New Contrast 156

South Africa literary Journal Summer 2011

objects are words, words have a use, a value, an occupation, people give them a use, a value or an occupation, words contain, objects control, can you think of anything that is nothing at all, the expression of a hand, a lingering finger, an eye lash, nothing, the double bed is in the centre of the room, or, to a certain extent it is, it is more or less, in the centre of the room, it is pushed against a wall, the centre of a wall, if you take a tape measure and measure from the one end of the wall to the other, which ever end it is that you choose to measure from, you will find that the double bed is not exactly centred, there will be a few centre meters that are different on either side, but if you stand back and look at it, it is perfectly centred, the eye is never as accurate as a tape measure, stand back, look at it, the double bed is perfectly centred as you want it to be perfectly centred and so it is perfectly centred, the wall is red, an off red, slightly orange, a little bit fiery, not blood red, just red,

the red wall reaches up to a ceiling, the ceiling is white, if you lie on the bed on your back and watch the white ceiling for a long time, almost mesmerised by a colour that is devoid of colour, there is no colour, white is colourless, it has no name, no label, you will notice that in the corners of the room, where the white ceiling and the red wall, or sometimes another white wall, overlap, there are cobwebs, silver silk strings, do spiders make silk webs or is it silkworms that do this, silk, an oriental, erotic fabric, a magical miracle that emerges from a worm, a slippery, squeezable colourless white worm, hold a piece of silk against your inner thigh, the skin that covers your instep, caress your footsore toes, feel the glistening embrace, the silver silk strings that the spider spins are silky, maybe these strings are not silk, but they are slender and soft, evil, the strings of silk stretch from the ceiling, the no colour ceiling, nothing, it shelters you from the rain and the sun, to a red or white wall, a wall that holds the room in place, holds the ceiling above you, as you lie on the double bed, where the ceiling and the red wall overlap the silver silk strings are more obvious as they make contact with another colour, bloody red, an arterial seam, listen carefully, hear a heart beat, a suicide, a murder, as there is a contrast between the colour of the silver silk and a colour that is something, red. but even where the wall is white, if you look carefully, the ghost of a silver thread is evident, sometimes, but not always, a spider, a chocolate flavoured flat spider the size of a 50 cent coin crouches in the shimmer, it waits for an insect to come its way, if you are lucky and lie on the bed for long enough, something does come its way, a small fly, a mosquito will fly into the silky spider’s home and is caught in the silk, small flying insects, like fly’s and mosquito’s, are unable to discern that the silver silk is there, they are unable to tell the difference in colour, colour blind, they have no word for a colour, so that where the silk is set against nothingness of white they find it difficult, if not impossible, to know that the silver silky rope is there, are they aware that this defect is dangerous, they cannot know as they cannot speak, handicapped, crippled, the noose of the gallows widens, it is easier if the spider’s silver home is set against the red wall as here the blood darkness, life’s heart shaped blood, and the powerful lightness of silver is more noticeable, if you lie on the bed for a long time, for the eternity of a thin forever insect life, some or other small fly or mosquito will flutter into the silk, then it is eaten for breakfast or supper or lunch, the flavoured spider does not know time, it does not know that there are words for the meals that take place at different times of the day, meals divide a day neatly, the flat spider, this, “0”,  is its size, watches the struggle for a short while, then in a chocolate syrupy passage the spider moves, the struggle lessens, silk poisons, paralyses, it’s tiring to keep struggling, to fight mortality, and the insect is eaten, nutritious, vitamins and protein, the flat chocolate spider makes a hole somewhere in the body of the small fly or mosquito and sucks out its viscera, the arachnid is now fat, corpulent, it is satisfied, it can live longer, spider, there were six letters and now there are 8, there are four walls in the room, four walls make up a conventional room, some rooms have more than four walls, a pentagonal room will have f[555]ive walls, a hexagonal room will have si[666]x walls, what has ei[888]8ght walls, in most cases a conventional room will have four walls, count the rooms that you know that do not have four walls, are there any, this room has four walls, two of which are red, an orange sunny red, fire flames burn, the other two walls are white, not a bright white, but an off white; the colour of an egg shell white, a creamy white, cream is wholesome, healthy, the white of the colour that is written on a tin of paint, slightly tinted, a thought, cultivation, it is traditional that walls should not be painted a bright white, they are painted something off this white, a rainbow, for if they are painted bright white then the glossy sun will make the walls too intense, too vivid, a blinding void, lost, the bed is a double bed, what the salesmen in the retail shops call a double bed, it is big enough to contain two people, but not so big that two people can sleep without touching each other’s bodies, without feeling honey silky skin, bees sting, a double bed, so the salesmen in the retail shops say, is most often bought by people who do not have sufficient money to buy a bigger bed, a queen size bed or a king size bed, but those that are not salesmen in retail shops will say that smaller beds are not bought as two people want to sleep as far away from each other as possible, they do not want to touch in the night, they do not want to feel the sweat and toil of another as they feel it on themselves, they do not want this memory, it contains, limits their limitations, the vanished memory of fate, this bed is a double bed, perhaps it was bought for none of the above reasons, perhaps it was bought as it fits perfectly in the centre of the room, or more or less the centre of the room, the double bed is pushed against the centre of a wall, the red wall, the just red wall, and the eye cannot discern that it is not quite at the centre of the wall, the eye will see what it wants to see, a photograph, and it sees that the double bed is centred, the double bed has no head board, it has bed clothes on it, sheets and a duvet and two pillows, the bed coverings are white, not the white of the walls, beige egg shell creamy white, but a pure white, an authentic white, a worthy white, a white that has no colour, the no remembrance white, you fear a memory, recall a nightmare, a dream, the double bed cover is so bright white, so authentic white, that it is dazzling, it blinds the sleeper, the two pillows are often placed at an angle, not quite straight across the top of the double bed, balanced in a jaunty fashion, they have just been thrown there, casually, just thrown there as if it does not matter where they are placed as long as they are there, useful, and yet the authentic white pillows are always at the same angle, everyday, a specific look, an off balanced look, a gay abandoned look, it is easy to throw a pillow onto a bed, the double bed is always made up, except for a brief period in the morning when someone, 1 person, that sleeps in the double bed, despite the fact that it is bed that can accommodate two people, wakes up and climbs out of it, then the white coverings are crumpled and dishevelled, but this is only for a short period, then the double bed is arranged again, the double bed covering, the duvet, the sheets and the pillows, are pulled up, made up, neat, unnatural, a covering, the one who sleeps in the double bed, alone, cannot feel another in the night as there is no other, it is a double bed but it can manage 1 person just as easily as it can manage 2, sometimes, on an occasion, the double bed is shared with another other, now 1 person can feel the other, the person, touch the other, the last heart beat of time, it is a double bed after all, not a queen size bed or a king size bed, as a double bed fits against the centre of the wall, not a measured centre, but an unhurried, leisurely centre, the eye is not deliberate, it is not precise, it is only calculating, then the coverings are left crumpled for a longer period, sex takes place in the double bed, it is a place of fun, parody, it is not only slept in, it is rumpled and creased and wet, not guarded, controlled, on the left hand side of the double bed is another red wall, you can call it red, almost red, just red, but both red walls do not touch each other, they are cut off from each other by a doorway that leads into a passage, torn into two, divided by an enclave, a hole, a space, an empty space that is there to fill, clothing can be packed on shelves and hung on coat hangers, there are always clothes, four or five pairs of trousers and possible six shirts, hanging in this space, it is never empty as empty is not full, full is valuable, worthy, it is not blank, a vacant lot, the word martyr does not fit into this sentence, this space, there is a thick warm woollen jacket, short sleeve shirts are in one pile, long sleeve shirts in another, an assortment of pink and black and red and green and orange and mauve and blue and vermillion underwear, the wall on the left hand side, the off red wall,  is shorter than the wall against which the double bed lies, this is because the intervening doorway and dressing space condense it, narrow it down, across the way from the double bed, in front of it, and to the right hand side is glass, on the right is a long window, and in the front a long window and two doors, the windows and the doors in front of the double bed open out on to several trees, there may be three of them, blouhaak acacia trees and river sand, the glass of the windows and the doors are clear, you can see what is inside the room if you are outside of it, and you can see outside the room if you are inside it, if you stand at the front of the double bed, or if you lie down on it and prop yourself up on an elbow, it is easy to see what is outside the room, the blouhaak acacia trees are most often green, they are not dried out, useless, worthless, they have brown slender branches, almost spindly, and the leaves are tiny, they cluster around each other in green feathery whorls, the thorns on the tree are not blue, despite the name of the tree being the blouhaak, but these not blue thorns, they are not easily discernable if you are lying down on the bed propped up on an elbow, as you are too far away from them to make them out precisely, but if you go slightly closer then you can see them, fish hooks, penetrating fish hooks that cut open skin and make it bleed, hooks that are difficult to remove, death hooks, but you are inside the room looking out at the thorns on the tree so they pose no problem, they are just there, there to be used for whatever it is that thorns on thorn trees are used for, a washing line, a machine gun, clean, competent, looking out from the room, whether you are standing up or lying on the double bed propped up on an elbow, the outside appears to be sliced into pieces of a horizontal puzzle, a picture in a frame cut into a puzzle, for the windows and the doors are bisected with metal, a grey blue metal, the grey blue metal bars are not bars, they can not keep the bad-mannered, offensive, disrespectful out, rather they are bars that are there to keep the glass of the window in place, in a place, they are horizontal, depending upon which angle you are looking from, whether this is from the outside or from the inside, so the grey blue metal bars divides the picture of the trees outside into two, into three, into 4 and into 5, a misshapen picture, perplexing, a mystery, and so at all times you lie still, in one position, careful, if you lie on the double bed, the bright pure white of authenticity, there are pictures of slim brown trees tiny green feathery leaves, divided, cubed trees, a cubist painting in a picture frame of blue and gray, two dimensions, the same object, two objects, 3 and four, or 1 object, that just looks as if it is two or 3 or 4, if you lie on the double bed with white coverings, pure white, authentic white, not off white or a nutritious creamy white, you may become confused as you are unable to decide which is what or what is which, but soon this twisted view becomes the real view, the normal view, and then if you move your head slightly, just ever so slightly, the view becomes different, the distortion changes, normal once again, the slender brown branches, almost spindly, with tiny green leaves that are clustered around each other in green feathery whorls take on a different look, a new look, a new two dimensional look, you can lie like this for hours and as you move your head ever so slightly so that the trees are constantly moving, constantly changing, they move nowhere, you move nowhere, somewhere, the trees with tiny green feathery whorls are not planted in a linear fashion, they are not planted like you would plant a plantation of citrus trees, but are just there, maybe the seeds blew in from somewhere and embedded themselves in the ground and the trees grew, jaunty, you cannot know, there is a pattern, a self confident, secure pattern, a blue print that you cannot know, a model that you want to copy, the pattern that you want to portray, to design and plan, creatively, as you lie down the pattern that you create depends upon the angle of your head or the time of the day, in the early morning the shadows stretch westward, the sun rises in the east so it casts its rays over the trees from the east, the shadows lie forward to the west, the grey blue metal that crosses the glass, splits the shadows, the shadows have a life, a cut up life, a bathetic touching personal life, this also depends upon the wind, if the wind is blowing the slender brown branches and tiny green leaves move in the direction of the wind, burrowing out, flat against the wind, they dance, black against brown, they crawl across the river sand, at midday when the sun is high in the sky there are few shadows, the green leaves, the green feathery leaves have to make their own lives, so they reach upwards in an attempt to find a shadow, and they never can, they never will, until the evening finds them, when the sun sets in the west, the shadows move east, a ballet dancer is made, then a hot air balloon, then an aeroplane that flies to extraordinary heights, sometimes, but not often, a beautiful lizard, a more than a man lizard, walks onto the glass, if you lie very still on the double bed with white coverings you can watch the lizard that is worth looking at, four legs move on the grey blue metal, on its legs are suckers which allows the beautiful lizard, the more than a man lizard that holds its head high up to the ball of fire in the sky, to walk on glass, to listen to the sounding of the spheres, on a ceiling, upside down, horizontal, vertical, in a straight or crooked line, the long tailed lizard, who is much more than a man, more than even a poet, walks across the glass, it seems to walk gently, you can never know if these suckers suck softly or they suck as a leech sucks, is the glass beneficial like blood is healthy, is glass healing like bleeding is curative, for you are not glass, you are lying inside the glass just looking at, feeling these suckling feet, the picture that you have is different to the picture that the delicate more than man like lizard has, he is cut in two, sometimes there are 2 or 3 or four dandy charming lizards, more pleasing than men, so even though there is only one lizard, it has two front legs and a face, or a head, that is pointed forward, another has two back legs and a tail that is also pointed forward, the 3^rd has no tail just a face and the fourth has nothing at all, it is not there, and you wonder where the lizard is going to, if anywhere at all, it swirls its tail, if you lie on the double bed with authentic, pure, bright white covers facing upwards, looking upwards, there is a fan, it is a silver fan made from steel, there are three long extended pieces of metal that make up the fan, they are flat, but the flat side is not facing you as you lie on your back on the double bed, the sliver metal is at right angles to you, if the fan is turned on at the switch by the bedroom door it turns around, sometimes slowly or other times fast, the speed of the fan depends upon whether it has been turned up to its highest speed or whether it is at the lowest speed, the dial reads 1, 2 or 3, you can see your reflection in the fan, but the reflection is distorted, not misshapen as is the picture in its frame outside the window, but distorted as if you are in a amusement arcade, the house of mirrors, a house of mirth, laugh from one mirror to the next, depending upon the way the mirror is configured so your reflection changes, in one you may have a very large mouth and a small body, so large is your mouth in your face that as you watch yourself your face your head grows heavy on your shoulders, you swallow, in another your whole body appears to be extremely wide, in another you are frankenstein’s monster, a test tube baby, and in another your head is so elongated that as you watch yourself you feel your brain stretch as if it has been placed on a rack, tortured, and you laugh again as there is nothing left for you to do, if you lie on the double bed so you see similar distorted images, if you incline your head one way your body appears like a ghosts face, it is pale and incandescent, if you incline your head another way your face takes up the whole space that was your body, now you are only a face, sometimes if you turn the fan on, your body becomes your face and your face becomes your body and your body becomes your face and your face becomes your body until you turn the fan off, then you only have the ghost body, the pale and iridescent body or you have a face instead of a body, sometimes if the sun light is bright, you can notice the feathery whorls of green leaves on the outside tree, reflect in the fan, but this is only if you sit at an angle and are not lying down facing upwards, on the floor next to the double bed with coverings that are not the colour of an egg shell but are pure and bright, is a book, it is facing upwards so the title and the name of the author on the cover is clearly visible, it is a white cover with the words printed on it in black and blue ink, the title of the book is written in capital letters, one word is black and one word is blue, INVISIBLE CITIES, underneath this is the name of the author, italo calvino, his name is written in black letters and yet the print is much larger than that of the title of the book, INVISIBLE CITIES, it is almost three times the size of the title of the book, that is not exactly correct, the first name of the author, italo, is written in the same size print as the title of the book, although it is in small not capital letters, and the last name of the author, calvino, is written in black letters that are three times the size of the title of the book and the first name of the author, in the middle of the cover, between the title of the book and the name of the author of the book are tiny blue words, you cannot read them if you do not bring the book close to you, hear it, the small words in blue letters say ‘a subtle beautiful meditation’ sunday times”, the top third of the cover of the book is made up of black gothic scrip, it is undecipherable, maybe is spells out the word venice, but of this you cannot be sure so you imagine it to be venice, an illusion, a delusion, a damsel with a dulcimer, a shattered spell, the book is closed, but the cities are open to an eye, a city is visible, another city is seen, the words of a lover, an invisible lover who never went somewhere, who never went to a pleasure dome, a twisting memory, a city is always imperceptible, there is no word for the letters of the lover, the sterile is real, it is never touched or seen, it is not contained in a word

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