47094: 37 Bucked By Cold and Rainy Skies
But of course there were those she wasn’t so dolorous with.
These buddies themselves had of course their own sedentary and not so sedentary lives to accommodate and deal, some barking with abnormal strain, others slip-slop, others powerless over consequences but happy enough just to let things slide forward, not looking to purify, assist too much or goggle inwardly. They were full of home-made distinctions that only they knew about, and none of them were the kind to want to buy much more glory than they already had, no matter what high opportunity might come along.
Mimi was still at that stage of sloppiness and laziness with Sam her live-in man that meant her emotions were hypo and fished up with silver tongues, so it seemed, desperate at one level, hilarious at another and with terrific manifestations so that it seemed she was always dramatical and enviably smitten even after so long. Which meant she liked Mimi to an extent and even Sam who to his credit remained gloomy and tough, rough and smelling of bottles and spliff but patient with himself and everyone he disposed to communicate and interact with, much more intelligent than he thought he was, with a sense that he rather ruined everything but nevertheless acted out his disappointment in ways that were kind. So again, she rather liked this in him, although it also seemed terrifyingly knocked down and melancholic and she didn’t like that. It made her sit on her hands and hunch stiffly and think that really there was so much more reality in women. Hers was a terrible impatience.
‘What I say I say,’ Mimi kept her eye on herself like that.
‘Take it easy.’
‘Hospital? What’s the matter? Have you been back? Have you been there at all?’
‘It’s too early.’
‘You’re ill.’
It was left there. It was hard for them to think of her, go even that far, because she was someone who had always made it clear that her thoughts didn’t stay at home, including what she thought about living, eating, staying tuned in, seeing body and mind as a single package and worth taking time over, who held opinions about the antagonism between life and death, between health and sickness, inanimate and living, the continuity of phenomena, and an imperceptible gradation and harmony that meant with mortality came history and culture and what she reckoned was humanity.
So they were impressed by her dedication and knowledge and made allowances. Yet there was obviously something going wrong with her and they didn’t need to buy any articles to know it. But she wouldn’t say anything at all about what was happening to her. And they knew she wasn’t wanting them to try persuade her either. She was that sort who knows what they are going to do and so there were these evenings of continental and hemispheric denseness, like stars and insects were humming in tune under a half-shelter of ground, letting feelings become mountainous and go further. Everything and everyone were thresholds, repressed like verdigris-covered ironwork, so Mimi would clutch the collar of her tie-dye t-shirt and mutter knowingly, ‘this will kill that,’ to noone in particular, as if between old messages and new medium, cultural context and new classes risen up high with pleasure, the luck of love that wasn’t bucked by cold and rainy skies, all high with busted circuits that made her want to answer everything and stir, worked.
Which she did in her own way. But nevertheless her friend continued to decline, which showed unhappy people often think the best and inferior reasons tend to be the grudge of the contented, which is a barbarous state of affairs not easy to discern and less easily agreeable. Which goes to show that friendship is more or less a jostle.
Read 47094 from the beginning here.
Read the complete novel 'The Ecstatic Silence' here.