Love at First Sight (Longish) (640 hits)
Category: RomanceRating: 2 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by conrad <ball0395.at.rogers.com> (View user info) at 2004-06-03 23:06:00 EDT
I used to walk the cliff pathways a great deal. Though only a short walk from the edge of town, there existed there a purity of air, the zephyr cooled and cleansed by the Atlantic, and as one climbed higher the sporadic hikers would disperse, leaving one to take great lungfuls of what felt like iced ether, bringing a purity of thought, a freedom from confusion, that comes only of solitude in the presence of beauty. I would sit among tussocks of bristling grass and the demure wildflowers of the coast, themselves seemingly invigorated by the same tonics as I, and gaze out to the palette of the sea where thought, fogged and stifled by pollution, and the pollution of others words, would concrete and find its paradigm. One could taste, distinct, the very elements of being, as in the whorls, the heave, the froth below, memory and prescience would manifest themselves as if in the present on the peaks of waves and in the darknesses from which they rose. Truly, to climb here was to climb heavenward, as surely as if in blameless death.
I could never quite grasp how it was that I so often came to be truly alone in such a place of beauty, though it's true that I would have been less enamoured of the place were it not so often that I saw it unencumbered by the infinite weight of human tread. These paths were somewhat unsafe, to be sure; they frequently meandered close to the edge, where an unexpected squall could cast one down onto the jagged rocks below, and it's true that when close to the edge, one cannot resist peering over, feeling one's heart sink bowelwards, and one's mind reel at the temptation of a glorious swandive into a death anything but ignominious, shattered and bloody, acolyte to the ineffable call of the Siren of the rocks. The cliffs plunged stark and brutal into black basalt, and the waves that would crash against these jumbled monoliths were often violent, their welling and crashing redolent of a Titanic forge: upon reflection, the scene could have been forbidding to some, but only really forbade those who were cosseted by babble and the society of others.
It wasn't that I was estranged from solitude in life; since Sarah left me, taking the children with her and leaving no means of contact, I had been devoid of company at the house, and wouldn't have had it otherwise. I had felt, for a time, the righteous indignation of one who had lost, in no uncertain terms, a game of chance so very emphatically as to wonder what Gods one had offended, but this indignation was quickly supplanted by the belief, somewhat forced admittedly, that things had concluded as they should have. Certainly, there had been violence on my part, but no-one seemed to understand that she would instigate it, not with blows, but with words as weighted, and as calculated to injure. People never saw, never thought, beyond the bruises, beyond the surface of the skin, and I had never sought to explain that which I thought self-evident. I genuinely regretted the boys having seen some of these episodes, equally uncomprehending in their childish simplicity as our blinkered 'friends', but I felt sure that they would one day understand, and seek out their father. This seems somewhat resigned, but I really felt powerless against a linear chain of events so a priori as to entirely defy intervention on my part: no, they would one day comprehend, and I could not force comprehension upon them until that day.
Since then, the house had become a tomb of sensation, the singing of children's voices, the aromas of cooking and the sights of familial warmth replaced by an aura of mist, of distant bells, of brokenness. Stale air, tainted by bachelorhood, recalled aromas of dry semen in dusty outhouses, of seedy bars past closing time, and the atrophied fug of churches, long deconsecrated. My situation being as it was, it seemed quixotic to clean, or to throw open a window. I could, in any case, leave for the cliffs any time the atmosphere of mummification became too much; I lived now the life of the mind, a mind become musty with time and distance.
It was on such a day when I first saw my Medea on the cliffs. The sun was setting, and I was lost in reverie as the calm sea glittered with fiery hues, lapping placidly on the shore as if wind on leaves. I didn't notice her coming 'til she was nearly upon me, but she had come, evidently, from higher up, her delicate feet lightly dancing over treacherous shales, a small bunch of freshly-gathered wildflowers cradled at her waist in gracious hands. She wore a dress of white gazar, and in the eye of my mind I saw her dance, spinning, afire in the light of dusk, every sissonne and pirouette flaring her skirts and revealing tantalising glimpses of perfect, ivory legs. Her copious, auburn hair bore waves and depths like those in which I found my meaning below, and I longed to touch it, ready to sink to my knees at the very frission. She was the beauty for which the word had always awaited, and though her eyes, which I could sense were of the deepest green, looked beyond me, I could sense that she really looked at me, and that she too would see me as a scintilla in a great work. I had drunk her in for what seemed like an age before she smiled at me, and in that smile, made of light, was everything that was and will be, and everything ceded before it, that glorious moment captured in aspic as all else went still.
I fancied that her breast swelled as I rose, and extended a trembling hand in her direction: we were near the edge, and I, beset by love, could do little else. In a moment I pictured us, together, diving from the precipice, and as my mind rose from my broken body, I saw her lying, face up, next to me, her hand still in mine, blood draining from her body and mingling with lapping, caressing water as an ethereal foam. Her hair coated black rocks and deified them in doing so, and her whitening face was still more doll-like in death, still more beautiful. That same smile traversed her lips, or even lightened as life ebbed out, and flowers lay around her, my fallen Ophelia, 'til they blew away on warm winds to tell of this afar. I did not know what I would do now; surely it was better to share such a perfect, crystalline moment than the autumns and winters that time would inevitably bring us?
"May I accompany you down?" I said, the tremulousness in my voice betraying the gravity of the moment. "It's dangerous here, especially in bad light."
She looked at me, her face a mixture of fright and pity, before saying "no, thank you" and hastening away from me, casting occasionally an alarmed glance back over her shoulder as I stood, utterly bereft, and watched her passing as if it were a Renaissance in a moment, an infinity of dumbness and nihilism to follow.
I returned at the same time for the next couple of days, but knew that I would not see her again. I no longer come to the cliffs at dusk: the grasses, bristling in the wind and indistinct in the halflight, seem to me as sheaves of errant arrows, shot by infernal archers.
User Reviews
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2004-07-29 15:49:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Shandythedog - it was Humbert Humbert in Lolita, shirley one of the easiest names in prose history to remember!
Conrad, very fine writing indeed although I'd need to look about 10 of the words up to remind myself what they mean. I liked the imagery throughout this piece, you made it very clear in my mind. I thought your protagonist was a bit of a git expecting people to understand and accept why he hit his wife!
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2004-07-14 23:44:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i like the anti-climax at the end, it seemed quite comical to me
something in the tone reminded me a bit of hubert humbolt or whatever his name was, the narrator in lolita.
Submitted by conrad (user info) at 2004-06-05 12:23:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Awww, thanks Circe.
Someone: thanks for the comment. I hope that the rest of my stuff doesn't come off as preachy; it's just that I was writing in the preachy voice of a deluded character here.
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2004-06-05 11:46:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Incredibly well done, as always.
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2004-06-04 23:14:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Writing (Longish) doesn't help you get reviews.
Submitted by someone (user info) at 2004-06-04 19:05:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Your writing is a bit preachy, but you are very talented indeed. I am curious for more.
Submitted by SausageKing (user info) at 2004-06-04 02:22:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is great writing, but you will do a hell of a lot better doing stuff like this http://www.ubersite.com/m/31792 I think.
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2004-06-04 01:17:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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