Eels Arriving on the Sargasso Sea
I looked down at my cold feet and they looked green, almost translucent, the blue of the veins noticeable, and they looked too far away like something through a telescope. I imagined them marble, where the form would be permanent and the color solid white, and hard, and heavy, firmly planted on the Earth. My hands were much warmer but still white with the same blue intersecting veins and I imagined them the same substance but more pliable and floating. Hands are avian, I think. I felt well, painless, except for the occasional surge of chemicals that kept me laying down while navigating a recent trauma. Trauma is perhaps the wrong word. Words are so damn limited. Limited to communicate the expression of profound experience but extremely good at unifying us all in a common order. In the literate world anyway, the world of marks upon marks. You, dear reader, know me through written words. If you happen to actually know me, you still can only know me now, at this particular moment, through these graphic forms strung together, these letters and words here, this placed performance. "I" am that set of circumstances which arises here accompanied, as these are, by pictures and depictions from our evidenced culture. You are here with me now if this introduction has done its job and this craft has claimed its purpose as a vessel. We've met somewhere at sea, you and me, and the others. Now we are on the shore. Now we are past the hills, inland, and the sea is no more, just a aged memory. Now we are past the cedar gates, above the deep earth and below the laden sky, in a pocket of pleasant pressure, with marble feet and avian hands and breath and conversation. Below us is a support of cedar and above us whatever it is we can discover. In my dreams it is this way, a beautiful passage and the now is a worthy arrival, and tomorrow we are heading to a destination, a place with music. My companion and I arrive at home.
"What's there to discover?", she says.
"Maybe the animals", I reply. "I've been visited by animals lately and this feels not random and may have some significance."
"Why? Am I not important?"
"You are important. That's why you're here. That's why we are together now. Do you agree?", I say to her.
"No, I don't agree."
"Then why are you here?", I ask.
"You called me here. You formed the union for this story but did not ask me if I was willing to be formed and come along."
"Are you willing?"
"Maybe," she answered. "It's hard to know, this is all so new. I haven't had the chance to orient myself to anything. I don't have the context I need. I want the control."
"You're not an object, really," I say. "You're the one who flowed in to the story."
"Now that I'm here, I want your attention as to who I am. You write of the earth and sky and this home you have, and I've just arrived and you're not paying that much attention to me," she replies.
"I am right now. I'm focused just on you at your insistence. In the story, it's just you now," I reply inquisiting a response.
"That's only because I had insisted, not because you inherently wanted to. It's selfish of you," she adds.
"I was sharing and you were going to be my companion in this story, in the flow of it. I thought you would like that. I thought that was so because you came so effortlessly after appearing," I managed in response.
"Which animal is your favorite?" she asks.
"I don't have a favorite but the flying squirrels stick with me."
"Squirrels don't fly," she added quickly. "Go ahead then, tell me about your imaginary flying squirrels."
This is not going as I thought it would. Without proper reception, without desire or curiosity. I looked at my companion for some time, pondering a solution.
"Well!" she added after a short silence.
"You're beautiful," I said. "You look beautiful," I appended quickly in hopes of a receptive spirit.
"You really don't think so. You're just saying that now because you see that I am bored," she said.
"What would you like to do?", I replied. "I can tell the stories of the animals anytime."
"I'm bored," she says while plopping herself on the couch, laying her head back with a deep sigh.
"Would you like a drink?" I say, now giving up on any transcendent discussion.
"I guess," she replies. "Can I smoke?"
"Not inside, but you can move to the porch and smoke if you like."
Without response my companion rises and heads to the porch in annoyance. I follow and briefly stop to the kitchen to pour two glasses of wine and head outside. There I find her already smoking and indeed looking bored.
"So tell your story," she says between drags.
"I'll tell a different one," I say.
"Tell it," she replies with a shrug.
"There's a black cat that hangs around the yard and is very shy, he never approaches. I see him in the mornings and evening waiting often for my cat to join him. I think they hunt together though my cat doesn't want me to know that. Anyway, I was sitting home some nights ago in the evening and I look up in the kitchen and see the black cat peaking at me from stove top in curiosity. He had come in through the window there," I said pointing. "I leave it open for my cat to come and go. Anyway, that black cat watched for a while and left and I thought nothing of it."
My companion lit another cigarette. "That's the story?"
"The next day I was talking on the phone with my daughter upstairs in her room. My cat was there with me. When I came downstairs, there on the carpet, was a beautiful dead yearling male Cardinal. The black cat had brought it to me as an offering."
"Do you think it means something?" my companion inquired.
"It has some significance," I say.
"Why are you telling me this story?" she replies.
"Because you travelled across the waters," I said making eye contact.
I left her there smoking on the porch and walked around to the back of the house, past the frogs croaking in from the pond, Mary looking on, down past the Rose bushes, across the back lawn and down the stairs to nowhere. At the bottom I stepped onto the cobblestones of Florence and walked from memory across the river Arno and up the steep path to San Miniato al Monte where I could hear the monks chanting in the humid evening air. The night was approaching fast. I glanced back for a moment to see if my companion had followed and entered the church alone.
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