Landscape

Whereas"Cow" below consisted of one long paragraph, this piece, "Landscape", is not just one paragraph, but also just one long sentence. The flow is interrupted by short interjections in brackets. My intention was to form brackets within brackets, making explanatory or further-developing-a-thought statements, and then tracking back and closing the brackets as I retreated and completed the thoughts.

I first intended this to be the opening to a short story (based on a photograph of Carol throwing stones into the sea, which was lying on my desk as I was writing something completely different. I couldn't stop staring at this picture, and eventually wrote what appears below), now I think that I will use this mode to write something with a different content.

This beach edged out into what felt like an inland sea, it might have even been a lake (it never occurred to me to taste it), and rightly felt like the edge of land, a tip of firm matter dissipating into the cold dark liquid that lay with only its endless surface visible, stretching to the horizon with no features, no ships, no distant land, no islands gripping a deep bottom, not even a horizon in sight (so humid, or polluted, or just hopelessly fuzzy was each day) not allowing for any clear division between the water and the overcast sky, and not that it mattered of course, since I neither had nor cared to have any kind of  boat or other type of floating device to travel upon this bland endlessness nor any desire to test vague suspicions I had of what perhaps lay beyond the slightly suggested curvature of the earth knowing well enough that behind me, in the gradually rising land surface was so much disturbing complexity that I nearly welcomed the tiresome deprivation testing my senses without any illusion that it would become therapeutic, but also knowing full well that my mind needed this moment of pause, a punctuation in the steady stream of incidents, to grasp the meaning of some of the features that lay in the landscape behind my back and to turn into a moment to turn on my heel and take a step back and up the beach without too much drama or false expectation, first continuing my motion with lowered head, rising it gradually knowing and forming what I would confront, but always, always stupidly hoping for startling magic to transform the familiar substance of my being (though I knew well, of course, that it was magic enough to have it be as it is (it was a comfort to deeply be aware of this (and try as I would, I could not stop being a fool for comfort) in a fleeting sort of way, since this depth of awareness now felt like holding my breath in the cold, dark water that I was climbing away from) while not having a clear idea of what I would prefer in its place), which I felt was bestowed upon me by not me.