UNRAVELING THE WEAVE
Missive #83 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation with Vision Accompaniment
[Today we visited the Rose museum at Brandeis to see Leonora Carrington’s first New England museum exhibition. She is a force, especially in her surrealist trifecta with Remedios Varo and Kati Horna (who was new to me this time, and overwhelmingly wonderful). During the drive back north, this missive arrived on the back of a strong vision~meeting of the ~richly robed walker~, with face of hooded vacuum — a monkish complement to the mirrormaiden who appeared in the last missive, and again today. The figure’s robe was a sort of fracturing, shifting deep blue-ish green sea, emerald and tourmaline night. Inside their deadening vibrance and humming silent oppression emerged an almost Boschian carnival menagerie of characters, somewhat monstrous, eerily bizarre, and somehow not frightening. The spirit of Leonora was certainly alive in it. As M said upon hearing this Missive earlier today — “It’s like a vapor trail”. A fumigation of spirits. A charade~ ] Received 5/15/25 | 3:15-49pm
Listen to the Recitation:
UNRAVELING THE WEAVE
A castle in the clouds made of lizards
No mortar to be seen; five corners
Finely fitted, wriggling dreams
With transparent scales, measuring
One rule or forty-two, it's the same to me
Whether specified or complicated
The essence rang out of time
And the colored threads shone dull
With gold and silver and copper flicker
The mirrormaiden plucked a run
Between corner and itself, the mallet
Struck a gong out of water, lightning flash
As two small legs appeared, uncovered
Without a body above them.
Compelling an image, the ringed bard
Plucked the lyre's string, Lord's prayer
And a wary pair of eyes from beneath
The sitting stool, where perched the bejeweled
Bird, spectacled, reading from a scroll
The pontifex, the bridge, learned rumbler
Grumbling how one theory or another
Shall soon be proven true. The data
Pool has gathered, sufficient, the thread bare
Red or gold or glowing, the cord is seen
Connecting one smoky figure to another
One ghostly scene to another, crowds
Of mothers mumbling hush, the whitherwhile
Stung under needlepoint, a wayward
Wishkeeper, one of the great guardians between
Worlds and temptorrials overlaying layers
Where a car becomes a ghost becomes
A trumpet bearing robe floating on a wind
A broken brown mottled leaf and griffin's
Oaken face, lion claws become talons and
Tail becomes trident, skin to bark and skin again
With ivy crawling up, slow consumption
Of stone, marbled granite schist swirl of lava
A million eons frozen in motion conjuration
From an active dreaming up a frail vision
The visible and invisible are indistinguishable
Too high to be brought low, taken down
With rust on the frame, brown lace and yellow
Velvet embraced, a touch of tactile tone
Which is fabric itself, this fabric we cast
In graven count, the cemetery stones are worn
Rounded corners, rowan-tree, mountain-ash
Put away your knife—marr no branch of the tree
That grows 'pon stony ledge, dark gray rock
With flecks of green when wet, intermittent
Revelation of what is already there
Finding in the catch a net of jewel hinges
Each opening and closing, oyster shell
Mollusks, light purple mucus membranes
Filtering sand from pearls, we treasure
The least of them, the most mundane ordinary
Indistinct grains: together a shore
A soft beach of bones, gently wearing
Away callous and claw, steel and stone
A richly robed walker comes toward you
The weave of it fragmented, multicolor
With starlike sheen, a moon's worth of impact
Looking up, the color grows brighter, deeper
In intensity, approaching the face
Which disappeared before it could be noticed
Showing only a hooded vacuum remains
With an ominous presence, e~motive
Unclear, as if nothing lay behind it
But everything within it, the whole sum of all
The commons available, filled with haunting
Denizens, fantastic and phantasmagoric
Some with beaks, others with whiskers, and
Still more with tendrils, tentacles, spike
Slime and mold, furred and crustaceous
One looking from inside a shell, one from inside
The topmost room of a miniature tower, next to
An icy green giant, who themself was dwarfed
By a great rooster-headed man with wiggling
Snakes for legs, rainbow boa and a three-headed
Whip, shield of sun, emitting no light, but glory
Hanging on a thin thread, a faint precipice
With the unweaver, more giant still, half-smiling
Almost laughing, barely perceptible glyph
Pulling one part of one corner—just to watch
The whole scene come apart
