Sent by a friend a month ago, and Ive just discovered it. My Chosen Landscape by P.K. Page I am a continent, a violated geography, Yet still I journey to this naked country, to seek a form which dances in the sand, This is my chosen landscape. - Finally Left in the Landscape Sand dunes, interminable deserts, burning winds the night temperature bitter, a land of grit; and floating above me stars as violent as fire balloons, tactile and brilliant. The all-enveloping sky, a cloak of soot. This is my story, my brief biography. The sum total of my experience. I travel – a compass useless in my useless hand – through a sandscape, a singular topography. I am a continent, a violated geography. Restless in all this emptiness, I seek a fellow traveller, search for a sign – a secret handshake, a phrase, some unusual colour like periwinkle, for instance, or bright citrine, but the monotony of sand persists and nothing improbable finds entry into the appalling platitudes of speech – the lingua franca of everyone I meet – in this land devoid of flags and pageantry. Yet still I journey to this naked country, for something in its nakedness has a beauty so pure it is as if I thrust a knife into my immaculate flesh and drew it forth without a drop of blood being spilled. It is abstract and invisible as air this empty geometry, this ampersand upon ampersand that leads me on as if I were zero or minus sign, through ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’, to seek a form which dances in the sand But nothing formal dances. Only the wind blows – unchoreographed – a floating ghost across the dunes. The sand molecular, airborne and free, is faint with the scent of absolute dryness, a small mineral smell. And this almost scentlessness, this shape without shape is a violated country, one in which I am both exile and inhabitant and though I would escape this is my chosen landscape.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 02:13:18 +0000
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