A Text

by Angela Halliday (2022)

This is a work in progress, held onto into existence.

Fresh flesh, blank leaves.

Arrival early, timely, late.

The act is all muscular and sheer grit. In this moment the bones rest. This is utterly endured.

The moment pivots on life and death. The organ is aged, less reliable, and yet you emerge.

The isolation is necessary, I read too high. I am taken away from the others and you must join me in segregation.

A Lone. The antithesis of nurture.

There is no approach to the bed, the misanthropic apparatus. We lie on the inflatable pillow that tries to hide under crisp polyester. I know you are there, non-compliant, uninviting me to rest. You are not receptive to humans. I am not receptive to euphemisms.

you’ve been through the mill

you must be shattered

a bit the worse for wear

This is a remorseless room of tiles and glass only moderated by a marginal view of industrial gable ends, as grey as the atmosphere that encloses us, a desperate pair.

You are pink and yellow, I am white. We are cast in blue.

We grow and degenerate. We will leave here, and autonomy will be restored.

A papery Corpus,

Committed acts, written down, figurative records.

Transformations and edits, censor and cut, enlarge, reduce, deliver.

In our short eternity, we navigate each recorded word, that administration of us.

Signs and symptoms created by living changes, chronicled through subjective, obscure text.

It is it,

it is not us.

We may labour over the determinations of others, meaning to shatter each articulation.

And when we create this work, the Flesh speaks. In its actuality, wielding a distinct vocabulary.  Form and movement push back the textual and bring forward perception.  Here is held up a visceral mirror that we may not want to glance into.

Whether we look or not, we read.

We authorise our own texts.

Reader One

 ‘I cannot describe this. It will not be made into a sentence. It is more than a subject and a verb. But I am looking at it, here I see it.  I cannot see my Self, but I can see my material being, my flesh and bones.  I can see my body breaking down in the process of creation, the irony of degeneration. I can see my limits expressed in front of me, not in unspoken obligations or agreed commitments, but in a vision of control and patience. I see a figure that knows the future and can manage expectations and I recognise a drive.  I feel that tension in being consumed by others’ needs, whilst being compelled to create a space of my own. I see my power, the resulting transformations and endurances.’

Reader Two

‘Do we see ourselves in other bodies?  If we are witness, do we feel, is there an empathetic recognition? The body is the first material we know. We can alter it and improve it or destroy it.  It can create new material, a secondary body, or bodies, repeatedly. Until that function is lost. A cycle of growth and degeneration. We see work and know that toil. We understand the toll it takes, for we are all that material being.

We are limited by this frame in every mortal sense, but the ultimate bind is that we are more than physical material. It is not a fair partner to the psyche. The bloody units, the cells, the tissue and all the rest are not only where meaning can be found. We inhabit these structures, there is an I. And here I see it.’