‘Solar Bear’ – Sue Vincent 2009
***
… “Well,” says Wen, with a mischievous grin playing across her features, “I have some more shocking news for you.”
“Really?” say I. Not really paying too much attention because most of that is taken up by the game of fetch which Anu has again managed to embroil me in.
“The Children of Don, may well be the Welsh version of the Crafty Folk!” My throwing arm pauses in mid-air, the Ball of Power still clasped in its folded ‘maw’, poised.
Anu pauses too, poised in ‘setter’ mode, tail to earth and nose to heaven, pointing out his intent. It is as if the world has been halted in order for the magnitude of Wen’s statement to sink in.
“I think I did sort of know that,” I manage to muster after long moments in limbo-land, “I had just never realised the ramifications of its import.” The Ball of Power again arcs into the air flying way, way beyond its intended destination, out through the living room door, and into the garden. Anu growls, and leaps, and barks, as if in protest at the transgression of the spacial rules to our game, and then bounds out into the garden after the Ball of Power, singing…
“It’s all in that dream.”
“Which one?”
“The one written in Oz after the mozzie attack.”
*
Approaching the amusement park from a great height, its rides converge into angles. An un-scalable wall smooths the park’s perimeter, and an old bus swings, unstable, around a wide bend in the road which winds past a field in summertime.
Somewhere, a man baits a bear through market day crowds, the beast’s roar frightens the by-standers, who laugh and drop coins at the man’s feet.
An alleyway runs overhead. Its walls contain glass-doors like windows in a small gym. The limbs of the exercise equipment squeal, clank and groan, like mechanical muscles.
I find a small friend swallowing toads. He offers them as alms to beggars in the street. Their mouths are shut-tight but their eyes are open-wide, and gleam as black as the empty bowls which they clutch…and shake, feverishly.
In the scrap-yard built on the side of a hill, the wire-gates are rusting open… two tall, thin, pale-men whose enormous eyes shine brightly, move together, unconsciously.
Watching their faces change with the motion of the clouds, the sky turns, a cold, fresh sun rises under a frown, and green trees dance in the distance.
The Living One
*
“Maybe it should be ‘The Living Ones’,” smiles Wen, and walks out and into the kitchen for more wine…
***
***
The iconography of the ‘Beheading Game’ too, now appears to be full of double-blinds.
The head it seems in this respect is to be regarded as a microcosm for the body.
The mouth is analogous to the genitals, the nose, to the stomach and the forehead to the chest.
The spiritual heart referred to in the esoteric literature lies not in the chest but in the head.
The Chinese alchemists and mystics were more than well aware of this.
It is possible that they were among the first of the younger races to re-discover it.
Their ‘square inch dwelling in a square foot field’ is a precise enough designation though if we want to be circumspect we could add that this house, or dwelling, lies between the sun and the moon…
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