introduction

     Sit somewhere comfortable. Quiet. Plush. Curl your feet underneath yourself, perhaps. Close your eyes. In the spotty darkness an image forms: a vast expanse of land, immeasurable, winter-burdened. Clov's landscape. The muted colors mark everything indefinite, pale tones of grey-blue tempered by mist. Soft browns and desolate, dirty, white. You're not sure where the line of the horizon lays. There is the suggestion of upheaval, climatic turmoil, but the stillness contradicts that nothing has happened here for centuries. Patches of half-melted snow are scattered across muddy earth and brown grass. It looks... unpleasant to walk on. A few short steps would sink your shoes and soak your socks. Not much is worse than wet socks. But you begin to move forward anyway because, in the distance, you can just see something that doesn't belong, something odd in its placement, something... blue? Squinting, you walk forward on the plain. There are, perhaps, a few scraggly trees, twisted and bare, strewn about the unending expanse. Miserable afterthoughts from an ether nightmare. The sky is that particular shade of grey that comes in northern climates in mid-February: oppressive and unbreached. You keep expecting a lone bird to fly overhead screaming a far away notation of the lack of progress. A raven would be fitting, but there remains no such apparition. Even the pathetic suggestions of plant life are alien and cold.
 
     Why here? Is this what's behind your eyes? A desolate wasteland with you wandering silently in the middle? This isn't what you want. Comfort, quiet, somewhere to nap in the sun, maybe, but not this... uncertainty; caught somewhere between the inevitability of death and the desire for everything. Not this predictable metaphor. Its too easy, adolescent, stubborn. Yet here you are, surrounded by it. Something is hanging in the air around you, tempting. A compromise, a resolution, a way to avoid the headlong rush to either extreme. It's there, but you can't see it, can't grip it, can't bring it close to own. It exists as a suggestion, and as soon as you've noticed it's gone again. You sigh, trudging forward.
 
     The object is beginning to define the horizon as you approach, as it grows. It is definitely blue. The blue of plastic and of ribbons in little girls' hair, of finger-paints and orgasm. A screeching, continuous blue so out of place in this expanse of cowed tones that it fits as seamlessly as if it was always there. The blue becomes, as you near, a plush, ratty, armchair. Surprisingly squat for its height, it vibrates pain and Chopin. You approach, circle, inspect. The fabric is worn in places, damaged by damp and cold; amazing it has retained its color. Then again, anything could look vibrant here. There is no indication of purpose. No, it's just a slightly faded blue armchair squatting defiantly in the middle of a desolate wasteland.
 
     So you sit down. What else would there be to do? You sit deep in the plush chair, draw your feet underneath you, close your eyes. And in the spotty darkness, you begin to dream.