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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






                                                                                                                                     










 

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Mark