Jungian Postcard by Tishani Doshi
Dear Carl, the days here are impossible:
all silence, and the sea. Yesterday we saw
the horizon unstitch itself from the sky
so delicately, and further down the beach,
two stray dogs materialised like lost souls
from a genie’s lamp. I just had to cry.
Our anima and animus! My love cried,
being philosophically inclined and impossible
to argue with. But the way those bony animal souls
took ownership of us—one black, one gold, and saw
fit to flex their paws on that deserted beach,
unmoved by the disentangled sky
that had banished all its birds. The sky
that slumped so languidly into the sea, I had to cry
for all my complexes. I won’t deny, this beach
brought out strange things in me: Impossibilities.
And the silence! Such eviscerating silence. I saw
no boats in sight, or bees. Just us, our souls
and the sea. Funny, those flea-bag souls
of ours, appearing out of nowhere like the sky
just deciding enough’s enough. Carl, I saw
what I saw. And the whole thing made me cry
because no matter how magical, it was impossible—
the restlessness reared up. I had to leave the beach.
Stay, my love said. Let’s make castles on the beach.
But I could only think of our hungry souls
and what to feed them. How impossibly
they wandered from beach to beach, the sky
their only sanctuary. It made me cry
for my love and me, our unrelenting see-saw
about where to live and who to be. I saw
no glimpse of destiny on that nameless beach
with our anima and animus except to cry
because we would have homeless souls
wouldn’t we? And underneath that gleaming sky,
how skinny they looked, how impossible.
Carl, I left the beach to go inside to cry and from
the gate, I saw my love devotedly restore the hem of sky;
two souls resting at his feet, perfect in their possibilities. Art by Erin Lux
Recommended listening: The Moon You Stand On - Small Forward
Links of the Day: The Colo(u)rism Project Surreal Monochromatic GIFs by Carl Burton The Earth Itself Is Now Accelerating The Demise Of The Human Species