Fifty days’ sick-leave lay ahead, and my trouser pocket was heavy on my buttock with the high-denomination back-pay notes. It should have been a time for restful convalescence after the long spell in the military hospital, but I had been discharged too soon and I was still affected by the enemy’s synaesthetic gas I had inhaled. My perception was disturbed. As the train clattered through the devastated towns and countryside, I seemed to taste the music of pain, feel the gay dancing colours of sound. Waiting in the port for the ferry across to the Dream Archipelago, I tried to understand and rationalize my delusions in the way the medical orderlies had trained me. The brick-built houses, which between my perceptual lapses I saw glowed brown from the local sandstone, became synaesthetic monstrosities: cynical laughter, a deep throbbing sound, and cold to the touch like tempered steel. The fishing-boats in the harbour were less unpleasant to perceive: they were a gentle humming sound, barely audible.
What do You think about An Infinite Summer (2015)?
