inspo/setting

Recently, I found myself doing this again—this time in the desert, that perennial seat of madness and punishment and epiphany, in a house at the top of a hill in a canyon where the sun and wind were incandescent, white-hot, merciless, streaking and scintillating across the bright blue sky. I left the house and walked down in the valley, and started to feel the drugs kick in when I was wandering in the scrub. The dry bushes became brilliant—greener—and a hummingbird torpedoed past me so quickly that I froze. I experienced, for the first time, Weil’s precise fantasy of disappearance. Each breath I took felt like it was echoing clangorously, an impure reverberation. I wanted to see the landscape as it was when I wasn’t there. I had tugged on some fabric and everything was rippling. I had come to that knife-edge of disappearance. For hours I watched the blinding swirl of light and cloud move west and I repented. At sunset, the sky billowed into mile-wide peonies, hardly an arm’s length above me, and it felt like a visitation, like God was replacing the breath in my lungs. I sobbed—battered by a love I knew would fall away from me, ashamed for all the ways I had tried to bring myself to this, humiliated by the grace of encountering it now. I dragged myself inside, finally, and looked at the mirror. My eyes were smeared with black makeup, my face was red, my lips were swollen; a thick whitish substance clung stubbornly around my mouth. I looked like a junkie. I found a piece of paper and wrote on it, after attentively noting that the ink seemed to be breathing: “The situations in my life when I have been sympathetic to desperation are the situations when I have felt sure I was encountering God.”

I cast another glance at Yashka and went out. I did not want to stay—I was afraid to spoil my impression. But the heat was still as unbearable as before. It seemed to hang over the earth in a thick, heavy layer; through the fine, almost black dust, little bright points of light seemed to whirl round and round in the dark blue sky. Everything was hushed; there was something hopeless, something oppressive about this deep silence of enervated nature. I made my way to a hayloft and lay down on the newly mown but already almost dried grass. For a long time I could not doze off; for a long time Yashka’s overpowering voice rang in my ears; but at last heat and fatigue claimed their due and I sank into a deep sleep. When I awoke, it was dark; the grass I had heaped all round me exuded a strong scent and felt a little damp to the touch; through the thin rafters of the half-open roof, pale stars twinkled faintly. I went out. The sunset glow had died away long ago and its last trace could be just distinguished as a pale shaft of light low on the horizon; but through the coolness of the night one could still feel the warmth in the air which had been so glowing-hot only a short while before, and the breast still yearned for a cool breeze. There was no wind, no cloud; the sky all round was clear and translucently dark, quietly shimmering with countless, hardly visible stars. Lights gleamed in the village; from the brightly lit pub nearby came a discordant and confused uproar through which I seemed to recognize Yashka’s voice. At times there were wild bursts of laughter.

After lunch Rome would succumb to its August stupor. The afternoon sun remained immobile in the middle of the sky, and in the two o’clock silence one heard nothing but water, which is the natural voice of Rome. But at about seven the windows were thrown open to summon the cool air that began to circulate, and a jubilant crowd took to the streets with no other purpose than to live, in the midst of backfiring motorcycles, the shouts of melon sellers, and love songs among the flowers on the terraces.

Before concluding that the wings were made of gold, Hoyt thought it might be a trick of the light. Sunshine in summertime can be deceptive. He’s seen diamonds of dew on blades of grass evaporate and quarters shimmering at the bottom of the community pool turn into gum wads. From his tree fort, he’s watched sparks of gold rise from the earth and hover in the branches. Before his childhood brain can right itself those fireflies are worth a fortune.

It was the beginning of October. There was a haze over the countryside. Mist lay along the horizon, between the outlines of the hills; and elsewhere it tore apart, rose, vanished. Sometimes, through a gap in the haze, one could see the roofs of Yonville under a ray of sunlight in the distance, with its gardens by the water’s edge, its courtyards, walls, and church steeple. Emma would half close her eyes so as to distinguish her own house, and never had this poor village where she lived seemed so small to her. From the height on which they were standing, the whole valley appeared to be one vast, pale lake, evaporating into the air. Clumps of trees jutted up at intervals like black rocks; and the tall lines of poplars, rising above the fog, were like its shores, stirred by the wind.

Beside them, among the pine trees, a dusky light eddied above the grass in the warm atmosphere. The reddish earth, the color of snuff, deadened the sound of their steps; and the horses, as they walked, pushed the fallen pinecones before them with the tips of their iron shoes.

On the train they sat side by side, passing soft fields that leaned and shook as if water were pouring across them. Where the grain had been cut a sharp stubble remained, glinting like broken glass in the sunlight. Pietro’s clothes were clean but smudged, as if he owned few outfits and wore them often. Despite his physical slightness, there was a strength about him.

[...] Meanwhile it was a clear night, and the lights in the other apartments hinted at parties five meters above our heads, leisurely conversations five meters below our feet, maybe a couple of old men listening to classical music fifteen meters in a straight line from our ribs. I was happy. It didn’t seem very late, but even if every light went out and all that was left was me and the glow of my cigarette suspended on the wonderful balcony, this particular beauty or terrible fleeting calm wouldn’t melt away. The moon seemed to creak over reality. Behind me, through the bulk of the building, I heard the whisper of traffic. Sometimes, if I was quiet, holding my cigarette motionless in the air, I could hear the click of the lights changing and then another click or, more precisely, a rhrrr, and the long cars moved on down Avenida Universidad. Three floors below, the gravel yard and the building’s garden were connected by narrow paths of black dirt bordering big trees and planters. [...]