A wave of cold reality has swept through the township of Fênix and almost everyone has fled. One unlucky person was made to stay behind because their fingerprints were unsatisfactory.
I tell no-one that my thoughts are rain and glass,
frivolous on a foggy day, but I will sit and wait
for isentropic meaning to appear, from within
or from without, and after sleeping,
recollect a question from my dreams.
~/~
I planned to wander aimlessly, through doorways
and beneath the Rio Ivaí, to find my core,
to seek an unhatched chick, no more than winter
melodrama and less than foliage fallen
in the shadows of the weepless willows.
An adjectival stranger interrupted me.
My name is Sorry, I’ve seen your dreams
and I have a supplementary question:
What will remain when all your saving games
have gone? When your cut-price warranty
has ended.
I noticed local weather, falling raindrops.
It wasn’t personal, they fell on Sorry too,
but I was next to speak.
Once as I watched the solar marathon pass by,
in my mind, a thought-experiment committee formed
to consider why I existed, and unanimously agreed
that what is obvious in sleep is complicated by the dawn.
The rain trickling down Sorry’s face was stained
with indigo dye from her hair.
Fear is a line you scratch into the world.
We’ll explore your limitations, and before we’ve finished,
we’ll free the prisoners of the sephine spiders.
The frames of my glasses whirred, and the automatic
windscreen wipers started up.
Once I might have doubted the existence
of your so-called sephine spiders and their captives,
but Fênix is bereft of fantasy, it’s all been taken
by the wave, and I’m a guileless believer.
Sorry was cross-hatched with latitude arcs of tiny bugs,
their mortal remains swept across my glasses,
and overhead, blind storms, dark capsules
sizzling with plausible lightning, skimmed across
the realistic sky.
to continue
background
- Entropy is a measure of information; isentropic—constant information—means no information in or out of a process.
- Rio Ivaí—the most noteworthy characteristic of the river is the color of its waters, which for most of the year is red or brown (Portuguese Wikipedia).
- louisa, the dragon, is one of the solar marathon competitors.
- sephine webs
artwork
Further detail from destabilisation, made by VEE, the visual evolution engine, with EMMA, the min-max entropy addon.
I would guess that as there are no comments, everyone has been rendered speechless by your creativity and brilliance. 😁
Once again, I cannot pick a favourite part.
Fabulous Saturday reading. Thank you.
I’m sure that must’ve been what it was, it has nothing to do with me posting every blue moon now. Everyone was stunned by something: probably my blatant disregard for communication in English. 😸
My pleasure Vanessa, glad you enjoyed.
No it would have nothing to do with that… 🙂 besides, we shouldn’t expect to be so spoilt too regularly, and really, time moves so fast…
That’s for sure. Time has left me behind in its rear view mirror. I’m still back in March, the Ides.😸
haha that’s interesting Steve…so you mean you feel you are catching up on comments you owe? I feel that could be a perpetual date for me, the way I am in and out as well.
No deadline date here! 😀
As it turns out, I’m not actually catching up with anything at all. My current aim is not to move too far into the past. Really. This can happen. It is the equivalent of moving so slowly that you go backwards. 🐒
Oh Steve, I can relate to this so much!
In the shadow of weepless willows is a chilling image… And “Fear is a line you scratch into the world” speaks to me, as well as freeing the prisoners, finding your core and unhatched chicks. Those glasses are pretty special! Like SayNo above, I’m rendered pretty speechless by all the original images. Such a fertile mind, free of restrictions!
Thank you, BG. Yes, darkness I guess, seeping inside us. I’m still affected by the terrible events next door in New Zealand.
Interesting that you connected those things: prisoners of the mind, enclosed in personal barbed wire fences created by fear. Not me of course, I have no restrictions. All right, maybe one or two. Not that many. A finite number anyway. 😸
PS: I’m pretty sure I saw a picture of glasses like that somewhere.
Beautiful image, words, the mood matches mine today. Must be a wayward electromagnetic spot on the indigo section of the color spectrum, encouraging the repetition of the song, at least in my mind, “I guess that’s why they call it the blues…”
Yes, that’s where I was when I wrote this, and it can’t help but come out. Anyway, it’s better to be swinging through the shades than to be colorless. Thank you, Clarissa.
The statement “what is obvious in sleep is complicated by the dawn” is so true. Upon waking, I often find it difficult if not impossible to follow the logic in the dreams I just had, even though they made perfect sense to me when I was sleeping. Also, in the few occasions when others have recounted their dreams to me, I wonder how they’re able to do so with “waking logic”.
I know what you mean, Magarisa. The dreams themselves are complicated enough I think, but there’s the additional step of going through the levels of consciousness to wakefulness from REM sleep. I find that if I don’t make an immediate effort to run through dreams and commit them to (more permanent) memory, they vanish like morning mist in the sunlight.
Even without definite memories, I find I can be left with vague feeling tones, pleasant and sometimes not. I suppose the feeling that something made sense or even might be important is just that—a feeling.
I loved it all and it’s brilliant as always. It made me wonder what will remain once my saving games are exhausted since I haven’t worked in a year. What is my saving grace, am I one step away from the weepless willow and it’s darkness!
Thank you, Rhapsody. There might have been a little introspection with the saving games and the willow. I suppose its point of view, I find myself wondering what is the point of this and that. Perhaps if occasionally we see our story in a light-hearted way, playing games, now and then doing some good, no harm is done. PS: Wishing you the best for the future.
A wave of cold reality-much needed at the present time. Good imaginative storytelling.
Thanks Paul. I am not that keen on reality, but I know it exists.
Because of other commitments which are part of reality, I have had to cut WordPress back to once a fortnight. I do enjoy it, and I hope to keep going even if it’s with delays.
“that what is obvious in sleep is complicated by the dawn.”…this alone is worth the price of admission! Clever and funny as always….with a bit of wistful thrown in!
Thank you, Jim. Something to do with dreams, I guess. Mostly what happens is perfectly reasonable at the time, eg, just another day with waves breaking in the street, complete strangers having a party in my house (which is nothing like my house) and me focussed on the important issue: choosing the music.
Dreams usually makes sense while I’m in them, but not so much when I awake. Of course, sometimes even that’s not true. I recently had a dream where I was dressed in a dance outfit and had a partner dressed the same way. We were in an airport with literally hundreds of similar teams. We were all to fly to another city to put on performance. I kept wondering when they were going to find out I couldn’t dance at all.
Fascinating reading.
Thank you. It’s true, you can certainly have concerns and fears in dreams. Maybe it’s useful to try to work out what you’re telling yourself. Either that, or reassure yourself that everyone can dance in dreams, haha.
My most common recurring dream, although I haven’t had it for a while fortunately, is simply waiting in a queue, usually for food, and never reaching the counter.
So many interesting intriguing ideas and possible interpretations in this piece of work, Steve. My favourite line: “Fear is a line you scratch into the world.”
Sorry posted too soon and now unable to edit….meant to say I like the way your writing explores the subjective nature of so-called reality.
All good, and thanks again. You’re right about so-called reality. I guess that recognizing how much of your own perception is subjective is a step forward.
Thanks, Nikita, and for singling out that particular line. I can claim a tiny bit of credit, but I did modify it from the lyrics of a beautiful song called “Miedo” (Fear) by Julieta Venegas 😸:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQpmc6hiIBQ
Thanks for sharing this Steve – great song!
Glad you enjoyed, Nikita.
Hi Steve. Would you agree that ‘isentropic – constant information’ could be expressed (at least by an unreliable narrator) as a state of perfectly balanced binary opposition?
Hi Demosthenes. Let’s get technical. An example of a perfect balance would be two planets orbiting each other, where, roughly speaking, centrifugal force balances gravity.
If no external effects come into play, ie, no information enters or leaves the system, this balance will last forever. So a perpetual perfect balance is an example of an isentropic system.
At present I am not as balanced as I might be, because of a bottle of Shiraz I came across, but I plan to catch up to two days behind with comments before tomorrow’s honeyeaters are at the bird bath.