Keith Waldrop
from Falling in Love through a Description

 

 
The Growth of Private Worlds from Unattached Feelings
 
 

 

 

Ambiguous words provide harmless
remarks. Suddenly things mean something quite
different. Transfigured faces. Harmless
laughter sounds like derision. A fire
breaks out in a faraway town.


Brilliant hair. Blowing. In the morning, I
run away. No direction. No
up or down. No dimension. Everything
happens quickly. A subtle, per-
vasive, and strangely uncertain light.


Conversation in a low voice through an iron
tube 3,120 feet in length. Eternal harmony,
practicing on silent violins. Fourteen times
lighter than air. Thus we distinguish
primary, nondirectional urge. Driven.


First, in default of anything better, with
a little tin cannon, the torn remnants of which are
now before you. We can compare it to a
photographic plate. Happiness contentless
but bright. Afterward, with pistols.


It is a pulse and not a puff. Specifically: in the
limbs, forehead, chest, or stomach. She hurts
in her breast and her abdomen, but it is
more a sadness. A progressive
series, subject to interruption.


Something is going on. The dead Arch-
duke is resurrected. Unusual
beauty of the landscape. I think the world
is turning around me. Whatever position we
take, space is not place.


The two men in raincoats, a few
steps away, are the priest Melchizedek and old
Doc Brinkley. Overpowering glory of the sun-
light. Menacing faces. Traps. Allusions. At
twelve o'clock, there are additional insults.


The world is changing. Odd words
picked up in passing. Scaffolding around
sound houses. Something is bound to
happen. A trail is blazing. Hold
on: there is always a farther step.


Under the voice. To and fro. And thus tardily
deliver up the motion. We shall fly straight
into the sun. Beware of starting small—everything
else may follow. Unbearable, because
it comes from within and will out.


Who first constructed a perfect violin? While
the wave moves forward through considerable
distance, each particular particle makes only
a small excursion. I myself have had objective
experiences, which I would not interpret.