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May. 25th, 2016|11:42 pm |
Yesterday:
“Shut your eyes and listen” said the Catholic mystic in the book now alcohol stained and resting behind the cupboard in the toilet. She kneels her five-year-old frame by the ditch and listens to the frogs. We have walked an hour down a gravel road, and the dust given off by the motors is a net curtain of haze in the evening sun. My wife takes the emptied beer bottles and I pick the little one up and put her on my shoulders. We’d bought them (Rigas Alus) and pyramid of frozen juice in a meat product shop in the old organized part of town. The shopkeeper, fat arms and precise and elaborate nails, had asked us “Attaisiit?” and I thought she was referring to the beer, which gave me a nostalgic thrill. But she got a pair of scissors out and snipped the top of the pyramid off.
We wandered down the road in illicit consumption. What affront to civilization is this progress.. The road is Roman in the straightness of its intent, but every other telephone pole is plastered with adverts for architects experienced in the art of planning permission. We are in Buras, and the old allotments are now in full sail, solid homes in all tastes atop the swamp - each plot with its own script (assembled by Plotnieki) - from the couple hand in hand among the tilled earth, to the shut door of the builder’s van returning home, to the old feeble bark of the hounds that 10 years ago had attempted to terrorise. The Buddleia has a soapy wonder to it, and I close my eyes: again, listen… your idea of yourself can be written on a piece of script, which can be offered up, lifted up and be bourn away… no one cares, really. You just did or didn’t do anything of much use to anyone else. “She steals the bread you know? Takes it to her bed - hides it!” I know - look at her, with her sweet ice - it is good. Let her do that, and continue to do it, find her own plot, write her own script, fingers in the soil, eyes closed, listening to the frogs.
Today:
Down by the old Soviet Daugavas stadium, I read that ‘reality is matter in motion’, which is what Plotinus, I guess, might have wondered about with all that talk of emanation from the Godhead - what else can you find here? Moral philosophy is understanding motions of the mind… “Hey! Virginia!” “Hey Selga!” “Hey, Maria!” There they are, over there on that old carpet where 12 years ago I played in the Час league, moving into space, receiving the perfected shape, bodies twisting and turning and receiving in answer to perpetual questions of geometry and time. Close your eyes and listen, “aiziet!” Quiet rustling of life abounds - a swift whistle, a slink of leopard printed thighs and a dog that leaps, all four legs in the air, into the undergrowth. Viss ir kartībā. |
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