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The tapeworm made Blair nauseous. He could feel it moving. Churning. Even the cat had started to stare straight at his belt buckle, twitching its tail.
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In a daze, he moved towards the cupboard with the now somewhat disconcerting idea of making something to eat. The cat crept along the floor and stopped beneath the kitchen table, wiggling its haunches back and forth, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
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It doesn't matter. The hand reaches out, but here we sit. Even if he were to wait, and he won't, he wouldn't hear anything, not even the dead quiet. This is the way it happens to us. I am trying not to be distracted by what's going on outside, trying to focus on the seconds ticking off, but the hand reaches the handle of the cupboard door and, of course, it must open, as it does.
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Exposing to the inquiring mind, the clutching fingers, the Kraft Dinner (...."ahhhh,...'Classic'...," he sighs), folk art for one.
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For two, always for two, for now. Idly shaking the box produces a kind of mournful salsa which will accompany him towards the countertop where the instruments shall be arranged and a comfortable habit allowed to inform the remains of the morning.
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I'd like to think you might spare the unecessary details and get to the funny part.
"And they all lived happily ever after."
"...and taking her into his arms, crushing her heaving, bejewelled bosom into his chest, he finally proclaimed his true identity, while the citizens of Dobongia emerged from their dwellings, first with tredipation then with growing incredulity, bearing witness first to the slain dragon and then to the rebirth of their nation..."
"'And the worm turns his heads and asks: "Where's my cherry tart?" as the Doctor creams him with the Eastwing roofing hammer "Ta-WHAM," grabs what's left of his skinny neck and pulls out the rest, all 27 feet worth, wrapping the body like a garden hose around the foot stirrups of the examination table."
"little world remained for what little of him was left when, at last, the
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One is immediately drawn to thoughts of children asking about eclipses. The way the mother's head casts a shadow over the book, the way the child's nagging casts a shadow over the conversation.
See? Impossible.
The simple idea of the tapeworm is transcended as quickly as the metaphor infects the ordinary locutions of a most ordinary life. Eggs laid.
The cupboard? Pulled. The KD? Seized. The punch line? Over-re-hearsed as in long black Cadillac with little curtains.
Act 1. Scene iii.
Blair (talking to the cat, maybe): Stop staring at me. I"m hungry. So what?
Cat(internal monologue played over speakers to the audience): I can't bear it.
Blair (lifting leg slightly): Smell that? That's all the way from Guatemala and laid just for you, Kitty.
Cat(begins to choke up a hairball as prelude to vomiting): hark-hark-hark-hark-hark
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a mournful salsa a brisk marimba a fiendish cumbia
What difference could it possibly make? One must feed the beasts.
I'd like to take a moment to record an impression of utter futility:
In this wilderness of teacups, old baseballs, paintbrushes; where the unreliable etymological dictionaries and Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia explain nothing like moonrocks or space-filling curves;
where a white 'papier-mache' baby bear lurks, on a wooden box smashed with a fist; where the gravitational field of the clay bear is a Sun's, a black hole, or among the heaviest of things on earth; in this wilderness of clicks and whir, tires in rain, ticks and tocks, pigeons and crows; in here, where blue-bottle flies, soul's busy neutrinos, are forced to bloom beneath the glass.
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Pain? There is no pain. Brain? There was a brain, once, long ago maybe, perhaps, not so! you say? who say? I say, we say, oh yea! ouch! Pain? Yes, but where? In the brain? Which brain? What brain? Which pain? there is no pain, only brain
until one day there is no...
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You think I'm insane, that I can't handle the pain? It doth wax and wane, like a summer rain, but I remain and the pain does sustain my reign, without gain or evil's bane, lame!
Pain is not rain, pain is profane like sayin' it can't contain the blame of the dame.
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Don't only consider the young men who drive the heavy equipment watching the somewhat old ladies pedal their bicycles (always so slowly) over the thick lazy hoses laid out to bypass the sewer repairs: they're not the ones who look up at brown biceps stuck out of torn t-shirts or watch the fly-eyes, the smiles as you swing this incredible bucket of dirt from the hole: a magnet of sorts for their new bikes, the pretty old ladies who scowl a little too much at the cloud of dust, at that slop of mud that's spattered their sandals, soon to be swallowed everyone's thinking themselves.
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There's a way to do it right, surely. Something close to the bone, you know. Now, I'm not one to, say, fake stuff, nor (in spite of the accusations) am I even infinitesimally of the bunch of wimps who, for example, refuse to play in the rain, not me, not I, not any part of whatever it is that's gone into making it stick or fall apart, whatever the case may be. The case itself remains a mystery, a great murky mystery. We are of both parties: accused and afflicted.
"Try. As I might." Wait. "Try as I may have." Come. On. "Try as I have."
Try as I have to love you, we've been cursed from the first full moon, whose sallow light cast a bottomless shadow behind the Elm tree. More of a crack in the moonlit veneer on things than a shadow, a hole of sorts, an opening up or out, regardless, captivating for long enough to throw one off ones course, provoke a speechlessness of sorts, the world at play just when when I wanted to be here, or there, or whatever you call it.
At any rate, At any rate, years have gone by, years, and with every fullish moon I've tried to fall into the same crack, the same black upswell, you know, things not themselves, trees, twig lattice, statues in pitch-black, twilight carved up, shattered, behind it all, underneath, watching too closely, exactly there, the call to come home, to come back, and silently waited while staring up into the wide open eye of, well, you'll call it heaven, but, of course, it's not.
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Here at the assisted living residence the faintly chemical acid lavender smell of wet diapers yearning for a change and the surly indifference of the nurses dying, as usual, for a smoke.
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++Yup. --I didn't ask you. ++Still. --It doesn't matter. ++Nope. Still. --It's immaterial. ++You see. --What? ++See. --What? See what? ++That's the idea. --God. Please. ++Etcetera. Never to be. --Given. So what. If I said "Given," then there. Take that, then what? ++A definite nope. --A bagatelle? ++Now you're talking. A splinter. --Off the great granite block. ++Yup. --Can you make me a coffee? A nice one? ++Is the electricity back? --The toast popped. ++You shouldn't leave it in like that. It could burn. --The house down? It's just a waffle. ++Cafe au lait? Bowl or cup? --I'd like the tall water glass. ++ "I'd like it in the water glass," Jeez, you're such a sophisticate. --I like to see what I'm drinking. See if you can get it right. ++Well, there's no milk. --What? ++There. Is. No. Milk. No milk. None. Nada. Il n'y a plus. Finito. Hear that? The sound of nothing. --Use the little "Durex" one, then. Like in Italy. ++I think you mean "Duralex". --With the bevelled sides. ++Exactly. --They're up there. ++I know, I know. --The lights went off again. ++So much for coffee. --Man, is it ever dark now. ++I'll get the candles. Do you want a sandwich? I've got half a sandwich left. --Can you cut off the bite marks? I hate bite marks. ++Here. Take it. Just rip off the end. Jeepers.
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--Fifty-one years ago, all you could talk about was Proust. Proust. Proust. Proust. Now, you say "Just rip off the end". I can't even tell if my eyes are open or shut anymore. It's all the same. ++Peanut butter and honey. Somewhat crispy. --Did you cut them off? ++There aren't any. It's a clean cut. I used my filleting knife. Surgical precision. --I can feel tooth marks with my tongue. There's slobber. ++I may have gummed it a little, after the fact. --Put it on the table. ++The flame attracts bugs. --But, I can't see you. ++Look out the window. We're there. --Caravaggio. Last Supper. ++I invented you first.
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I, at least, am glad we've cleared that up. Imagine a large frame as if from a window, but only as if, and falling through that frame at sunset, over a typical inner-city scape (tops of rooves, obselete antennae, crosshatching wires, yes--the inevitable laundry line pops into view, with the fluttering, dreary, ragged child's dress, abandoned to the elements, speaking to the sordid horrors beneath this sky etc., but this is merely a lack of imagination) and falling through that frame across indigo-orange bands of twilight are birds one after another sometimes two or even three maybe outriders of a flock of pigeons that you cannot discern, then nothing;
they've passed leaving the frame to you
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Sitting in a evergreen plastic lawn chair in the blowsy Mexican place, looking out over the tops of a few empty sleeves of inevitable beer, not that I'm proud of it it's just the way it happens, well, doing that, feeling the give in the legs of the chair and enjoying the quickening thrill of a fall that never comes (at least not yet) well, doing that, while Dougeroonie's out for a smoke with Ben, ghost-owner, queen bitch of the place, beige cowboy boots and all, the guy you've just got to deal with to be left alone, that type of little garden variety devil, well, I noticed, over the dirt road and all the machinery, the usual skyscape with deadheads and ramshackle balconies and the pure, clean top of a "Subway" sign, all that sort of thing, well, above it all a bunch of crows circling and I said to the ghost of Dougeroonie, I said "Doug, those are my totems, in the old-school way, you know?" and Doug said that he did and that it was clear I was a crow. I've already spoken at length about the rubato triplets, I know I have as I've got it on tape. It's just the way we talk. So, seeing the crows and seeing that Dougeroonie was out smoking up with the boys just off the premises (as this was some great sophisticated plot to trick police and such), seeing all that and mainly staring out, all alone, watching the birds and simultaneously focussing on the purple petunias and the shroud of blue bottle flies kicked up by life's vicissitudes in general, given all this basic stuff, and even though I felt pretty comfortable, kicking back like that and draining the last pint of Keith's or whatever was going' around, doing that and nothing much else, I squeezed my eyes tight and laid the curse on all of them, with all my force, I really laid the curse out for once and for all on the lives of everyone sitting there drinking and smoking, especially on Ben the little devil and even on Dougeroonie (a little, but not all the way), and it worked perfectly. They all dropped dead right there and then, beer glasses smashing on the dirt, cigarettes rolling around on the ground and continueing to smoke for nobody--that's when my crows come in and start pecking out the eyes and tongues of all the folks, as if they'd been waiting for it all afternoon. They make quick work of the faces and settle in for the rest in a sort of gluttonous bourgeois fashiom that's bugged me for years. Dougeroonie's survived and avoided the worst of it, but I feel obliged to kick a few of the bodies just for the symbolic emphasis. Symbols are really important for the crows. They live on that kind of stuff. The sky's the same as before, the wires crisscross the dust clouds raised by the bodies dropping and the crows fluttering around. It's that time of the afternoon. Ben's old Mercedes sits there looking pretty good, so I rifle the keys out of his tight jeans and think of heading out for a ride. There's birds everywhere, pecking and cawing and hopping around, covered in juice. I've always loved Mother Nature and her creatures. Even the dumb little rabbits that stare me down when I'm jogging. So what? It's time to go for a drive, out to the country, maybe out to the river, after all, there's hardly any bugs this time of year. I wish I knew a curse to clean things up, but I don't. The birds are staring at me, as if I've forgotten something important. I'm out of my element now. The sun's never going to set on a day like this so I grab a fistful of Nachoes off the plate of this fat 60 year old English wanker and his Laotian child-bride before leaving. I really do. I really do. I really do.
It's too late to fix this sort of thing. Too late to even try. Curse them all.
Not that I'm adverse to Laotian child brides, or even beer for that matter, but the crows keep me in line. If I didn't listen, they'd do me in. They're everywhere, just look!
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I don't mind the noise the buses make. They toll the hours around here like the old clock that gonged away my youthful Sundays or those bells that pealed into the high noon stupors of city-life. I really don't mind although I wonder who's supposed to be riding around at this hour, down here, on this stretch of road. I can't make out anyone inside, not even the driver who's hidden in a sort-of protective box. Nobody's waiting at the stop, never do at this hour, anyone would go up a few blocks to the intersection where there's more light I'd guess. That's what gives the clockwork aspect to their passage. They're always going the same speed, always carrying that fat bus momentum, just where the deisel's geared down into a purr and after the air brakes exhale and let her roll. I wish I was a driver. Imagine that. The comforting routine you'd build up for handling the late shift. Adjusting the captain's chair, putting the hot coffee in the holder must right, expertly folding up the Sports section so that the standings are showing and reading off a few lines at every red light, saying "Hi" to the crippled guy with no face and slowing down if someone's running for it and watching them catch up to you. Day after day after day, always the same, always safe inside the little drivers' hut and even firing up a little talk radio on the graveyard shift, back-up donuts at the ready, and that little picture of the wife and kids staring back at you everytime you mind wanders.
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and the eyes of the two of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked
Were their eyes closed before? No, opened wide10:61. Staring outward.8:23 Like those of the kouros5:57 or stele2:66 at the gates5:11 of the dead.
they knew that they were naked
They knew that (ki). And there the fall, in the ki. It doesn't matter what, just that.
they knew that they they knew that they
Not the they they were, but that they, over there, as in a mirror. Propositional knowledge: knowing "what is put before". Knowing-that falls like a mirror between they and they—it is the and:
they (knew that) they
A mirror falls, between Man and himself. Now he is here, a subject to an object, no longer the impossible edenic vocative, called into be-ing, subject without object. This is the first declension. He is here, and there, over there, an object in the mirror, and in the mirror, in the world.
Case, sb. [--L. casus fall, chance, occasion...]... Grammar. a. One of the forms of a noun, adjective, or pronoun, which express its relations to some other word, e.g. as subject, object, etc. b. loosely, The relation itself. (O.E.D.)
It is odd of course to inhabit the earth no more[...]. Odd to see everything that was related fluttering so loosely in the space. (1:70/78-80)
The world is all that is the case [der Fall]. (Tractatus 1.1)
Der Fall: 1) "The case." 2) "The trap." 3) "The fall." The mirror is the fall, the trap, and the case.
Is it too late to say "Um...what?"
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I dare say... after wading through this intriguing assemblage of deerpark's ponderings... might we be in the presence of OSC himself?
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Think of this: $836.44, then what? Walk north? Ha! They're coming back on Sept 22nd. Maybe they'll give me a bonus? Take a bus, a plane, to Burbank, stare off that old balcony again, over that dumb pool, watch the planes land. I have filled out all the forms. Nothing. I have filled out all the forms. Nothing. Filled them up with songlines. Nothing. Filled, illfed. Smell the chicken burning? Exactly. There is no chicken. I'm feeding off negative dialectics, the difference. Beekeeper of the invisible.
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Death is a midwife, indeed. I mainly remember the sound of the zipper, the smell of the vinyl, the stupid sunlight shining on the sidewalk. Death is not a perfectionist. Surprise!
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It turns out I'm a duck, but reincarnated, that is, not a dead duck. This appeared to be the main part of the message. There was the part about having to sleep on top of a warrior prince and then merging into his body, but it's gone too fuzzy to recall the important details. The duck, on the other hand, is still as clear as a bell. Just an ordinary brown duck. I'm standing on the top of a really huge pole. I'm not sure how my feet are gripping the steel ball that tips it, and yet I feel secure. I've flared up my wings and flapped outrageously in what feels like an impressive display although no one can see me at this height or even begin to wonder how I do it--perch here with webbed feet that is. My duck demeanor is highly inscrutable. Such are the ways of this wildest of kingdoms.
In case you wanted to know, I'm a happy duck. I can feel it in my serpentine neck. Totemesque. I can stretch it out about a foot and then, if I tilt my head back, bill up, I am easily mistaken from the ground) for a cormorant (especially in contre-jour). Either way, one hell of a symbolic gesture if you're in to that stuff. I'm a good and articulate quacker of the classic "Quaaaaack-quackquack-quackquack" school. I can fly like a dart (while quacking). If you've ever paid any attention, you will have noticed this is a rare trait in waterfowl. Brown duck. Brown river. My neck hurts. There was something else, something related to the
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quote:Originally posted by Jenga650: I dare say... after wading through this intriguing assemblage of deerpark's ponderings... might we be in the presence of OSC himself?
No. He reads a lot more like Pynchon than OSC; I rather enjoy these posts but can't say I have much in the way of responses...
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I had always been quite serious about the big brown river. More than H., more than that other silly bugger in the call centre who, after hours of breatheless scribbling, tearing each ruled yellow page from the thinning pad with authority, only finds himself staring at leftovers, three words: big brown river.
Something'd gone quite wrong. An overzealous devil's advocate in gaudy tap shoes had pounded clarity into a fine subtle dust that's filled the vaulted arches of the mind. Look! You can even see the light.(It was a time-step, of course. Mutated.)
This is the river, however, upon which floats the inscrutable duck. Always the same river. Never another. There they go.
Then comes the clocktower's singular "Gong!"
What next? Qu-qu-quonfess.
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Matryoshka, her old Russian doll, opened and opened until a procession of upturned bells wallowed over the tabletop, until she'd reached the end, the heartwood.
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it's an old brown table. you were hunted because I was hunted, I was hunted because you were found. we made the table on an afternoon, slick with mirth and full of sense. and gold. Can't forget the gold. can't have a decent meal without the gold from mother's tomb, her fecund gold staring with silent exhortations exhort this, exhort that, i'm as dumb as a baseball bat. But the table was of gold! The table was full. And you saw it, and knew it, and thus knew me. Maybe that's why you were hunted. Maybe that's why you run free. it's an old brown table. An ant negotiates its edge, as broad and flat for him as it is thin and sharp for me.
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The glass forces the bloom, and the greenhouse is full of begonias, row upon row in a plain pinkish white.
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Middle ground. Sigh. Take stock: One Swingline stapler. One clay urn, the size of a little football, with one handle and two holes. One necklace draped over the handle of aformentioned urn. (As I recall, purchased from a child on a beach in Kampot, the day of the wave.) One well worn paintbrush, the first and last. Seven mute stones, hand sized. Two small pieces of lively driftwood (snake and dwarf). One black and one white bear. Clay and paper-mache. Sticks to hold the window open, covered with cryptic red scribbling.(The window from which the teapot fell). A suspicious, new brown teapot. One brittle teacup with gold leaf rim (my long dead grandmother's). One large fishing lure, from Punta de Mita. One tattered map of Wabakimi park; one fantastically old lead trail marker found way off the trail and so collected as a souvenir of what it feels like to be lost. One shortwave radio, taking on a life of its own.
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Struggling, as I have, no body, no soul, no mind can deny...it...it(is) still, still (so still) and (out)there: utterly: struggling-strugggggullllinnnngggg. Hear that?
The probes (of course) have disintegrated. Burnt up. Red needles fused to the fanned array of delicate, embossed numeric gradations: .005--.006--.007...discriminating the cryptic signals... How many times did we run our fingers over the bumps, Sergei Brianovich? How often did we tweak those antennae? The last readings indicative of the disaster-- Fire. Searing heat. Molecular fusion. It didn't stand a chance, Not unlike the wayward shuttlecraft, launched from the womb of the Enterprise, piloted by the last remaining security guard, into the maw of the beast, that flaming ice-cream cone, do you remember the drumbeat? the brass?
Unlikely.
Crystalline in structure. Adamantine. Hard to miss.
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What readings? They were all faked. It's a moot point whether it blew up on the launch pad or landed 327 miles off the coast of Bermuda. They keep it all secret. You only see the films (Films. Ok--think of a Youtube video, except without interruptions.) It was all faked. Top secret, inscrutable countenances etc.
Someone painted my door last night. I mean, they spray painted a guy with horns, diabolical--you know--all drippy on the high gloss exterior latex--but clearly supposed to be a demon of some sort.
"Unauthorized, expressive, visible, human inscriptive defacement of property," I said, "a living fossil."
You wanna focus on the primary process here. The surface. The code.
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I've pulled on my tight fitting red spandex jersey; zipped up my spit-polished black go-go boots; oh I'm beaming down, arms carefully crossed in the small of my back, phaser on stun and a hard little smile for the bloodsucking salt monster, all of those tentacles waiting to cover my clean-shaven face.
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In 1934, just before I gave birth to my fourth child, I was sitting in a prototype grey Panzer, taking pot shots at a couple of forlorn Gingko trees left over by the bloody Huns 500 years ago, when I felt her chewing at my innards. Needless to say, and in spite of my best intentions, my strict upbringing and the handbook, which I'd almost learnt off by heart, I leapt up from of my wicker seat, banged my head on the periscope handle, and pulled the red ripcord.
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Later, breast-feeding her on what could only be described as the flesh of my withered glands, watching her little nails squeezing the calico fabric of my camouflage maternity jacket, I recited a verse from from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary to comfort our souls, a classic tale of mirth and fury.
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