Um Her a her - 1/11/2002

Is the transcription of a guitar lick from Space and Time, the track playing in the background now. Which is to say the act of this writing is foregrounded, pushed absurdly to the front in spite of its reflective and unobstrusive nature as opposed to the music that is obviously playing out loud. What is loud has to be sublimated so that its hi fi sounds no longer leave grooves on the being. A lasting kind of music? No, single notes which hold their length long enough to be sensed, then fade off into lullaby.

Come on into this mode of triggering thought
Via the synapse popping of nerves figuring out their way
over plastic pieces marked / signalled out as different
only by shape not meaning ...
"we have existence and its all we share"
"keep on pushing cause I know it's there

Small, shrivelled, the mind looks for gorgeous things.

A flaming dress all flowing textured as rock made craggy by nature's forces would be. We leap from peak to peak trying to find a safe place to plant the next step. Safe not for us, for our footprints are littered across the globe! But safe for those who still small and shrivelled remain. She and I are writ large for all to see. Once we walked, trekked for days over the dense landscape. We picked the scents of mountain flowers - the Ulaweira, the Flume - and folllowed these to the high places. But now we are large. We stride, giant steps over the mountains, now made small. We look down at the miniature farms as if we put them in place when we were children in our nursery hour.

Crossing the Hellucian Ridge with a single step, we come across the Bay of the Broken Back, so named because it is in the shape of an old man. When men grew old, their backs grew thin and snapped. We walk as giants. Planting our shadows across the wild waters, we find our reflections perfect in the black. The water here is stained by the dye from the button bushes which line the Bay. It laps up the edges brown, as if made dirty. But there is nothing clearer than your reflection in the Bay of the Broken Back. The blackness allows for a metallic clarity and the Bay is sheltered from the winds by the ridges that surround. Made darker by our shadows that stand in the sun, the Bay becomes an enormous density of dark reflecting surfaces. Those still small look up, as if trying to chart the cloud cover, as if making preparations for rain. But there are no clouds today, only Giants .