Scriptor Press - The ElectroLounge

New Period
continued
Raymond Soulard, Jr.
I come back. Breathless. There . That was something. There .
The wife looks up from her drawing. Smiles golden & happy.
I hope I’m in the box & gone before you stop being who I love, who I want.
Jim’s music is swirling around him. Then I notice: his usual big bulk is much more
muscle than usual. His short hair runs down past his shoulders. His face is thinner, younger.
I begin to see.
But the rapturous look on his face is the same one I’ve seen for years.
Frisky as a pup, Rebecca has put down her art pad & is beginning to softly maul me.
I guess this is our . . . honeymoon?
“Do you like being married to me?” she whispers, half giggling, half shy.
I nod but say nothing. Just tatter her with kisses & embrace.
“Thank you, I’m sure,” she says, & laughs some more. Patiently wondering what’s
next but truly not caring if we stay unmoving.
Holding her steadily with one arm, I reach down to get her art pad.
My wife. My love. My friend. The key . A pencil drawing of a room, from the
perspective of a person lying down on the floor, looking up at the side of a bed & further up
to a ceiling of ambiguous images. A woman’s small, fair hand drapes over the edge of the
bed. The ceiling, filled with a myriad of tiny images apparent to the studious eye, contains
the rest of her nude form. Her form is, in fact, the boundary of these images. They appear
like living moving grafitti all over her body.
The Cornish Phalanx.
I close my eyes, still holding Rebecca, & move my attention to Jim’s guitar music.
There’s a pretty flow to his playings right now, an ascent made by little leaps from one ledge
to the next, something deep inside, the sounds almost apparent, even sentient. Sentient? A
sentience hidden within the music; not human consciousness, no, but something with selfawareness
& other-awareness. I follow with all the concentration I have & realize Jim is
engaged in a kind of game with this creature inside his music, a merry chase that crosses the
dimensions of time & space. . . I follow it best as I can. . . then I realize that I am more
within this musical world than not. . . & I am not moving by muscle & bone motion but by
notes, by selecting certain notes in Jim’s playing, I am propelling along. . . & Rebecca has
followed me here! I hear her music behind me, coming closer, rising, gaining volume is I
guess the best way to put it, blending with my music. . . I am mixed in with her love, her
anxiety, her beauty. . . I wonder if Rebecca could draw here, what her picture of the Cornish
Phalanx within Suzanne Valentine’s silhouette cast upon her ceiling would look like. . . we’ve
lost Jim, I realize, & the creature with which he gamed. . . we are still within Jim’s musical
5
The Cenacle / 54 / April 2005