Not in my nature, not my style

I sleep in a bed. I stand in a kitchen. I lie on a sofa, like a psychiatric patient. I meditate, unsuccessfully. I sit at a desk. I twitch like a dog. I scrape a fork across a plate. I wince at the sound.

In Golgotha, where Christ was crucified, letters are sealed with blood and beef tallow. In Babylon, where the tower was felled by God, crops are fertilized with bonemeal. In Tokyo, where no ancestor of mine, not one in a million years, ever set foot, my mind is a palm-sized hand-axe, and I chop, and chop, and chop.

Modernity got the better of me today. It crawled up the inside of my leg, like a furred insect. Its wings fluttered against my abdomen. Its segmented eyes met mine and found less than it hoped for and more than it wanted. It whispered in my ear: Can’t you do something original? 

“It’s not in my nature and not my style,” I replied, cynically, scratching the wax from the whorl of the gothic cathedral of my ear.

“Coward!” the insect cries. In ultrasonic tones heard only by me and my votive candle, it preaches a futile gospel.

In the forest of cedar, we come across a block of green marble dusted in ash and needles. When we leave the valley, tears on our faces, we cling to a new, burning awareness that will nonetheless fade, at a speed equal to its power, before we ever reach the gates. No one will hear what we saw there, though we try to tell the tale. Eventually, when the snow melts from their branches, the trees are taken for ships, for railways, for the building and ravaging of the spring and summer of empire.

I nurse a headache. I react defensively. I drink too quickly. I dream too deeply. I refresh the inbox. I put a sweater over my pajamas. I sweep my hair up into a bun. I listen to the news. I hear about war, about billionaires, about waterlilies; about basements, about weather, about bivalves. I climb a wall. I fuss in a tub. Something desperate strains itself through the holes of my brain. It lies in my hand, a wet tarot card. Four of Cups, Ten of Swords.

My face in profile on a gold coin, marsh reeds braided around my head. Cuneiform scratched into my cheeks. The men of the cavalry pay for their weapons with my likeness. Modernity hands me a saw and tells me to get to the cutting.