Story for performance #331
webcast from Sydney at 05:01PM, 17 May 06

a natural marriage
Source: Daniel Williams, ‘Democracy the loser in US deal with Libya’, Washington Post, New York Times in Sydney Morning Herald online, 17/05/06.
Writer/s: Deborah Garden

Maritus, Latin for husband lurks linguistically in the background of marriage. In mathematics, the number one forms the base of a natural function. I husband myself through the days in a natural marriage of flesh and time.

You smelt clean and sharp, almost antiseptic, a smell that clings to my skin. Your sperm smells refreshing. Oh! I regret not rubbing my whole body with it, letting it soak through until I was saturated with you. But time prevents this: the train is pulling up to the platform and the push and shove of passengers is beginning. Now, it is negotiating the complexities of finding my seat that is the immediate priority. Looking outside of the train’s window I watch the smoker inhale the heavy tar-laden breath that gives air substance. He consumes, savours and swallows the heavy tarry air with relish. Each suck a marriage of flesh to air, a natural joining impelled by need. For after all, weeks may go by without food, days without water but only a very few brief minutes may pass without air. It is air that joins us to the whirling world. Sucked in as it passes us by. Who knows where it has touched, who it has touched in its marriage of insubstantial substance with solid form. When I am tired I like to imagine that the air I take in has caressed isolated, cold mountains and racing, shouting rivers. The wind is earth breath: panting, sighing, howling and breathing the planetary mood. The Greeks believed that mares could be impregnated by the wind, a marriage of two champions of speed.

The train is creaking, and shivering into motion, carrying me away from you. At the same time it is carrying me towards you. Time is a natural marriage of past, present and future, separated by language. You will exist away from now; resting, nestled in future memory to be taken out of its box, turned over, examined and returned slightly worn from handling. Not an inviolate, unchangeable past moment but a constantly recreated narrative. Memory removed from its warm skull box to sometimes support hidden grudges and prop up self constructions that feel too comfortable to abandon. We appear to move towards a seemingly unknown future. Yet the vague outlines have already been sketched, drawn onto the tissue paper of thoughts. They are perceptible in present moments of daydreaming and plans. So I sit here in the stained upholstery of Trenitalia in a natural marriage of past, present and future, savouring the deliciousness of you. I feel amused at your subterfuge and almost embarrassed by how easily I was tricked but grateful for an unexpected encounter with such a sweet-smelling conclusion.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Deborah Garden.