Another session with R. yesterday. It was obvious from the moment she saw me (and so she confirmed) that I was, how do I put it?, not my usual dissheveled, troubled self. Or I was, just more so.
There are emotions below words; there are emotions that reside somewhere below, in a Tartarus where words haven't been dreamed, and mouths don't exist to speak them. There are symbols only: no images, no portrayals: signification only, of something darker, more primal than imagery and form.
I spoke at her, she said, not with her.
What was the other choice? What other option exists? There are things that can't be conveyed, except by empathy, and that requires the similarity of experience. It requires that the emotion behind the movements, behind the statements and protestations, be met with an understanding and a similar chemical rise: a similar tensile means of being, so that two minds can vibrate in equal tone.
Sometimes it's best not to listen, but to receive. Sometimes the only communication is by barrage: by a scream that isn't a scream, but emerges through the manipulation of a social being and plays puppeteer to the outward, civilized form.
In that stretch of linearity, in that slice of what exists and how it does, I was carnage: war in a shell: a bleeding child under glass, voiceless: existing only in that I was perceived.
There, I echo.
It's warm, and close, and lit somehow. Inside my chest and oblivious of the bones that form my organ cage-crib, I look down and wash my hands. Again. Again. Again. Flesh over palm, palm over finger, finger over flesh, wiping at the stale caked blood with secretions of the same kin and kind, I move slowly, communing with myself in the deliberate slowness of touch, regret and caress.
I continue.
On, and on: no reverse on the switch of feeling.
I continue.
To echo.
There are emotions below words; there are emotions that reside somewhere below, in a Tartarus where words haven't been dreamed, and mouths don't exist to speak them. There are symbols only: no images, no portrayals: signification only, of something darker, more primal than imagery and form.
I spoke at her, she said, not with her.
What was the other choice? What other option exists? There are things that can't be conveyed, except by empathy, and that requires the similarity of experience. It requires that the emotion behind the movements, behind the statements and protestations, be met with an understanding and a similar chemical rise: a similar tensile means of being, so that two minds can vibrate in equal tone.
Sometimes it's best not to listen, but to receive. Sometimes the only communication is by barrage: by a scream that isn't a scream, but emerges through the manipulation of a social being and plays puppeteer to the outward, civilized form.
In that stretch of linearity, in that slice of what exists and how it does, I was carnage: war in a shell: a bleeding child under glass, voiceless: existing only in that I was perceived.
There, I echo.
It's warm, and close, and lit somehow. Inside my chest and oblivious of the bones that form my organ cage-crib, I look down and wash my hands. Again. Again. Again. Flesh over palm, palm over finger, finger over flesh, wiping at the stale caked blood with secretions of the same kin and kind, I move slowly, communing with myself in the deliberate slowness of touch, regret and caress.
I continue.
On, and on: no reverse on the switch of feeling.
I continue.
To echo.