Shining threads

Shining threads

Saturday 13 August 2011

Take two

Two - for a start what a genius to match a T with a W. That happens very rarely. Twist, for example. Between and betwixt. It takes much wit to take those two words and turn and dance.

For two is the number of the dance of duality. Only with two can you have reaction and responsivity and communication and dialogue. Okay...only with at least two.

Two is the number of fingers to make certain gestures. Two is the number of legs, arms, hands, feet, ears, eyes, lips, buttocks, bollocks, breasts and nostrils of a human being. Where would we be without two? Hopping mad, I say. Two allows us to compare and contrast. Two has two sides. Without two, we wouldn't have the concept of a side. Two is doubt. And boundaries. And distance. Two is in time and space. Two touches.

Two is relativity. Two is all your relations. Two is a line with two ends. Two charts the course. Connects the dots.

Two - don't ask me why - is blue. Maybe it's in the rhyme. Two is rhyme and rhythm and poetry.

Two sees double. Two is a pair of cards. A pair of Aces. A King and a Queen.

Two is a couple - partners - all those modern terms to describe a relationship. Two is respectability. Two is socially approved. One less and you're single and suspect. One more and things get kinky. More than that and you're getting religious or orgiastic!

Two is a blend, an interaction, an interweaving. Two gives birth to something new, arising from the fusion of elements.

Two is perception. The seer and the seen. The hunter and the prey. Two is the chase, the search, the race, the process, the dynamic, the unconsumnated and incomplete.

Two is a conversation and a chat. The mutual exchange of information for love, for business, for gossip or for conflict.

Two is sex - the meeting of bodies in so many different ways the mind boggles. Two is licking and sucking and kissing and fucking. Two is frisson and flirtation and friction. Two thrills to the soundtrack of desire.

Two is an endless series of combinations - a kama sutra of relations - mind-boggling in their variety.

Two is opposites - on the surface conflicting but in the depths complementary. 

Two is separation - teasing apart the fabric to distinguish two distinct lines. Two travels on different paths, sometimes together, sometimes divergent, but never exactly synchronised as one.

Two is desire. Without two, without space, without longing, there would only be stasis. Two is the gap and the movement to close it. Listen to the silence of the gap which plunges between two. Two is waiting and anticipating. Hoping and fearing. Wondering and dreaming. Two is the tension between what is and what may be.

Two is split. Railway tracks. Two trees between which the hammock lies.

Two is contradiction, duplicity, hypocrisy, the pull between persona and self, social and personal, explicit and implicit, stated and desired. Two is divided - perhaps by fear, perhaps by class, perhaps by restraint. Two has a foot in both worlds, awareness in both hemispheres.

Two is trade and exchange. The flow of currency. Negotiation and barter - deals struck between canny merchants.

Two is war and conflict - clash and friction, antagonism and argument. With two comes the possibility of hierarchy, of domination, of oppression, of slavery.

Two duels in a contest between players for their own hopes of glory, romance, justice and progression. 

Two may be equal in their difference but never exactly the same, for then they would be one. Two is an equation, delicately balanced complex sums. Two hold hands, linked by relationship yet distinct in character - points of intersection and points of autonomy.

Two allows shadow aspects, a hidden dimension, a sense of perspective, a number of levels, a distance travelled, a pair of sides, a co-existence of feelings and motives. Two is the new element that displaces dominant routines and subverts ancien regimes. Two is uncertain, two is in two minds, two wavers, two is not simple.

Two is a bicycle and a pair of glasses and a set of taps. Two is the knife and fork. The lighter and cigarette. The bat and ball. The rider and horse. Start looking and two is everywhere!

Two is gender, two is difference, two is contrast, two is translation. Two is complementary and co-existing. Without two, you and I would not exist. And for that we should be happy.

Two is day and night. Hot and cold. Home and away. Heaven and hell. First and last. Here and there. Up and down. Lost and found. Two is travel, drama and adventure. Two is the journey. Two holds the space that we call the middle. Two is both. The best of both worlds. And the worst.

Two is a pair of record decks - manipulated by the DJ to mix and blend tunes, creating a sequential flow from many records.

Two is double-edged. Not easily fitted into a box. Two cuts both ways. Simultaneously different.

Two is the world. The platform for polarity to be experienced. Like ping-pong balls we humans are sent careering back and forth over the table of duality. The players occupy different ends of the spectrum at different times and the game is in the movement and variation. Never will we land at exactly the same spot but many times we cross the net to visit each side.

The concept of balance is predicated on there being two. The closest two gets is paradox and the furthest it gets is alienation but two is always in relation. The tension of two gives rise to all kinds of dreams of utopia. But two is where we are and two it is.

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