3. almost óra (-cle) flower,
or a thing that remembers itself
PART ONE AN ALMOST OBJECT
fractured and flexible time
microbes, dwelling on fruit once on a ship’s hull for almost a century (or)
in this evening’s rain causing its earthy scent (or)
two miles underground in a radioactive gold mine
pre / post anthropocenic matter—disrupted yet always unfolding, ALWAYS BECOMING
thriving in extremities, a rhythmic annihilation (a COUNTER-ANNIHILATION)
the weight of days felt through the decaying skin of things
like the last agitated casting of goods overboard in order to save a sinking vessel
a rotting substance choreographing its way through time; time choreographing its way through a rotting substance
an embodiment of a forever passing—never past—lines of microbes both present and absent in the fruit’s (current) now
PART TWO A (PIXELATED) MEMORY — LAGGING
decaying (mnemonic) tissue; A THING THAT REMEMBERS ITSELF—like DNA on an eroding limb:
ashes, or META-TRANSCENDING OBJECTS from the 2018 summer wildfires in Athens / always travelling and ALWAYS BECOMING—through ground, through water, through air / matter that
once was yet no longer is OR now is yet once was not
a squid fishing boat that travelled 4000 miles across the Pacific Ocean after the 2011 tsunami in Japan, found a year later in Alaska—remnants of radiation fixed in the ship’s corroded hull
white wine and seafood stains on my Grandmother’s wedding dress from June 1968 / the stains yellow with time / a permanent remembrance of a (once) banquet
transferring fish genes into a nectarine in order for it to last through winter—a plant-animal hybrid that has forgotten the seasons
a fleeting scent from a passer-by / MARINE, ANIMALIC, SWEET / an aroma containing notes of
wet moss, wild fig, peach flower, ambergris; ambergris—a porous mass of UNDIGESTED SQUID BEAKS formed in a sperm whale’s intestines and excreted into the sea—may float in the ocean
for at least 30 years before washing up on the shore
yellow washed and flattened thyme bushes, sulphur-coated, to keep the snakes away / once a pigment for cave paintings, or the fuel for Hell’s fire in the Bible
a fossilised flower on Mars or flowers made of dried fish scales
PART THREE AN INDEX OF TWENTY DISSONANCES
this is (the / an image of):
a stingray / a vessel / moist armpit hair / a (lonely) giant / a jellyfish /
flower nectar / a (fish-fly) swarm / a beached whale / a sea-urchin / a pseudo-sun /
a (once) ship / a giant oyster / a (fish-fly) swarm / phantom limb / rocket debris /
olfactory memory / extinct suns / a (once) ship / a blackened tooth / desert snow
PART FOUR SEVEN IMAGES OF SIMULTANEITY
I.
a petrol-soaked hand (with blue-tinted finger tips from poor circulation)
carries a heavy plastic bag, inside, a sickly rockfish wrapped in damp newspaper:
wet & lustrous
foetid & nasty
II.
pearls of sweat cut through the thick, powdery makeup
(like FRESH MOULD ON A FORGOTTEN ORANGE)
acidic perspiration rolls along the eyelids and into the whites
greasy baby hairs / glossy upper lip / scorching forehead / throbbing temples
III.
2.21 am
amber resin drops and sharp cedar needles (like cats’ eyes under a phone’s flashlight)
lurk on the sand
sticky and etched bare feet trace their way
7.54 am
hesitant yet hedonistic peeling of crystallised resin
(like peeling the special stickers from a childhood sticker collection)
IV.
wet and heavy bread loaves (on the side of the road)
children in soggy cardboard masks (with distorted eyelids and gaping mouths)
playing with shimmering beads of mercury from a shattered thermometre
poking them, gliding them along the floor
performing / forcing MITOSIS
(pseudo) mitosis (pseudo) knights in silver armour (pseudo) metallic blood
V.
warm fig milk (stimulates the eczema on the knuckles of my left hand)
fig milk aka fig latex
contains ficin—a proteolytic enzyme which metabolises protein into amino acids in order to repel predators
ficin digests worms—if worms eat ficin, THEY DIGEST THEMSELVES
VI.
a (pixelated) memory—lagging
(still) wet & lustrous
(still) foetid & nasty
VII.
mid-August wildfires
a moon-like sun (foggy fish eye)
bursting pinecones and melted rims
silver ashes rest on windscreens miles away—
children draw images of jellyfish and giants with their tiny index fingers
PART FIVE MAKING OF FLOWER NECTAR: A HYPERREAL GESTURE
firm and virginal Ora flowers (Sonneratia Caseolaris)—violently ripped from the wilting branches
and delicately placed in a translucent plastic bag
CUT TO
5.9 kg of plastic found inside a beached sperm whale
(its decomposed stomach carried 115 cups, 4 plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, 2 flip flops)
a cautious and delicate synthesis of beautiful, amphibious objects—dead yet becoming
(like hair and nails on a corpse)
(a sensory remembrance of) crimson nectar of the gods
nectar < nektar < nek (death) + tar (to overcome)
nectar / ambrosia / amrita / soma
a liquid with the power to defeat death
CUT TO
my first memory of death / fifteen years ago, at least / summer morning / a rat trapped
in a cage overnight/ my Grandad put the cage inside a bucket of water (warmed by the morning sun)
/ violent jolts of despair / an ecstatic, almost enthusiastic hysteria and then it stopped—
posthumous cicada mourning
it was a crime of hubris to steal nectar from the gods
Tantalus was chastised for attempting to steal nectar; he was sent to the Underworld where he was
eternally punished to suffer from hunger and thirst
forced to stand in a river, every time he tried to drink water, the water receded
forced to stand beneath a fruit tree, every time he tried to reach the branches, the fruit would disappear
CUT TO
a snowball you once kept inside the freezer until summer time
nectar tastes like sweet water—an ambrosial sugary fluid, secreted by plants to stimulate pollination
with devious charisma, it seduces insects, animals, mythical characters
nectar, or THE BIOFICTIONAL TRICKSTER
a meta-transforming amphibian—its already extinct state precedes another
in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, ‘the Graces bathed her and anointed her with ambrosian oil
such as is rubbed on deathless gods, divinely sweet, and made fragrant for her sake’
in ‘The Iliad’ Hera ‘cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh’ with nectar
in ‘The Odyssey’ men disguised themselves as seals in untanned skins: ‘and the deadly smell of
the seal skins vexed us sore; but the goddess saved us; she brought nectar and put it under
our nostrils’
CUT TO
the scaling of a fish / remnants of gut liquid soaked into porous cement and evaporating
in the hot sun / a familiar scent of putrescence lingers above the ground / a bed of coarse scales
and fins deaden as time passes
churning of the ocean milk; in Hinduism, the gods and the demons coalesced in order to retrieve
the amrita, the elixir of immortality from the bottom of the cosmic ocean / when the amrita rose
to the ocean’s surface, the gods stole it; a vicious stimulus to an aeonian war
CUT TO
the greasy leftovers of a ‘roadside picnic’ / a low, muffled drone of cars from the highway / debris;
a floating reminder of a (once) coming together
nectar allures bacteria—a microflora that attracts and repels
forever dwelling in stagnant yet living water—A PROTO-VISUAL IMAGE OF MATTER
time felt through bacteria—always becoming (through macrotime / microtime)
the flower’s viscous insides become a gravitational field / an a-gravitational field
CUT TO
dashcam footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor that entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia
on 15 February 2013;
a superbolide shedding vaporised particles into the universe, some reach the ground
re-staging of a once-happening / like a dream you revisited as a child / every night,
you traced its remnants with the ‘confidence of a sleepwalker’
the Ora flower: ‘óra’ in Greek meaning
TIME / a period of time / season / climate / year / hour / time of the day /
time span of life; youth / the right time for something
the right time for the meteor to fall; the right time for the flower to blossom
printed publication tabloid / newsprint paper / magazine paper
contact for a copy