href="https://dergreif-online.de/www/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/sirens.jpg"> Maurice Blanchot, Encountering the Imaginary, 1959 The Sirens: it seems they did indeed sing, but in an unfulfilling way, one that only gave a sign of where the real sources and real happiness of song opened. Still, by means of their imperfect songs that were only a song still to come, they did lead the sailor toward that space where singing might truly begin. They did not deceive him, in fact: they actually led him to his goal. But what happened once the place was reached? What was this place? One where there was nothing left but to disappear, because music, in this region of source and origin, had itself disappeared more completely than in any other place in the world: sea where, ears blocked, the living sank, and where the Sirens, as proof of their good will, had also, one day, to disappear. What was the nature of the Sirens’ song? Where did its fault lie? Why did this fault make it so powerful? Some have always answered: It was an inhuman song- a natural noise no doubt (are there any other kinds?), but on the fringes of nature, foreign in every way to man, very low, and awakening in him that extreme delight in falling that he cannot satisfy in the normal conditions of life. But, say others, the enchantment was stranger than that: it did nothing but reproduce the habitual song of men, and because the Sirens, who were only animal, quite beautiful because of the reflection of feminine beauty, could sing as men sing, they made the song so strange that they gave birth in anyone who heard it to a suspicion of the inhumanity of every human song. Is it through despair, then, that men passionate for their own song came to perish? Through a despair very close to rapture. There was something wonderful in this real song, this common, secret song, simple and everyday, that they had to recognize right away , sung in an unreal way by foreign, even imaginary powers, song of the abyss that, once heard, would open an abyss in each word and would beckon those who heard it to vanish into it. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Professor and the Siren, 1957 I turned and saw her: The smooth face of a sixteen-year-old emerged from the sea; two small hands gripped the gunwale. The adolescent smiled, a slight displacement of her pale lips that revealed small, sharp white teeth, like dogs… She was a Siren. Hans Christian Anderson, the Little Mermaid, 1837 Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects. We must not imagine that there is nothing at the bottom of the sea but bare yellow sand. No, indeed; the most singular flowers and plants grow there; the leaves and stems of which are so pliant, that the slightest agitation of the water causes them to stir as if they had life. Fishes, both large and small, glide between the branches, as birds fly among the trees here upon land. In the deepest spot of all, stands the castle of the Sea King. Its walls are built of coral, and the long, gothic windows are of the clearest amber. The roof is formed of shells, that open and close as the water flows over them.

[/caption] A giant camera stands on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. Its blue and yellow exterior echoes the city’s fairground nostalgia. V expects it to be shut, but finds a woman wrapped in a blanket behind the box-office entrance. Reciting its history, she takes V through black double doors into the camera’s belly. V walks into darkness, eyes adjusting to the change in light whilst the woman describes the apparatus’ mechanisms. The lens in the centre of its conical roof focuses the image outdoors onto the mirror, projecting it upon the concave circular dish in the room’s middle. By the time the rehearsed explanation is complete, her eyes have adjusted. The eggshell-lacquered projection bowl now holds the most exquisite image. Tiny crystalline waves break silently over jagged cliffs, water droplets spray in minute detail. Its circumference would fit a curled-up body almost exactly. She could sleep here, waves crashing upon skin, dancing across eyelids, covering her with their continual circular motion. She will come back here one day and he will stand behind her. Together they will inhale the image in silence, breath suspended, waiting for that moment when the late afternoon sun hits mute waves, flooding everything inside her in an overexposed glow of too much light. V takes him to her room above the cliffs and the sea, surrounded by a thick jungle garden. The evening light enters in horizontal rays, bamboo clangs softly. When the wind stops, her curtained boat-bed is entirely silent. He sleeps arms outstretched as though crucified, wrists up-turned, chest exposed. V watches him, tracing his veins with her eyes, until they disappear beneath flesh. She thinks of the bodies and skins that have been as familiar as his is becoming, the strangeness of intimacy. Her gaze falls upon the fractal scar that spreads across his chest. It begins at the base of his throat, in that soft indentation between two arteries. It glistens a coral pink, like the inside of the seashell she holds to her ear, listening to the ocean inside to fall asleep. From this tender point it spreads out and down like the finest of seaweed, fossilized upon him in one violent moment. She touches his lightning scar, reading this strange map etched upon him. V keeps a thicker kind of seaweed in her bathtub, the brackish salty smell reaching her boat-bed when a breeze moves across the room. She keeps these washed up branches of slippery leather, so as to bathe within their drowned mermaids’ embrace. Filling the bath with warm water, V lowers herself into their tentacles as he sleeps oblivious, a few feet away. As is the sea beneath them, so is she: swelling, roaring. She tastes her saltiness in his mouth, the taste of the ocean, the sweet smell of swamps. Deep-sea diving, eyes open, swimming from luminous turquoise into dark blue towards almost black waters. Unafraid, she swims down, through ocean caves, under waterfalls, no longer needing to breathe. Past and with all the women who are a part of her. The soft downy hair of his armpit feels like the cradle next to her mother’s breast in which her head still fits exactly. She wraps herself around him the way she and her sisters used to sleep entwined, slowly realizing she is no longer homesick.

imeo video_id="39631539" width="1000" height="563“] It had been dark for several days now; day turned to night and night to day without there ever appearing to be but brief glimpses of light, flashing momentarily. The skies rolled by furiously, swelling angrily in a strange twilight, crashing in waves that burst into pouring showers. Water ran in tiny rivers, steam rising upon impact. I come here almost every day — the glass roof amplifying the raindrops, comforting in their dramatic overtures. At least the weather seems to hear me, the rage, the grief. Inside and outside collide here, within this forgotten corner of the city. Birds fly in and out of the tipped panels — only the black blue sky and a blurry grey outline of the city visible through the sweating, dripping glass. The orchids, ferns and palms, with their Latin names on carefully placed signs, bloom proudly, oblivious to their lack of audience. I sound out these unfamiliar words, forgetting them as soon as they form a shape in my mouth. The air is so thick here it feels solid, acrid, sharing the vegetation’s breath. The silent statues look on with their artificially dismembered limbs, copies of gods and goddesses from another time. Stretched out Christs in the hundreds drape the walls of the adjacent museum — gaping mouths, silent cries. Pain veiled and unveiled in burnt gold, petrol, umber, the same story told and retold. Walking through these empty rooms to get to the glass-house, silent guards sit immobile at every corner as though cast, or carved, echoing the bodies they protect. Presumably this could go on forever, this wandering, the emptiness, the iron taste of apathy that coats my tongue. Language will return eventually, I know this, remember the last time, recall the dragging of feet, the pain along my spine, the flood of dread upon waking. This prior knowledge, this bodily remembering, this physical infidelity in the repetition of mourning, brings no relief. What was automated just last week, is now a complex chain of actions, requiring a will I no longer possess. The black of the storms have folded into night and the caretaker is locking each section of the glasshouse, maintaining their different temperatures and humidities. A girl at school had stopped speaking. Did not speak for years. Maybe whispering these words, reading the names of plants imported by an emperor, is an attempt to stop language leaving entirely. Grief takes hold anew each day, as though the fall of sleep withdraws all memory, and every day upon waking you die again and I with you. Like a knife he is lodged inside me. I read these words somewhere. Days spent in saunas, steam rooms, the world disintegrating in water vapour. Here within these other glasshouses, I lie back into the burning heat. This self-induced fainting, this willful drowning, delivers the delirium of falling away, of dissolving.

mg src="https://dergreif-online.de/www/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/11246497_1145736625446131_7381450518811049379_o-1000x563.jpg" alt="11246497_1145736625446131_7381450518811049379_o" width="1000" height="563" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-53240" /> Waking with a start, she finds herself within the moon’s spotlight. A warm breeze moves across them in gusts, meeting him, then brushing across her. Breaking waves echo rhythmically, curtains billowing in a strange dance. The rented room faces the sea, balcony door open, calling her to it. They arrived here late last night, too tired to drive on, a journey without destination or end. Days of driving through winding rainforest roads, warm afternoon rain lashing against the steamed-up windshield. She slides out from under his arms, moving slowly, holding her breath. Slipping out, she closes the door softly. The moon seems larger, closer to earth. Everything feels alive in this too bright night, yet there is no sign of anyone else awake. Pulling at her shirt to cover her nakedness, she walks down stone steps, across the parking lot and now silent road. Cool, smooth pavement meets her feet, toes tracing occasional cracks opened from the blistering heat of day. Her mother had told her she had been born at full moon, the maternity ward so crowded, babies were delivered in hallways. She imagines the symphony of cries like baying wolves, the moonshine bathing bulging stomachs and writhing, blood-soaked-pink flesh in opalescent blues. Cement turns to sand as she runs towards glittering waves. She drops her shirt behind her, eyes never leaving the hypnotising scene ahead. Near the roaring sea, wet sand seeps between her toes. One long inhale calms the cold sting of water crashing against shins, then thighs. Slowed only for a moment, she dives into blackness. A perfect arch with a force much greater than her body usually allows. Hurtling into and through the darkness, everything inside her breathes with strength and relief. She swims downwards and away from land, eyes open, seeing nothing, saltwater entering every pore. Life swirls beneath and around her, invisible to human eyes. As the depths push against her, she swims back up, languidly towards the light above. Stretched out on her back, rocking easily in turbulent waters, held firmly in the sea’s grasp, she bathes in the moon’s glow. Something is shifting, changing. Waters churn faster, a low rumbling building steadily from a far off place. Black clouds plunge this otherworldly stage into momentary darkness, their edges deep cyan and petrol blues, backlit as the spotlight re-emerges. Looking back towards land, she sees the motel a mere outline. He sleeps with abandon, a world away. Low groaning escalates into distant cracks of thunder. Slivers of lightning flash on the horizon with a precision and force that betray their seeming delicacy. She thinks of his scar, of the almost ecstatic joy spreading across his face as he told her of the night he swam in lightning. The rolling waves turn violently, breaking rhythm, no longer a gentle embrace. She should leave now, return to the rapidly diminishing shore, come back to her body, her separateness, lie beside him as though she had never left. Reluctance lingers and she hesitates too long. Raised up, tossed and recaptured, dragged under by a raging weight, her body sags, resistance futile. Every part of her is penetrated, pummelled by the howling sea. Seaweed strangles and binds her limbs. She gives in to the fury, knowing only then will it release her. The skies turn upside down and as suddenly as she had found herself drowning, she is now expelled, thrown towards land. She lies motionless, half submerged, eyes closed, returning slowly. Rain pours down, washing the salt away. And still it clings to her, seaweed in hair, Medusa writhing. She moves steadily. First on all fours, then back on two feet until she reaches firm ground. Suddenly vulnerable, she moves in the shadows, silently letting herself back in. Damp seeps into the sheets as she sinks beside him. Sleep engulfs her as the warmth of his skin spreads out to reach her, pulling her back to here. Esther Teichmann, 2015