Coming full circle...

I had the feeling that I wanted to write something. 

I had no idea what. 

Not having any idea or any sentence which came to mind, 

I sat and waited and waited...

Eventually, I settled for one word:

FALLING

Well frankly it wasn't much to go with. So I waited. I felt "falling" and it brought up "gravity"..."my gravity". I had found my "baseline", I had written "baseline" with a full stop.  

"Why bother with "baseline?" I thought.

"Full stop will do." 

"It has finality, it has an ending, a succinct landing." I settled the internal debate.

How long did it take?

I have no idea.

By the time that I had got to reflecting on "gravity" and its appropriate punctuation I had lost all sense of time.

I was engrossed.

I like playing with punctuation.

"Aller à la ligne."

"Well for hell's sake why not?" I thought, "So what if it is French?"  "If people don't understand..."

Well frankly I didn't understand what I was writing about...as often.

I trust myself to trust whatever comes out...when I am engrossed.

That is rather the point of it.

Playing.

Nothing more or less.

So why not "franglais"?

Exactly. 

I mix French and English all the bloody time.

I decide to ignore linguistic boundaries which are fuzzy a lot of the time.

Whatever comes out wins the fight for exposure.

"Aller à la ligne".

I had dropped as far as I could. 

I get a clear sense of verticality, of "gravity."

I start traversing from my original ledge: "Falling".

One can only fall so far...

I build horizontally using "ing" and two syllables words beginning with f.

I don't judge what I am doing.

Whatever I am doing, I claim diminshed responsibility.

Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.

AMOR FATI.

I stretch out: "falling, feeling..."

"flailing" I don't like the sound of that, it just doesn't sound or feel appropriate here.

I reject "flailing".

I accept "failing", but rather "failing" as in the sense of "failing light".

"People can read what they like.." I reason.

I end up with "falling, feeling, failing" and wait and wait...

Next, the word  "fleeting" insists inclusion,  mainly, I think, because I love the sound.

I love its dissonance, "fleeting" it shall be an unusual verb, so what? 

I shall treat it like a verb and let its desire to adjectivise itself fight it out with its lot.

A mortal combat: adjective vs verb.

"Ha ha, ha, ha."

It is "fleeting" therefore I am...

I is not it, but it entails me. 

Whatever that may mean....pretension, pretention, oh whatever.

Who cares?

So I have some sort of vertical and horizontal and sonorous and dynamic (are those words) structure.

As often, it is loosely hanging together, fighting to get off the page.

Even if a word is unknown to me, or "incorrect", if a sound comes to me then it gets roped into action.

What the hell! Take all prisoners!

Legerté.

"Legerté" acts as counterpoint to  "my gravity".

I am both light and heavy, in this writing exercise (if that is what it is).

I can feel lightness and weight, or wait pulling me downwards towards a conclusion of sorts...or a decision to erase all...

I play with French and English, what if "legerté" exists as "legerty" in English?  I wonder.

I go off and find a dictionary.

Legerity.

Lovely word, unknown to me until then.

I go off and investigate.

I come back.

Now things get really strange.

I had a series of lines starting with A: 

a falling, a flailing etc or other words I forget.

The series of A plus two syllables suddenly recalls, plucks from the depths of my memory:

A Tisket 

A Tasket.

No good reason why.

Hell that will be something to explore, I decide.

Ella Fitzgerald.

I must have heard this before.

I have no memory whatsoever of it.

I enjoy these surprise appearances.

I particulary enjoy the play with nonsense words.

How often do we try desperately to make sense and end up making nonsense?

I will settle for playfulness.

I will settle for joy.

I will settle for discovery.

A tisket and A tasket are central to what this piece conveys.

It is less in the words than in the gestures, in the pauses, in the sudden jumps, the odd juxtapositions.

More sounds pop out, this time a rebuke, ironic here: "Tsk Tsk"(I should not be doing this, I should be doing something 'serious'.)

I immediately love the expression for its refusal to include any vowel.

Tsk and Pff and Zzzz marvellous subversions.

Please find me more!!!

So I go and investigate "A Tisket A Tasket".

I go away and come back and introduce Eminem's subversive rap "Without me."

The idea of this nonsense expression  "A tisket A tasket" journeying from children's play to Ella Fitzgerald to Eminem, is for me in itself glorious.

I love the connection, this weird connection.

By this time, I have lost all concern for appropriacy, I reuse "Tsk Tsk" for the hell of it, French for the hell of it, I introduce a voice of a reader, or my own voice, "Huh?",who can't make head or tale of what I or it means here.

"Huh?"

"Tsk Tsk, crétin! MDR!"

No doubt Eminem's Slim Shady has a lot to answer for.

His joyful stealing and remixing and goading of sacred American idols is infectious.

"Tâtonner" groping away in the dark.

I love the word for its feel in my mouth, its sonority.

I love the word even more for its circumflex...its little child-felt exoticism.

I could happily put circumflexs everywhere for the hell of it.

The ton, the ton, becomes an uncle, maybe Mitterand, "Ton Ton", for the hell of it.

The sound ton, goes from "tâtonner, to étonnement, to tonnement, to Ton Ton, to tonnère." for the hell of it.

Just the sound, that is the meaning, sound for itself, any other meaning is incidental.

"Tsk,tsk."

"Oh!"

And then down, down to a chute, to the plunge under water.

The image of plunging invites the Grand Bleu.

Why not?

Letting go, being at peace, being animal, being part of all.

Because.

Numbers pulse my hesitation, a silence , to celebrate the slowness of my breath.

Respiration, relaxation, letting go, mediation, meditation, emptyness, peace.

Play goddam it!

How long have I spent here? 

Who cares.

What does it mean?

I could feel an element of fear for the unknown.

I could feel a moment of fear for the ununderstandable.

It is enough to write fearing.

I let others deal with my expression of fear on arriving at a full stop.

Is it my fear, or their fear?

Who cares?

Is there gravity here?

Is there depth here?

Whatever?

Let others decide.

I have done enough.

Falling, failing, feeling, fleeting, fearing...

I go and find an image to transform with words.

I find that image of darkness.

I didn't bother to scrutinise it, or to inspect it carefully.

I liked the fact that it was indistinct.

I go and dig out an app that I had forgotten on Apple's server.

It comes back into use.

It becomes a starting point, and end point.

Falling, failing, feeling, fleeting, fearing...

Then I see what the image was.

In the darkness, a cave-writer has connected his lines with those of bears or lions.

He is both their prey and they his prey.

I go and post the "poem" the "play" the "piece" with a couple of hashtags and then expect nothing.

I am with the cave-writer extinct and at peace.