Borderline Cosmology

1 May

The brain is amazing. Rain in the morning whilst I am sat looking out on the harbour, chugging on my roll up, gazing out onto fata morgana. It has become typical for me to be here, doing this. You could probably set your clock to my appearing against the half moon regency views, back turned against the civilised world. And so here, on a Tuesday begging for spring, I noticed the light blow a chalky dark ink through the cloud armada. I don’t know if anyone else found the moment exceptional, only my own internal reaction to the moment. The mood caused a domino of memories, each one absorbing the faint clarity of the last, until I was led along a trail of crumbs that were all my own making - strange, past to present.

Today, is a Friday, and I wish I had woken to a country alight with bonfires and dirt rituals, our divine energies slow motion dancing under the afternoon moon. Later on, I’ll take a walk to my familiar perch and cast a glance over the horizon, just in the case an orange smoke is signalling me across the coastline. Given the prospect of such celebrations, I figured it a good time to write you.

A broken mirror searching for a stable reflection. The trouble with broken mirrors is, like glass, they will cut the skin and cause sores. Other people tend to keep a distance. Only the brave and similarly broken dare step forward. Shards like memories and events, traumas and tribulations, woven in the owl light. Wild shapes that feel easy like a blink, but impossible to comprehend. I think of those easily mocked faith finders, middle aged divorcees turned self helpers, newly pretty at the expense of a knife and hot bill. Life is like that for some of us, somehow uncomfortable, no matter the situation. Unreliable narrators of our own lives. I guess it doesn’t matter, it’s all going down the chute anyway. My cynicism is wasted these days. A retired weapon, ineffective defence against the powers that be. The Roman Empire is crumbling, again. Yes, yes, the paranoiacs were telling the truth. But paranoia doesn’t carry the same weight of currency as it did twenty years ago. The truth is out there, but I’m here, by the sea, and no one cares. Inside this modest ex-council flat, a fortress for my kin, dashed walls to ward off the wolves. This is the price of personal progression. A slow worm suicide, a naked snake shedding. We play, the two cats and I, with our familiar other. We spell and sing and search in an ever shifting room.

I have learnt this, my abstract reader. Life unstable will leave marks unwanted. Rolling stones carry more than moss. The bruise of youth will reveal itself an open sore with age. Yet, there is hope. I have shaken myself free of the pollution and stood bare toward the horizon line. My hands are old and broken, twice the age of my face. In my palm, I see a soft boy with knives as eyes, collared in leather, hands broken and twisted at the root. Mirrors are wicked indeed, but it’s good to see what's really there, as opposed to what one convinces the self of being. Crumb trails lead backwards to a red squelching womb. This, in my newly formed utero, is where I have found the triangles and base eights of my teenage psychosis. Like time capsules, they are untouched. My borderline cosmology, my psychic intuition, it has all sharpened with age. Life by the coast has brought with it noise cancellation. I only hear the voices that chatter internally, and no one disturbs us. My familiars are aware. She will join in a conversation when the moment is right, and the cats will crow and rev. You see, now, we are all together. A chorus. The chorus I refused to write. It sings to me and I sing back. Ghosts, spirits, vibrations, orbs, deviations, and more.

Closer to the truth cuts closer to the bone, and for sure the absence of distractions can feel like walking naked into the snow just to feel exactly how cold the air is. It’s cold. But my family counter the temperature of my reflection with a great flame. Each night entwined in our bohemian nest, crowned with cats, excited by the repetition, safer because of our compulsions. If we are sick, it is a sweet disease that we suffer. For my gains, I am pleased to report that I can now read back turned cards accurately and with ease, but my concentration is still poor. I purge my body with regular fasting. I can sink deep into oily pools of submission and touch nirvana, the golden light. I am closer to the trinity than any priest. I am honest with the doctors and they turn to me for mindful advice, and I am unafraid of strangers and old friends, too. And it is in these reveals that this has come about, contained in quiet, while the world has been shouting. Ok Crow, I say. And with that I hope that these dark materials shine brighter and wider than before - chapters less closed, changeling pages that bear scratches and ink spills unhidden, minor thefts for survival’s sake, but no attempt to wipe down my prints in the afterward. The evidence of my presence will be challenged, regardless. That’s the price of staying quiet in a riot, and this time I’ve paid my dues. Surely.

Well, this feels like a good place to pause. Abruptly, without overstaying any welcome. And so, I hope you’ve enjoyed my greeting message. A transmission from my satellite heart.

Yours SINcerely

LUPEN CROok

Lupen Crook