The eye approaches!

Preparations are made on all sides as a cyclone as big as the world threatens to touch its big toe to the small of our catastrophically relaxed backs. The shock of cold, though tolerable once experienced, seems desperately unbearable as the anticipation mounts, mocking us with its lighthearted melodies and paltry song-and-dance numbers staged amateurishly by evening newscasters and other officially sanctioned government spokespersons and entertainers. Whether their aim is to keep the calm or sew subtle seeds of panic I feel unqualified to say. Once, about two years ago, the street on which I had secured quarters was completely rearranged by one of these mad looters, these unbidden busybodies, but who has the wherewithal to fuss over something so trivial as a simple redecoration of ones living environment when, at any given moment, there are inevitably more pressing matters which demand our undivided attention?

No, the wake is inconsequential next to the sublime feelings which the eye awakens!

I am seated in what is known as the Burmese style, with both feet tucked securely somewhere between the knees (picture that if you're able), and in this cozy nest of my lower appendages sits a purring cat, my miniature muse. As wind chimes set the stage in clangs and cascading chimes, I feel such a sense of deep and penetrating calm that I hesitate even to mention that the lights have suddenly gone out, the electricity has fled for the time being, but what matters this minor turn of events save that I expect to receive no further diversion from the evening news pantomime, lackluster opening act, derivative and predictable as it invariably is?

(Ah the ambiguity of the written word, leaving hapless readers to fend for themselves when it comes to envisioning with precision a credible scene, a meager allotment of imagination the only thing separating these readers from that divine bewilderment of incoherence which all writers simultaneously dread and court!)

My computer has, I estimate, at least another six hours of battery life remaining before it fails me, at which point I shall turn to pen and notebook in a soothingly lucent bath of bubbling candle light! It really is too delightful, this waiting in the wings for the eye to take up the role it was born to play, never blinking, never batting an eyelash, never for an instant threatening to disappoint its adoring public! Indeed, to venerate the eye is to take refuge in the most reliable of expectations; a sure bet!

All critics are bound to agree, lest they imperil the very credentials which have elevated them to the crucial position with which to see and, above all, to be perceived! If they are to stand together on naught else, all critics must surely concede that in this privileged, exceptional instance, there is no place for dissension, not a wink of wiggle room for opposition nor conscientious objection of any sort. It is the cyclone that unites, and it is the critics that, rising to the call of the written word, must toil altruistically to create the conditions conducive to an unlikely unity springing from the infinite diversity of a nation, strike that, an entire world, of wonder-struck windows to the soul, positioned at as many angles in relation to one another as there are grains of sand 'neath the Ganges!

The eye approaches!


James Bradley