February in Dordogne. The brightest light jumps along the fluorescent tubes of snow which lie cracked in all the ditches. But the fields, which stretch from ditch to ditch, are thawed and non-commital in their colours: silvergreen, silver-tope, ashy-ochre. Toto, the best dog in the world, is a white, wire-haired terrier and swears he can hear rabbits deep underground, swears he can hear meltshapes of darkness. When he jumps into the ditches he dematerialises, then jumps out and bolts on ahead.
Who needs the song and dance of Spring - all that green and juice and ruckus - when you can have this? The landscape retracted to its starched bones. No lust. Not yet. No panic to seed and be sown, which is a hankering after self-duplication in hypothetical elsewheres. Just the bare, muted now. The enough of now. No God. No priest. No shrink. No one to pay heed to the scurry and the hide-and-seek of my thoughts, but me. No one to be responsible for them, but me. No one to care for them, unconditionally - if I have the balls to do that, but me. No one to call them home, but me.
All the ponds wear blind-man's lenses of ice.
Lapwings idle west.
Who needs the song and dance of Spring - all that green and juice and ruckus - when you can have this? The landscape retracted to its starched bones. No lust. Not yet. No panic to seed and be sown, which is a hankering after self-duplication in hypothetical elsewheres. Just the bare, muted now. The enough of now. No God. No priest. No shrink. No one to pay heed to the scurry and the hide-and-seek of my thoughts, but me. No one to be responsible for them, but me. No one to care for them, unconditionally - if I have the balls to do that, but me. No one to call them home, but me.
All the ponds wear blind-man's lenses of ice.
Lapwings idle west.
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