Walls Fade

Walls fade

Walls fade. The ground under your feet, wafer thin, tears and crumbles
leaving wisps of powder that fall away, disappear. A man you are
talking to smiles and turns. He leaves and will never return. How can
you move in this world? Who can you ask for advice?

A round man works in his garden. His spade digs deep into the earth.
This ground is not thin, you can shout it out, it is not thin. Yet the
man turns to dust and falls to join the earth he has just toiled over.
The image of his sweating form bent over in labour, his arm raised
momentarily to his brow to mop away the trickling beads of sweat as
they form, remains a moment in your mind, then fades to nothing.

A woman, naked in herself, and having no breasts, removes her legs and
places them where her breasts might have been. Her appearance reminds
you of a large wading bird, perhaps a stork, though her anger brings to
mind the emu. She then proceeds to walk towards you, her face tilted to
one side and straining to look up. You think that with time her neck
may grow, her bottom surely become less prominent. You turn your back
upon the creature and think no more of her.

You are behind the screen, projected on the screen, you are of the
screen. You feel the pulse of light. You feel the places where your
form meets other forms as a faint pleasurable tingling. You are able to
smile.There is a child watching. He sees your smile and for a moment
looks on, his face grows with an idea, bulges forward towards you, then
he is bending down and picking something up and throwing it. A stone
hits the screen and glass splinters, fractures the air. There is an
explosion. Then there is nothing else. Nothing except the dark.

There is a wall with a window. The window is removed by a small child
who then tries to replace it but never finds the correct angle to do
so. He crumples the wall under himself and sits on it.

A father sees the child and slaps his face. His hand sticks to the face
and when he withdraws the hand the skin rips free. The child cries
miserably. The father attempts to remove the flesh from his hand but
cannot. The child cannot stop crying.

The man takes the crumpled wall, smoothes it out, walks up it, walks
across the ceiling, down the opposite wall, across the floor, up the
first wall. He doesn't notice the child has removed the window again
and falls through. He yawns with distaste at the sensation, his arms
reaching out to stop his fall, he then climbs back into the room.

The mother returns to the home and finds the child still crying on the
floor. She screams when she sees the child's face. She takes the
father's head in her two hands and stretches it, pulls it at the sides
like a concertina. The father's face, his eyes, struggle against her
pulling, her screaming voice. He pushes her back and picks up the
child. He is crying and still has his flesh on his hands. The mother is
hysterical, hitting him, plucking flesh from his back, pulling large
chunks of flesh away to reveal naked bone. Her screams build higher and
higher and the father begins to dissolve within the noise of her. As
she watches she cannot control herself, she is divided into two. Her
double stands and watches, its eyes harden as tears flow down its
cheeks.

The father crawls up the wall. The child is on the floor barking at him
like a rabid dog. He is frothing at the mouth. The mother comes into
the room. Hurls the father from the wall to the floor. The father howls
and the mother chastises the child. Father and child set to tearing the
mother's flesh from her skeleton. They laugh inanely as they do
it.

Your friend's daughter dies of cancer. All turns to dust. Importance is
lost. Your friend's son is run over by a truck, his cycle swaying
momentarily towards death. All is turned to stone. Importance is lost.
Your friend's daughter dies in her cot. Breathing stops. You are
lost.

The walls move closer to you. Within you shrink. The walls speak of
names, show faces, threaten you with their touch.

In difficulty you find profundity. Like rats in a labyrinth, you prize
your arrival at an extreme. Like rats you fail to see the irrelevance,
you read importance in your journeying. Never do you question that
journeying. You turn to dust and the labyrinth remains. The labyrinth
you created. The labyrinth I am damned to live within.

Beauty. There should be beauty here. There is no other reason to exist.
Joy. There should be stretching towards joy. There is no other reason
to exist. But the labyrinth is drab. It is formed by streets that are
walled with slabs of concrete, the slabs covered by advertising posters
that call down to the passer-by, posters that are peeling, half
stripped away. A girl reaches to you; her lips, swollen with
promiscuity, desire your touch; her body is poised for your glance. You
desire her. Her body has been half stripped away. Paint sprayed between
her legs, paint that forms a wide circle within which is written:
'COME'.

You glance. You fall. You walk on.

Voices call down to you as you walk between the walls, voices that take
hold of your mind, voices that take hold of your body. They want you to
buy. Buy this. Buy that. They follow you home, stand in your living
room and they offer you glories that will smile at you.

Walls fade. The ground under your feet, wafer thin, tears and crumbles
leaving wisps of powder that fall away, disappear. A man you are
talking to smiles and turns. He goes. Movement is impossible in this
world. No one can give advice.