Stone #77

out of the continual hum, I grasp my fragmentary words, speaking, momentarily, before they slide into the murmur that is everywhere

Stone #76

Slow, meticulous cutting of patterns, sewing. Each second is a stitch; each hour a finished seam. Our lives are the garments we wear.

Stone: #75

In the Annex's wealthiest areas, the streets are empty. No cars, no porch-sitters, no children, no-one out watering their front gardens. My dog and I walk. Unencumbered silence.

Dream: July 25, 2011

An empty apartment pool, high up, maybe the 20th or 22nd floor. The building is thin, constructed of whitened concrete. Light from the slits of windows shines on the water. My ex makes me swim naked. He is in a bathing suit. He is in his late 40s; I am more like my 20s. It's okay because we are alone. I swim in the blue chlorinated water around the bend. The pool is shaped like a half moon.

Then we walk down the street, where, again, I am naked and he is dressed. I don't like this, am embarrassed.

I rush back to the building, trying to hide my body. We are in the elevator rising. On the screen in the elevator I try to edit the YouTube video. I want to put on the clothes I am carrying. Only I can't. I have to go to the YouTube studio to do that.

Daphne Becoming-Tree

Daphne, 20.5cm x 20.5cm, 8" x 8", dip pen with India, acrylic and fountain pen inks, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4. (Click on image for larger size.)

I hand wrote the words with a dip pen under the image today.

I lay in the park sketching the tree; though invisible to the biological eye, she was there. Neither did the lake exist, nor the rocks. It was sunny and yet I found a sliver of a moon and a star on the paper. The child in me saw her. She is like a paper cut-out, drawn as a child would draw; she is Daphne. Look at her laurel crown. Her arms are turning into branches with leaves. I found her ghostdrawing her myth in the green dreaming imagination of the woman drawing in the book on her lap.

This Daphne is caught, perpetually transforming, as night falls. Apollo, the god of light, long gone. No sign of Cupid's arrow, if it ever flew.