When you became Elizabeth,
And walked along the borders of the world,
We all would genuflect and bow
And say a prayer as you passed by.
And all your tragic triumphs we would
Whisper tales around our nightly fires.
You alone, Eliza, fought the giants,
You broke the backs of tyrants,
Clawed the Cyclops eye,
Drowned the hateful witches
In the sea.
The grimness of your everlasting violence.
Your everlasting violence.
When you returned we had no way to thank you. You towered high above us, so high your stately visage was obscured by winter clouds. And we could only love you from a distance, and you could only see us for from above.
cleared out the corner dead tree in joanne's yard. met matt, ran up to northview, five mile, plainfield, northview, and back. i weight one-hundred-ninety pounds. finished first edit of "swatch," chilled at the house after returning from flint. went to meijer with deb. saturday we did huff park and went to flint. neck doesn't hurt too bad. shoulder has been bugging me.
brutus, my cat, is looking out the slider window at the night backyard. the night backyard is a magical place. i assume it is. i am inside now, so how can i be sure? I cannot be sure that the nighttime backyard is a magical place. i almost hope not, because then i would be missing out on wonderful and whimsical backyard magic. elves and fairies and whatnot, lurking around cutely under bushes and toadstools. there were no toadstools back there earlier, but i have no proof that there are none there now. if there are elves and fairies in the backyard, would one of them be a malcontent? would it be sullen and contrary? would his name be stan, stan the elf, and would he refuse to partake in the elvish highjinx they get up to back there? running around and laughing and doing whatever elves do in their spare time, which i can only assume is all the time, because they probably do not have jobs in the conventional sense. would stan be bored with the entire thing, and decide to leave the backyard? would elves remain in one backyard only? wouldn’t they just wander around, ignoring property lines altogether? and would they only frolic in suburban yards? would they go downtown, under cars in parking garages? to street festivals, dodging human feet as the humans with wristbands wander to and fro between the port-a-johns and the beer garden? stan would be there, wondering what it is all about. under a wheeled dumpster, listening to two cops discuss overtime, or their domestic situations, or politics. the people getting louder and louder under the influence of their beers, and stan would wonder what it is all about. he would find a side-street, and overhear a couple arguing about a third person. one of them is jealous, and stan feels lonely. none of the other elves are interesting to talk to. they just giggle and laugh and frolic around. mindless idiots. elves are, if compared to humans, always naturally high. they have no needs or wants to speak of. they are like animals, really, not thinking, only casting tiny spells on humans, and playing tricks, and mostly frolicking at night and having loads of sex. they are all in great shape, disease free, eternally young, usually naked, and randy for all eternity. but not stan. poor stan. he just doesn’t get it. he will wear pants, thank you very much. he thinks too much. even through the naturally high haze of his tiny elf mind, he can tell that this all does not add up. he flicks his wings sullenly and flies up into a tree. and i suppose it is here that i should introduce a second character.
i see a thousand spaceships crawl across the evening sky
but none of them are interested and they keep passing by
i see a million zombies with their smartphones lumber by
but none of them are interested and they keep passing by
i suppose i could begin some story, but my stories are crap, but if you must have a character, we will have this person do things. this person will say things as well. this genderless, completely unidentifiable person will come alive, and you will help me, gentle reader, bring this person to life. because this person has feelings. this person was brought up in a certain way, and this person believes certain things because of and in spite of this upbringing. this person is, of course, frustrated with life. how can this person be otherwise? look at the world. you have seen it, dearest and most cherished reader. you have seen it. the world. this person finds this person stuck on this world. a planet, to be sure, with gravity, filled with other people. who said "hell is other people?" wonders this person. i know what you are thinking, dearest reader. "i could be that person!" you think, reading on. or the author could be this person. but no, you and i are not that person. we are simply the writer and the reader. no. this person is real, and we will make this person real now. think about this person. crystallize this person in your mind. make this person solid and real. eyes like that. hair just that way. a certain walk. a way of hold the head. there. now this person is real. now this person must do something. doing is more exciting than not doing. and it is excitement we want. we shall have it, my most loyal and trustworthy reader. we will do this together. it is incredibly important for this person to do something. this person does not exist in a vacuum. this person has a friend. this person and friend will have conversations. but they cannot hang in space having a dialog with no setting. they must be in a place, so we will make them a place. this place has a certain amount of trees and foliage; it is a very green place. you may put a fountain in it if you like, or not. perhaps there is a commercial or retail space a few streets down. but they are walking in this green space, this person and the friend. they are walking near the fountain. a car goes by, and finally the friend says, and this is the first dialog, so pay attention: "should i say something profound?" the friend says. "go ahead," this person said. "say something profound." they walk along for awhile, and the friend says, "i think it has all been said." this person says, "that is profound, it it's own way." i think i should explain here that my characters will be speaking in contractions, although i do not like to use them in my prose. this is a writing tradition to which i have kept true for over an entire page. sorry to interrupt. a car goes by. this person waves, because this person knows the person driving the car. "who was that?" the friend asks. "no one," says this person.
Let’s trouble gods and
Keep them in their places—
Let’s ask them for
Uncomplicated things—
Let’s bother them with prayers
Unnecessary—
Let’s all distract them
With our tiny needs—
There are so many of them
In the heavens—
And twice as many
Dwell beneath our feet—
They sit there in the everlasting
Boredom—
They suffer in the everlasting
Heat —
I pity them in their
Eternal Sunshine—
I weep for them in their
Eternal Flame—
Let’s ask them for
An awkward-worded favor—
Let’s genuflect and kneel
and bow our heads—
For they ignore us
While we go on living—
And punish us as soon as
We are dead—
woke up, and this went through my head:
"All beliefs must be believed /
Or else the world has been deceived."
So we were watching a murder show, and there is an actual commercial for Life Insurance, and in the commercial, the wife is talking the husband into buying life insurance. And the plot of the murder show we are watching pretty much matches that setup exactly.
"Lawyer, priest, doctor, politician, newspaperman—these are the quacks who have their fingers on the pulse of the world. A constant atmosphere of calamity. It's marvelous. It's as if the barometer never changed, as if the flag were always at half-mast. One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it can be like, this heaven that men dream about. A frog's heaven, no doubt. Miasma, scum, pond lilies, stagnant water. Sit on a lily pad unmolested and croak all day. Something like that, I can imagine."
Tropic of Cancer — Henry Miller
They say it's called "Black Friday" because it's the time when retailers finally go "in the black" and turn a profit.
But it can also be, under the right circumstances, even blacker, and darker. Suppose it is overcast, and you have nothing to do on Black Friday. You're not at work, and although you imagine you can fill a spare day with productive or entertaining activity, you mostly sit around in your pajamas, unwashed, looking at the Internet.
It isn't so much depressing, but melancholy. But can we make Black Friday even blacker? We can! How? Bring forth
Emily Dickinson! (1830-1886)
Emily Dickinson was a shut-in who didn't give a rip about punctuation, titles, or anything else. Her poetry came from the Blackest of Fridays, an infinity-long afternoon of gloomy brooding unmatched in literature. Dickinson stared into the void and brought back reports such as this:
Sip some chamomile tea and dwell on that for a minute.
Oh, is it still just around two in the afternoon and this day is dragging on forever?
They do their work on the Galilean moons of Jupiter, millions of men and women, ancient beyond imagination, chiseling, one letter at a time, the entire history of mankind, on great slabs—not indigenous, of course—of purest marble. Chisels and mallets in chapped hands. Tap tap tap. The vast face of Jupiter looms overhead, shining glorious on the scribes, lined up before their pedestals. No spacesuits. No held breath, no discomfort, just ageless fatigue. These are not lives, but afterlives. Not too old, not too young. Just that middling age that makes one almost invisible. Gray, but not completely gray. Taught skin over lean muscle and tendon. Things happen on earth, these men and women, chosen by mysterious gods for mysterious reasons, sit for ages, chiseling the past into stone. The rise and fall of empires are recorded. The stubbing of a toe, probably not, but the loss of some minor local, obscure election, with enough pathos? This is recorded. The death of kings? Of course. Lost car keys? Not so much.
Naram, once a dubsar in Mesopotamia, had served Sumerian kings, then Akkadian kings. He had lived what he thought was a chaste and sinless life, but here he sits on a little wooden stool, in this unexpected afterlife, on the surface of Europa tapping out the vagaries of human history, one letter at a time. For awhile it was cuneiform, but as the centuries passed he had written in every conceivable language. The context of the events as they unfolded, the comprehension of each language, and the details of events small or of great consequence, formed in his mind as easily and simply as a dream. He wondered sometimes if he were recording events, or making events. He knew it was the former, but he liked to imagine the latter.
Lately, he'd been writing in Hindi, about the landing of space vehicles on his very moon. Naram found this very exciting. These Indian travelers had done several exploratory expeditions, and one traveler, one single astronaut, was approaching his valley. He watched this history unfold, on his marble stone, as he chiseled it there.
Naram was finishing a sentence. He knew, without turning from his work, that a visitor was walking down his very row of stone slabs. Without looking up from his work, he raised his hand and beckoned over his shoulder for that visitor to approach. He didn't need to look. He knew all the details from that which he had written. He had just finished the Hindi word for "suit" when, as he expected, a shadow, the first shadow of movement he had seen for thousands of years, passed over his shoulder. He turned to look.
The shining sphere, a face-shield, black and gleaming, the black and white suit, not too cumbersome, but solidly built, silhouetted by Jupiter's vast glory, stood facing him, beholding the body of his endless work.
Astronaut Jenean Nayak, jaded, tired, not sure if she were hallucinating, squinted behind her face shield. Her breath went in and out. These people can't be here, she thought. I'm suffering neurologic compromise. This cannot be. Already nervous, she had broken at least a dozen protocols coming out here on her own, so far beyond the perimeter. She thought of the reprimand she'd get if she were discovered. No one would believe this, even if she confessed to ignoring procedure.
Naram knew not only that this masked figure was a woman, but that she was from the wealthy suburb Gulshan, she had married and divorced, drank on occasion, and was either about to live or die, depending on how fast she read what he, Naram, had just written in the stone. She was a figure of some note, for he had written her entire lifetime, on and off; her placement in school, her stellar academic achievements, and her career at IIST.
Now this. The outcome of her story rested on her ability to comprehend what she read, and her ability to act quickly.
"This is about me," she thought as she read. Her early advancement through St. George's in Hyderabad. Her divorce. The mission to Jupiter.
She read:
She cast out on her own, ill-advised . . .
"This just happened." How did this old man know? She looked at the man, thin, horribly thin, large dark eyes watching her expectantly, hammer and chisel held in slack hands between his knees. She had no way to communicate with him. How was he, or any of these people alive with no life-support?
She continued to read. She felt so fatigued.
#
Naram watched the astronaut crouch ever so slightly, obviously reading. "Get to the end," he thought. He watched her bend lower, reading the very last thing he had written. The movement. The flinch of recognition. He smiled and pointed back the way she had come. The figure bolted at once.
He would almost have found it comical, watching her try to sprint in her spacesuit, but too much was at stake. He watched her run as best she could. The large boots tramping, dust flying.
He turned back to his work and read the last sentence.
There was a tiny tear in her suit. Her air leaked out slowly, and her LS monitor, malfunctioning, did not alert her to the danger.
Now he waited. Not long. It would come to him as in a dream.
He added, with a tap tap tap:
She read her fate, and ran for her life.
Still he waited. He could not see the future, however close. Only the past.
A small detail came to him. Tap tap.
She fell.
Still he waited. Naram had never been so anxious. He had seen this person, now he was writing her history.
Finally, he added, tap tap tap:
With the help of two others, she was dragged into the airlock, and revived.
