Filigree & Shadow

Filigree

&

Shadow

Mick Rooney

Also by Mick Rooney

Arcadia

The Eternal

Hybrid

Thais

Oceanic

Academy

First published in the USA and UK in 2008

This Smashwords edition is for ebook distribution, 2013

Mick Rooney’s author website is:

www.mick-rooney.com

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@mickrooney7777

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Mick Rooney - Author

Copyright Mick Rooney 2013

Mick Rooney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

ISBN 9781301810635

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

For Jerry

Somewhere out in the wilderness.

Contents

Author’s note

Introduction

Arcadia

The Eternal

Children on the Hill

Hybrid

Tisima, Tisima

The Spiraling of Winter Ghosts

A Time that Time

Thais

Author’s Note

We should be honest with each other from the very beginning. I am not a storyteller. The following work makes no attempt to satisfy the modern reader’s obsessive consumption of plot and character. Go no further; I have devoured everything I could find. However, if your appetite is satisfied, and you are interested in the shape, colour, texture of words and ideas, step inside; we have much work to do.

Introduction

It was summer 1995, and like all Irish summers, it rained from the heavens all week. My friend, Jerry Craig, a gifted drummer and sound engineer, took a week out from work to help me record a demo-tape in my parent’s home. They were away on holiday in the Mediterranean and we were shifting furniture around to make space for the music equipment. For that week, the living room became our recording studio.

I’d been writing short fiction for about ten years and I knew it was like nothing I’d ever read before. Jerry knew I was into electronic and ambient music, and considering I’d listened to so much of it when I wrote, he suggested we put together a recital demo-tape using the music as an accompaniment.

I’d been listening to stuff like Brian Eno, Harold Budd, David Sylvian, The Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Roger Eno, Dead Can Dance and Jon Hassell. We felt that so much of the atmosphere and rhythm of this music was already embedded in my prose. In rehearsals, I did try using Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, but all the time during the takes, we just kept returning to my own prose. It just seemed so natural and I was comfortable with the nuances and depths of my own work.

Much of what we recorded that week appears here in Filigree & Shadow. I think anyone familiar with the music of the artists I’ve listed will hear a title or a mood resonate strongly from the book. It’s got to a stage that I simply can’t read or look at a piece I’ve written without knowing which music goes with it. Maybe the artists won’t thank me for stealing a title or two for a line in the work, but I don’t think they will be able to ignore the emotion and atmosphere they unknowingly added to my whole writing experience.

For the demo-tape, we used Brian Eno and Harold Budd’s The Pearl and The Plateau of Mirror for Tisima, Tisima; Roger Eno’s Between Tides for Thais; David Sylvian and Holgar Czukay’s Plight & Premonition for A Time, that Time; and Harold Budd’s wonderful Lovely Thunder for Arcadia, probably my favourite of all the pieces we recorded.

In the evenings, usually when Jerry got frustrated and fed up with constantly doing retakes due to my screw-ups, he’d utter the immortal lines I became so familiar with when I was getting on his wick. ‘For fuck sake, Rooney, listen to the bleedin’ music. You ‘aven’t a fuckin’ note in your ‘ead. Give it up and let’s get some beers!’

Many nights we’d end up supping away on our beers watching a video of The Wizard of Oz, Jabberwocky or Picnic at Hanging Rock. In time, I left that rainy week in the summer of 1995 behind, and my work became as much influenced by films as the music I listened to. It’s always the way with life; people come and go through varying circumstances, and in Jerry, I lost touch with a wonderful friend to the wilderness of the world. But always, I cherish that rainy summer; filled with excitement, drunkenness, joy and sadness. Through my work, in exploring and discovering cruelty and beauty, I have learned that there will always be music and words to accompany the cruelty and beauty in life.

Mick Rooney, September, 2008.

Arcadia

First published in 1990 by Aquarius Communications

Heaven knows, how in the beginning, the dwindling light caught her raven eyes as she gazed skyward in nightly bewilderment. Light that never before dared to pierce the clearest sky of her dark and cold domain. She, alone, standing high in the mountains on a narrow gravel road saw the birth of this dwindling light. Tears filled her beautiful blue eyes as she stared in fear that she might go blind. She knew not why, but only that this was her own dwindling light come from afar. For almost an age she stared upward until all else seemed nothing more. Only that dwindling light from out of her last doom seemed visible to her raven eyes. She stared, more in fear, as she had stared when it first overpowered her in the fiery days. This timely balance between earth-bound beauty and heavenly sky, fixed forever in her lucid mind. She, then, standing motionless, never to rest her raven eyes, forever in fear of her dwindling light dwindling away.

Say first, then, for heaven’s sake, hide nothing, not the horror tracks of hell. Say first, then, what tortures and curses her wretched young soul. Say how it was in the beginning when hell’s fires burned unquelled.

One day, in the past fiery days, this very same dwindling light stopped her in hell’s horror tracks as she walked gracefully on. Heaven knows how such a faint white speck in the vast, dark sky could catch the gaze of her raven eyes. Her raven eyes were the only pair to gaze in bewilderment at this humble, faint, white speck. Other pairs of raven eyes passed over this dwindling light, never to tangle in its merciless grip. She, alone, high up in the mountains was overcome by this dwindling light. She was not given the least forewarning before its appearance in the dark sky. From the very first day this dwindling light caught her raven eyes, she could be seen on the narrow gravel road, overpowered by her star.

So many have seen her climb to the top of the highest mountain to follow the movement of her dwindling light. She knew she should hide in the deep hollow of the valley, but she feared her star would be swallowed up by the vast engulfing sky, and not to speak of how her soul would return destitute to the unquelled fires where it first came from.

She, then, motionless to her cause each night. The very cause, the almighty causer, who watched her fall from heaven. Almost nothing now, only her dwindling light in her dwindling world. She saw the scene from high on mountaintop and such a scene it was of swirling gases and past and future oceans. It was a little white hope of future with a licking ray of light she envied a million times over. It was a little black despair with a dwindling light she died a million deaths for.

Standing on high, she stirred not the least, though the cold wind blew all hell’s lunacy around her. Only strands of her blonde hair blew in the gusts of wind during the moonlit nights. She knew nothing about the plight of others engaged in the light of their own stars. Each one, then, has their star in the heavens, whether a little white hope or a little black despair.

During the light of the day with its pitiful hours, she dreams of beautiful Arcadia. Dreams she never dare dream before the dwindling light caught the gaze of her raven eyes. Each successive dream becomes more vivid than the last.

Your voice, soft against her. The deepening gloom from the front window. She stood rigid; staring out, full abreast with life. Your voice, all about her. Ahead lie simple journeys of the magi. You go down the lane after her before she disappears into the distant heavens. Walking in silence, and soon the quiet of night is down on her. The city of Arcadia lies ahead in the distance. Dim lights at the end of an overcast day. Your voice, still with her. A song, silent for a moment in her throat, until it hauls itself up. Soon, the evening is filled with her sound. A sound which drifts above the curve of the land. Gentle songs which only make sense to her. Songs which comforts her in the quiet of night. Songs to be sure; to be sure that all was one and one is all. Your voice, now, singing with her voice. Songs of a child dancing in the rain. Songs of The Stolen Child, hand in hand. Walking, not touching or disturbing. Walking, trying to understand. Listen, she whispers, a voice, my voice. The faint trace of past ways here. On she walks to the familiar iron railings of Arcadia. The open gates inviting its visitors inside. A Parisian city to be sure. In the iron gate at one end, walk a little, out the other gate. Simple as that. Round the stone fountain and homeward. Simple as that. Your voice, always with her, to be sure.

Before the appearance of the dwindling light, she fell from heaven under the gaze of the almighty causer into the flames of hell’s fiery depths. Flames which burned and raged as the very source of all that is life in her earthly domain. She dragged herself from those smouldering ashes which marked her for life. Of those days of dark despair, she remembered only the smell of the earthly depths and the feel of hot stones on her body.

Once, then, in the past fiery days, she was part of the zone known as hell. So, too, the few who inhabit her earthly domain. Each one trapped in their own heavenly gaze. The one or two who might one day break their star’s hold, refrain, for fear of losing the only beauty in their world. No sign of beauty in her domain. She had no longer the courage to face her own reflection in the still waters. She had only the beautiful images of Arcadia where her dwindling light shone. Images of Arcadia she may one day truly see. It was a place to rest her weary old soul. For now, we can only watch the fate of her life in the dwindling light above.

She knew nothing of the plight of others in her domain. Only that they too climbed to higher points when the light of the day was dim. They were soon wrapped in the fortunes of their own stars. On her face, each evening, always the same expression of awe and a delicate trace of patience. Nothing tells from her expression of how she came to exist in this dormant world. Deep within her mind were trapped memories of her earthly domain when it raged in fire and its rocky foundations moved like a liquid around her. She was a true self then, not as she is now, the symbol of her world’s despair.

Lines of tears ran down her cheeks to mark the fate of a past age. An age when hell became the faint glimmer of heaven in the eyes of the beholders.

Say then, of the future days when all became a forgotten past. Say then, of the days when her frame broke her star’s hold.

***

Once then, in future days, her star, far from dwindling, grows brighter, until all surrounding worlds are engulfed in its engulfing mass. A past, still passing in the light of her own time. Soon, the glare is so bright that she forces her raven eyes to close. She turns away and faces the trail of her earthly domain. All chance of future days without the need to watch over her star, seem strange, almost out of place. For so long, she stared, night after night, her body almost cast to stone under its spell. Now, the lonely journey downward from her solace on high. This, the last downward journey. Never a chance for her to stare in awe at the birth of her distant star. Down the narrow gravel road she goes, pausing at intervals to glance up at her little white hope. It is shining brighter than any other star in the vast, dark heavens. She sees others in the distance, fixed rigid, in awe of their stars. All unable to neither speak nor acknowledge her presence by a single gesture. They will one day descend from high, never needing to return.

Tears again, well in her eyes, for no more the need to care for the life of her dwindling light above in the heavens. Like a mother without child, left to drag her skull across the sky. She crouches down low in a field, her head in her hands, swaying slowly back and forth for the world to see. She fears nothing now, only the loneliness the night brings. This, then, the fate of one who spared all for the outstretched celestial hand. Crouched in a pile to decay into the earth, which has held her in one form or another, for always. She dissipates into the soil among friends. They are the very souls of the earth who in the early days watched her depart to roam the surface as others before had done. They are marked by similar fates on the earth with their dwindling stars. Stars which either lived long or died early under the gaze of raven eyes. Now, not the least trace of past fiery days, when nothing was solid, but violent and changing under the spell of hell. Not a trace of that speck of hell after age on age of the almighty causer.

Age on age, her little white hope grows ever brighter and warmer. At wits’ end, her dormant world spreads its sad wings and seeds of hope. Into the new morning you go, her voice, always with you, to be sure.

The Eternal

First published in 1991 by Aquarius Communications

The exact day, the hour, the minute, the precise second are all uncountable. There is only redness, a soft, soft redness in varying shades. They go from bright red-orange, almost yellow, to a dark, dark red, almost black. The gradual change is hardly noticeable. If time is passing, then it is slow, very, very slow. It is strangely slow. There is no movement or sense of direction, but there is sensitivity. This sensitivity comes in pulses from time to time. The first pulse gives no hint of origin. Then, for a little while, there is nothing. Then, more sensation, but this time, there is a sensation of warmth. It is comforting. Now, a little emotion; all is tranquil. Something is flowing, running, swirling, spinning like an eddy in a stream. Outside, all seems still and stagnant.

She is young. She is alone, quite, quite alone. She is beautiful. She is in a garden. It is her garden; a wonderful garden. She is watching and waiting in her garden once again. She