Presences [antikvár]

Big things. And little things. The weight, the lightness of it. The place it takes. Walking around, it comes forward, or to the side, or sides, or backward, on a foot, on feet, on several feet. There is a top, and a bottom. From the one to the other may be a distance. Equally it may be so dense, or vaporous, so tangential to touch, that an inextricable time passes in the simplest way. If it were to fali, either over, or up, or down, what spaces were there to accomplish would be of necessity measured later. Time runs to keep up, in other words. Already days have apparently gone by in the presence of one. This is the first time he has spoken in somé time, in weeks, in fact. The mouth was, or had been in the sense of what was seen, sealed over with somé sort of substance, waxy in look, and, touching it, the feeling was of something sticky, as sticky rubber or sticky gum. This substance, translucent, made the lips seem preternaturally large. Very, very large. To which a footnote: "He bore a preternatural resemblance to his caricatures in the evening newspapers." (Evelyn Waugh). But his lips had been sealed. Sealing wax then. Had not someone, possessed of a stamp describing an intricate sphinx, therein and on imprinted that image, on his lips? A cruel, thoughtless joke possibly. The person who did this one thinks of as caring little for others. It must have been an evening, when this occurred. There was nothing else to do insofar as the day had come to nothing. It was rainy, a little chili to the air. One wanted the sun, the sun. There was a beach. Small figures at one far end of it, never quite clear in their detail. Somewhat clifElike rocks surrounded. High above, there seemed to be an open space, which might have been the sky, and yet, in the inexorably close weather, it had to be assumed. Top and bottom, the world?