In the hollow spaces between joy and pure, there is faith.
Ha. Faith you say. Faith. It begins below the heart. It begins in scar tissue.
We all suffer. Where is it? Your scar tissue. Tell me how you came by it.
What would you know about it?
You are a failed suicide and I am a priest. There are things I know that you won't dream of. And I've no doubt there are things you know that I won't dream of.
Won't or can't? Do you want to know what I dream of? I dream of tits. Oh yes. I dream of girls in pieces. Impromptu visions in my head. Like pornography. But better.
I'm sure you do. Let me ask you. Can you love without faith?
Ah Father. So often the searching gaze conceals the thing it is looking for. You and me for instance. I come here and you interrogate me on matters of faith, with precision and yes, I concede, a true curiosity. Which I admire. But what you seek eludes us both. You recite a catechism I cannot hold to. The truth is surreptitious. It resides in the flickering gas-lit parlour of the imagination. We'll not see it clear again. It is a relic of a time that is lost now.
Maybe so. If faith were tangible what would it be?
A stone between the ribs? perhaps. Something illicitly sustaining. I would test it like a blade against the wrist.
What would it make you feel?
Masterful. Compelling.
Is that so? What would faith not countenance?
A still mouth. A wreath burned to thorns, a wafer subsituting for nourishment.
Ah.
The priest's eyes crinkled. And there and then, in the weak light, his smile broke. He looked around the cell. Held his hands open.
What do you miss?
I miss the green garden. I miss my father singing to his cat in French. I miss who keeps faith with whom. I miss love, like a marksman misses the target. And until I don't, I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. To declare.
Let me ask you again. Where does faith begin.
It begins below the heart, Father, it begins in scar tissue.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
Thursday, 12 September 2013
Monday, 9 September 2013
Cosmo's dream
Salt on the cold air, black feathers and a dark bed. Cosmo is dreaming of his second wife, he is drawing on her flank with his knife. Islands well up behind him: Britain, Madagascar, Santorini and Nightingale. Now you are my whole world, he dream-whispers, one of these days I shall love you to the moon and back.
Night wraps its heavy silk about them. Tonight there is no moon. His dreams come to him as wifely-interrogators, bleeding and pleading:
Where are my roses? yellow for unrequited love, orange for passion?
They are behind the door he answers
What colour's the door?
It's the colour of rotting pears
Who lives there?
We live there: An old married man and his loves
What colour's the door?
It's the colour of pale toad
How will I know it?
It's in two halves
Where are my roses?
They're here, of course they're here. There is no door.
And he flourishes for her a bouquet of stems, astonishingly green, their leaves and thorns reaching for their lost heads, because he loves her. He tells her. Yes, he does.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
Night wraps its heavy silk about them. Tonight there is no moon. His dreams come to him as wifely-interrogators, bleeding and pleading:
Where are my roses? yellow for unrequited love, orange for passion?
They are behind the door he answers
What colour's the door?
It's the colour of rotting pears
Who lives there?
We live there: An old married man and his loves
What colour's the door?
It's the colour of pale toad
How will I know it?
It's in two halves
Where are my roses?
They're here, of course they're here. There is no door.
And he flourishes for her a bouquet of stems, astonishingly green, their leaves and thorns reaching for their lost heads, because he loves her. He tells her. Yes, he does.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
The Angels watch over Rain Baby
Rain Baby sits in the damp cafe and consults her copy of War and Peace, attuning herself to its unusual frequencies: The seagull's cry of loss, the fall of blossom in the abandoned garden, the low hum of the bluebottle feasting on the carrion. Her copy of the novel is beloved, a well-thumbed treasure, annotated and diaried. She uses it for daily practice, consulting Tolstoy before making any decision. That is how she has come to be in this cafe, in this land. She is in her Russian period. Before Tolstoy it had been Chekhov and she had yearned for her three sisters, and to know the precise provenance of her father's silver topped cane. She had longed for Moscow.
Today, as the rain exhausts the cafe window, she taps out the rhythm of the book with her fingertips, drumming against the yellow vinyl of the table, not even knowing she is waiting for him to come in. When he arrives he is a stranger to her. He is dressed like an exclamation mark in surplice and trainers. He inclines his grave head by means of greeting, and lies down across two chairs, like a sword. His halo is as true as a gold coin. In spite of herself Rain Baby is interested. She walks round to his side of the table and stares boldly at him.
The stranger is asleep. Perhaps he has come to lie down, for nothing more than the simple mercy afforded by the cafe of somewhere warm. Nonetheless Rain Baby is offended. She perceives his eccentric sleep as a mockery of her patient waiting and her long journey. She beseeches the red-faced barman with her eyes, but he is polishing cups with a grey cloth, and is unprepared to intervene. She thinks, he probably doesn't care who does what so long as they're quiet. And the still guy in the vicar's outfit, he is quiet.
Rain Baby goes over to the stranger and places her hand on his frocked leg. The faint scent of cashews rises from him. He opens his eyes and sits, simply upright. He hands her the envelope from his breast pocket, and she comprehends that his archness is merely a part of the message.
Far above them, the angels in their glass bottomed boats are peering down from the clouds and sending their blessing of rain on folded grey wings.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
Today, as the rain exhausts the cafe window, she taps out the rhythm of the book with her fingertips, drumming against the yellow vinyl of the table, not even knowing she is waiting for him to come in. When he arrives he is a stranger to her. He is dressed like an exclamation mark in surplice and trainers. He inclines his grave head by means of greeting, and lies down across two chairs, like a sword. His halo is as true as a gold coin. In spite of herself Rain Baby is interested. She walks round to his side of the table and stares boldly at him.
The stranger is asleep. Perhaps he has come to lie down, for nothing more than the simple mercy afforded by the cafe of somewhere warm. Nonetheless Rain Baby is offended. She perceives his eccentric sleep as a mockery of her patient waiting and her long journey. She beseeches the red-faced barman with her eyes, but he is polishing cups with a grey cloth, and is unprepared to intervene. She thinks, he probably doesn't care who does what so long as they're quiet. And the still guy in the vicar's outfit, he is quiet.
Rain Baby goes over to the stranger and places her hand on his frocked leg. The faint scent of cashews rises from him. He opens his eyes and sits, simply upright. He hands her the envelope from his breast pocket, and she comprehends that his archness is merely a part of the message.
Far above them, the angels in their glass bottomed boats are peering down from the clouds and sending their blessing of rain on folded grey wings.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
Friday, 30 August 2013
The Prodigal: Electra Considers the Queer Idea of Family
It is so because it is written. Five hearts tattooed in blue upon his wrist: one for each of us. Mother sits beneath the open sky embroidering children onto the soiled household linen. The day drenches her in a sudden light. I watch her pulling threads, quiet as breath, as she fastens another smile to an infant's face. Rex traces his hearts with a calloused finger and leans back against the trunk of the apple tree regarding his wife. Rex, the husband of hearts. He has married a woman utterly addicted to the quality of light in his shadow. He stands just five breaths away from her. His heart beats to a distant drum,. His spheres turn to a darker music. Mother unspools another twist of thread and murmurs her prayers, calling him in. One breath for love, two for an open heart, three for each child, four for an angel's effigy. Five is the magic breath, the breath that will close the space between them in an embrace, as Rex falls towards her, helpless. I watch as he leans in for her kiss, momentarily extinguishing the light in her face. And I think: they have chosen to be lost.
The King Pays a Surprise Visit
She wears the mourning jewel, black loops of jet about her throat, its indistinct lights purling between hope and sleep. She unhooks her wings, shakes down her shoulders. He watches her reflection in the long mirror. Her spine is a string of pearls as she bends to her task and his jealous ghost leans in stupidly to get a better look. Is it his imagination or does she glance up at him now, facing the wild? A prickle of joy knits one purls one cable across his back. They are the pearly king and queen turning over the odd reliquaries of the world between them. He comes to her now, in the odd months of the year, those months when the wind blows him backwards, inverting all his desires. To kiss is sick. He longs to eat but all she can offer him is tea. Come to me she whispers, smiling a smile full of bright necklace, a smile full of crumbling opulence. Come to me. And he has no idea of his desire to punish her until he hears the soft snip of recognition as she takes out her pearl-handled knife and cuts the heart out of the possible.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
Thursday, 29 August 2013
Booker Longlist: The Luminaries: Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton's second novel is as suggestive, diverting and mesmerising as its title would have us hope. Set in Victorian New Zealand, it is a masterpiece of plotting and revelation. Conspiracy, secrecy, purloined letters (there is more than a nod to Poe here) revelation and fortune circle each other in the stories of the cast of twelve characters which intersect and interrupt each other for the unpacking of the central mystery.
For sheer reading pleasure Catton's novel is an out and out success. We are reminded throughout the novel that we are being told a story, and we are as captivated as children by the telling of it. The headers for each chapter which begin by dropping little clues, and end by usurping the content of the chapter are themselves beguiling. The evocation of place is compelling, the language precisely of its period. Her sense for the vernacular is spot on, her characters vivid and endearing.
Even if one were to appraise the novel simply in terms of its architecture, it is a thing of beauty, wondrously structured so that the form fully underpins the content. Catton's decision to use astrology as the frame for her story is a stroke of genius: astrology, the ever-changing patterns of the stars which men use to find purpose and pattern in their lives and motivations. The novel is structured in twelves, so it has a mathematical as well as literary pleasure to it.
Fortune is the currency of the novel, both in terms of chance and in terms of gold. We are asked to consider what is of value and then shown what desire costs. There is an alchemical beauty in Catton's novel. Everyone is transformed, some are transfigured. Paulo Coelho says that alchemy exists so that the world becomes a better place, so that we can transform our leaden lives into gold. Catton has done something even more luminous: she has turned the world of words into something fine and precious, rare and valuable. If this isn't a contender for the prize I don't know what is.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
For sheer reading pleasure Catton's novel is an out and out success. We are reminded throughout the novel that we are being told a story, and we are as captivated as children by the telling of it. The headers for each chapter which begin by dropping little clues, and end by usurping the content of the chapter are themselves beguiling. The evocation of place is compelling, the language precisely of its period. Her sense for the vernacular is spot on, her characters vivid and endearing.
Even if one were to appraise the novel simply in terms of its architecture, it is a thing of beauty, wondrously structured so that the form fully underpins the content. Catton's decision to use astrology as the frame for her story is a stroke of genius: astrology, the ever-changing patterns of the stars which men use to find purpose and pattern in their lives and motivations. The novel is structured in twelves, so it has a mathematical as well as literary pleasure to it.
Fortune is the currency of the novel, both in terms of chance and in terms of gold. We are asked to consider what is of value and then shown what desire costs. There is an alchemical beauty in Catton's novel. Everyone is transformed, some are transfigured. Paulo Coelho says that alchemy exists so that the world becomes a better place, so that we can transform our leaden lives into gold. Catton has done something even more luminous: she has turned the world of words into something fine and precious, rare and valuable. If this isn't a contender for the prize I don't know what is.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
The Prodigal: Electra takes a Walk
Electra walks in the shadow, her face smudged with black light-out. Tonight she is walking with uncommon purpose. She is walking to heal her broken heart. Love for Rafael has dragged her through the graveyards and eelhouses of her ordinary life and brought her finally to this walking world, defined by vast, unboundaried ways. The moon slips out from a veil of cloud and illumines Electra making her cautious way down the broken street. She feels the chill of Rafael breathing down her neck, but when she turns there is no-one, only a cat which slinks behind a dustbin and disappears, like a magician's coin, into a sleeve of darkness.
Because he has vanished, she believes she will find her way by following her handedness. She tends towards the left. It is not much to go on, but it is something.
She follows the cracked map of her hand to find her way through the city and stands back against a nightclub wall as a gaggle of girls, clinging to each other, tip themselves into the street. It is the night of the breakneck bodice and high-heels. Somewhere a clock tolls and a neon light above her flickers on and off in red. Look out, there she goes, walking through the rat's nest of the city, still trying to find her way back to him.
Because he has vanished, she believes she will find her way by following her handedness. She tends towards the left. It is not much to go on, but it is something.
She follows the cracked map of her hand to find her way through the city and stands back against a nightclub wall as a gaggle of girls, clinging to each other, tip themselves into the street. It is the night of the breakneck bodice and high-heels. Somewhere a clock tolls and a neon light above her flickers on and off in red. Look out, there she goes, walking through the rat's nest of the city, still trying to find her way back to him.
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