Unimaginable

Written May 13th 2007, not published here till now

For days the art of writing has evaded me. I had no subject-matter and no impetus. The other day a man asked me to write his biography, and I almost took it seriously, for I had nothing to write on my own account, just an imagined vocation. I’d reached the point where I didn’t want to step outdoors, for what was the point? I was lacking in motivation so why do something so motiveless?

Then this Sunday morning early I went out to post a letter and as soon as I got out the door, the open air enveloped me. Its reality was unimaginable from indoors: the unspoilt sharp air of dawn, never mind that it was sending down a steady fine drizzle from low cloud that painted the sky with a uniform pallor. As I type this I’m inches from the unimaginable, for my desk is close to the wall—beyond which is the most ordinary and yet the most extraordinary: fresh air.

So this is what I mean by reality: something which impacts on our senses. If it cannot be imagined, how come the memory of some long-ago reality can be evoked by a tiny thing which happens today? It’s a rhetorical question because I know the answer: we’ve evolved that way. The orang-utan catches a whiff of distant fruit (durian) on the breeze, which triggers the long-buried memory of eating its sweet flesh, which sends him swinging from branch to branch in that direction.

It’s not just the air, it’s the echo of birdsong across rooftops, the way the curtains hang in the windows of a dwelling where everyone is still asleep.

Everything I am inspired to write is in response to this unimaginable reality. I can respond to it but not describe it, just like the snails I saw this morning extending their eye-stalks and feelers in joy at the answering of their prayers for just such a drizzle as this. Can they describe? I don’t think so. They merely enjoy the beauty of their own being.

It was only out in the rain that I remembered that the essence of my wayfaring is to go aimlessly, in pursuit of nothing but reality, a substance so plentiful that it matters not which way I go.

One could sit indoors and say “This is not a day to go out. It’s raining.” That’s what imagining does for us; no, what it does to us, for it does us no favours.

Reality dies every moment, replaced by new reality. The pattering of rain on the leaves is an age-old music, but the erratic clanking when it drips from a roof on an iron fire-escape is modern. I hear the hushed roar of airliners above these clouds: travellers waiting to land at Heathrow Airport, twenty miles away.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time

11 thoughts on “Unimaginable”
isabelle
beautifully written….I love to contemplate such questions and in the end Blake’s words say it all…
Anonymous
There are bills to pay.
Vincent
Thanks Isabelle, I blush. Anonymous, your remark is not as irrelevant as some might think, because whilst we worry about those bills we feel the world differently. If my roof had been leaking, I’d have seen the rain differently too!
Serenity
Yes, beautifully written. Your words are melodious and at the same time so poignant. So then what is it about us that seems to desire this description of reality, that we are not like the snail who merely goes about the day, being in the drizzle or being in the sun, that we seem attached to our descriptions of reality, as if maybe we can capture it in our descriptions, it won’t be so fleeting?
Vincent
I think I can answer your question, Serenity. We have been blessed—some say cursed—with an intellect whose qualities are to be plastic and impressionable. In effect we model our own brains. We are Frankensteins to our own self and nothing prevents us from creating a monster.Our intellect creates dire and toxic descriptions of reality. A snail is innocent of such dysfunctions. For our part, we are condemned to seek other descriptions which may act as antidotes.
ghetufool
Fleming
Vincent, this is one of your best. It evokes indescribable sensations and insights.
Paul
Great description of what I experienced too throughout my healthy years. Used to get up by 3 AM during the workweek so I could write before going to work. So at dawn I’d be up and that’s when I’d go jogging. Fresh air – has to be maybe the single thing I miss most now as I’m heading toward the third year of being house-bound. And weekends were great too. Since I went to bed so early and got up so early week days, when I “slept in” on the weekends I’d still be getting up at seven or eight AM! Being up early on Sundays was especially great. In a small town, basically no traffic out and the air that much fresher, everything feeling new and gleaming.
Have you got a “marketing platform” though? You obviously write well but there’s no such thing anymore as trade publishers taking a chance on unknown persons because they write well. In publishing, it’s about a pre-existing audience and taking no risks, especially for nonfiction although it seems to me I’ve read that it’s become pretty much the same for fiction. Being housebound and unable to physically handle books anymore ,I’ve had to do a lot of online research. Victoria Strauss has a website “Writer Beware” and also a blog she does with another writer whose last name is Krispin. The most reliable online source of information I’ve come across, especially when it comes to avoiding the sharks in the waters ready to take advantage of anyone with thoughts of publishing.
Vincent
Ghetufool, you have drawn my attention to a need to edit. “Second” should be “moment”. Fleming thanks I felt the same and to evoke the indescribable is the aim!
Paul, I always think of those who cannot do as I do at present, you for example. My hours are often like yours, & I’m at work by 7am.
No, I’ve abandoned the idea of a book, or rather there is no point in pushing the snail to make it go faster: it digs its one heel in. Meantime this is practice: what could be more fun than amateur status? I believe the angels will come knocking on the door when the time is right, and that’s what led me to listen to a virtual stranger with a plausible proposition. I’m an extreme romantic who behaves as though life and art are seamlessly blended. You sound a lot more down-to-earth and practical.
rama
Wonderful!
Tickersoid
as isabelle said… beautifully written….I love to contemplate such questions and in the end Blake’s words say it all… Beautifully written….There are few hours go by, when I don’t relish my senses. In the end Blake’s words whistle over my head. Thanks for the ‘Village Idiot’ compliment. Coming from you that’s praise indeed.