practicing arts have brought you. The devil at your doorstep my child.’ ‘You must repent for your dabbling in the unknown. You must confess your sins and leave your anger at the church door’ 

‘Had I not done so priest, would I have passed through this threshold? You speak to me of repent? What would you know of a woman’s suffering, hiding amongst your icons?’ 

‘Child you are in blasphemous tone to your Priest. I am God’s voice in this house. Come not with your pride and choose humility. Come to God naked and bare. Let him punish your sins so you may be cleansed and leave the conjuring to the unholy women lest you become one.’  

‘Shall I allow God to thrash my soul so I may preserve it? Shall I let him wonder into my mind with a weak and unadmirable conscience? One where I will fade into obscurity?’ 

‘ If humility is adversary with hubris, then you have no place in this church nor shall you ever find peace. Go now as I cannot help you. I see your mark carried on your wrist. That of the eclipse. You have opened the door to Satan and invited him in.’ 

‘If Satan gives me free will and allows my suffering to end, then so be it. I came here to find love and I have found yet more punishment. I will do what my soul commands. Shall it be with God? On my terms. Shall it be with his fallen child? Again, on my terms. One thing priest, you must know that you cannot command a daughter of the moon. For my true god sees my cold heart and loves me with it. Takes this body at midnight and responds with heated tongue through my spine. This is where I find God. A God of whom a name asks not for punishment but for caresses of passion and true love. If this be my God, then I be damned and my feet never to pass through this arch. My face shunned for a love from God I was never given. May he forever abandon me as I pray with sage and incense to his crucifix. And mock his agents on earth for they do not have any knowing of who God truly is.’ 

The dim light from the candlelight flickered softly as she lay on the iron bed. The hanged man upside down from her vision. The cats curled at her feet, hungry no more as she slowly drifted into a slumber with blood on her hands.  

Conversations with Another – 4. Whispers through the Halls

In some homes, whispers can come of a silent kind. Through the exchanges of gestures, a glance, a quiet understanding through the eyes. And some whispers of a lesser kind come as a means of understanding. To assist in the emotional awkwardness of certain situations. To comfort in thought of agreement and to decipher what is not readily understood. Three women in service, witness to what must never be uttered.

Shuffling through the swing door, heavy work skirts and a pristine apron bobs around with the hair cap in nervous movement. The youngest and newest servant, jittery, no longer able to contain her fear from all the unhinged emotional outbursts coming from the Lady Grace’s room.

1.‘I can’t bear the ‘ousehold this way Ma’am.’ In hush whispered the younger to her Servant Madame in charge.

‘ The parents keeping as nothing, while them lost all smiles from their faces. And she! She’s a wildling, howling in the night. Scratching at her skin, tearing those fine white nightshifts. She’s harrowed them folks, she has!’

2.‘If you do not contain yourself, you will need to leave as whence you came but months before. There is no room for idle gossip in service of this household. You will need to be strong of mind and quiet of tongue. Close your eyes and shut your ears. This is what is required of this household and why it pays so handsomely. This is not new, and the parents know how to sustain.’

3. ‘ Madame is right younglin’. Best not repeat your chitterin’ outside this door. We’ve seen it all before.’

‘ I will admit though Madame, younglin’s not wrong. The Lady miss is worse than ever before. Those shifts, torn to pieces, bloody and like. Wailing like a mad animal she is. Isn’t it time we brought Father Thomas? Fearin, shy might harm someone and all!’

2. ‘HUSH NOW both of you. I will take the miss her breakfast if you are so fearing of her. Have you no shame? She is suffering. Not like you nor I when we feel. She is not of this world. She never has been.’

3. ‘I’ll say! She’s something else all right!’

1.‘Demon is what she is!’

A young maid’s face turned from fear of the woman in the room to the woman before her. Squashed between palm and thumb, lips pursed so as not to speak and hair tugged with the other hand.

2. ‘Say one more word. Just one more and you will be back shoveling pith! Now both of you stop with this and get to the Lord and Lady’s breakfast. Useless mouths the both of you!’

And as the older madam softly opened the door to a darkened dank room she saw the wet eyes of the young miss, through rat licked hair and crumpled body in the corner of the room. Naked and shivering with bloody scratches she made herself. Broken glass and a torn-up mattress strewn across the room. Here is where the devil comes out to play. Within the body of a beauty. Within the soul of kindness. Here is where evil is madness and madness salvation…

‘Miss Grace. I Have brought you some breakfast.Come now child.’

Conversations with Another – 3. Dusty Mirror

There you are again.

Looking at me from behind the mirror!

I see you! Don’t think I don’t know you hide in the shadows, waiting for me to smile at you. There you are softly smiling back. And here I am before you one more time in this reflection. This glass pain of love entrapped. Love ,which is not here, yet not there. Not present, yet not absent. One which is as ambiguous as the stain-colored leaves from an outside garden that does not exist.

Did we look into each other’s eyes that day on the train in silence, let the tears speak for our clumsy hearts? Did we wipe the smile off our faces for fear of longing one more day? One more moment in that soft eternal beauty, forever to be lost?

Lingering on our sweet honey flavored lips. Lips we cannot taste. Lips we close with words unsaid, for fear of love. Fear of pain. Fear of life. Fear of Loss.

So here we sit my companion. My quiet love. You in the shadows while I talk and smile at your charming presence. Sing you songs you will never hear. Write you words you will never read. Declare a love, unmet. Unwanted and burdensome. Here I sit in the hush of the firelight combing and braiding the ebony locks that fall past my breast. Turning slightly to the left and let the candlelight show you the way, while your imaginary kisses fall like dust on my neck and shoulders. Here I am with the lines growing deep in the ridges of my brow and the hands turning into themselves while I wait. The black in my hair turning into a pale shade of remembrance. Here I am dust itself while your love grows ever more impossible to grasp.

 Here I am again!

Looking at you from behind the mirror !

Conversations with Another – 2. Diagnosis of a Star

2. [ Diagnosis of a Star]

´Where does she go to Doctor. Here but empty. Where is she present, if not in her body, her mind ? Here in this place where she has no one. Why has she not remembered my name. My face?’

‘She did not respond as she has gone to where she always goes when unseen. Somewhere between her heart and her soul, broken from the words that spill her being, inked in lonely fingertips like witnesses of confession. Too much, too little. Quiet, unassuming and barely there. Yet, loud in her absence. Fraying as the velvet that once caressed her skin. Not angered, not enraged, yet subtle in her wavering. A weakness to those who cannot understand yet forged in deadened silence, like the ash after a fire softly covering the snow in dusty presence. There she is. There she will be, fighting for dignity, in the most delicate of ways. Non-verbal, ever tragic yet stoic in her smile. She will not show but she will write and thus imprint her passions to a virgin page of nothingness. A melody unplayed, a memory lingering. Most likely my friend, her soul took over her mind and shut down to her heart and love unrequited. A ghost of herself, waiting to be heard. And until that day, she will remain a catatonic star waiting to be seen, light years away. Posthumously, gloriously and you will long to hold that light if for one more moment. Sadly, she will no longer be as she has already lost herself to you. I’m sorry my friend but some women love so loudly in silence they become deaf from their own echoes. And this is not your fault, merely an incapacity to understand the mind of such a delicate creature. Her soul was fractured long before you knew her.’

Conversations with Another – 1. Ghosts

Sometime in the afterlight, where the soft embers brought a moment of warmth, a conversation of truth took place. One where the words were not enough and yet needed to suffice. Here the twists and turns took on a new path of life. A new walk into the unknown. There where the truth hides like a beast behind the shadows, waiting to attack before it is seen. There, where the other side is the same and one with the self.

Yet,searching in agony for one true identity.

And so, the conversation started with a wrinkled brow and a judgement in tone. From two who have known each other since birth. You could say sisters, rivals, other halves or shadows. You could say, mirrors of self! Ghosts. One writing and giving words, the other reading. One erasing the words before they could be understood, the other frustrated at her shadow.

‘You always do that. You always show me and then tear up the page, come and go, be and not be. Why?’

‘I am there when it matters, I give and respond. I bring and don’t ask. Isn’t that enough sister?’

‘ Why don’t you ask? Why don’t you speak , or yell or scream? Why must you keep me guessing?’

‘It is not my nature to yell or to make known, you must see for yourself. I am here. Always. Is it that I clean the table too fervently?  Change my sheets daily ? Is it that I erase my words from my pages or tear them entirely? How long have I been writing sister ? How long have I been doing this ?’

‘But people will think you are mad.’

‘So let them! Do you think I am mad?’

‘Yes. But in a good way.’

‘There is no good or bad way sister. There just is. So if I am mad, are you also mad?’

‘I can’t keep up with you! You are insufferable. Everything always changes. Your words are here one minute, gone the next. Your images, on the mantle then in the fire. Why do you do this? Why do you erase yourself again and again?’

‘What is my name sister?’

‘Aetherealis’

‘And you know what that means, don’t you?’

‘ Of the air. I know.’

‘And like the air, ephemeral. For what more permanent in this life than words that are no longer visible, no longer tangible. Words , my sister ,that can be retrieved, make one grow tired. They are there on the ready, to be diagnosed, cut open and sliced into a million pieces until they lose all meaning. I have been doing this all my life. Word forming, building, shaping, twisting and tweaking, creating and destroying. Not out of indecision, not out of insecurity, not out of madness to hide or show, but to perfect and eliminate anything of the past that could mean an untidy sentence, trapped in meaning no longer worthy. It is called deduction darling sister. Deduction of the past into a future of simplicity where the only thing between the soul and existence is the body of words one lays down, in ink, in type, in speech and in disappearance. Here, is where the haunting begins. The truth opens, the frightened run and the worthy break. Here is where, my task in this world proves the innocent a liar and the liar a saint. The lover, a thief ! And the thief, a mere hungry soul that would say anything for a morsel. Here, where words take the place of action and actions become lies ready to hide or run. This is my legacy sister. To awaken the mind into question. To mirror the madness and see within. What haunts humans more is not the other but what is present within them that shakes their reality. This is what I have always done. And tomorrow, these words, again will disappear.’