Still Life with Opium
Leave the Apples Out he house would rather be remembered for the force of its boredom, for its provinciality, its quietism, its long opiate sustain of ill attention turning over its will to speak to another. The pretexts for gossip are facts. The vertical lines cored into the stump fan outward where the strikes wavered and a final blow split the log in two. A deeper cut marks the spot where the stump was struck directly, holding the ax suspended as another log was brought from the pile. Pine burns faster than hardwood, and smoke wafting from the blaze binds with the fibers of clothing and the oils of skin. The ring of mulch and mud around the chopping block is weedless. The surrounding grounds lie flat like the sediment of an ancient lake bottom. There are no signs of footprints away from the main house toward the wood. It is as if that path travels backward in time: pistol to knife to hammer to bludgeon. Out of view, surrendering themselves to more primitive imaginings. One must have the proper constitution to dream. A habitual determination toward reverie, De Quincey thought. If one is boring in life, one’s vision will be equally boring. If one is inclined toward a vibrant life, one’s dreams will be alive. Or, like De Quincey, you can swallow daily tinctures of opium dissolved in gin.
TPear In the wood, the light filters from sky down to shadow. The curves of broadleaved oaks and heart-shaped cordata meet and turn away. The alignment of planes and pixels as thin as the horizon line constrict each aperture to nothing. The view’s depth recedes to a muddy cloud and the soft indeterminacy of knowing where, if ever, the third dimension is finally dropped. Under the canopy, space flattens to gray-green like the sky’s depth of blue. Spruce and oak stand separately and meld together. Unable to parse distance from farther distance, the colors swallow the viewer from within. Her insides are caulked in oakum. The throat warms and the stomach moves to jelly. The air animates in alkaline, and the gin smoke from the woodshed holds the color of pine and juniper. What is clear to the eye lights softly green as it hits the tongue. A memory, once hit upon, burns its mark there permanently. For De