Steel Bars and Padded Walls Cell
Steel has a memory ... convicts don't talk about ... It was liquid heroin once ... Poured into molds that someone designed on an Orange Sky afternoon in 1947 ... Bars remember the moment they became solid ... That's metallurgy ... Light has no memory and doesn't know where it came from ... or where it's going ... When steel bars turn to hard light what happens? ... The hard in hard light ... We assume it means rigid ... structured ... But hard also means difficult ... Hard light is difficult light ... Light that isn't easy ... Rampling is still sitting there with a number patch sewn to the chest of his jumpsuit ... He didn't pass through the light ... didn't escape ... The light passed through him ... Or maybe the light was always inside the steel ... The reader who feels this imagery ... feels it in a place they can't name ... The body also was a prison ... Bones as bars ... Skin ... flesh ... padded walls ... and light passes through Rampling still ... The guards just couldn't see the miracle ...
