(Above: Don't recall you face today, pen on paper, by Zoe Catherine Kendall, 2010, artist's own blog)

This is a free-form text directed at a universal concept of 'you.' Perhaps each of you have your own such 'you' – a notion of relation to another energy form that you find it more or less difficult to define. On the surface it might be your lover or ex lover, on a deeper level, it could be a more spiritual, parental, playful or otherwise unknown presence.

If we are lucky, there may come a time when we can shirk such limiting bases for relationships, and start afresh...

Oh Dear -
    
it's you again, haunting the days and nights that have passed since your last appearance. I wonder if I can I write about you? No wait – I should write about letting you go... what a happy thought! I am unsure of how much justice my words will give to such a liberating prospect, but I will persevere.. With a letter and a verse, having already reeled you in, and having reeled myself in too, I will try to explain how I will let you go – splash! What a thought...

All these stories circulating around my head, narratives of life, love and something else. Sitting here, some place like this bed, swamped in my own carefully crafted detachment, I have been silently swallowing my tongue. Well I shall swallow no more...

You - (deep breath in)  I don't know who or where (deep breath out), and me here, playing with life. There have been many faces, some more distinctive than others, I will say that. A girl asked 'and what of your experiences of love?' - and I couldn't answer. Love (disbelievingly)? I never thought I’d doubt it, lose the confidence I had in my youthful endeavours...

So I, watching on, see the world passing by. Little interjections define my position in the storm; voices, laughter, tears. You are so many faces, eyes in the back of strangers heads as I navigate these streets around you. But even with a map, your coordinates cannot be pinpointed. It's as though you have become the stuff of legend.

That's okay I think, sitting here musing. Who were you anyway and what did you stand for? I look to my feet, purposeful, ready to jump up and I think - these catalysts of movement, extending up the legs to the hip, these knees, arms, fingers and this chest, these are moving me now, keeping me living regardless of any presence or absence on your behalf.. 

I without you here.

I, here
without of the realms of you,
you who are not here
not with me,
also without.

We are both without. (text continued below image)

(Above: Sights set on, pen on paper, by Zoe Catherine Kendall, 2010, artist's own blog)

So what of the thoughts occupying a brain? Can they be detached from any kind of emotion?  Are these feelings nostalgia for a previous neural pathway?  Oh I do long for those old peptides, they used to put a spring in my step.  Now I am redefining these pathways, so far no emotions have been set. I am lost in the present, having let go of the past, journeying through the current time.

Consciousness exacerbated, curated and retold; through this process I might come to unite with...?? For conventions sake I hope they are human. I wonder if they will still embody you. You have been following me around for so many years now, I guess I would miss you, though I still can't put my finger on what it is that (pause) you are...  

Attached to air and thought all these years, I have been attached to a transient dream. If I choose a temple, you know they say the body is a temple, well I prefer to think of it as a vessel, so if I choose a vessel for you, some place near this bed of mine, somewhere to house your spirit within, well what then?

What's that? You don't want me to leave you behind as I begin on this journey to realign my neural coordinates? You won't exist without me? But I have been chasing you for so long now, and I am tired of these games we play, you cropping up in various guises like Doctor Who, suffering multiple regenerations... and multiple personalities. I don't want to do it to you any more, try and define the undefinable.

You will be a legend (whose impact will be forgotten with time). I will sing to the high hills about you, the unnamed spirit, the celestial man. I will retell the stories of our ethereal palace, a seldom frequented place of expectation met, and expectation unmet. That, I will tell those hills, was the single most defining point of our relationship. We knew how to thrill each other, we knew how to love, and yes, we knew to include the heartache and the loss, as these were the emotions that excited us the most. (Continued below image)

(Above: Happy when you smiled at me, pen on paper, by Zoe Catherine Kendall, 2010, artist's own blog)

I shall tell this story, and with each retelling, it shall loose its significance. And then, overtime,   I will finally let you go - poof! Up and away... to meet your fore fathers, those mythical beasts of the patriarch, protagonists of the betrothed, the married, and the illicitly conceived... boy they taught us how not to engage, decreeing the sanctity of ownership over love.

'With this ring I thee wed'. With this ring, let our love be dead!

Oh but no, I am being an awful pessimist, I do wholeheartedly believe that marriage helps the best and worst of us to get through the years, though they be years of loneliness, bitterness and discontent.. dreams fallen by the wayside as we take on our defining roles as husband and wifery.

I don't want to do that to you – the ethereal has always been so much more liberating. And now, after all our transient encounters, and with marriage an all too real prospect, I have gathered the strength to let you go so you may transcend all of those ungodly ties, and as I promised I will loose all my expectations of you, and we will both be free at last... It's an idea I’ve had anyway. Marriage seems such an old school convention, I almost want to reinvent it, with a whole new system of vows, a whole new significance to it.

So now then, can we all finally be happy by ourselves? Wouldn't it be nice. I know there is this little issue of continuing the human race, but isn't that just the burden of our generation?! Gosh, a life time of reproduction and raising doesn’t thrill too much. If only there were another way...

Humour aside, it would be refreshing to see modes of thought change and adapt in reaction to social convention. The potential for this kind of thinking arises when we start asking questions such as why, what for and how best – in relation to concepts of living. Is this the best way to lead my life? Am I making a happy world for my yet unborn offspring? Is there another way to coexist and copulate in harmony? Perhaps the eternal attachment to a thought construct such as 'you' is utterly necessary – and it could only be a life long commitment to that line of enquiry that might fathom any kind of answer. A quest for each and every one of us perhaps-

On that note, thank goodness for these moments when we loose each other, single in our twenties, thirties and beyond, lets give thanks to being somehow free of a defining purpose... we can really live now, without the heartache we can really dream...

For more artistic deviations in image and word visit my blog www.self-series.blogspot.com


(Above: Beautifully in the light, pen on paper, by Zoe Catherine Kendall, 2010, artist's own blog)