proximoception (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
proximoception) wrote2008-09-15 01:59 pm
proximoception) wrote2008-09-15 01:59 pm
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(no subject)
This Dickinson:
I saw no Way -- The Heavens were stitched --
I felt the Columns close --
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres -- [massy earth and sphered skies are riven]
I touched the Universe --
And back it slid -- and I alone --
A Speck upon a Ball --
Went out upon Circumference --
Beyond the Dip of Bell --
I discovered that there is no way forward. The sky was a cohesive material and not a route to freedom. Even the lesser routes to freedom started to be blocked off by the material limitations imposed by space and time. The sudden knowledge that no external escape is possible revolutionized my relation to the universe, as though the whole planet had been stood on end. I found I knew my place in it. It was like touching the real world for the first time.
But that world slid away, leaving me alone and worldless, except for this now so little ball-shaped world, next to which I was tinier still, so tiny as to seem a speck. And where was this ballbound speck now? It had rushed away from the true world to some distant point measuring out as far back as space can go, so far back that [words failing] the movement had perhaps left any realm of comparison with images of physical recession, such as that of the curve of a churchbell from near horizontal to near vertical [or could this be the dip of its curved motion as it's wrung?].
I saw no Way -- The Heavens were stitched --
I felt the Columns close --
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres -- [massy earth and sphered skies are riven]
I touched the Universe --
And back it slid -- and I alone --
A Speck upon a Ball --
Went out upon Circumference --
Beyond the Dip of Bell --
I discovered that there is no way forward. The sky was a cohesive material and not a route to freedom. Even the lesser routes to freedom started to be blocked off by the material limitations imposed by space and time. The sudden knowledge that no external escape is possible revolutionized my relation to the universe, as though the whole planet had been stood on end. I found I knew my place in it. It was like touching the real world for the first time.
But that world slid away, leaving me alone and worldless, except for this now so little ball-shaped world, next to which I was tinier still, so tiny as to seem a speck. And where was this ballbound speck now? It had rushed away from the true world to some distant point measuring out as far back as space can go, so far back that [words failing] the movement had perhaps left any realm of comparison with images of physical recession, such as that of the curve of a churchbell from near horizontal to near vertical [or could this be the dip of its curved motion as it's wrung?].
no subject
"Between 1835 and 1860, New England was subject to unusually frequent and intense displays of the northern lights. On September 2, 1859, in fact, Emily Dickinson may have witnessed the most powerful auroral event ever recorded."
Makes me think of Shelley's fading coal--Dickinson's rays get intense right as the lights shows accompanying her whole conscious life up to then die down.
"Hasn't the sky?"