eros, logos

Thursday, February 05, 2009

time's arrow

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

I wrote recently about the spaces between: the way affairs are interstitial creatures existing in the spaces between a life, on the fringes. These small spaces belie the way lovers create an entire world for themselves and a whole mythology. We are creatures that love and crave narrative, and when we fall in love we invent whole mythologies, narratives about ourselves and our lover, and our love, and never cease to enjoy returning to them and building them anew. In a licit relationship the archetypal story is 'how we met', and it's no wonder that children, lovers of stories, clamor to hear certain stories again and again: how their parents met, when they were born. They recognise more clearly than adults that we exist in the stories we tell and the narratives we weave. But even in unions without children, the public performance of the story 'how we met' is a duet which will alert the careful listener to the hidden tensions, if any, beneath a seemingly placid surface.

I've often thought that one could track the progress of a love by listening to the stories we tell. Do we still tell them to ourselves and each other in the same way, or has it subtly changed? Arguably a couple could never uncouple if one or the other had not dropped the narrative thread, subtly stepped back from the pattern they were weaving.

I want to write today about the way time itself has a peculiar property in an affair. It's the most precious quantity of all, and necessarily in limited supply. If there were a natural law about this, it would probably state that our craving is in inverse proportion to the time available: the less time together, the more intensely the flame burns between us. The moments are sweeter for being stolen, held more tightly and more precious to us because of what they represent. The stolen five minute phone call on a weekend just to say I can't stop thinking of you is so much more intense, so much more meaningful, precisely because of its rushed and compressed nature.

We speak of stealing time, but of course time cannot literally be stolen; it is not a concrete entity to be picked up and hidden in one's pocket. The only way we can begin to approach the nature of time is through language and metaphor itself. If we say a long time has passed, we've used two metaphors: time can be neither 'long' nor 'short'--it is not a piece of string--and it cannot 'pass' us--it is not a ship or a train.* Being spatial creatures, it is only metaphor that allows us to get a grip on what time itself is and begin to understand it, and so we use spatial metaphors like 'timeline' to allow us to comprehend it.

And as spatial creatures, as interstitial creatures creating our own world, our narrative and our time are twinned. Unlike the licit couple, we do not usually have an audience for the stories we tell; we exist in a private world where only the two of us exist. And unlike the licit couple, time is a commodity to be hoarded. Our affair exists in the spaces between, like those small interstitial ecosystems in between grains of sand, but it also exists in the times between, when we think of the other and long for them in their absence, when we tell and retell our stories to ourselves, waiting, patiently for the next episode.

The stolen hour in the hotel room both lasts forever and is our eternity and passes all too quickly, those hidden sands running out of the hourglass of our selves.

* Frye's English Delight: Metaphor. Listen here.

Labels: metaphor, radio 4, stephen fry, time

posted by O @ 02:38 Social bookmark this 9 comments

Monday, January 26, 2009

whore

The name of wife may seem more sacred or more worthy but sweeter to me will always be the word lover, or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore…my love rose to such heights of madness that it robbed itself of what it most desired beyond hope of recovery, when immediately at your bidding I changed my clothing along with my mind,, in order to prove you the possessor of my body and my will alike…..God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess for ever, it would be dearer and more honorable to me to be called not his Empress but your whore.

Heloise to Abelard, letter 1

I’m inside you. Haven’t I always been?

I want your name written on me. I want all the words you’re afraid to say, the ones you can say only to me. The ones you can’t believe you’ve said or thought but that I can tear out of you despite yourself. The secret ones. Like your secret wishes that you don’t always know you have til I bring them forth.

He dips a finger inside me and traces my mouth, making me taste my own desire for him. Longing rises up in me like a wave that will knock me down, drown me. A vast ocean of sorrow and grief that you can eradicate for me. Obliterate, annihilate, take me beyond the limits of language and of self and of thought, of past and future both, a gift you can bring me and I you.

Then I put my fingers inside myself, wetting them, and write my name on your chest, marking you just as you have marked me.

I know your language. I speak your secret one, the language of blood and bone and nerve endings, of secret names and the doors that unlock at my knock. I want access to all your rooms, every dark corner. If you let me in perhaps you can finally see what I always knew, that they’re beautiful and filled with light.

You dirty fucking whore he moans when he comes, shuddering, and his words sink into my bones with a pleasurable shock. It’s like a key turning in a lock. It’s like his cock sinking into me, like it sank into my throat earlier with his hands in my hair binding me to him while he thrusts hard and deep, gagging me. Whore, he names me, but it feels like he’s groaned Love, love.

When I come I'm breaking open, gushing, spilling all over him, covering him, and I tell him his secret desire, what he already knows…..he’s my whore too.

I would reach inside him and pull his soul inside out if I could. I want to inhabit you. Look through my eyes.

While he sleeps I crawl out of bed to write this, putting on wet panties that I’ll soak still more, his essence and mine mingled.

I have to write while I still feel you inside me.

I leave this at your ear for when you wake
A creature in its abstract cage asleep
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.
WS Graham, I leave this at your ear

Labels: ejaculation, exaltation, exhilaration, expostulation, radio 4

posted by O @ 00:40 Social bookmark this 19 comments