To Write About Such Things

Who are we to write about life? How dare we try and tame what is endless in the way that its wild? Well this is how we dare and why.

There are a dozen seats, filled by a dozen butts. Nine couch cushions, a broken sofa, a hammock and a lap. We are eclectic sitters. A woman leans in to engage a man, 3 cushions and a coffee table away. The painting on the wall isn't painting at all and these aren't walls they're people. We broke all the lights, ignited tiny flames; the walls hide in a background blackness and our faces, our chests, our moving mouths and shining eyes, have glow cast across them. And so our set changes when we wiggle, when we lean or laugh or move. We are the only structures here and the candles paint us. So when we move, the shape of the structure changes. And so the woman leans in and another man turns to listen and two walls, two walls of a dozen, are shifting their shape for conversation. This, I'm sure, is how houses are supposed to behave.

There's concern on the woman's lips, her fingers slip off a mug of mediocre wine to tell the man 3 cushions and a coffe table away what it looks like at the moment in her mind. Her wine ripples cause her hand shakes a bit; she's not nervous, she's restless. If only she could paint like candles do, free her thoughts from their twenty year slavery, offer onto the coffee table, centered in a twelve-walled room, the pure and potent story that's being authored behind her eyes - then the eleven walls would smile and cry - and their tears would change their shape, and the candles would know they're needed. Twelve walls with twelve wills all looking every day to light their little fires and provoke their neighbors to change shape. What can she say that brings him off his back to the edge of a couch? The man sits up toward her, hearing words like threads tying into his face, reeling him toward their source. The woman is changing walls. Its happening again and all twelve bodies know it, mass movement, the candles smile in excitement and agree to stay awake a little longer. The woman is overcome, her voice is the messenger from the piece of her inside her mind. A great garden stretched out beneath the dim sky of epiphany and awe. She has now, in her wandering, become lost in the garden, brushing aside the thistels and thorns which persuade so many to stay out of the thick, keeping to paths less wild. Eleven walls, now still and eager, listen to a woman, no longer fully present, as she screams truths from the garden inside.

It's beautiful, she finally says, standing solitary in grass and flower under star and moon, if only I could tell you, you eleven walls would crumble and weep sweet tears dripping down smiling mouths. It has happened for her, the eleven bodies know, they saw her leave the room and wander into the garden by way of a sentence spoken in the right meter, bouncing from word to right word until the beaten path no longer suited her. Deep red smiles look up from ceramic mugs at the smilers hovering above, watching this woman return to them from the garden. If only I could tell you all, she said, tell you all what I've seen there, she spoke through sobs, then I could move you, then I could change your shape. And eleven seats held eleven butts on eleven bodies all thinking of the gardens for whose description they dare to speak at all.

We are no one to write about life, about the forests of revelation, about the gardens which grow for our wandering under the great skies of epiphany; we are no one to write about such things, but we're the only ones to write about such things, the only ones screaming from the gardens into rooms which candles paint, and that is how and why we dare to write about such things.