the detector, the dummy, the daughter

intro to a text in progress

My plan here ( this is a repost from … the detector, the dummy, the daughter on a separate substack publication) … to post excerpts from my current work. Its an odd story that starts in an odd space it involves these three plus a chorus of others, all interested in the ear and the sound of love … all in constant state of re-listening whilst I rewrite. I think the process of writing is just as interesting as the text, and when is it ever finished? I’ve been working on this piece for a few years. Now in a settled place (- and does that ever matter) so, to get on with it. This is a fragment from a description of the detector …

“HER SMALL EARS WERE FULY FORMED

Her small ears were fully formed. Some could say extra in formation. And there were two of them and they were positioned where they ought to be. Maybe more forward than others, maybe larger than you were thinking. The fleshy cone of them was turned out and the gristle was sharp as a knife. The inner canal was open and vibrating in itself. There was nothing there to stop sound coming in. Or sound coming out. She heard from these ears or the one ear of perception between them or from the ear lower down from her heart, her hearts ease, ... sounds. Not the usual sound of speech but sounds in the way people spoke. She heard the insistence and the un-insistent reflections. The not-said. She heard the hesitations and the half truths. She heard the shape of stories and the ones that were not told ... and she knew from this which lost stories were above all others and the most important to hear for. And she gathered this understanding to her.

Up from her ears flowed the skin of her two cheeks and they were sufficient and swelled to be pinched pink. But no one pinched them or ever had. And rising above them both, her grey eyes set at some depth across her face yet close in to her cerebrum, touching it in places here and there. Watching out, but also watching in at the tickertape of thought as it passed across their optic nerves, first one then the other. Linking the light on them the ideas of light and life inside her. A lot was seen, and a lot was missed she knew. Above her eyes in their lashes framing their globs, rose her brow and it was high and wide. It held the tales she had heard stored in pews across the cathedral, but also the unrepeatable, the unsaid ... and her hair line swept away like a fire. But below it all when you travel your eye down her face you come to the inevitable. That there, on the bottom of her face, is a gap, there is nothing. She has no mouth.”

remember this is a WIProgress