Like splendid papers hung on walls that hold framed portraits of imposing faces
Like deep patterned rugs laid down beneath the finest carved scrolled wooden feet
Like heavily embellished curtains drawn across broad windows looking out on what was grown there dug up out of there dragged off from there
I’d swear that there is someone sitting next to me right now.
we are reminded
No there’s no one sitting next to you.
Where did she go?
to look at something else.
Get out of here. Go get her.
Who?
Arriving at the castle on the main path from the south
proceeding around the corner to the moated gateway on the north
then through this gateway to the inner wall
through NORTH GATE into STABLE
past the east or KITCHEN front
through two more big gates down below
depositing me at last onto the SOUTH FACADE
I circled it
my rolling suitcase struggling on these old time surfaces
without apparent end in view but with a feeling of pure joy
enlightenment
deep drawn awareness of the beauty in the tragedies on top of tragedies that I perceived in this location gotten to by boat. As I grew conscious of such feelings my entire being filled up with desire. This new sensation touched me so profoundly that I wished to get as close as I
In other words I hoped I prayed to find a way to pull it deep enough into myself that I
I mean I wanted just to take that castle
lie down naked on those ruined grounds
my legs spread open
shove that castle straight up into me.
He has resumed his course. He turns a corner moving along as if this journey had been permanently coded into him by someone
something
situated on the other side of somewhere else. While there are times when suddenly he finds himself in places where the agony of being sent to there is more than he can
There are many other times when he is totally unable to abandon present circumstances. At those times he begs to be transported back.
When leading us up the FIVE STONE STEPS he said It’s just so lucky that we met.
It’s nothing to do with luck she said.
Atop of the FIVE STONE STEPS we hooked around the CORNER
NORTHWEST of the mansion. Picturesque bay windowed spot for peering into the DRAWING ROOM.
I thought I saw a form behind the glass. He took me by the arm. He turned us all around.
THAT NIGHT
NEXT NIGHT
when I got up walked out into the hall I found that I was standing at the door into the NURSERY
DAY. I did not try the door. I turned. I took the STAIRCASE
MAIN
down to the ENTRANCE
MAIN. I then went back up to my room.
No. That’s not true. I went into the
Fourth door on the left.
to see the little lacquered box beside the oval mirror on the mantel underneath the
photographic painting of a house.
Now looking through the windows she can see a figure moving down below contorted trees above the twisted roots that cover everything. She pulls the curtains closed. She lies down on the bed looks all around her at the floor.
Thus with the sighting of a movement that cannot be stopped has come anticipation of a cover of patina creeping over every surface like a shoreline onto which a rolling tide encroaches.
The interior of that castle
as the little pamphlet indicated
had at one time been an antiquarian chiaroscuro. Open framework open timber roofs elaborate chimneypieces in the hall with other lesser chimneypieces in the rooms. So many painted decorations. Finest frescoes on the walls adorned with armor
weapons
heraldry
high stained glass windows
plaster busts
Etruscan vases
pictures
tapestries
The castle
it was written
had been built up through the years
a tower added here
there
blasted
some things taken away
put back
torn down
Too tired to fight it anymore that castle obviously had gone behind the hedge allowed itself to be completely opened up then shot up into turned all inside out.
THAT NIGHT
NIGHT FIVE
I went down to the KITCHEN opened up the corner door then started down the stairs into the BASEMENT.
On the train awakened by another even bigger jolt
amazingly
I managed slipping back into that dream again.
Clock ticking on the wall inside the cottage I fell sound asleep.
WITHIN THE DREAM INSIDE THE COUNTRY COTTAGE DREAM I then was given information
somehow
that the dying of the little boy was nothing but a big mistake.
The little boy
as I was made to know
was meant to be alive.
I woke up from THE DREAM WITHIN THE
clock not ticking
COUNTRY COTTAGE DREAM
still in the OUTER COTTAGE DREAM
elated
dropping tears of joy
true happiness
immeasurable relief. I hurried over to the bedroom door which was completely covered up with vines with tiny blooms. I opened it.
My job WITHIN THE COUNTRY COTTAGE DREAM was Take that information about the life into the bedroom. Take it to the bed that has the tiny body of the boy on top of it. Then shake the body tell the boy that he was meant to be alive.
However there was not a body in the bed.
Just shake the boy!
clock ticking again
When I got back on board the ferry
leaving behind the honey colored stony clusters of the fallen gables
crumpled towers
toppled
candy wrappers
walls
no longer high
dilapidated
broken bottles
heaps of rock
surrounded by the weakened but remarkably undestroyed stone battlements encircled by a moat
tin cans
I thought about my feelings as with all of my belongings with me I had walked the pamphlet in my hand around that castle.
I was not its only visitor although I might as well have been. The cool fall air that heralded the onset of the winter winds intensified the feeling of desertion. Isolation.
Crushed.
Save pigeons
seagulls shrieking
wheeling endlessly through ruined walls
the moat long since closed in with tall weeds thick reeds grasses rippling over what according to the pamphlet had at one time been the widest smoothest lawns
was anything but inviting. Watching from the ferry little could be seen except a wall of overgrowth
the garden wall was smothered by the saplings.
towers soaring
plunging
Though it was apparently inanimate I feared that I had managed to awaken it that day igniting a continuation of the terribly steady stalled slow process of its creeping crawl upon the surface of the earth. It carried all its emptiness
its endless infestations
with it.
As the ferry pulled away I half expected I would see that castle coming after me.
What do you think you’re doing coming all the way down here? she said.
Next morning
Which one?
Doesn’t matter. There would be no others after that.
That night I took the elevator up.
THE NIGHT WE MET
THE NIGHT I ALSO MET A MAN who asked if he could drive me home
if I had answered otherwise I might have ridden IN ANOTHER CAR out to another mansion facing an enormous courtyard organized around a flame. Upon a balcony above a central entrance might have hung a bell. That bell will ring