The Wishing

When I wrote to you a day or so ago, to see if you were 'home', I called this work, writing, that we are doing 'The Wishing Way'. I had translated 'why' as 'way'. And this seems so, that why is a way. That wishing is a way, that wishing is an act, albeit secret, the secrecy being central to the act, upon longing. To dance, with someone, or alone, is to be somewhere, perhaps, one would like/prefer to be, or to be someone one is not, and yet 'is' then, in that moment, for a moment. To be the dance.

I know the wishbone custom slightly differently. The wish is make after the bone is broken, only by the one who 'wins'. There is no wish beforehand. The gift is as much the opportunity to wish, as the wish itself. This, the smallness of the difference, is crucial. To 'win' the right to wish. Or, the right to be known to be wishing. To be watched to wish. To watch a wishing person. And to hope that that wish will come true. Or, not. Depending. Wishing then, the watching of wishing, is such delight, as (could this be so) it brings into view the/a way. There is no wish before the why-bone is broken. And then a ghost of a chance, yearning permitted through the wish.

My mother's name was Mulshine, an American name, apparently, sometime. Now in Australia there are very few with this name. And becoming less. My mother has two brothers, and they have daughters. They each wished for a son. There is no-one to carry the name/way on. I wish I could track down the American Mulshines.

A wish could be a curse. Is the wish close to the curse. The wish, as far as I know, must not be said outloud. The curse is: like chant, a chant can be a cantata: a text set to music. If you tell the wish to someone, make it sound, all is lost. Language, on the air, dispells the wishes chance. Isn't that amazing. When spoken, hope dissolves. So much unsaid then, if life is full of wish, of longing. I never know what you wish, I never know what you think. You might live inside wish, you might live for wish, you might yearn forever. I mull this over. I shine it, rub (up, against) the sense, to make it come out, word by word.

Bo Catlett says to Chili Palmer in Elmore Leonard's 'Get Shorty': ""You asking me ƒ do I know how to write down words on a piece of paper? That's what you do, man, you put down one word after the other as it comes in your head. It isn't like having to learn how to play the paino, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write, didn't you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren't positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words. There people do that for you. Some, I've even seen scripts where I know words weren't spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it. So I don't think it's too important. You come to the last page you write in 'Fade out' and that's the end, you're done."

Chili said: "That's all there is to it?"

"That's all."

Chili said, "Then what do I need you for?"

You can hear Chili mulling over Bo's speech on writing. And it mulls (lulls) him right into writing, no wish needed, just a mull. Mull has heat and sugar and spice, something comes about, changes, appears as something else. You ponder, you cook (you drink that hot wine), you walk (on the promontory). I like to walk (I promenade by the sea, I live by the sea, in the sunshine), I am a Walker, and I have mulshine in me. I mull and I walk. That's life.

The words are said, out loud. Like wish, for death. A little sacrifice. Who knows, things might be better. "When someone says 'drop dead' in a Weldon novel, we start searching for the body." (R. Barreca, Writing as Voodo: Sorcery, Hysteria, and Art, in 'Death and Representation', ed. S. Goodwin & E. Bronfen, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, 1993: 179) To think those two perfect words, as curse, to be delivered. Drop dead. And to think too: don't think that, it might come true. No way of knowing. That's for sure. Small small words, scarcely there, but sound. Bells, tinkling in the breeze, from the heart, so sad. That has been broken. Meanwhile: the body is parted, from the damned, or so it thinks. The curse has begun. Nothing to see, or hear, on the surface. And is too rich, rich to beyond, at the very moment of entry, ongoing. The folds of the wound are ground, & mute is to cruel, what hope is to pause. Who carries you off, this is the question. Who wants you dead. What is wished, is wished. Requires time, minute work.

I added an 'l' to get mull. And mull is also mould and dirt and dust and garbage. A muller is a stone to crush/pulverize matter on. To break up and make very very small. A stone to grind spices (before they are heated) on.

And mul. A prefix. Seems to come from 'mur' or 'mer': black: mulberry/murberie: black berry. Mur/mul: black. Mulch, the black rotted stuff. And mule and mulatto. A spanish word for mixed breed. And mule, a backless reddish leather slipper. A slip-on.

The bone is still drying, yet, already, I have slipped on the 'shine' shiney past. And slipped on the wish for watching the wish write, as it glows, as it wishes to be said. Wishing talks of wishing, and wishes upon the sound of the snapped bone. On death. Which wishing way to go: the one of wishing before the break, where both players get to think a wish. Or the one where wishing comes after the break, to the one who 'wins' (the bigger bit/part). To lose here is not to wish, to not even think a wish.

I wish you well, LMW