A note to myself

like any mirror-writing, it’s slant rain. And like slant rain
it goes on falling and tearing, falling and tearing.
Like slant rain it quickens suddenly and slows down.

---Tim Liardet.

The first morning dew of the season, startled or petrified on the dark cold window. The first rumblings of hot water in the rusting old pipes, the ramblings of an outdated mechanism that promises relief, like the first breath of Spring. A word you can't remember, falls back into night. A woman glides past you with sleep all over her face, and your heart is unprepared...

...in the old country, it was like, like the camera from a different age kept behind the mirror. "It might be valuable someday". And so we kept it, unused, a mysterious relic from someone else's life. Holding on to what was lost, what will be lost as if we could one day return it to its rightful owner. It occurred to you: we stumble into other people's lives, and into our own, too. With what lack of grace do we take leave!

The days pass. The frail morning moon is where it was twelve years ago at this time of the year. The arc of your own life without trace, or unobserved. It goes on, when all the doors are closed, a briefly-lit interior that is more a recollection than anything else. We carry with us fragments of images, place them on the table, rearrange them, pick out and hide the visionary piece. What cannot be said must not be said.

So many false notes, your ear has declined recognition. Your hands have lived a life of their own and your eyes carry with them so many stray thoughts. The shadow-work continues in the morning; you draw lines and graphs and try to find the balance in an equation. No red ambition, no green envy, just a grey and calm indifference. The mind turns aimlessly, your heart trying to remember what. The morning stretches, is a vast and open space, your hands and your voice beneath all that space.

There is a sense in which you run to be broken, to detect the true note, the true self.