THE WRONG MERIDIAN


I'm living a life.

During my wanderings, prior to which I have no recollections, I have found an old house - a terrace - somewhat ramshackle, and I would have assumed it unoccupied, were it not for the appearance of several small children - perhaps abandoned, or runaways -crawling tentatively from the woodwork.

It was a corner block. I had followed its high, chipped white, side wall the length of the short cul-de-sac.
The rear was open, on all sides, backed onto a vacant strip of no man's land.

Beyond, an endless vista of flat concrete, acres and acres of nothing but squiggly mounds of unidentifiable waste, the odd container - and far off, a space needle tower - the ground between criss-crossed in a mystifying web of tram rails, shredding the sunlight into an extravagance of laser fine splinters.

The back room looks like a disused print workshop, littered with greasy, retired machines and busted windows, its hanging door opening onto the small yard.

Standing in the gloom, ankles deep in bits of glass and cardboard, and zinc washers and dirt, I suddenly realize that I am not alone.
The boy, about five, is half concealed behind the corner of some inking press - not hiding, just optimally positioned - his brows ludicrously furrowed.
And, peering from the inner doorway, a girl, perhaps his younger sister, flashes a look of wonderment at the complexity that life has taken on, and disappears back into the shadows.

Stepping from his hiding spot, the boy walks past me, but slowly - a sign that my presence is accommodated ...not an automatic intrusion.

There are others, each no less an enigma, and all equally untroubled. But, for now, I venture inside, to see what they have made for themselves here.

_____________________________

The rest of the house has considerably more charms - huge, empty rooms, and antique carpets - although the children seem to have confined their frontiers to the rear of the ground floor, unconcerned by the luxury of shambling opulence around them.

I have gently suggested they might consider living in some of the other parts of the house, finally deciding, in the face of lassitude, to investigate on my own.

I discover more rooms. Entire floors, filled with them. So many, in fact, that I am soon wandering, aimlessly, through a fabulous succession of spaces, one room opening to the next, all different - many, furnished long ago, now lying idle, patiently outwaiting the generations of occupants, and impermanence of style - some, with dusty and magnificently plush foyers, or Regency drawing rooms, and high ceilings - others, bathed with an Easterly light, or tendrils of ivy - and shallow, sweeping staircases, arriving from below on worn heavy carpet of red, and gold, or fading crimson ...and blue, between deep lustrous banisters - others with classic split-levels, sunk behind elegant railings, and radiant silver pools of sunlight or shifting patchworks of crimson, and gold, or amber, and green, from ageless kaleidoscopes of leadlight - down meandering passageways, which only turn left, and evaporate into narrow, L-shape dead-ends, with the sudden tranquil eddy of a hiding place - or to others, plain and entirely empty, the affluence of space a surge of inspiration and energy - some, forgotten, or secret, perhaps ...missing, and later rediscovered, or glimpsed, from soaring indoor balconies - while others, seen once, are lost again, to mysterious and impossible geometries - rooms ...and quarters, chambers, suites ...and apartments, too big ...and indeed, too numerous, to fit inside this house.

I had long abandoned any attempts to compare them.
Yet, throughout, is the persuasive illusion that comfort, and elegance, atmosphere, formality, decadence, and space, all co-exist - cardinal points, of a sequence visited each time in a different order.

When the spell is finally broken, leaving behind a fading territory of the imagination, there is, I realize, a world that will persist, downstairs - one which owes its substantial reality to the presence of the children, to their ...shared experience.

And their experience is mine.

Now, there is a sense, as I move amongst them, of being part of their world - that somewhere, we passed the critical point, where 'behaviour', like the passing moments, crosses over ...into pure interaction.

_____________________________

Outside, a sheltered strip of lawn runs up the side of the place - a cool, glade-like refuge, like another room.
There is the illusion of people, dining. Everything looks classic ...jewelled.

The long flame of a Russian space probe stands out against the blue daylight - a distant streak of white and orange - finally disappearing behind the sky, as it leaves the atmosphere.
I am still gazing out, towards the South, long after it has gone, ...picturing the huge expanse of continental Russia, displacing the waters of the Southern Ocean - underneath the world - like an enormous blue whale, beached and luxuriant, in the shallowest of ponds.

_____________________________

One of the younger ones has found a long piece of string, and is running it along behind him, pretending to fly a kite - the intransigence of gravity completely outclassed by his fertile imagination.
I hold up the 'kite' end for him, as he tugs against fantastic gusts of wind, running the string out, pulling me in, until - stepping across an invisible threshold, and with a long sigh - I am buoyant, floating upwards, like a breeze, and tethered to the Earth below by nothing but the implausible curve of that one single, slender strand.

I breathe in, and suddenly, I am coming down, tumbling, bewildered, onto the soft, green turf. Quite by accident, we have stumbled onto a novel little pastime.

For a while, then, floating silently weightless at the end of a piece of string provides an exhilarating diversion, and the shrieking of tiny lungs drifting down, some entertaining crash landings.
But, novelty is not eternal. As with all amusements, it must be reborn elsewhere, and my thoughts return, at length, to the sumptuous, undiscovered spaces inside.

This time, I undertake the mysterious ascent of rooms - some no longer there, or recreated differently, on other floors - finally stepping out to a sheltered oasis of roof, nestled between the intersection of four gables.


Here, at the very top, a tiny, final room awaits - a hollow tree trunk inside - outside, steps and room cut from stone. There is a restful, cozy solitude within.

A sudden earthquake rips the entire vicinity, unleashing a demon wind that warps the space around me like Plasticine.
Outside, the earth ripples.
A series of visible air compressions, like huge watery lenses, roll in, sucking forward and slamming me, one after another, around the hollow space.

Suddenly, it is calm. But like the eye of a hurricane, the energy is still there, poised.
I can hear voices, breathless descriptions.


It is 5pm. I turn my face, slowly, towards the heavens...


The sky has already begun to curve, from one eternal edge to another, into the vast speculum of twilight.

But, overlaying the scattered embroidery of glowing velvet and evening stars, a spectacular tracery of lines divides the arches of heaven, its equatorials and rotations drawn across the surface of the sky with the precision of a fine etched lithograph.
Great circles of longitude rise into the zenith and converge overhead, crossing the celestial pole and descending below the horizons.

Along the tilted flank of ecliptic, two sweeping rows of irregular oblongs - each mysteriously numbered, and adorned, like constellations from some arcane ephemeris, with symbols, profane and celestial - slowly traverse the visible hemisphere of deepening sky, an endless ascension of unbearable riches.

Somewhere, there is, within this sublime precession of black and silver numbers, an elusive suggestion of meaning, as they rise, passing slowly westward, to set behind the staggered western silhouettes of nearby buildings.

But, reason, if not absent, must be ...inaccessible.

The Earth, encircled under a caravan of Medieval fretwork, simply waits, tremulous - its citizenry gaping, puzzled - frozen beneath sheer magnificence.
Now, while the struggle with illusion continues, the unending advance of random numerals begins to close, like a roulette wheel, singular and relentless, seeking one bankruptcy from all others - the number...'41'.
The significance of this remains a mystery, yet it is clearly a portent to some moment, or act, of unsurpassing finality.


Then, as the condemned man, whose walk to the gallows, after interminable weeks of anticipation, passes in a flash, ...there, from the prophesies of the Eastern sky, and lit by twin commandments - a curse, in Latin - like satellite intruders, come the numbers, 'forty one', now forever tainted, and bearing with vengeful deliberation on their southernly elongation - to the last, crossed equinox ...before the long meridian.

At that moment, whatever fate has in store will be mine ...alone. I am floating, too near the ground, in the wrong place, and the wrong time.
Suddenly, forcefully, I am swept away, in a furious headlong flight, the air whipping breathlessly past me.


The world rushes by, the ground slowly rising beneath me ...I am in descent! ...by infinitesimal degrees, first grazing, then ...torn ...vanishing, through the crumbling surface of rock, and bitumen, splintering ...and shattered...

...tumbling ...past the ancient loams, ...and disintegrating mantles ...below...

...and ...then.. ...deeper
...swept on..

...towards...


...Subterranea...