Negative Capability

In the nineteenth century, contrary to popular belief, courtship was no easier as it is today. It is perceived now that it was as simple to give another one's heart as it was to press a handkerchief into the hand of your beloved. This was not the case. The fears and uncertainties of another's affections, whilst seeming new to each who feels the first pangs of doubt, are centuries old. Indeed, by the nineteenth century, most languages even had a name for it. Keats called it negative capability.

Since the time of the Anglo-Saxons, intuition has played a part in communicating with another. This art of communion sans words has been rendered necessary in feeling what one is trying to say, alongside hearing it. As one may find, in talking to another with whom ones affection lies, that there are insufficient words to describe the commonplace, concrete things. This has arisen from the highly inconvenient notion of favoring to converse in abstract terms over definate. This is where negative capability has played its fiendish role. For fear of rejection, questions and statements such as 'I adore you',  'Do I terrify you?' and even 'I have confidence in you', have been lost in ones efforts to disguise the true feelings of the heart, and we find, with staggering breathlessness in the moment that we desire the deepest to say things of great import and value, that the terms 'I love you', 'Do you fear me?' and 'I trust you', fall painfully short of everything we wished to say, merely brushing the surface of implications.

This is where the art of intuition has arisen. For deep down in each of our hearts, we know that the language we utter with timid lips is not the fullest representation of the emotion we feel in our hearts, in our lungs and in our stomach. And so we stretch out invisible fingers to tentatively feel the air between two beings, trying to grasp with our minds what the other might actually be saying, when his from his mouth comes the words 'I feel as if I haven't seen you in an age'. And this intuition, which as C.S Lewis writes, stands for what we know not, for the unknown and the unexplainable, tells us that what he is actually feeling is more along the lines of, 'I've missed you in my life, I used to enjoy so much spending time with you, and because of your absence, I feel as if you no longer want me in your life. Please, tell me what I can do to fix this'. Sadly, however, even to this day, the art of intuition is slowly dying, and as much goes unheard as it goes unsaid.

However, when words fail, one may have found that each feeling could be expressed through the hands. The feeling of doubt of another's affections through the running of the first three fingers down the jawbone from the ear, the smallest resting on the chin. Uncertainty through the upwards twist of the wrist towards the heart. Restrained affection in the bent elbow, a deep-seated ecstasy at another's attention in the rhythmic tapping of the elbow with ones fingertips. This inherent bodily expression of all that we feel but never say has taken the place of the unspoken declarations once felt with one's intuition. One may find this the saddest of all of societies developments, and is the equivalent of falling asleep. One may still be inside of the world surrounding her, but she may no longer be a part of it, as much as an old, unused chair is in the corner of a busy room.

In the time that it would have taken for her to wake up, the world has already changed. Time, which had previously dwelt always in obscure corners of abandoned rooms, in the folds of curtains and on the backs of strangers necks, has emerged, crying loudly for attention and demanding action. Action which, deafened to intuition and blinded to expression, is of less potency than in ages of old. It could be argued that it is in this state of weakness, in sightlessness and dumbness, we have found it as difficult as before to give ones heart to another. Where once it was a matter concerning inadequate expression, there is now a plague of ignorance. Where the fear of the possibility of rejection once lay, now lies the fear that ones heart may go unnoticed in its offering.

But the desire to feel, to hear and to see does not long go muted. If, by chance, you find yourself amongst the company of those whom you feel most strongly for, begin to observe. You will begin to see the shadows, the infantile imitations of what used to be a thriving language of the hands. You will start to notice that the silences are no longer as silent as they used to be, for now they are layered full of meanings and desires and those feelings felt between your heart and lowest rib. You will begin to hear in those silences an awakening desire to be heard, to be seen and understood, and then you, feeling what each is trying to feel, must stand up, and in a brazen act of kindness, move over to those, who like children are beginning to learn how to walk, clasp their hands in yours and whisper to them, 'Yes, I understand you. Don't worry, you're doing well'.

Caravan, BBQ and Treadmill

So here is the short story I was so passively bent on getting you all to vote for. The competition subjects change each week, and therefore, this is no longer in the current competition. 150 words, harder than you'd think. Bon appetit mon cheris! 

We grew up in an old caravan; mum, dad, my older brother and myself.
It was a hardy thing, our caravan, so sturdy you could roll it down a hill, set it back on it's wheels and pull it across three states with nothing but a few scratches and some broken plates. Believe me, we tried.
We moved around all the time, a lot like modern-day gypsies. Dad was a barbeque salesman, always chanting, repeating the same pitch,
'This one, mate, this one's top o' the market, can't get nothin' better', he would say, day after day, week after week.
Every single afternoon, dad cooked dinner on our own rusty barbie, while mum would walk the distance from the east coast to the west on our second-hand treadmill, and us kids would run around making friends with the locals.

These days, I can't stand even the thought of barbequed meat.

(And yes, the picture is slightly irrelevant, but I needed something light-hearted to go with this. And I don't keep a back-catalogue of barbeques, caravans and treadmills, although some say I should)

Can you?

Can you feel her heart beating, when you lower yourself to lie next to her. Where you lie, whether on grass, cool as the sky; or the floor of her living room where she lies in numb silence; or, in the half light, be it dusk or dawn, onto the white sheets that cover the too-small bed; to look sideways at her delicate profile, to feel the thrills in your stomach that you haven't felt for years and years, since Abigail Stevens cornered you in the schoolyard and you kissed her like she had never been kissed before, and though you were only children, you knew that it meant something more, so much more, but it would be years until either of you knew how to name it.

And does your skin burn where it touches hers. Do you know where she goes, in those moments of silence, where her skin becomes armour, a fortress to guard what you covet so dearly, her heart, her soul, her everything. Do you remember as clearly as she does, the first time she let you inside her home, the torn dress she was wearing, showing you glimpses of the back you had never seen before, and after you drank the too-sweet tea she made you, you never have told her that you drink yours black and unsweetened, and you held her hand, and she kissed your eyelid, your cheek, your ear. Do you remember hearing, amidst the thundering of your own heart, a timid invitation to come closer, not spoken with those reddened lips; reddened not by artificial means, for her lips would grow red when she was nervous, or passionate, or angry; but spoken silently, from heart to heart.

And did you feel it, waking up to the thin light that drapes lightly over the world at dawn, awaiting for the sun’s passionate fingers to rush forward and caress its coolness, until both absolve into each other becoming one and the same. On that winters morning, weeks, months, years after you had crept into herself, not caring to break down walls and fortresses, merely content to be close to her by any means: did you feel that wrenching honesty that, like the dawn and sunlight, you two had become one, your heartstrings were rendered within hers, and inseparable.

You remember it all, knowing that a part of her lives on in you, that as long as one or the other lives, you both shall continue to do so. You’ve seen it in her veins, blue pulsing lines drawn across her pale limbs, creating paths, highways, and secret roads which you so desperately desire to get lost amongst. Like a map of an unknown city, you pray to your deity: herself; that no path shall lead you to destruction, but regardless of the silence that whispers ‘take heed’, you do not relent. And you search for a way, search for the melodies in the reflections of light that shine in her hair, the rhythm of her step that falls into place with the beating of your heart. The swing and slide of her hips, her staccato laugh that reflects an awkward grace in her eyes, the movement of her hands, expressing her heart as she speaks.

Will you find her once more, fallen and lost, tangled in the bracken of her mind, the whispers of darkness entwined around her feet and hands, black against white, thorns pressing into the softest skin you will ever feel, drawing, extrapolating crimson tears in places where the pressure weighed too heavily on her soul. Will you see her as she really is, entrapped and without hope, or as you once saw her, when the suggestion of darkness seemed foreign and to think that once such as her could suffer, could feel so deeply was beyond your knowledge of such creatures as she.

Promise yourself to produce inadequate illusions, to shatter the glass cage of insensitivity that gives only glimmers of reality, to perceive, as her heart does, the pains and numbness that she strives so desperately to hide. And promise to never relent, though she may tear you limb from limb, she may brush against you with her invisible thorns, tearing at yourself and her. Though darkness may surround her, darkness in which no candle may penetrate, no flame tear asunder, promise you will be the stars, the moon, however dim, to remind her of the turning of the earth, and the encroaching renaissance. And promise to feel her heart beating, when you lower yourself next to her still form, entwining your fingers amongst hers, as a living reminder that your hearts may always be as such, and know that to feel her heart beating is to feel your own life, thriving and alive.

The animals were never here

I was five when my dad promised me a pet.
‘A tiger? An elephant? A monkey?’ I had cried excitedly.
He smiled and said nothing.
I asked when we would get him.
‘A him?!’ Dad chuckled, ‘Soon. But first we need to get him a home.’
I started saving. Three months later, I made dad drive me to the shops on his Harley Chopper, and I bought my new pet a transporter cage.
‘All we need now is Jeremy!’
‘Jeremy?’
‘Our pet!’
‘Ahh. Well, you’ll want something more solid than that. Something that ain’t going to fall over as soon as look at you’, his eyes glinted cheekily.
‘Like a house?’
‘Yeah, like a house.’
Each week after that, I’d carry my pet transporter to the hardware store, and carry back a brick, all I could afford.
Twelve years, a pet transporter and a brick doghouse later, I’m still waiting.

This is something I intended to submit to a competition, but never got around to because of my incredibly awesome organisational skills.

Weightless.

She stood on the edge of a steep drop. Steeper than anything she would ever know. In isolation. Nothing before her, nothing after. She turned backwards. Backwards she could face these things, backwards she would never see what was coming, all she would feel is the ability, finally all at once, to be enveloped by the sky, to esconse herself in its very existence. The endless sky, filled with such things that dwelt amongst the air, feeling the clouds brush cool and damp against her cheek, seeping its life through her, breathing as if of one organism. And as her heart fell and shattered amongst the razor-sharp rocks below, she heard him, as though all life of hers was tied to the sound of his voice.

'Do you know what this piece is called?'
She looked up, hearing a familiar voice. He smiled down at her, before collapsing his lithe frame to seat next to her. Smiled half a smile, flickered half a glance.
'No need to be hasty in reply.' He joked. 'It's Gnossienne.'
'By Satie?'
'By Satie.'
'Eric?'
'The very one.'
'I like it.' Though in truth, she would have given heart and soul to anything he had declared a passion.
'Would you believe I've loved it since I was fourteen?'
'Perhaps.'
'Stand up. Walk with me.' He took her hand and lifted her to her feet. She did not show that deep inside, in the place where all things are felt most intensely, a volt, leaping from her heart, ran down her arms to dwell, tingling her fingertips, and again, pacing through each potion of her cheat, ran down one leg, to reach the knee and run up the other. She hid this intensity of feeling underneath layers of social convention, where it is frowned upon to show ones love in such extreme honesty.
He took both her hands, starting withing her an electrical storm. Brought her closer to him, and then back again, a waltz developing.
'Because' he said, in between steps, 'It reminds me of you.'
Her heart stopped. All she could say was 'oh'.
Dark. Pensive. A damask room at dusk. Something always going unsaid, hidden in those thoughts of yours. And something I can't quite pin down. An unpredictability, I suppose.


His eyes were blank when he saw the result of her decision. Like moments made of glass, everything you thought, felt, breathed, heard, touched up until this moment is shattered, and what is left is a cruel impression of ideals. That night he found the note she left. How could one be simply 'Sorry'? The very word fell brutally, drastically short of all meaning and intention he wished it could convey.
But in truth, he did not wish it to be any more than a word, well meaning but insignificant. The word would not, could not, lift itself up from the page to explain intentions, reasons, motives. It could not even begin to extract what heartstrings were entwined with his, from that moment, seven years ago, he had beheld her for the first time, the tune of the Gnossienne floating mysteriously through the air. It could not warm his hands, tug at his hair, breathe life onto his lips, his neck. It was worthless, now the speaker of it is nothing more.

'You told me once, what it felt like to be weightless.'
'I did.'
'Did you know that ever since I was a child, I have been trying to catch that feeling, forever chasing, forever out of reach.'
'I would think it to be a regular occurrence for you.'
'No. You see, as a child I had vivid dreams, each night. In each, as slumber overtook my consciousness, an unseen figure would come and lift me and send me to all sorts of destinations, each where I would float as if nothing could tie me to the earth. I began to know with intimate familiarity what it felt like to be weightless. And at seven, the dreams stopped. Since then I've been plagued with the most dreadful form of groundedness. Nothing I do helps me capture it once more. My feet are too firmly set in the earth.'
She had lifted her eyes to the sky as she spoke, but as she drew to an end, they, like the rest of her, was drawn to her feet. 


He lay on the floor of her living room. Flat on his back, ignorant of the still steaming sup of tea by his knee. He tried to feel gravity as she would have, tried to make the earth come and threaten to swallow him whole. Still to no avail. He looked sideways at the cornices. Tried to imagine how she would have seen them, overwhelmed in unintentional intricacies. He breathed, trying to feel what feelings she must have called her own. To know for certain what overwhelming realities claimed her for their own. He knew though, it was to no avail. To some, each moment is more vivid than a lifetime, each colour brighter, each smell more intoxicating. Each vial of emotion swallowed on every street corner too much to remain bottled, too strong to remain encased in glass. And as the glass shattered, he saw no choice but to pick up the shards and remains, taking their cuts as they came.

Is it something in the water?

Listen to this.


Can you feel it? An unknown, a hireling, unfamiliar lurks. I can feel it in the stars at night, I can taste it on your skin. I can see it, written in the air between us, lithographic and tangible, as heavy as our souls.
Were we ever fated to be more than the same, more than what the world, with all it's fickle promises could determine? Is there a time that questions stop...

And answers begin.
I could never say you completed any part of me. My loneliness was voluntary, my isolation preferred. As you can see, I long ago mastered the art of walking and reading, and whilst surrounding myself with the light of the ultra-real, I thus avoided the tragedy of the valley in which I sojourned.

Sojourned, yes. Because though I might have believed for a time that I was moving, onwards and upwards, the darkness did not diminish, the constellations remained the same, and the waters around me stagnated. And I thought to wait, wait in the wilderness, waiting for the cloud of smoke, the leaping fire to draw me from this dungeon.

But nothing.

I would brush against you, feeling my way through the darkness, arms outstretched to catch me if I fell, or simply graze the delicate skin on my wrists. And you, you could sit there for hours in silent remonstrance, by quarters imparting into my soul a venomous dark, that naught but the sun could remove.

So we waited.

You, for atonement of things long since forgotten, and I, for a glimmer, a whisper of something else, something more. And feeding our hearts with such vain hopes, we began to see where naught was before.
Light, in places darkness had dominion. Music in the frozen silences that grew, like stalactites, in between us, hiding each heart from view. Buried under earth, what electricity had once ran though our veins had slowly been deadened, but now, a burning would rise up, a craving, a hunger to consume the stars where they hung unchanging, an energy to leap past the bracken and the mire that had taken captive our eden. And a fire, small and distant, yet flickering and alive, of something without name, a mystery without probability, a hope amongst hopelessness. A call to arise.

Was it visible? In the distant west, did we see it, lighting up the indigo night like the northern lights do so eloquently, casting all doubt of divinity aside at such a vision? Was it the sound of water, softly falling in the dry silence of our wilderness, calling forth memories of warm summer afternoons, the sensation of cool against skin, to moisten parched lips and hearts? Or was it a feeling, rising up within each chest, filling each cavity with a boldness, a brazen confidence with no knowledgeable source? Something in the water that stirred internal passions, a desire to want something more.

But still it is unknown, unforetold and silent in its intentions, and what valleys and marshes it may lead us through to arrive are hidden from sight. All we are to know is it's unfamiliarity, it's quiet, mesmerising chant, the glimmer of cloud undispersed by dark, by night.

And if we follow it, who may tell where it may lead, though few will point to beyond the grasps of the worlds fickle fingers, and others to the depths of the unknown, where none but the bravest souls darest enter.

But this water, it gives us hope.