Coil

Memory Palace

I

To give substance to that to which we cannot be present. Intransitive, that is, acting without object, I merely “remember,” the gesture a substitute for its target; in transit, or, “a matter of course.” The heart has two doors but no address, and my cheeks bear a flush, taking exit for entrance. Orbiting, elliptical: coming close then recoiling, drawing back and drawing over again the same helical strand; writing to right a genealogy that at no point arrives but extends in opposing directions indefinitely.

II

There is a suspicion that life could be a dream, the logic of a copy with no original. Air between rungs, shades cast by the form that remains unseen, that ambivalence with which we number our days. Nailing the calendar to the wall and crossing the vacant space as if to say: it was.

III

By way of anecdote: in the otherwise barren plaza, a marble column stands, communicating less the victory of architecture over time than a delicate and bizarrely personal fortitude that makes me weep and turn, wishing it reconciled with obsolescence. Only in the square thoroughly empty are we granted the vision of a civilisation whole, peopled, dimensional if ephemeral. Diamondesque: the powder pressed beneath our feet. So fine we cannot capture its riches.


Text By Paris J. B. Reid