GOLD PLATED - A FABLE BY LIM ORION
There was a smooth oval on his head where his hair would not grow.
‘The thumbprint of a mighty God’ his grandmother had cooed as she rocked him in the cool marine of the muted TV late at night.
He had a terrible memory for specific words but had remembered this perfectly. Growing up it swam back to him every time he caught himself in the tarnished gleam of the bathroom mirror. Whether he knew it or not - he wove this story into him and felt like a descendant of the gods.
Stuck in his head as he often was, he combed over the same grandiose thoughts like heavy doors carving again and again into pinewood floors. When he woke in the mornings, he felt as if his brain simply didn’t have enough room for him. Other times that his head was enormous and his mind cowering lost inside. Starting each day as two completely incompatible sizes had become very familiar and over the years he had learnt to take long, fierce walks until they balanced out.
Through the dampened leafy acoustics of the forest, he would follow bird sounds over streams and eventually come to the summit of the tallest cliffs that hemmed the town. He always slowed his step as he arrived - not through fear but for a kind of dramatic effect. This was where the rough seas and winds battered the coast to their will; into angular sculptures and jagged desperate arms that reached forever towards but never touching the horizon. At its highest point the wind was so harsh that the ridge was smooth so it was possible to stand in its palm perched on the lip of the earth. And this is where he now stood; pride lifting his chest, a rush of adrenaline clearing the clouds from his mind, the wind lashing him. He used to come here when he was little with a girl from the village and though they dared each other they never came this far. He took another step. He liked to challenge nature this way and he loved how tiny all the houses and cars below him seemed as his head grazed the sky.
Once he looked down on it all he would visibly relax and feel a sort of dithering calm as he meandered home. On his way back he was like a different person; grounded, warm, his humanity shining out through his eyes as he greeted the familiar characters on the village’s only street. His heart would start to open. He felt its vastness and retreated slightly. He had always felt capable of great emotion and the size of it in his chest scared him so much he rarely paused to feel it. Over time he had developed cold forgotten corners without a name. Desire & Ambition on the other hand were extremely comfortable to him. They gave him purpose, fuel...he knew what to call them. They felt like a pair of strong arms within him.
The weather was warm and bright, and as he passed people remembered him. On the faces of those he spoke with he would often leave a trace of a smile lingering long after him - always a sort of crescendo in their day! But like a crescendo somehow it could not be sustained. They would spot him on his favourite bench at the edge of the forest in front of a beautiful church, his tall form curved - not slouched, more ready for an action like a bow drawn back. He watched people going in and out but always on the outside. Watching their small stumbles, triumphs, misunderstandings and tender moments as one watched a play. Deeply and truly moved but never inside the frame.
Today he sat on his bench watching families playing frisbee in the park, sitting & talking about nothing in particular. Somewhere in him with a slight sting, he knew he could not talk about nothing in particular. He longed to make something lasting of himself. He felt it as a hunger but everywhere in his being as one hand idly etched his initials in the bench beside him with his keys.
His daze was interrupted by his friend. She came here a lot at this time to be by his side, knowing she would find him here and that he would be happy to see her. She was the only thing in his life that seemed to happen outside his own head. He almost never arranged to see her, he said he was too busy and had things to plan and do but every day she came and felt to him like a window thrown open in a dank and musty room. Their conversations were like water, he stepped out from behind the camera, light everywhere.
And so, day after day his routine went a lot like this - walking and fantasising what elaborate designs his life might take. Spending his evenings reading about great achievers, gods, inventors, pioneers well into the night until his eyes were dry and could no longer make sense of the words. He felt these stories were not just being read but becoming part of him - the ink drawn from the page and now running through his veins. The only time that his hunger to be extraordinary did not pain him was at noon each day by the church when he sat beside his friend.
As the seasons cooled, he began to watch the church goers more curiously and some days could not even hear his friend talking. He went inside but not to admire the spectral glass or to listen to the choir. He came to watch other people and the relationship they had with this building; for solace, for pain, joyous occasions….in short for everything that was important. He noticed that people changed their style of walking as they entered; treading carefully and respectfully on the stone. He heard them bicker bitterly outside and then crossing the threshold of the church the anguish somehow gracefully put itself out. He was transfixed by the immediate hush, that the building was so much more than the sum of its parts. His fascination with the church took on an odd light - the corners of him starting to gnarl, a simmering behind the eyes. He had become quite jealous of the church.
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His envy started to get in the way of his sleep, he lay awake with unrealised potential fizzing within him. If he ever found a few minutes of sleep all he dreamt of was the church; that everyone was happy and warm inside and that he was locked out alone and shrinking. He would wake with a start. His heart beating fast, the scent of frankincense in his nose.
When this had gone on for many months, he threw off the covers in the middle of the night and decided to walk. It was late and the movement of the fallen leaves was hinting at the first fingertips of a storm. His familiar overcrowded mind charging him on into the night, walking his route in the pitch black but knowing where to go. Instead of his pace easing as he neared the cliffs, he felt himself accelerate! And instead of adrenaline he felt fire. The clouds luminous black & patch-working the sky, the full moon blaring at him like a speaker turned all the way up. The air became syrupy and charged and as he approached the cliff’s peak standing as tall as he possibly could trying to feel bigger, greater! And then there was a flash so bright that colour was unmade and then nothing.
He awoke at dawn. The tiny trees below him were tinged a sweet grapefruit pink. The sun was a large glowing thumbnail on the horizon, its beams reaching soundlessly across the farms below.
The hot hunger and sleep-deprived bruise in him had both evaporated. It was the first time he could recall feeling satisfied, in need of nothing. The sun came to meet his face as he stood and he closed his eyes smiling.
‘Strange’ he thought, feeling taller. Much taller. His shin bones and arms seemed to be growing. He was rising and smoothing and his skin was beginning to turn a sandy stone hue. He smelled earth as his hair became ropey and split into vines. His feet stretching as far as he could see like huge shadows of ornate marble. ‘How beautiful’ he uttered as the eyes that watched this transformation hardened into two large abstract stained-glass windows and, overtaken by the urge to reach towards the sky both arms lurched upwards and turned into two delicate spires! He felt strong. Purged of each doubtful, nagging thought of inadequacy. He was everything he wanted to be and more.
It didn’t take long for the news to spread of the astonishing new church perched at the world’s edge that had appeared one night, and it really was something to behold. The way it mingled with the day’s sky was nothing short of extraordinary. When flooded with sunlight, it seemed to catch and throw light playfully through its patterned glass almost as if it was enjoying itself! It also possessed an uncanny knack to feel different depending on the occasion. Electric, alive and brimming with joy during celebrations, then during solemn and sad times the church seemed to hold the space just so - empathy in its walls, companionship in its chairs, and humanity in its music. The church never wanted to be left.
It was brimming from dawn till dusk with tourists, visitors of all faiths and walks of life whispering their prayers to its listening walls. When the doors closed, they camped outside. All came and never wanted to leave. All except one.
His friend had begun to worry when he did not go to his usual places. She searched and asked the people of the village, who smiled when she said his name but couldn’t remember anything specific. She heard about the new church and oddly found comfort in its description alone, and going there she immediately felt relief. The church was a cool balm on her heart in the place where she missed him though she did not know why. She visited every day and like everyone else she never wanted to leave but for a very different reason. What they idolised she simply knew. As the years went by the crowds at the church doors grew larger and greedier to spend time, camping outside, night after night, more and more of them. The church seemed to dazzle in the light of this admiration.
Eventually and curiously, it was only she who came less and less to visit. It no longer soothed her. She would go every now and then because it once did. And then one day was the last time she stepped out of his halls.
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It took some time to notice she was gone. That whatever part he wished himself rid of was the part she loved. His success in transformation was the breaking of another spell, one that was much more precious.
He realised this many years later. Long after the masses of tourists had begun to overwhelm and hollow him, he had begun to think only of her. And not as an obsession, not as an ambition. But just of her. And without knowing why the visitors started to drift away...no longer a queue at his doors. People rarely came and when they did, they didn’t stay long. So unloved was this place.
He shut the doors tight and the vines around the grounds grew feverishly like they were trying to hide him from the world. Over and through and around every surface in layers until not one slip of stone or glass could be seen at all. He didn’t feel sorry for himself. He replayed conversations they had about nothing in particular in his mind over and over. He imagined what she might be doing and smiled.
It was at this exact moment that she was in her cottage dreaming. She had an amazing, full and wild life but in her dream this missing piece blew through her like a draught. It woke her and she knew she would go to the church one last time.
Every step she took towards the cliffs, a vine unclenched and dropped softly to ground around him. Each tendril, one by one - almost relieved to unbuild his cage. As she approached the cliffs, she saw the last few vines forming a small shape at the centre of a huge square of unweathered ground. The shape stirred. She was not confused that the church was no longer there and peeled back the last few vines.
By Lim Orion.
To accompany her track Gold Plated from her latest album Cosmic Salt.
The music video of Gold Plated was the Good Wickedry film of the week in April 2021.
