imagination

A Story From The Western Sea

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

Far off in the Western Sea of dreams and beginnings there was the birth of a story. It bubbled up from beneath, from deep in the gloom of a cold benthos, where strange things scuttle and make their homes. Some bubbles rise as stars while others are neutral. This one was like the very first born thought, as fresh as the newest thing, pale skinned and beautiful. From the waves of the Western Sea it rose high and caught prevailing winds. With birds and things airborne it navigated the Coriolis force and felt the call of land like a heart beat in its body. For days it watched and winged on blue ether and mist. And when it saw the brown earth it dropped like a stone and kissed the hard, dry soil and burrowed as its feeling decreed. And then it waited. And waited. And waited. And when the time was right it germinated on sweet water and the worlds urge to change and put up a shoot, then a leaf, then a flower: a new flower that no one had ever seen before.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Dr Paradox

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

Dr Paradox lives at number 13. I don’t know what he does all day but it appears he doesn’t work. I have coffee with him every Tuesday at eleven, sharp. He is a stickler for timeliness but remarkably relaxed when I’m late.

It’s hard to tell his age: somewhere between 1 and 89. That sounds ridiculous, I know. But you’ve not seen him. He sometimes wears a white moustache and sometimes a bib. He has one enormous bushy eyebrow while the other is trimmed. His skin looks soft as a babies and wrinkled with age. Often he wears a white robe in his house though when I’ve seen him in town he wears jeans and t-shirt. I think the robe may be for my benefit. Everyone else on the street just knows him as John, but he insists I refer to him as Dr Paradox.

I usually go over accompanied by my cat. He invites me in and we sit in his lounge. He’s had an enormous bath fitted in one corner and sometimes we sit in that – but bizarrely without any water and fully clothed. He often remarks on the beautiful buoyancy of air: how warm it is, how clean it makes you feel etc. He says that he only fully appreciates it when understood through the context of an empty bath. Generally, that cats don’t join us in the bath. I forgot to mention, he has a cat too. It’s named Inverse and he’s a ginger tom. I’m not sure if our cats get on or not. They seem to spend an awful lot of time attempting to out-squint each other or they play the strange mind game that cats enjoy, where they try to make each other invisible. And it appears that sometimes it works.

Generally on my arrival, Dr Paradox will ask if I’d like a coffee. To which my answer is invariably: yes. His stock response is: yes, but do you? My answer is: yes, I’d like a coffee. He then answers: yes, but do you really want a coffee? This interplay usually results (eventually) in a coffee, though not always. To be honest, I’ve not got the slightest clue what he’s up to and while it’s unfailingly annoying, some part of me enjoys it very much. Sometimes, even though I’ve asked for coffee he brings me tea instead, which I drink without complaint lest I have to go through the whole process again.

The weird thing is: I always feel refreshed after my visits. The coffee (when I get one) is great but somehow there is more to it than that. It’s as if the air really is buoyant and cleansing and contains a warmth, just as he says it does.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

In Her Butterfly Breath

~ distilledvoice ~ 3 Comments

In the air around
In her warm breath
In her aura.
In the space
That she owns,
Crossed by no other.
In her own land,
The country
Of her soul’s endeavour

There are butterflies
In swarms,
In every multicolour
And species creed.

They are
The myth of her lightness,
For on invisible strings
She is anchored
To every flutter
And delicate wingbeat,
And held aloft
As any lucky cloud
Is mystical
In the wind’s drift
And by the sky delivered.

It’s as if
They were part of her
And her body
Were just food stuff
On which the insects
Come to fill and feast:
Her heart
– A chalice –
Nectar deep,
The sweet centre
Of a spirit flower
That she is

In the ether-other
Beyond the solid and tangible
Regulations of the
World we live.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Virus Of News

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

In our reality
Thoughts shape the space
Of our dream.

A news item,
A Facebook outrage,
A horror,
Flares like guilt in the brain
And an abdominal twist of pain.

These are the food of nightmares.

Are they facts?
Possibly,
Probably,
Perhaps not.

For all the circled world is but a myth
Of savoured and soured dreams,

Where truths
Are malleable

And thoughts are bent

And perception
Is first machined by bias,
Changed by the colour of memory.

Our facts
Are not the solid stones we think
But slippery fish

With faces in multitude.
Not facts at all
But tellings and stories,

Mixed fictions and truths,
Happenings and imaginings,
Wishes and fears both,

Reported as the proper news

But perhaps not news at all,

Just the incessant re-posting of a viral fantasy.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015