Last night an unsatisfactory
discussion on Cézanne and then I was cold on the walk to the station – down the
hill – it was as though I had cut short my afternoon, rushed to the station to
catch the train simply to have half an hour or so prior to the meeting reading The
Savage Detectives accompanied by a glass of
beer. Not an unpleasant experience, I should add.
It seemed a reversal had taken
place since the previous week – a reversed polarity – without me noticing;
right had become wrong, wrong right. The strange berg-werk of the distant past
shoving rudely into my present reality, rococo dreams of a heaven that we no
longer know how to believe in, but then I was puzzled, even outraged by the
betrayal of all those claims and pronouncements that I had understood to be
promises.
At least it was warm in the
waiting room and I sat and let the exhaustion drain into the concrete until the
train pushed through an opening in the darkness and emerged next to the
platform a couple of minutes early.
I need you to arrive on time not
early and certainly not late. Of course she wasn’t there to hear me.
The ice has melted and suddenly
primroses adorn the banks amidst the seeming dead remains, the worn out
detritus of our colder than usual winter. Spring pushes in out of the darkness
– unbelievably – a presage of the heaven we don’t know how to believe in
because we’re much too grown up. Why don’t you and I book a flight south.