Opening the sails

http://heretothencefort.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/nishida-is-wrong.html

On the horizon, look!  Something -- a smudge -- Look.

(sketch on tavern napkin)

These orders are absolutely binding.  These ropes may bind together but they serve equally well for hangings.  We are all sorry, and weighed down with sorrow, though this shall pass.

(the strange attendants)

You know, this ship has only known the slow flow of sand for too long.  It yearns for the swell, to feel the slice of keel-knife swift and purposive through that meniscus between worlds which is one of its trinity of homes.  This is not a feeling her self-named commander is familiar with, not anymore.  It has leaned against the larger leeward piling of this other sea which is that of smashed rock suspended in air, which loosens its hold as it folds and curls against this charred body.

It is not for no reason that our black carapaces are adorned with eyes.  This is not some expression of savage and ignoble anthropomorphism, no.  We need the eyes for with to do the seeing, the light collects there as the wind fills those sooty sails.

As one of my eyes is pressed hard against the driest dunes, so too the right eye, though unscarred, is fixed on that makeshift surrounding it, all fences and leather-hung enclosures, which has traveled through the breakers of strange ages between temporary shelter to become the very palace of this Prince of Nothing, this dark sulk of a thing which so often sits out the evening's eviscerations staring at the edges of its drinking-cup instead of the horizon which is where the dark water grows light and lifts its volleys of pearls against the car of Hesperus, delaying the blind times if only a while.   

(unseen in the desert of the sea)

I admit to having issued the order to scupper the fleet.

Orders can always be rescinded.

(numbering the ships)

Like coleopterid carapaces, these coracles, near numberless.  

. . . And at high tide turning they scurry and swarm the sand, hauling the hulls from Ocean, as ants carry leaves larger than they into the subterranean farm-factories.  There the leaves will be inoculated with mould which will decompose the cellulose and nourish the numerous populace of the Hill.  And all this, and hospitals too, and true community care which continues even for those who care not nor can.

We haven't quite got there yet, let's hope we do.

After the landings, the beachcrawl, the dark aspect of eyes gazing seaward from under furrowed brow.  Sharply the nostrils open, inhaling the spume, savoring its saltiness, breathing in deeply and hoping no-one hears the sigh let slip . . .

(beached on the south shore)

One of my favorite sections of the Iliad.