Martin Edmond

Into Dust

I

I have a friend who, when he was four years old, ate some berries of Deadly Nightshade. His mother got him to the hospital in time but the Belladonna altered his perceptions forever. He sees things differently. One day he told me that, if you have a sealed box that is empty, even perhaps a vacuum, but into which light may enter, you will find that, after an indeterminate period, dust gathers within. This is the dust of light. It is energy become matter. Since my friend told me this, I have begun to see a luminous dust everywhere. It coats my fingertips while I'm sleeping, it dances, with Brownian motion, before my eyes when I squint at the sun, it is all over the golden windows of this apartment. My friend also believes gravity to be a kind of sentience. He says that, in time, we will understand that what keeps us anchored to the earth is a fidelity we cannot help but feel towards that part of ourselves that is inchoate, which our awareness has not yet illuminated. When he talks like this I feel myself begin to float, not away, but into an empyrean where the dust of light streams towards the future.

II
A dream of dust. It lies along the edges of all the bookshelves, on the tabletops in the study, the sitting room, the kitchen, it congeals on the ledges of the skirting boards and on the wainscotting, on the pelmets, everywhere. The glass-topped dresser. The windowsills. I run my forefinger along the flat wooden surfaces, pushing up cloudy skirls of grey and brown and letting them fall onto the dun-coloured carpet which, later, I think (in the dream) I will vacuum. The windows themselves are golden with grime that filters the late afternoon sun to revelations of dust and one day I will hang out of those that open and clean them too. Or inscribe them with sigla encoded with the secrets of time. The dream has a soundtrack, it is Mazzy Star, Hope Sandoval's melancholy voice drifting in and out of the debris: I could possibly be fading / Or have something more to gain / I could feel myself growing colder / I could feel myself under your fate / Under your fate. Never knew until this actual moment that was what she was singing. This moment of awakening, slipping across the purple sheets, rolling out from under the blue duvet, looking for dust devils. And they're gone. Or rather, not here. It's just the ordinary familiar chaos of things. Feathers, stickers peeled off apples, sequins fallen from the kaleidoscope, crumbs. Where has the dream dust gone? What is dust anyway? Planetary dust. Dust of light, dust of skin, dust of books. Curators are advised no longer to wear white gloves, the abrasion of cotton causes as much damage to paper surfaces as the oils in the whorls of fingertips. Dust of tears, what's left after the liquid evaporates and only the salt remains. The heart's dust. Or the galaxy's. It was you breathless and tall / I could feel my eyes turning into dust / And two strangers turning into dust / Turning into dust …

III
One star shines through a hole in the leaves of the tree outside this building. Which star? Don't know. What kind of tree? A gum, it flowers whitely or yellowly, profligate, often; though not now. The street so quiet this could be the future. The one without us in it. A cat walks along a wall, stops, walks some more. That makes two. Survivors, I mean. Cat pauses again, looks up, a green flash from its eyes. Does it see me? Or just ... sense a presence here. Street seems somehow soft, rubbery. As if it would sigh and give a little if you walked down it. Cars made of charcoal latex. I've never seen a night like this, so absent, so empty, so unforeboding. The world as it must be when there's no-one here to see it. The yellow star still hangs in the hole in the heaven of the tree, making me think of Magritte, those trees with doors in them that open upon marvels. Light spilling from the darkness within. So quiet, did I say that? Now I will discard my butt end, swallow the last of the wine and step off the balcony into the air. You will see the trail of my tears hiss softly across the leaves. Some slight disturbance blur in the branches and then I will be gone. Into the umbra of that yellow star. Into the aching mysterium. The nebulium.

Martin Edmond is lost in a mirage &/or writing a book about Ludwig Becker, called Fata Morgana.

 
 
 
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