requires, first, lessons in concentration. think of that cloud of dust
you only just now dislodged from under the bed when you were
looking for the other shoe. why was the second shoe under the bed?
this is an example of a distracting thought you must set aside.
pick up the cloud in your hands. how soft it is, how made of
what you dare not contemplate. this will be the stuff of trans-
formation: do not think of binning it, not yet: you still have not
discovered its nature: light, uncompacted, its tufts and feathers
(metaphor is allowed) still allowing a puff of breath to make
its way, to move the cloud from your hand to the air, from the air
to the floor. its nature is to gather, is to greaten, but in secret,
in quiet places where such magnitudes can work undisturbed
for weeks and months, especially under the bed of the likes
of you. there, there. housekeeping is not what we’re after:
we seek nothing less than magic, which is why the inadvertent
vowels of disgust you utter when you bring the dust nebula
forth with the all-but-forgotten shoe is precisely correct: turn
disgust into surprise, into interest, and you’re nearly there:
this constellation of the gods know what is your own material:
(‘conjuring for beginners’ was the name of an exhibit/installation, or series thereof, at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin, 2012.)
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