Funereal Winds

It was a windy day for a funeral. I wondered whether the soul would be torn asunder by the bellowing gale. Down by the sea, a fitting funeral for a sailing man I guess. But wind is such a disturbing weather pattern. It is like it blows the elements of my insides like dust motes around a room. I am creeping around inside trying to find the cracks through the which the wind is coming. It is insidious. It may not be coming from the direction of the prevailing wind. An eddy is wrapping around my body, and this steady breeze, this incessant zephyr, this annoying compression of air, is blowing in from the other direction. Where the fuck is that gap.

I am set to wondering. Are the dust motes that I see being blown around, are these the elements of my soul. Are they the little bits of fluff and dust and are my essential nature. Are they so fragile, so light, so insubstantial that they are all that really holds together my soul. When these sprites – for surely they cannot be considered more than that – are whisked around, I am chasing my own soul.

In front of me, on a bench, on top of the bench, a solid box, open, and inside, a man’s body. My friend. Where is his soul I wonder. Is he now oblivious to the blow. Across the box and bench, I see the ocean, the whitecaps – and the wind continues to whisk around whipping up a frenzy. Is it his soul that has invited this disturbance? Is it that any death, like a wind, must disturb the souls of the living.

By my hand, I have my partner. Rebecca. Although right now, I am not looking at her face, she is number – god knows what number she is. I am reflecting on my life, my long string of girlfriends, lovers. How do I love them, let me count the ways. How do I count loves? My love for this man, Peter, the rock, so inappropriate a name for a sailor I always thought. Sailors don’t like rocks. The wind-whipped waves may look unfriendly, but the solid, unmoveable rocks are far more disturbing. The solidness of real life, the implacability of physical existence, it is not that which is undoubtedly present that leads to my doubts, my questioning, it is the elements that give that solidity life. Life. That is the wind. It is life which moves the dust motes around inside the shell of my existence. It is the breath of life. No breath, no life. Peter is no longer breathing. Rebecca’s hand is warm. I crave her body, her warm embrace, to be engulfed by another life, to be supported by her body, to be inside her. I am looking to go back to the source of my life, to my mother.

A man is droning on in the background. Talking about Peter’s life. But Peter is no longer with us. All I have here are the rocks. The breath is gone. And the man talking, just more breath. Save your breath. I have plenty of wind inside me. It is whistling in the eaves of my mind. It tells me, if nothing else, that I am alive.

(Cabarita, 9oct06)