Friday, April 29, 2016

Simone Weil 8



To soil is to modify. To shift terms, like two images that bleed together at a mirror's edge. A boundary without wall cannot get mended. He would have shoveled Ken Kesey's cow shit just to breathe the same air he did. But my friend was allergic to his smoke, as to his privileged skin. A novel has a plot but no soil, unless you use its paper in the woods. Leave it there and it self-erases. Liken it to natural selection, or the retreat of word into sound. Rose is name and she is noun, more electronic pulse than petaled thing. In the video, he's cut in half, then replicated. He's two partial wholes, dancing toward us in silky blouse and tight pants. We forget the emotion in these songs, he said at his last concert. We didn't know his piano was a guillotine, that his body would soon scatter, that no magician could undo the illusion he offered us. He moved so beautifully, my husband says.

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