Beneath the sur-face

"For her face was no more than a cover of skin, 

showing nothing of the terrible, complicated things, ugly and beautiful, 

that were going on inside her."

-- Douglas Woolf, Wall to Wall

Self portrait 9-19-13

"One of the first things she was going to do when she got to heaven, she said, 

was to ask somebody what was written on her face and why it had been put there."

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

"All art is at once surface and symbol

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril."

-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Only if for a night

 And it's breaking over me,
A thousand miles down to the sea bed,
Found the place to rest my head.
Never let me go, never let me go.
Never let me go, never let me go.

-- Florence + The Machine, "Never Let Me Go"

Self portrait 5-12-13

“Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless,

I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; 

I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, 

I felt the torrent come; 

to rise I had no will,
to flee I had no strength.”

                                                                                              -- Charlotte Bronte, Jayne Eyre
 
 

I slept.

All night.

Somehow I cracked the code.

Probably it had something to do with the fact that I had slept less than 2 hours in the previous 36. 

But still ...

I am rested and alert -- a strange feeling for sure -- all buzzy and tingly. Scrubbed. 

When I woke, I wanted to marinate -- no, to drown, in the beautiful buzziness. 

I wanted to sink further into it and soak it up and to never get out of bed again lest I break the spell -- that magical convergence of fatigue, hope, hopelessness, the planets, the gods, and pure dumb luck that mercifully pulled me under and held me beneath the surface, only if for a night.

I know the spell won't last.

All magic spells are momentary, breakable, un-doable.

There is always a reversal, an anti-spell. 

But for now I will accept this elusive and magical gift that comes along but once in a very blue moon, before it slips away and is eventually and inevitably, undone.