It was still dark in the settlement, or the city as it seems better to call it, sensing the chaos of sleep that clashes with the sounds of the night, and the moans and dreamings of the passage of passionate events, moments too hot to handle, those times in which we lack control and judgement, as when she approaches us with a smile and a word, Sorry darling, and love sweeps us off our feet, in a fever, febril such as being unable to decide whether we should ride our horses sitting backwards or forwards, or even side saddle.
The complexity of what we should wear to accompany those phospho-contraptions which Judith had us fasten to our foreheads, What were they, you ask to be reminded, Far off lights towards which we seem to hasten, homing like moths, and the choice between our preferred forms of address – trenchcoat? Or T shirt and bermuda shorts? – preferred forms for undercover agents here in the city on the edge… que antes se desgarrada en arrabales / hacia la llanura incessante – the city that has broken itself upon the endless plain. Some time a few weeks ago now, we agreed together that the details of poetry or geography mattered less to us than a reader might suppose, whether it is those two lines from Borges concerning Buenos Aires, or the horizon and waves of the Indian Ocean breaking upon the shore line.
City attire and forms of address, whether East or West, the different styles appropriate according to time and circumstance, in order to give an impression, It is not exactly an aesthetic theory is it, Not at all, But shifting circumstances modify our answers – Who are you? Who are you and can you give an account of yourself? – the answers to repeated questioning, the questions perhaps accompanied with a please, but perhaps not.
After three days upon the endless plain, the “I” that constantly self-crafts has changed its forms of address and attire, the impressionable “I” reminding us once more of Joseph Roth’s ('Cousin Joseph'… not the uncle version of course) description – Der Rehmen ist der Stil bin Ich – the framework is the style I am, as the lighthouse beam shining from the headland further up the coast beckons us towards the safety of another anchorage.
It is your turn to pitch the tents I think tonight.