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Collision 100: September, 2024

IN WAKE OF MELTING

Lydia Hannah Debeer

I melt away Standing on the edge of a newly formed burn of snowmelt descending from a field Blue edges of neighboring mountains, midday’s undisturbed sunlight turning what was white into green I am ripped apart by a longing to reach those blue bodies in sight and a yearning to flow down the mountain flanks, one with the freshet With my feet soaking in the source of a newly formed river I stretch my neck to gaze upon the flowing veins of a blue rush1, trembling in the distance. Torn between a lust for the tinted blue beyond2 and a longing to dissolve and become one with the opaque surface of the melted snow I imagine my fingertips dripping bright blue liquid, after I reach out and wade my hands through its freezing veins I rush to breathe in your kobalt mist, infused with beauty through the space between us3 Staggering with want, I fail to notice the cold mounting from my feet As I picture how my dripping fingertips trace a bright blue line over your spine, vertebrae by vertebrae Blue drags black with it Blue is darkness made visible4 Bewildered by the trembling outline, I pay no attention to the changing color of my skin Sensation slowly leaves my toes, feet, ankles, knees, slowly losing myself in the possibility of you5 Skin turning red, white, then pale blue Is it your darkness, then, that propels me forward in pursuit? In the interval between reach and grasp6, I’ve been rendered numb for my most immediate need for warmth Midday’s undisturbed sun turning your blue edges into melting tongues Caught between sameness and difference 7 I melt away


  • 1 “80. What I have heard: when the mines of Sar-e-Sang run dry (locals say the repressive rule of the Taliban, who, in 2000, blew up the two giant statues of Buddha at the mines’ entrance — Buddhas whose blue auras were the oldest-known application of lapis on earth — caused a particularly long dry spell; God only knows what the American bombing has done since), the miners use dynamite to bleed a vein, in hopes of starting a “blue rush.” 81. What I know: when I met you, a blue rush began. I want you to know, I no longer hold you responsible.” Maggie Nelson, Bluets (Seattle and New York: Wave Books, 2009), 31.
  • 2 “For something of this longing will, like the blue of distance, only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition and arrival, just as the mountains cease to be blue when you arrive among them and the blue instead tints the next beyond.” Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Edinburgh & London: Canongate, 2006), 30-31
  • 3 “The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains. ‘Longing,’ says the poet Robert Hass, ‘because desire is full of endless distances.’ Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world.” Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, 29-30.
  • 4 “Blue protects white from innocence / Blue drags black with it / Blue is darkness made visible / Blue protects white from innocence / Blue drags black with it / Blue is darkness made visible” Derek Jarman, Blue (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2023), 37. Originally from the film Blue by Derek Jarman (1993).
  • 5 “Something paradoxical arrests the lover. Arrest occurs at a point of inconcinnity between the actual and the possible, a blind point where the reality of what we are disappears into the possibility of what we could be if we were other than we are. But we are not.’ Anne Carson, Eros The Bittersweet (Dallas/Dublin: Dalky Archive, 1998), 84.
  • 6 “In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘Iove you too’, the absent presence of desire comes alive.” Anne Carson, Eros The Bittersweet, 33.
  • 7 “{on metaphor} Paul Ricoeur calls this condition of mental tension a state of war wherein the mind has not yet reached conceptual peace but is caught between distance and proximity, between sameness and difference.” Anne Carson, Eros The Bittersweet, 84.

 

I melt away Standing on the edge of a newly formed burn of snowmelt descending from a field Blue edges of neighboring mountains, midday’s undisturbed sunlight turning what was white into green I am ripped apart by a longing to reach those blue bodies in sight and a yearning to flow down the mountain flanks, one with the freshet With my feet soaking in the source of a newly formed river I gasp as I lay my eyes upon the dripping streams of water, falling over the edge of the plateau Torn between a lust for the tinted blue beyond8 and a longing to dissolve and become one with the opaque surface of the melted snow I crouch down to meet its gaze when I am struck by the depths of its clearness, so absolute I lose all sense of time9 I close my eyes and listen to your wandering dripping song10 There, folded in the dent of your breath, is the whitest sounding sound11 Right when I’m on the verge of wading my fingertips through the source of your shivering veins12 You change your cloak from an equalizing white to an all-consuming shield Water so clear cannot be imagined, but must be seen13 Your cloak became the ultimate fence. A perfect mirror, only ruffled by the slightest of breeze My gaze alights on the water14 gleaming of a thousand of my fragmented eyes And I can’t turn away15 My likeness as your camouflage, there was no more reach to grasp Midday’s undisturbed sun turning your blue edges into melting tongues Where I drown in my self-defense And melt away


  • 8 “We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.” Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, 30
  • 9 “The streams that fall over the edges of the plateau are clear — Avon indeed has become a by-word for clarity: gazing into its depths, one loses all sense of time, like the monk in the old story who listened to the blackbird.” Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (Edinburgh-London: The Canons, 2014), 3.
  • 10 Yen Chun Lin, Ripples of falling whispers (performance), 2023
  • 11 Lydia Hannah Debeer, Folded in the dent of your breath, was the whitest sounding sound (Pigment print on dibond, framed in midbrown stained mansonia), 2023
  • 12 “It is the edge separating my tongue from the taste for which it longs that teaches me what an edge is like.” Anne Carson, Eros The Bittersweet, 33.
  • 13 “Its waters are white, of a clearness so absolute that there is no image for them. Naked birches in April, lighted after heavy rain by the sun, might suggest their brilliance. Yet this is too sensational. The whiteness of these waters is simple. They are elemental transparency. Like roundness, or silence, their quality is natural, but is found so seldom in its absolute state that when we do so find it we are astonished.” Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain, 3.
  • 14 “My gaze alights on the water, on this spot on the river, here where the water is turning around, where the currents turn the water in tightening circles. I can’t turn away. I want to feel time twist as I watch these spirals forming. I want to feel time twist and myself turning as I watch them disappear. I want to twist with the turning water. I want to watch these spirals turn themselves invisible. I want to watch them turning from the surface, turning down into the depths where I cannot see them. I want to turn invisible with them. I want to turn with them, invisible and keep turning.” Roni Horn, reading a text she wrote to accompany her work Still Water (The River Thames, for Example), 1999
  • 15 Roni Horn, reading a text she wrote to accompany her work Still Water (The River Thames, for Example), 1999