NEITHER / NOR: NINE STORIES & A NOVELLA
A thesis submitted
to Kent State University in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Arts
by
Travis Hessman
December 2010 Thesis written by
Travis Hessman
M.F.A., Kent State University, USA, 2010
B.A., Kent State University, USA, 2001
Approved by
Robert Miltner , Adviser, MA Thesis Defense Committee
Mary Biddinger , Members, MA Thesis Defense Committee
Robert Pope , Members, MA Thesis Defense Committee
Approved by
Ron Corthell , Chair, Department of English
John R.D. Stalvey , Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……………………………………...………………………vi
I. STORIES:
The Geometry of Distance………………………………...…………….……..….1
A Wait ………………………………………...…………………………………19
Wild Roses & Lilacs …………………………………………………….………29
The Love Story: A Love Story …………………………………………………..43
Reconsideration ……………………………………………………………….…47
A Guided Tour of The Museum of the Hole ………………………..…………...54
(Title) …………………………...…………………………………….…………69
Notes for a Story …………………………………………………...…..…..……77
Cough ……………………………………………………………………………90
II. NOVELLA:
Neither / Nor
1. Said 1 ………………………………………………………………109
2. Cause / Effect ………………………………………………………110
3. A Carefully Crafted Agenda………………………………………..112
4. Neither / Nor ……………………………………………………….113
5. &1 ………………………………………………………………….115
6. Either / Or…………………………………………………………..116
7. X / Y ………………………………………………………………..119
8. Did / Did Not (~)……………………………………………………121
iii
9. This / That………………………………………………………..…124
10. &2………………………………………………………………..…125
11. ∀ / ∃……………...………..………………..………………………126
12. One Knows / One Knows…………………..………………………127
13. Here / There ..………………………………………………………129
14. Being / Now ……………………………..…………………………132
15. If / Then………………………………………………………...... 133
16. &3.………………………………………………………………….134
17. 3:25…………………………………………………………………135
18. A ⊃ B……………………………...……..…………………………137
19. &4………………………………………………………………..…138
20. A /B…………………………………………………………………139
21. Know / Learn………………………………………………….……140
22. Day / Night …………………………………………………………141
23. &5.…………….……………………………………………………143
24. Earth / Sun …………………………………………………….……144
25. 4:05…………………………………………………………………146
26. Proceed / Retreat……………………………………………………147
27. Said 2………..………………………………………………...……149
28. N/Either / N/Or………………………………………………..……150
29. &6………………………………………………………………..…151
30. Said 3………………………………………………………….……152
iv
31. 4:35………….…………………………………………………...…153
32. &7……………………………………………………………..……155
33. Said 4………..…………………………………………………...…156
34. Res / Rei……..………………………………………………...……157
35. Effect / Cause…………………………………………………….…159
36. Neither / Nor….………………………………………………….…162
37. Now / Being……………………………………………………...…163
38. &8………………………………………………………………..…164
39. Neither / Nor……………………………………………………..…165
40. &9………………………………………………………………..…166
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank everyone involved for all of their help with this project, especially
Neal Chandler, Sheila Schwartz, Michael Martone, and Bob Pope. This manuscript would not exist without them. Also, without the help, guidance, and unending patience of
Dawn Lashua, Robert Miltner, Craig Paulenich, and Mary Biddinger, everything would be impossible. The world works because of them.
Some stories in this collection have been published in the following journals:
“Wild Roses and Lilacs,” YACK 2 (Spring 2007)
“Reconsideration,” The Akros Review (Summer 2007)
“A Guided Tour of the Museum of the Hole,” The Ninth Letter (Vol. 6, Issue 1:
Spring 2009)
“(title),” Pank 4 (Winter 2009)
“Notes for a Story,” Pank 5.09 (Summer 2010)
Travis Hessman
11/1/2010, Kent, Ohio
vi
THE GEOMETRY OF DISTANCE
If we have nothing to say, said Camier, let us say nothing. We have things to say, said Mercier. Then why don’t we say them? said Camier. We can’t, said Mercier. Then let us be silent, said Camier. But we try, said Mercier. —Samuel Beckett (Mercier and Camier)
Dick and Sally were happy: they were together: everything was simple.
They were separated by several feet in the almost-middle of the endless white- white space.
Actually, only parts of them were separated by several feet in the almost-middle and the rest of their parts were separated by several more. Their top parts, specifically, were the closest, only a few feet apart, and the ankles and below bits were the furthest.
It’s like this: Dick and Sally’s waists formed the precise mid-point of distance between each other such that (provided Dick and Sally were both relatively symmetrical
(that the distance from waist to foot was equal to the distance from waist to head) (which they were of course), in equal proportion to each other (which they certainly were as well)), the distance from Dick’s feet (DF) to Sally’s feet (SF) was exactly twice that of
Dick’s head (DH) to Sally’s feet (SF) minus the equal space between heads (X), or: DFSF
= 2(DHSF) – X.
Imagine it like this: if we cut out space “X,” so Dick and Sally’s heads actually touched, they, along with the floor as the baseline, would make a perfect isosceles triangle – Dick as the left bar, meeting the floor at a 45 degree angle, and Sally as the right, equally angled. Their heads, meanwhile, would meet at 90 degrees.
1
2
Except their heads weren’t touching. Because of space X.
So, Dick and Sally both stood at 45 degree angles facing each other, as if desperate to make the triangle, except their heads, the would-be right angle parts, were separated by a distance of precisely two arms and two hands (laid end to end) plus one inch (the insidious X). That means when Dick and Sally reached for each other across the distance (X), stretching against the thick ropes tied around their waists and straining their fingers straight (and they did this quite often), the tips of their longest digits remained one full inch apart. So no matter how Dick stretched toward Sally and Sally stretched for
Dick, there always remained that X, that inch, that space between.
Directly below that insurmountable inch (and this is of very little, if any, consequence) was the exact middle of the endless white-white space, framed on two sides by stretching hands.
It’s all really quite simple. And that’s why they were happy: they were together.
*
“I’m sad, Sally.”
“That’s too bad, Dick. I’m sad too.”
“I think, though I’m still really quite unsure, that this might be better if we
were to see it at more of a distance.”
“I was just thinking exactly the opposite, Dick. Distance, as I see it, is the
problem.”
3
“It depends how you see it, I guess.”
“I see as I said I see: the source of conflict. The miserable in-between.”
“But that’s only because we’re here seeing.”
“Where else should we be?”
“Nowhere. Nowhere else of course. But if we were far away, maybe over in the corner…”
“By the red thing?”
“Opposite the red thing. The other side completely. If we were down there, way down there, imagine how little this distance would seem.”
“But if we had enough slack to cross the distance there, why wouldn’t we have enough slack to close the distance here?”
“There must be a way to see it there.”
“If we were there seeing it there, there would be nothing to see here.”
“What if only one of us went, then?”
“Then the space would grow from here to there: one unbearable inch times all the inches you would have us add.”
“Then we need a way to be both here and there.”
“Or neither.”
“There must be a way.”
“But there isn’t. That’s why I’m sad, Dick.”
“That’s too bad, Sally. That’s why I’m sad too.”
4
*
They reached for each other, trying to stretch through the one tiny inch too many.
They stretched, pulled, and reached, sweating at the strain of that sad maneuver, until, exhausted, they let their arms fall and hang limply below them. And then, every time of these countless times, they would stare across the distance as they rested: Dick at Sally,
Sally at Dick, and smile until they stretched again.
*
“Which is the right way to say it, Sally: ‘It’s all behind us now’ or ‘It’s all before
of us now’?”
“It’s hard to say, Dick. We’d have to decide between it’ses.”
“Is it, for instance, the things? They’re behind us, sure as anything.”
“And the work to put the things there, too: all behind us now.”
“But can work really be behind? Such an inconcrete series of things?”
“Sure, it’s behind in both ways: the spatial and temporal behind. We
worked in the past (a time behind), clearing the things that are, as we agreed,
behind us now.”
“But is that ‘it’? The things, the work, the time before? Is that all ‘it’ is,
the big important thing?”
“It was diligent, forward-working work, Dick, that brought us here after so
much left behind.”
5
“It was good work. It nearly got us there. Almost, I’d say, to it.”
“The it one inch ahead?”
“The it that’s all before us now.”
“So all that’s behind us brought us here where it’s all before us now.”
“So how do we say it, Sally?”
*
Dick and Sally’s space was a forever large. From the middle, the edges seemed like blurred horizons, the ceiling, an immeasurable zenith, and all of it bleached white- white. A white so white it made white seem gray. A blinding shade. A blinding shade that went on forever. All around, floor to ceiling: white-white. Forever.
*
“It’s simple this way, Sally. You’ve got to admit.”
“It’s all maths now.”
“I haven’t stumbled since all this. Not once.”
“I haven’t moved.”
“So here we are.”
“So here we are.”
“And I’m happy we could get together like this.”
“I am too.”
6
“We should have something to say, though.”
“Since we’re together and all.”
“We should have something relevant to say.”
“Now that there’s nothing in the way.”
“We should say something.”
*
With nothing behind them, it would have been impossible to find Dick and Sally in that white shine and infinity. They would have been two grayish figures, just tiny spots in an enormous forever of almost nothing at all. Luckily, there was a great deal behind them and, consequently, a simple trick to locating them in the space. To do so, one only had spot the miles of inches-thick jet black rope that stretched taut all the way from
Dick’s waist to the door behind him at the horizon. Or the identical rope that stretched the identical distance from Sally’s waist to the door behind her. Obvious in brilliant contrast to the white-white everything else, the ropes worked like giant arrows pointing the way to the middle from each horizon to the two tiny, forward-leaning figures.
That’s how you found them straining there, stretching their fingers so. Can’t miss them.
*
7
“Lately, Sally, I’ve been changing my Ts around. I used to start at
the top and draw the line down and then cross it from left to right. Lately,
though, I’ve been starting from the bottom and drawing up. But I still
cross them the same way. Left to right. There’s no practical alternative.”
“I’m happy for you, Dick. I remember when I dropped the loop
from the bottom of my twos. It was great. Exciting. The best thing I’ve
ever done.”
“It’s all I can think about. I can’t wait to write another.”
“The best thing I’ve ever done.”
“Someday I’d like to make my threes with a straight top and a
sharp angle down to the curve at the bottom.”
“Someday I’d like to make my Ws out of Vs.”
“Do you cross your sevens?”
“Of course.”
“Me too.”
“Is this enough?”
“We can always stretch.”
*
There was a time, once upon a time ago, when it was all quite different. And impossible. Impossibler. When everything was a stumbling thing to stumble upon. When
8
their stares, which are now so even and focused, Dick at Sally, Sally at Dick, had to cross hopeless distance through all the colors of all the things to meet. If they met at all. If something didn’t pass between them as they tried. If they weren’t distracted by a green thing or a red thing and forgot, somehow, Dick or Sally, to stare longingly, deeply, into the others’ eyes. When they reached for each other then, of course they grasped nothing, just as they did now. But now, it’s only the inch, the clear, clean inch of nothing, and not the feet or miles or inches as before when something was always in the way.
That was all behind them now. Behind them in huge black bags just off the horizon.
There had been a plan, and the plan had been simple: be happy, be together. The two would be joined with a colon. Happy: together. And to be together, they would have to simplify. So they added another.
It’s hard to say who came up with it. There’d been so much in the way then, colors and things and motion. Motion especially. The things going one way and time going the other. And all the words falling in there hopelessly between. Dick said to Sally, but a little too late. Sally said to Dick, but too early and there was a green thing in the way. So, though they wanted to share and wanted to reach, it was too complicated. There was something always in the way.
So they simplified. Cut everything down to X. A reasonable space. So they could talk in normal voices. And come together in sad, desperate reaching. Call it happy. Call it simple. Call it together. And it would be perfect.
9
*
“That letter bit, that was something, wasn’t it, Sally?”
“It was an immaterial.”
“A non-material.”
“That’s right, Dick.”
“But still, it was something.”
“It’s something, sure. But it’s nothing we could bag, which is the point.
There’s still plenty of that kind of something left all around. But we can, afterall,
at least say there’s nothing bagable in the way.”
“If we could find a way, maybe we could find a way.”
“Riddles now. I’d like to find a bag for those as well.”
“Is there no way, Sally?”
“To bag what’s left? To bag all the somethignnothings left between us?”
“To surmount, Sally. To surmount.”
“There’s no way.”
“Well there it is.”
“Anyway, I’m happy we could get together like this, Dick.”
“Wow. Me too. Wow.”
*
Away from them, so far back you could hardly see it, was the red thing. It was positioned such that, if we assume Dick and Sally were on the X axis of the room, each
10
facing the XY intercept (such that Dick was negative facing positive and Sally was positive facing negative), the red thing was on the positive Y axis exactly one waist-to- horizon length of rope (such as the ones affixed to both Dick and Sally’s waists) plus ½X from the intercept.
It doesn’t matter what it was, whether it was new or old, fresh or brittle. Just that it was there. And red. It could have been a pepper, could have been a sign. Doesn’t matter. Because, since it was there, and red among the white-white, gray, and black, it made the white-white a little less white around it, the black lines a little less severe, and the gray of Dick and Sally’s robes a little more distinct.
Relative to its redness, everything seemed to get a little more detailed, a little less vague. So you could make out the shoulders and bumps. Even Dick and Sally’s faces seemed to glow in a certain way because of it. Like their lips when they smiled. Like their eyes when they stared.
If you stood a rope-length plus ½X down the negative Y axis (or two rope lengths plus X down from the red thing) the redness would fill the space between Dick and
Sally’s fingers perfectly when they stretched. So when they reached forward from their
45 degree angles and stretched and pulled against their too-big bags and strained, Dick toward Sally, Sally toward Dick, that one inch between their longest fingers seemed to glow red. The space seemed filled with color. A peculiar effect.
The bags, in stark contrast to the red, were an easy matter: they were too big.
They were on the outside of the room. Enormous, bulging things, far too big to fit through the Dick and Sally-sized doors.
11
Both Dick and Sally had a bag tethered to their waists, which they pulled against, which allowed for their unlikely angles. They pulled in constant pull, though they knew the bags would never fit through the doors, that the ropes were too thick to break and too stiff to stretch, the knots impossible, no matter how they fidgeted with them at their waists.
*
“I think sometimes about that old box, Sally.”
“Which box?”
“You know, the bad one. The box of bad. The Pandora box.”
“Oh, that one. I think about that too. I know the story.”
“About how they all got out.”
“Except that one, you know.”
“That’s the part I keep thinking about. About how it got out too.”
“I think we’re talking about different boxes.”
“I’m talking about the bad box. The box of hope.”
“I don’t know the story.”
“Anyway, I think about it sometimes.”
“Oh. Dick?”
“Yes?”
“You know, I’m sad.”
“That’s too bad, Sally. Me too.”
12
*
There was a chance before. Of course there was. Before, Dick could have tripped over a yellow thing, for example, just as, by way of incredible coincidence, Sally tripped over some purple thing and they could have stumbled straight into each other. Just like that. They could have come together with nothing, no inch, no X, no thing between them.
There was a ratio then, though, that calculated these odds with a sobering quantity of 0s.
*
“What if the ropes were a little longer, Sally? What if the bags
were a little thinner? What then?”
“But this is how it is.”
“But why?”
“We’ve tried everything. Now everything’s out of the way. And
now this is how it is.”
“Just an inch. Think how silly it must be from a distance, Sally.
This inch. A happy thing to see. We’d seem together.”
“But we’re only right here.”
“So we can only see this space. This distance. This in-between.”
“At least it’s closer than before.”
13
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
“We shouldn’t talk about it.”
“Well, sure.”
“Anyway, I’m happy we could get together like this, Dick.”
“Yes. Me too. Wow.”
*
It was easy work. There was a world of stuff: blue things and yellow things, reds and purples. Rainbows of things all in the way. And Dick and Sally, somewhere in the mix, were two people there to get together. To be happy.
So they agreed. They threw some words into the chaos of things and motion and somehow, against all odds, they met up, their words. And the message was easy: be happy: be together: simplify.
So Dick took his things, all his reds and yellows that were tied to his waist with those impossible knots of that thin black thread and carried them, one at a time to the horizon, where he dumped them. Where he threw them away in his great trash bag. One at a time through the rainbows. Until everything he had stuck to him, everything that had been in the way, was behind him. In the bag. Outside the door. Over the horizon.
All the while, Sally did the same.
One of them forgot the red thing. Or put it there for a reason. Or just threw it there at random. Anyway, it wasn’t tied to either of them.
14
*
“I read about a man once who said life is the underneath side of a rug.”
“The underneath, Dick? Where all the crumbs go?”
“Where all the wool is tied. Where all the wool that makes all the pictures on the ontop side come underneath to be tied. To keep the ontop pictures in place.”
“The man said that’s life?”
“Or that’s where to find life. Where to find the meaning.”
“In the knots?”
“In the nonsense down below. Down under where all the bits are that make it make sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“Nothing eventually. But that’s not `til the end.”
“What’s ‘it’ then?”
“The picture on top. Underneath there’s all the knots that make the picture the picture. But underneath it’s all out of order.”
“The knots are out of order?”
“That’s what he said.”
“But they’d just come untied if they were.”
“No. But. Anyway, it’s this man I read about.”
15
“I guess I don’t know the story.”
*
It was an easy equation: if stuff keeps you apart, then no stuff will get you together. If S, then no T; if no S, then T. They only missed one thing along the way.
*
“I’m tired, Sally.”
“I’m tired too.”
“There’s no chance, is there?”
“Not anymore.”
“But there used to be, right? There used to be tripping, right? We
used to have that.”
“There was no chance, Dick. Not with everything in the way.”
“And no chance now with everything behind us.”
“That’s the way it is.”
“So what if we opened the bags again? If we dumped them out?
Put the green things where the green things go? Put the purple things
where the purple things go? Put it all back? Back to the way it was? The
way it was before the too-big bags?”
“It’d be colorful.”
16
“And the bags wouldn’t be too big.”
“But where would we be?”
“Just where we are.”
“Then we’d fall over.”
“Then we’d find new angles.”
“We’d see each other differently.”
“We’d get used to it.”
“But how would I find you?”
“I’d be in the middle.”
“But we only know the middle because the ropes tell us where it is.”
“Then I’ll be south of the red thing.”
“But the red things would be everywhere.”
“Then we can ignore all the colors.”
“But you can’t ignore the colors.”
“Then we’d put them in the bags, hide them away forever.”
“Then here we’d be again.”
“Again.”
“Again.”
“Is there no way?”
“None that I can find.”
17
“How close would we get? With it all in place? With the empty
bags? With all the colors everywhere? How close could we get if we
tried?”
“There’s no way to know. Miles. Millimeters. Years.”
“So there’s no other way?”
“None that I can find.”
*
And they reached. They always reached. Because there was nothing in the way.
And everything was behind them. So they reached forward, they pulled against their bags, and strained their fingers straight. And they crossed all the world; crossed all of X.
Except that one small inch.
*
“Shouldn’t we be talking about something, Sally?”
“Like what?”
“Something huge. Something relevant. Since we have all this
space. Since we’re together after all.”
“Have we talked about Pandora?”
“Yes, and letters too.”
18
“And the rug?”
“The knot part.”
“Have I told you how I feel about it all?”
.
*
And they stretched. And they stretched. And they reached. And they stretched. And the X remained. And they stretched. And the x. And the x.
And the x.
*
“What’s left, Sally?”
“Just an inch.”
“That’s not so much.”
“It’s all there is.”
“Are we missing something?”
“If there’s anything missing, it’s the part that’s always been gone.”
“The part that’s after?”
“The part where we live, happily.”
A WAIT
There was no train.
Along the track, weeds grew between the ties, over the rails. The ballast around was still still. It did not shimmy, it did not shake, it did not dance to the vibrations of some far off inaudible approach. There was, nowhere, that distant muted horn.
She had decided on “nervous breakdown,” those sweet magic words. But it didn’t help, no matter how she practiced. There was no train. There continued, still, to be no train. She, like all the idling drivers there in that neat line of traffic, was nearly convinced of the fact.
In all, forty eyes watched as she watched, recording information, noting the weeds, the still rail, measuring precisely the lack of evidence available to suggest an approaching train. They waited, noted, collected facts. They built a thorough case, leaning on impressive empirical support, that no train had come, no train would come, and that no train was currently coming.
Evidence collected so far included the unobstructed view eleven or so miles to the northern horizon and, likewise, the long view south where the parallel rails finally met and dipped over. Between those two absolute points, no present eye missed the absence of blind curves from which a train could emerge. As they scanned north, south, in those desperate sweeps, they detected the presence of no bushy overgrowths, no bridges, no tunnels, not even a small hill. They noted a great abundance of absolutely nothing to the left and right but what seemed like an endless quantity of empty track. The earth was flat
19
20
around them, the sand light, ubiquitous. The view was, as far as the track was concerned, truly, inarguable, totally unobstructed.
They had collected enough evidence already to prove their case to just about anyone. Nothing is coming, they were prepared to say. There is no train.
Ten-foot-long boards, striped and weighted with large, rusted stop signs, argued against them on this point nonetheless. Jutting out three quarters the way across the road on each side of the tracks, this counter-argument was accompanied by two overhead flashing lights, flashing red on the left then red on the right, or possibly the other way around. Each flash was accompanied by a loud ding dinging urgently, echoing off the long line of idling cars that stretched both east and west, before diffusing into the vast nothing of the place.
The argument was, in short, every practical piece of evidence collected by the idlers thus far that definitively proved the absence of an approaching train versus an alerted railroad crossing gate, perhaps the most definitive indication of an approaching train short of an approaching train itself.
The two sides were, in this sense, evenly matched. Stalemated, as it was.
So forty eyes looked, forty eyes noted and collected, and behind those eyes, twenty brains calculated risks and weighed evidence to throw against the glowing, screaming signifier they had before them. They had nothing else to do, really.
All through this she sat, as she had been sitting since the very beginning, back before any of those other eyes were there to sit, trying to figure out how best to not sound like a crazy person. She had made up her mind some time ago to tell him when she got
21
home, as soon as she got home in fact, but she hadn’t yet decided how. She could imagine one screaming it, hair afrizz, makeup smeared, arms swinging wild overhead.
One could do that, sure. Just like one could say it in a teary fit all curled up and sad. No problem. But both of these deliveries, she figured, set in motion a series of actions whose conclusion didn’t match her aim. It had to be mild. Near sane. Controlled.
A nervous breakdown, a proper nervous breakdown, requires a certain finesse.
The announcement of the state dictates the nature of the treatment. This is an absolute.
Presenting oneself as a crazy person, as, as he would say, a basket case, implies to him a required service. One would be a broken thing for him to fix; one would be just another problem for him to solve. Which wouldn’t solve anything.
Her tone would have to be plain, her voice flat and dry. Best not to look at him at all. Just walk in and tell him. I’m having a nervous breakdown. Simple as that. She imagined it in her own voice, practicing it again, again until it sounded just right, until one would be hard-pressed to find an accent mark anywhere in it.
As she practiced, she watched the lights light just above her, flashing left to right to left in the same beat they’d been flashing since she’d arrived. She said the words dryly, forcefully, automatically with the ding, with the lights she’d been staring at so long she no longer saw them as she once had. They weren’t flat red discs flashing a warning anymore, they were no longer directly connected to the ding. She looked into the frame, saw the bulbs burning, actually saw the coils heat through the spectrum in the clear bulbs and shine white through the red filters. She could hear, faintly, the mechanical clack of the automated switch of the current meeting the coil on its way to the ding. She saw it all
22
happen in the left light and in the right. Click, on, ding. Click, off, ding. Click, on, ding.
A perception particular to firsts on the scene.
She would walk in, she saw it clearly, as clearly as the flash, the click and ding, she saw it, her unwrinkled suit, her tight ponytail, her unwavering step. She watched her straight posture walk in and drop her bag and keys on the counter. She heard them land as they always landed, which is not a crazy way to land, the sound of impact indicating no undue or basketcased emotion behind the velocity of the toss. They were not, likewise, set down too carefully, too quietly, which would indicate a restrained undue, basketcased emotion. She heard them land as they always landed: a thick clunk splash.
She looked at the cars behind her, going back ten until they disappeared into the valley. The sun had set into their back windows, a brilliant spark of red and purple, silhouetting all the heads in all the silhouetted cars that sat revving their engines, tapping their fingers, waiting for no train to pass. She noticed her fingers tapping her wheel with the silhouettes in time with the ding, in time with the lights.
She thought: click on ding tap, click off ding tap.
Thick clunk splash and she saw, she imagined she saw, the variation to the pattern she would enact. She would walk to the sink straight-away. He would stand, awaiting his kiss, and she would walk to the sink instead, place her hands wide on the formica, and stare out the window a long, window-staring stare. He would stand across, expect a kiss, and she would stare a stare. He wouldn’t know what to say. He would stand and wait, wait until she said. And she would, with her voice plain and flat, unemotional. Clinical.
23
So nothing seemed restrained. She’d tell him: I’m having a nervous breakdown, just like that, easy as anything, and give him a moment to consider.
She couldn’t find even silhouettes in the cars in front of her, on the other side.
Their windshields were just reds and purples of the reflected sunset, some of them only bright white shocks sun. There could be anyone behind them. They could have had their nervous breakdowns years ago. They could be recovered already, fully reconciled. If the line weren’t growing so steadily, she supposed, it would be reasonable to assume the cars were all abandoned. That they had lined up years ago. That their drivers, collectively, had broken, opened their doors, climbed up on the tracks, made their own train, and walked single-file to the horizon.
The lights kept flashing, the dings dinging. Fingers, patient fingers, counted the wait in taps. Forty eyes, more than forty eyes, more eyes every moment, looked north, saw clearly as the track vanished at its natural vanishing point. They looked south, saw the same. They did not look at the open road just past the gates, only at the twenty-two miles of unobstruction.
Her two eyes watched right along. They calculated as the rest calculated, collecting the same evidence for the same argument as all of them. As they did, she became aware of the fact that she had no idea what a nervous breakdown was, exactly. It just sort of crept in. Like, if he asked, as he would ask, what specific symptoms she was suffering from, she wasn’t sure she would be able to list the appropriate list. Worse, she wasn’t entirely sure, suddenly, if the term “nervous breakdown” described a specific condition at all. She worried that it was maybe more of a layman’s term, a relic of a more
24
nonscientific era. It was, maybe, just a thing a sad and mad person said, not what they had.
Times like this, it was hard to keep the divisions in place. Ding, tap. Ding tap.
Dingtap. Dtianpg.
She remembered when people had nervous breakdowns all the time. Men and women, she remembered, all those TV fits and movie hysteria, all those complete- inability-to’s. She remembered this part, she remembered how they went away. They said it, that little nervous breakdown sentence, said it and they disappeared, were disappeared, so quietly, so discretely, and everything just carried on without them. And when they returned, she remembered, remembered how rested and complete they were. So reconciled with their states. And no one, she remembered, no one ever asked why.
No one had nervous breakdowns now, she thought. No one ever disappeared. This was the fault of science. This was the fault of specificity, of definitions and symptom quotas. When people started asking about nervous breakdowns, she thought, they disappeared. Hers would be absurd, she thought. Anachronistically absurd. No posture or tone or unwrinkled sink-leaning could prove otherwise.
She stared at the cars facing her from the other side and hated them suddenly in a great flash of hate. Righteous hatred, just for a moment. She hated all those drivers who had been able, all those years ago, to just say it, that brilliant little phrase, and be done with it.
I can’t, she imagined them saying in their voices, firm and soft, man and woman, a whole chorus of ancient, broken voices.
25
I can’t anymore, she heard them say.
I cannot.
And everyone looked north together and strained their eyes in the fading light to see those miles of empty track. They looked south and strained for the same. She wondered what exactly they were straining so hard to see. What signs do modern trains exhibit upon approach? There would be no puff of smoke on the horizon, no long black plume. Shouldn’t someone put an ear to the track? she thought. Shouldn’t someone stand up there with their hand on their brows to shield from light as they scan? Shouldn’t someone cup their ears and bend into the wind?
But she thought instead: a red light is an orange coil in a bulb tinted white behind a red screen. This is important, she thought.
She reminded herself: there is a distinction. There are boundaries. Click. On.
Ding. Tap.
Behind her, she had watched the cars come, stopping a bumperskin off the next’s bumper as she had stopped a bumperskin off the board before her. They were a train, a growing train, waiting on a train, no train, she thought. Until the road fell down behind her. Until they disappeared down into the valley, where, surely, the train continued to grow, cars stopping bumperskin off bumper to sit, rev engines, tap fingers, and wait.
She wondered: if you don’t know you’re waiting for a train, are you waiting for a train?
She wondered: if you’re a train waiting for a no-train, who is waiting for what?
26
She wondered: does the lack of condition automatically negate the symptoms? Do negated symptoms take their treatment with them?
She wondered: is there a new name for a new condition that includes symptoms that are treated with disappearance? By complete reconciliation? By no questions asked?
She imagined again: home, sink-leaning, window-staring. She imagined not telling him the name, not saying anything about the nervous breakdown. She imagined instead, her voice, firm, back straight, suit unwrinkled, imagined telling him how instead of what. I’m sad, she imagined. I’m mad. She thought, I’m sad and mad and can’t anymore. She imagined all this as he, behind, quietly kiss-waited.
But she knew. She knew and knew. She knew the soft chair she would be taken to where she would be told again, again how she can anymore because there are no can’t- anymore breakdowns.
Somewhere behind her, way back there, way under her in the valley, someone honked a long, echoing honk. As if telling them all to move. As if they’d all just forgotten. It took a moment to silence after it stopped as they all looked forward, even her, even her who knew better than anyone why they were there, what they were waiting for, as if they expected, somehow, as though they expected it to change. And they all looked north. And they all looked south. Until they all looked back to the clickondingtap.
Back to the clickondingtap. Back.
Without that magic phrase, she knew, she only had sad and mad. She knew she could only tell him how she couldn’t on account of sad. She knew, even then, how there is nothing so special about either sad or mad, even in conjunction.
27
She knew what to imagine without seeing it. She knew his kiss on her neck from behind. His kiss and a long warm hug. A rubbed arm. She knew a reassuring pat and tussled, god damned tussled, hair. She knew how it would all end on a beach on a quiet weekend trip. She knew he would say how they should leave it all at home. She knew he would talk about getting away. She knew a weekend at the beach not alone, with him, after which she would come back, and she would have to again, and it would be again coming home, purse and keys to the table, kiss, and forth.
And all the eyes looked north, saw clearly as the track vanished at its natural vanishing point. They looked south, saw the same. There was no train. There was nothing. Nothing they all sat waiting to pass.
They did not look at the open road just past the gates. They stared instead at the light, the clickondingtap. She thought, these are the signs for a modern train. Barred roads. Stop signs. Flashes and dings. There was no smoke anymore. One didn’t need a train to warn of a train. They had everything they needed here already.
She imagined: stiff back, starched suit.
She imagined: purse and keys, sink-leaning.
She imagined: window-staring.
She imagined: him standing, behind, kiss-waiting.
She imagined her own voice: I’m down.
She heard: I’m tired.
28
And she imagined, imagined, at least, at the very least, a weekend alone, disappeared in bed, alone, a weekend at least alone about which no one would ever care to ask.
And she heard herself tell him, her voice firm: I believe I may have caught a cold.
Some kind of flu or something.
Another car honked another long honk at the cars in its way. At the cars in its way with her in theirs. At her in their way with a striped board barring hers. At the striped board protecting all of them from the train. At the train that wasn’t there. At the train that wasn’t coming. She imagined him back there, honking at nothing at all.
She tapped the wheel. She looked north. She looked south. She looked at the cars in the sunset behind her.
She tapped. She waited.
She pretended to cough.
WILD ROSES AND LILACS
... so we would like to thank you once again for your generous gift of FIVE
DOLLARS to the WEST VIRGINIA STATE TROOPERS COALITION.
We just need to verify some information...
—What bothers me the most is the no ring.
—Really? Even more than a Nguyen?
—Nguyen’s are rough, yes. Sure. But the no ring is a more fundamental thing.
—The essential flaw?
—The void at the heart of the void.
—But it is surmountable. Fundamental or not, you can still maneuver around it.
—Can you, though? It seems like such a thing. Such a flaw.
—Sure. When conditions are right it’s like no ring was ever not there.
—When conditions are right. Right. The rarest of rare.
—And you can’t plan for conditions, remember. Can’t make them happen. That’s
important. A mindless accident, all of it, every time.
—But it’s possible?
—On a lucky day, on a rare, rare day, no sweat. The surest of sure. Nguyen, though,
that’s the rough. The roughest, I think. Impossible.
—Nonsense.
—Proof: Something must be silent.
—One letter, at least.
29
30
—But which?
—It could be Nooyen.
—Sometimes I think Gooyen.
—What about the “u”?
—That’s something else altogether.
—Nyen?
—Gyen?
—I tell you, nobody knows.
—Somebody must. A Nooyen. Or a Gooyen. Or...
—Well, if they know, they’re not telling.
—It’s rough.
—And you can hear it in their voices. When you say it wrong, it’s like they’ve hung up
already. Inside.
—Certainly rough.
—The roughest. Some say there’s no way to say it. Foreign sounds we can’t even hear.
—Still, I think it might be the no ring.
• Hello MR[S] SANCHEZ,
this is JOSE GONZALEZ calling on behalf of the KANSAS STATE
TROOPERS ASSOCIATION, how are you this AFTERNOON? Why yes
ma’am, our records do indicate that you may have already received a call
this MORNING, but...
31
—For me, it’s not the no ring. It’s something else. The not knowing.
—I think it’s the same thing.
—Not knowing who it’s going be. You don’t hear them say hello, you don’t hear them at
all at first. It’s all lost somewhere in between, lost somewhere in the autodialer gap
between connection and beep.
—But you have to pick a sex nonetheless.
—How many times is it “hello ma’am” to Mister Nooyen?
—Or to little Susie Gooyen.
—Or on speakerphone for the whole Nyen family to hear and publicly mock?
—It’s terrible. Humiliating.
—I tell you, that’s the problem with the whole thing. Not knowing. You put yourself out
there. Out into this void. You never know who you’re talking to until it’s too late
—Still, I think it’s the same thing.
• Hello MR[S] O’BRIAN,
this is PATRICK FLANAGAN calling on behalf of the FLORIDA
HIGHWAY PATROL. MR[S] O’BRIAN, do you think crime pays? Well
neither do we. That’s why we’re conducting our new WINTER DRIVE.
Our records indicate that last year you donated...
32
—Any luck?
—Nah. It’s just what I was saying. Dead air. Gave the whole pitch to no one at all.
—Could have been an answering machine.
—Oh, that’d be cute. Wrong-ended, one-sided pitch on tape.
—To be played back at their convenience.
—A thousand times.
—If they like.
—Or never.
—Always the same call.
—Always the same caller.
—Always the same tone.
—Seems wrong, somehow. Wicked.
—I think it’s all part of what I was saying before. It’s just silence, nothing, and then beep
and you start. That’s the part. It’s the system. Stop and start; have not then have.
There’s no foundation.
—Built on sand.
—For a cliché.
—In a storm.
—More of the same.
• Hello MR[S] YO, this is
MIKE TOMAKA calling on behalf of the NEW YORK VETERANS
33
ASSOCIATION, how are you this... yes sir. Yes. We understand sir. Yes,
actually we’ve seen that Seinfeld episode. Right, why don’t you call us at
our house later. Yes, very good sir. Look, we’re not allowed to hang up,
sir, so you’re going to have to... Oh, yes sir. We are definitely one of those.
All of us. Yes sir. We’ll get real jobs tomorrow, sir. Yes. Have a great day,
sir.
—You know, someday I’d like to call someone. Me. Not we or us. I and me. That’d be
nice, wouldn’t it?
—Personal pronouns.
—Agency.
—And names, too. I’d like to be the same name. The same name every time.
—But it’s culturally inappropriate.
—Most of the time.
—Offensive.
—Ineffective.
—Old-fashioned.
—But still...
—But studies show...
• Hello MR[S] BURKE, this
is EWAN MACCARTHY calling on behalf of the EASTERN
34
CONNETICUT FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE, how are you
this EVENING? Great. Well, ma’am, we’re calling today to let
you know we’re conducting our FALL DRIVE right now. Yes
ma’am. TO FUND THIS YEAR’S CHARITY EVENTS, FOR
THE ADVERTISING COSTS OF SAID EVENTS, AND TO
OFFSET THE COSTS OF THE FUNDDRIVE. Yes ma’am. The
costs of this funddrive, ma’am. That’s right. Can we count on you
for your usual donation of THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS? Wonderful,
ma’am. Now, we just need to verify some information...
—What do you do with your money?
—I used to save it.
—In a bank? A high-interest savings account for future life and purchase?
—No, in a sock. A dirty sock.
—Is that safe?
—It was.
—But wouldn’t they look there first? The robbers? In the drawer?
—It wasn’t in a drawer. It was in the corner. Under a pile of other dirty socks.
—Security of filth.
—Guaranteed to repel.
—What did you do on laundry day?
35
—Nothing. I never washed those socks. They were my stashing-the-money-sock socks. A
permanent fixture. Ever-growing, never clean.
—Didn’t it stink?
—Terribly.
—Seems misdirected in a lot of ways.
—You got used to it.
—Like a skunk.
—Like the opposite of a skunk.
—Like the smell of yourself.
—And those thereabouts.
—Inured.
—Conditioned.
—How much did you have? Stinking in your sock?
—Inches. Inches and inches of dollars.
—It would add up, I’d think. A great wealth of inches.
—Depends on the denomination of the bills.
—Miles of ones.
—Millimeters of hundreds.
—How tall is it now?
—It’s zero tall. Inches or otherwise.
—It was pilfered and robbed? Pirated away?
—Spent. Spent down to zero anything tall.
36
—All the way down to the empty sock?
—All the way to nothing.
—What did you do with the socks? All of those no-longer-stashing-the-money-sock
socks?
—I washed them, of course.
—Is there any change to any of it now? Any change to any fundamental thing?
—It’s much less stinky now.
• Hello MR[S] DAY, this is
ED KELLOGG calling on behalf of the PORTLAND VETERANS
ASSOCIATION, how are you this afternoon? Oh, really? But ma’am, our
records indicate that you haven’t yet given to this year’s drive. No,
ma’am. You’ve already spoken to another Ed Kellogg? Four other Ed
Kelloggs? Just a coincidence, ma’am. A malicious coincidence. Last year?
TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. Yes, ma’am.
—I can’t help thinking its all related.
—I said Nooyen and she hung up. I think it was a she. She hung up like a she, certainly.
—What do you think it’s like, getting the calls?
—Would be altogetherly different. Just think of all the calls there must be. All of us from
all over giving the same name, the same speech. It would be a drastically different
thing.
37
—Do you think they hear the beep?
—Nah. But I think they get the nothing. They answer and say hello and then have the
dead air, just like us.
—The void.
—Right. That’s why we never hear them say hello. They’ve already said it. Before the
beep. And then they wait through the nothing for us. Like we wait through the nothing
for them.
—That’s why it doesn’t work, maybe. All that space.
—The nothing.
—The void.
—The insurmountable thing.
—Just the nothing between us, bridging the gap.
—It’s all that gets us connected.
—I can’t help thinking it’s all related.
• Hello MR[S] SPURLOCK,
this is MALIK LEWIS calling on behalf of the TEXAS RANGER
ACADAMY OF FORT WORTH... yes ma’am. Yes. We agree, a rather
esoteric campaign. Yes ma’am. But for just pennies a day... yes ma’am.
For the safety of all Texans.
38
—Was it a spree? Did you hit the mall swinging your inches-of-cash sock like a lasso
over your head, screaming the yee-haws of commerce?
—Hog-tying all the miscellany it was thick enough to catch?
—Swapping cash-weight for bag-weight at an irregular rate of exchange?
—Until my arms were laden and the sock limp?
—And still stinking in direct opposition to the scent of the new merchandise in the other
hand?
—No, nothing like that, actually.
—No miscellany, then. One big thing.
—The biggest.
—So big that Alex or Pete or Johnny, all zits and smock, was paged to wheel it to the
car?
—On a squeaky dolly?
—Out through the special delivery doors that open the widest?
—And then tied to the roof with complimentary twine?
—And then slow driving, arm out the window for ineffectual...
—... yet psychologically necessary...
—... ineffectual yet psychologically necessary support through the turns?
—No. It came in a little box.
—That fit nicely into a little bag?
—That fit nicely into my pocket.
39
• Hello MR[S] SMITH, this
is JOHN PARKER calling on behalf of the CANCER FUND OF
AMERICA... yes ma’am. That’s right, last year you gave FIFTEEN
DOLLARS. Great. Just let us verify some information...
—Anything?
—Grandfathered in.
—Lucky.
—It’s the only way like this.
—No one cares.
—No one can. All the calls they get, how can they decide?
—All day it’s the same Patrick Flanagan.
—But always different.
—Only in tone.
—There’s no way to decide.
—Unless they already have.
—Always the same script.
—Always the same name.
—Just with a slightly different tone.
—How can they decide?
—Unless they already have.
40
—It’s a hell of a system.
—All talk.
—Nothing but space.
—Nothing.
—A void.
—It’s a hell of a system.
—There’s no way to decide.
• Hello MR[S] TRAN, this is
HAI NGUYEN calling on behalf of... Hello? MR[S] TRAN? Hello?
—There’s something to the ring that shouldn’t be overlooked.
—Maybe. We’ve neglected it fundamentally. Nothing and beep. Or ring and nothing.
—It’s got tradition to it. Structure. There’s the ring and then the answer: a soft, feminine
hello. And you know how to respond.
—Immediately.
—With a soft, masculine hello.
—Respond in kind, then.
—As appropriate.
—As you deem appropriate.
—As it fits.
—And from there?
—Off script.
41
—Culturally appropriate names.
—A universal name.
—But studies have shown.
—Fuck the studies.
• Hello MR[S] KENOSHA,
I’m calling on behalf of the PENNSYLVANIA FRATERNAL ORDER
OF POLICE. Yes ma’am. Yes. I’m... it’s as accurate as I can get. Yes
ma’am. No, you’ve never. No, ma’am. A ONE TIME DONATION OF
THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR THE BRONZE AMOUNT, FORTY-
FIVE DOLLARS FOR THE SILVER OR...that’s great, ma’am.
Wonderful. Now, I just have to verify some information...
—Do you miss the sock?
—I like the clean air.
—But all it did was take away the stink.
—The stagnant stink.
—But it didn’t freshen.
—Couldn’t have.
—Not in the slightest. No stink can’t make fresh scents.
—Of course.
—But the clean air?
42
—I had some left at the end of the inches. So I bought some potpourri: wild roses and
lilacs.
—The stink made scents, then.
—In a sense.
—So you don’t miss the sock? Not even when you see that spot?
—Where the socks used to be?
—Where they used to be that you knew so well?
—With my system to find and hide the particular one?
—The valuable one. You don’t miss it? What used to? What used to be there?
—I like the clean air, the wild roses and lilacs.
THE LOVE STORY: A LOVE STORY
Two lovers sit picnicking on a perfect hill, under a perfect sky, feeling perfectly in love, as lovers do.
“I love you, lover,” says one lover to the other.
“And I love you, lover,” says the other to the lover. They touch glasses of fine wine and sigh, staring at the peace and possible all around.
“Will you always love me, lover?” asks the other.
“Always. Until all my love has died and there are no more yellow picnic blankets and no green hills and no blue in the sky, I will love you as I ever, always will.”
The lovers sigh and know their perfect love has filled them and lifted them up to this great height.
“I love you, wine,” says the lover to the wine. “I love you, light cool breeze.”
The other lover does not sigh now but looks instead at the wine, into the breeze.
“I love you, hill,” says the lover. “I love you, sky. I do not love you, small dark cloud on the horizon.”
“But this can’t be, lover,” says the other. “These are words for me. You love me, isn’t that true?”
“As I said, lover, I do. I love you. I love you too among all these things.”
“And you also love this picnic basket?”
“Yes, lover, I love this picnic basket. I tell it, ‘I love you, picnic basket’ proudly and boldly whenever I feel it, just as I do with all our picnic fare inside. I tell them, ‘I love you, potato salad,’ ‘I love you, fresh cut vegetables.’ ‘I love you, tangy dip,’ ‘I love you, buns,’
43
44
‘I love you, pre-cooked vegetarian hotdogs,’ ‘I love you ketchup,’ ‘I love you, spicy mustard, but I love you a little less.’”
“You are a great lover, lover. I suppose you also love this line of ants marching across our picnic blanket?”
“No I do not. I do not love this line of ants come to eat our delicious picnic lunch at all.”
“So you love this, this, that, and me,” says the other lover, “but not all things.”
“I love all the things I love and none that I do not. And as I sit here, lover, I love you and this and all of these. This is sure and true, on this just-right day.”
“I wonder, lover,” says the other, “if you love me, as you say you love me, in the same way that you love this delicious picnic lunch, as you say you love it.”
“I love you as I love. I only love the mustard a little less because it stings my nose a little too much.”
“Then there is not one level of love, lover?”
“There is not. There is love, there is less than love, there is not love. This is the way of love.”
“You love the sky and the tangy dip. You love them the same level of love.”
“True. Like fresh cut vegetables, like a just-right breeze.”
“And me and pre-cooked vegetarian hotdogs.”
“It’s true. When I think of it, I tell you both ‘I love you’ in the order of whichever I think of first.”
“But which is the love of the highest degree?”
45
“But you are both loved. Neither of you are less than loved nor not loved, for you are both loved.”
“But which love is the most important love? This is my important question, my very important thing.”
“I’m sorry, lover, but I don’t understand.”
“There are quantities of love, as you said: love, less-than, not. But is all love the same quality love? For example: do you love me a ketchup love?”
“Don’t worry, lover,” says the lover. “I only love ketchup a ketchup’s love, like I love the sky a sky’s love, like I love this just-right breeze a just-right breeze’s love. I do not love these ants only the absence of possible ant love. And I love you, lover, lover’s love.”
“But which is the best love, lover? Is lover love better than tangy dip love?”
“This is impossible to say, lover, for I have only love, less than, and not, no matter the brand of love. Because I love both my lover and this tangy dip, I have equal units of fancy dip love and lover love. All my loves, lest I love them less or not, are therefore even.”
“But which, lover, is the most important love?”
“They mean the same, lover. I love you, because I do not love you less and I do not not love you. My love for these pre-cooked vegetarian hotdogs means the same for it.”
“But which is more critical? Which has filled you up? Which has lifted you so high?
Without which would this day, this beautiful picnic day, be altered fully and completely ruined and destroyed?”
“Without my love of pre-cooked vegetarian hotdogs, lover, I would just eat potato salad instead. Or perhaps we would have brought a different entree, thus creating an altogether
46
different picnicking experience. If I did not love you, lover, I would stare into the blue sky more often and notice the subtle scents carried by this just-right breeze rather than define my loves to you. Or perhaps I would sit here atop this green hill toasting the blue sky with another lover I would love in your place. Without any love, or with the addition of another, everything is changed. It cannot be otherwise.”
“Then what does this mean of love? What can it be?”
“Love is that which is neither less than love nor not love, lover.”
“And what is lover love?”
“The love I feel for my lover, lover.”
“Which is experienced with equal love units as ketchup love for ketchup?”
“And less than my spicy mustard love for spicy mustard. It’s clear.”
“It remains less than clear.”
“It is, nonetheless, resolved.”
“Then nothing further can be said?”
“Only this, the critical point: I love you, lover,” says the lover to the other.
The other lover starts but does not say.
RECONSIDERATION
Herbert woke to find himself melting all over the bed. He considered this alone for several minutes, then he nudged his wife awake beside him.
“Marty,” he said, “I’m melting.”
She stirred briefly at his voice but didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she draped her arm across her face so her inside-elbow fell across the bridge of her nose, covering her eyes all the more thoroughly.
“You’re not melting, Herbert,” she said from under the folds of her arm. “I can assure you of that much at least. Go back to sleep, try it all over again later.”
“In general, I would agree with you,” he said, “and I would love to go back to sleep, too. It’s just that I’ve awoken here, a little startled, and have found myself melting all over the bed. I thought it was something you would like to know.”
“Well thank you for the consideration,” she said, “but I know what husbands do and I have extensive first-hand experience to back this knowledge up. What husbands do is a very simple thing: they don’t melt. This is commonly known. I suggest you take a moment and reconsider your position and let us sleep in to a more appropriate waking time.”
He did just that. He shut his eyes as tightly as possible under the circumstances and worked through the situation again from the beginning.
After a few minutes of this, he nudged her awake again with a somewhat more resolved, though dissolving, elbow.
47
48
“I first want to say that I agree with you completely,” he said. “Ontologically, rhetorically, and practically speaking, I totally accept your thesis. Husbands don’t melt. I understand this longitudinally. Evolutionarily, perhaps. Historically. As I lie here, I can imagine the long history of unmelting husbands behind me – a history you could trace all the way back to that first muddy, fish-legged beach of history if you chose, surely. It is, by now, a tradition, not melting.”
“Very good,” said Marty. “In this case, the solution to this problem should be clear.”
“It should be, yes,” said Herbert. “The long unmelting history of husbands is behind me and is thus behind us, and so I guess you could say that the line that begins at the beginning with husband prime and wife prime leads ultimately to this marital bed, hence also to this conversation. Given this, I become a consummative husband of husbandliness and you, with, as it is, hair curlers and generally sour expression, arm on your face, become the consummative wife of wifeliness.”
“And by tracing this history,” she said, “you can understand how the roles have rarified, slowly, carefully, into the even, balanced, structurally consistent harmony we have now.”
“Indeed,” he said. “Hair curlers and sour expression.”
“Not melting,” she said.
“Agreed,” he said. “Totally and surely. For through this timeline, one can observe, moment-by-moment, evolutionary tick by evolutionary tick, the slow adoption of sour expressions on the wives’ faces and the gradual evolution of haircurler
49
technology. Through this same timeline, however, there has been no observable evidence, slow or not, of husband melting.”
“And,” she said, “if one cannot curl hair ex nihilo, if a sour expression requires such a great historical list of antecedents, each generation carrying a sourer, mouier expression than the previous, as you maintain, one cannot, certainly cannot, melt in such an inspired and non sequiturial fashion as you claim to be doing this morning. All over the bed as you said. As a husband of husbandliness, as you said, you cannot, therefore, lie here, melting.”
“Given this, given everything behind and the expected ahead in regards to melting husbands, et cetera, there is no room to disagree.”
“Then we’ve no reason to discuss this any further. If there is no precedent, there is no case,” she said.
“Nonetheless,” Herbert said with another nudge. “Here I am: a husband, melting.”
Marty’s sigh made a loud raspberry sound as it blew through the folds of her arm.
“So,” she said. “Despite these reconsiderations, despite the traditions behind us that you and I have only just now discussed, the implications of which, in regards to the topic at hand, we only seconds ago agreed upon and reified, you have decided to maintain this melting argument in defiance of all logic and truth?”
“It is the regardless state of Herbert,” he said.
“So you have decided that your life, the consummate life of Herbert the husband, should consummate into some puddle of husbandliness instead?”
“This is the story as it presents itself to me,” he said.
50
“But is this really the grand Herbert story,” she said, “considering the evidence?
That in the end, Herbert melts? Or is the story, considering the rarified, as I said, into perfection, as I also said, evidence, that Herbert, a husband of husbandliness, wakes soon, rises normally, dresses, pats his little dog, takes his coffee, and drives a worn route to an office?”
“Your evidences,” he said, “are sound and good. There seems, however, to be a variable you have missed. ”
“In cases like this, Herbert, we must always side with the known good,” she said.
“If one is good and sound, then anything opposed to it will necessarily be bad and unsound. This is the way and nature of all the things we know.”
“All this,” he said. “But nonetheless.”
“None at all,” she said. “I should be clear on this point: you are not melting. You are not melting because you mustn’t melt, and therefore cannot.”
“But look,” he said, showing. “See how my skin has grown so waxy, my innards mush? See how I puddle where before I did not?”
She did not look, nor did she remove her arm from her face, nor even open her eyes uselessly under it. She remained: sour expression, hair curlers, moue.
“Perhaps,” she said, “it’s only a matter of shape. Of pushing up. Perhaps, if there is any evidence of such melting, the solution is only a matter of a neglected morning exercise routine.”
“You think?”
51
“Such a regimen is necessary for both good health and a fit shape,” she said.
“This is known commonly among husbands and wives. Push up every morning upon waking, a certain number of pushing ups each time, a number that will increase, perhaps, with time, and you will soon be back in recognizable shape and health.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “but.” He offered her two drippy handfuls of melted flesh from where his stomach should have been.
She didn’t accept, however. And didn’t move her arm at all.
“Instead,” she said, “I’ll sleep again, to wake later when you’ve dressed, to pour you coffee after you’ve patted your little dog, before you drive your worn route.”
“But,” he said. “But perhaps this should be discussed. I really think this may require further deliberation. There seems much more to consider, Marty.”
She breathed, arm across eyes, across nose. He nudged her but she didn’t move.
Her breath evened, became snores.
He replaced the handfuls of flesh near where his stomach should have been and watched it slowly blend back in with the puddle of everything else.
He considered. He reconsidered. Then he started over again.
Finally, he rolled over, off the bed, and did, as well as he could anyway, several pushups and started his day.
He stood, or at least did a fair impression of standing, and walked into the walk-in closet and closed the door. He watched in the full-length mirror as he dripped flesh down to large puddles at his feet. He watched and considered drips and suits, kisses and drives, drips and husbands.
52
He looked at the mirror and disagreed.
He sunk to the floor and found, in the back-bottom of Marty’s bottom drawer, a skinny pair of hosiery from the long ago days of skinny hosiery wearing. He turned over on his back and walked his legs up the dresser and stood there, on his head, until the flesh puddled at his ankles dripped back up to his waist, then up to his chest. He slipped the hosiery over his fleshless feet, up his fleshless legs, to his fleshless waist, and rolled back over, upright, and stood, let the flesh drip down from his chest to his waist to his legs to his feet, letting the extra hose space in the skinny pair of hosiery fill with drippery. They filled to bursting but didn’t burst and pinched him at the waist. Pinched him more, perhaps, than the far-too-tight-t-shirt he tucked into them to keep from spilling at the middle.
So tucked, so dripped, so slipped, so pinched, he dressed: pressed slacks, stripped shirt, plain tie, tied with drippy, awkward fingers.
In the bedroom, he nudged Marty and she responded. She removed her arm, even opened her eyes.
“As I said,” she said. “The known good and sound is as good and sound as ever.”
“There are new considerations,” he said. “These fingers for one. And lips and eyes. The whole face, in fact, seems impossible to maintain. There are these parts, important parts, I think, where the dripping remains unhidden, untucked, and unrestrained.”
“It’s simple,” she said. “Raise your arms up, way up, and tilt your head far back.
Look down from your upward-turned face and reach for nothing.”
53
He raised his arms and his flesh rolled back from his long, drippy-fleshed fingers into his shirtsleaves to his shoulders. He leaned his head back and his eyes rolled open, his lips back from his chin. He looked down at her from his upturned face as she rose, sour expression, hair curlers, donned her paisley robe, and went off for coffee pouring and day starting as Herbert stooped, made a point to attend to his little dog.
They met at the door, where Herbert as no husband before him had, dripping in hose with his hands up in surrender and head held high with pride, and Marty handed him his coffee, as she had often before, and he held it over his head, as he hadn’t, and she kissed him on the cheek as she had, and he turned and left and drove, as always, along a worn path as he melted, silently, in hosiery, as he had never done before.
A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE MUSEUM OF THE HOLE
Lobby
“I have these arms,” he’s said to have said. “Hip-hip, heave-ho, these arms of mine.”
This may not be what he said, though, they say. He may have said it, he may have thought it. The recording is, as it was even new, ambiguous in this respect.
Regardless, “These arms,” he’s said by some to have said, upon waking, as the story goes, ex nihilo, the essays say. “I have these ball-and-sockets, I have these hinges. I have flexors and extensors. I have this back and these legs. They all work like this. I have. I have. I have.”
We have all already read the transcripts, read all the texts for years and have always wondered if that last part had once been some great list, a catalogue, an inventory of all his things that has been cut from the tape for one of any of the reasons we have made up. We have all, in fresh holes of our own, our shallow, fresh pit clubhouses, joked,
I have this coffee cup, I have that comforter, I have this spot on the rug, I have this itch on my knee, I have, I have, I have.
We’re anxious to hear it for ourselves, to listen for the click of cut tape, odd voice inflections, an indication of abridgement anywhere, or else be caught up in the cadence, the rhythm, the slow logic to the inevitable: “I have. I have. I have. And I have this shovel, too.”
54
55
Upon waking, it’s said, kitchen-tabled, said or thought, this new idea. This is the canonized version of course. The version most easily told by the museum automatons.
We know this fallacy going in.
* * *
Exhibit #1
In the kitchen room of The Museum of the Hole where the tour starts, where we are corralled into groups of fifteen between wall and rail, pushed all the way up to the curtain before the robotic scene. We all know from the drive in that just beyond the wall behind the scene is the hole, that great thing. We know we are, though crammed in with kids and seniors, peers and locals, field- and day-trippers, overly air-conditioned, tired- footed already, standing practically on the ledge overlooking what all that digging dug.
The museum lights dim and the curtains part. We wait.
Orange light, morning light, slowly warms the scene. The digger, that old, jerky automaton, at the table in boots and flannel. In person, we think, his beard looks fake, his face only vaguely human. He looks homemade and old, we think, in the bad way. A kid snickers, is shushed.
There is still, even still, an excitement, the story we all know, just before us, before us to be told as we’ve been told it’s told.
56
The digger sits, drinking his coffee from a blue metal cup, drinking, drinking, taking the cup from table to mouth with rhythmic, jerky-steady grace. The only movement in the room. Bent over the sink, his wife’s back is to the screen as he drinks, drinks. There’s a hissing through the speakers, water maybe. Washing dishes, we assume.
That kind of thing. This is the story as we know it.
As he sits and drinks, cup from his mouth to the table with a clink, to his mouth to the table with a clink: “I have these arms…”
The voice is deep, whispering, recorded way back by some actor, famous maybe, once, unrecognizable now, so snappy and worn by repeat. It’s hard to say if the words are thoughts or something whispered aloud. The questions have been: Did he tell her his plan? Did she agree to it? Or was it a moment between him and his coffee arm only?
“I have these arms,” the voice says as the lights slowly narrow from the room, from the common domestic scene, to his arm, just his arm, a bright spotlight lighting neither mouth nor cup, neither him nor her, just the arm and its endless, tireless movement.
“Hip-hip,” says the recording. “Heave-ho.”
“I have. I have. I have.”
With “shovel,” another spot lights, this on an old tool in the corner, worn and used. Impossibly small, it seems, for the work ahead. A good effect, we agree.
And there’s a minute, a full minute of recorded breathing, darkness, two spots of light: arm moving. Shovel in the corner. Arm moving. Shovel in the corner. The recorded breath quickens. “They all work like this.”
57
The conclusion seems inevitable.
We all say how artistically it has been rendered, notice we forgot to listen to the “I haves.”
* * *
“To dig is to live!” says the bronze marker overlooking the gorge.
“We are murderers!” chant the sad protesters still audible from outside.
* * *
Exhibit #2
The next room, the air feels different, dustier, blasts of hot air mixed with the cool. The curtains open on her back, only feet from the rail between us. She stands on a path that stretches out a yard before her and falls suddenly into a hole. The hole, we wonder? Impossible.
The spotlight suggests a bright noon, the coloring suggests heat.
A shovel swings over the lip, tossing dirt over his shoulder below. The recording hisses and snaps, the sound of shovel in dirt, grunt, dirt thrown, unmistakable. A light tinkling mixed in, ice in glass, we assume, a tray in her arms. A nice cool glass of.
58
The rhythm is steady, tireless in the suggested heat of the suggested noon, oblivious to her approach, her ice in glass.
A spot of light illuminates a spot of text that tells the story.
“He had arms to dig,” it says. “So he dug.”
“He dug well,” it reminds us. “He dug deep. Hip-hip. Heave-ho.”
* * *
Exhibit #3
“‘Look how he digs,’ says one neighbor to the other.
‘What does he dig?’ asks the other.
‘He digs down. He digs around.’
‘Is it a moat?’ asks the other. ‘A deep, deepening moat down, around his home?’
‘I can’t say,’ says the neighbor. ‘He digs only down. He digs only around.’
‘Is it a trench? Is he separating us with hole and trench? Does he hate us? Is he trying to hide? Is there a reason? Is there a plan?’
‘I can’t say,’ says the neighbor. ‘He’s only a man that digs. He is only a man that digs well with arms and back and legs. He dug down first. Then he dug around. Around him, around his home. Then deeper. Then wider. Now deeper. Now wider. And tomorrow the same.’
‘And tomorrow the same?’
‘And tomorrow the same: a man above who digs down, digs around.’
‘I understand a man like this,’ says the other.
59
‘As do I,’ says the neighbor.
‘I too am such a man who digs.’
‘As am I.’
‘Tomorrow, I shall join him, I shall dig.’
‘As shall I.’
‘We with these arms.’
‘Hip-hip.’
‘Heave-ho,’” says the made-for-TV movie.
* * *
Exhibit #4
A thousand voices along the hall, old pictures on the wall. The first, from a distance, a single man under a broad hat, a ten foot hole – ten feet wide, ten feet deep – surrounding an old home standing as an island erected in the middle. Smoke from the chimney, flowers in the window boxes. The blurry figure of a woman in the door, entering laden. The digger’s shovel is a blurred arc from feet to shoulder, speaking of speed, of strength, of tireless hefts. He has no face under the hat, no features through the grain of the film. The hole is perfect already, ten-by-ten exactly, pierced here, there, by pipe and wire, but the geometric proportions are as perfect as we’ve been told. Diagrams alongside indicate same.
60
This picture, this perfect hole, it’s said, as the caption says, first made people notice.
* * *
“I too am such a man who digs.” “Tomorrow, I shall join him. I shall dig.” “As am I.” "As shall I”
* * *
Exhibit #5
The next image from a greater distance, of a broader, deeper hole. A line of figures working across it, the round deep trench, all of them hidden under hats, featureless, blurred arcs of speed and strength. Forty, fifty feet wide and deep.
The house rises above on an untouched pillar of land, rocks, of pipes and severed power lines that lift from the men below. A long knotted rope ladder hangs from the house to the earth and buckets rise at the outer rim from pulleys, from the assistance of those above, the dirt is removed, progress is made.
61
A woman stands at the edge of the house’s plateau above, her arms crossed, maybe. At such a distance, it’s only the dress that identifies her at all, watching over the work below, we have thought, calling all the workers, some have said, sending the message far.
* * *
“I too am such a man who digs.” “As am I.” “Tomorrow, I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I” “I too am such a man who digs.” “As am I.”
“I too am such a man who digs.” “As am I.” “Tomorrow, I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I” “Tomorrow, I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I” “I too am such a man who digs.” “Tomorrow, I shall join him. I shall dig.” “As am I.” "As shall I”
“I too am such a man who digs.” “As am I.” “Tomorrow, I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I”
“I too am such a man who digs.”
“As am I.”
* * *
62
Exhibit #6
Another picture then, smaller, with machines now and crowds. The hole seeming incalculably wide, deep, the crowd an uncountable line of blurred arcs digging, be- bucketed, hauling.
This picture is easier on us: vaguer, enormous, incomprehensible scales. The rope ladder from the house dangles only halfway to the ground. On the island there, to the right of the house, as right as possible before a fall, a figure under a broad hat leans on his shovel, while another figure sits opposite, legs dangling over the edge with a curled, tired back. The chimney’s smoke seems blacker and thicker than before. We squint to see it: too black, too thick.
Aerial photos and newspaper clippings hang beside, a collage of press and coverage in which Ed Jennings explains his why, leaning on the bucket of a crane, bright smile, dirty face, swollen hands. “To show I can,” says Amy Griffith, the first woman in the hole. Barbara Walters interviews neighbors, asks if it was hard to sink their homes in hole. She asks why they dig, why any of them, why all of them, dig deeper today, wider, why the same tomorrow.
“Because we have these arms,” they tell her. “Because they work like this.”
The made-for-TV movie premiers, primetime slot.
* * *
63
“I too am such a man who digs.” “As am I.”
“Tomorrow, I shall join him.“Tomorrow, I shall dig.” I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I” "As shall I”
I too am such a man whoI digs.”too am such a man who digs.” “As am I too am such a man “Aswho am digs.” I.” “As am I.” I too am such a manI too who am digs.”such a man who digs.”I.”
“AsI too am am I.” such a “As man am who I.” digs.” I too am such a man who digs.” “Tomorrow, “As I shall am I.”join him. I shall dig.”
"As shall I” “As“Tomorrow, am I.” I shall join him.
I too am such a man who digs.” “AsI tooam amI.” such a man who digs.” I too am such a man who digs.” “Tomorrow, “As I shall am joinI.” him. I shall dig.” “As am I.” "As shall I” I shall dig.” I too am such a man who digs.” “As am I.” “Tomorrow, I shallI too join am him such"As. I shalla shallman dig.” whoI” digs.”
"As shall I” “As am I.” “I too am such a man who digs.”
“I too am such a man who digs.” “As am I.”
“As am I.”
* * *
Exhibit #7
Schematics, pictures, schematics overlaying pictures, pictures overlaid with
schematics, a thesis, a discovery, a Nobel.
64
Growing from a single point, says Dr. Wolfrom, a single man in a single hole, one shovelful at a time, preceding down as he proceeds around: equal, simple progression. As he progresses: more men: more shovels, following his rhythm to beat: a foot down, a foot around. As they around-down, more men, women, shovels in line, a new foot for every new foot. Around. Down. Around. Down. A spiral growing from the point of the house, from the first hole beside, whose growth factor, in all directions, proceeds at a steady rate by new arms, new shovels, new tools, and new effort, the hole growing wider and deeper by a factor of 1.61803399 for every quarter turn: golden expansion, logarithmically perfect, and all-natural to boot.
In the shovelers: a natural pursuit of perfection. An instinctual mandate buried deep in the subconscious, says Dr. Devlin. A compulsory drive to maintain the rhythm, hold the perfection, let the hole grow until the need is satisfied, the urge extinguished.
We are more comfortable with this than anything else. We giggle and laugh, make innuendoes, elbow ribs, raise get-it-brows. Mothers pretend to cover childrens’ ears as the speakers read the excerpts, we laugh and elbow, lift our brows to our neighbors.
* * *
65
“Tomorrow, I shall join him.“Tomorrow, I shall dig.” I shall join him. I shall dig.” “Tomorrow, I shall join him.“Tomorrow, I shall dig.” I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I” "As"As shall shall I” I” "As“Tomorrow, shall I” I shall join him. I shall dig.” “Tomorrow, I shallI jointoo amhim. such II shalltoo a man am dig.” suchwho adigs.”“Tomorrow, man who digs.” I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As“Tomorrow, shallI too I” am suchI shall a manjoin hwhoim.“Tomorrow, digs.”I shall dig.” I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I” “As am I.” “As“Tomorrow, am I.” I "Asshall shall join I”him. I shall dig.” I too am such a man"As “As whoshall am digs.” I” I.” "As“Tomorrow, shall I” I shall join him. I shall dig.” "As “Tomorrow,“Tomorrow, shall I” I I shall shall join join him. him. I I shall shall dig.” dig.” “As am I.” “Tomorrow, I shall join him. I shall"As dig.”shallI too I”am such a man who digs.” "As"As“Tomorrow, shall shallI too I” I” am suchI shall a manjoinI tooI toohim.who am am digs.”Isuch shallsuch a dig.”mana man who who digs.” digs.” “Tomorrow, I shall"As join shall him. I” “Tomorrow, I shall dig.” I shall join him.“As I am shallI too I.” dig.” am such a man who digs.” "As“As shallI too am I” am I.” such a“As man“As am whoam I.” digs.” "As shall I” "As“Tomorrow, shall I” II shall too am join such him. a“As Iman “Tomorrow,shall am who dig.” I.” digs.” I shall join him. I shall dig.” I too amI suchtoo am a mansuch “Tomorrow,who a man digs.” who “As digs.”I shall am I.”join him. I shall dig.” “Tomorrow, "As“Tomorrow, shall I shallI” “Tomorrow, join I shall him. join I shall Ihim. shall"As dig.” I shalljoin sh all him. dig.” I” “As am“As I.” am I.” "As shall I” “As am I.” "As“Tomorrow, shall "As I”“Tomorrow,“Tomorrow, shall II” shall Ij Ioinshall shall him. join join I him.shall him. Idig.” Ishall shall dig.” dig.” I.”
"As“Tomorrow, shall"As"As I” shall shall I I”shall I” join him. I shall dig.” "As shall I”
I shall dig.” "As shall I”
* * *
“We are murderers,” say the signs over the sad marchers outside.
“Let this hole stand as a monument to the perfection we have achieved together,”
says the famous dedicator of the museum.
* * *
“Who lives there?” asks young Timmy, of that old house out on the plateau.
“The digger and his wife,” says a mother.
“How’d they get down?” asks young Timmy. “The ladder seems too short.”
66
* * *
Exhibit #8
The last picture, wall-sized, impossible, the digger waves, enlarged over the crowd, JumboTron on the hole’s edge. His shovel swings overhead, free arm a blur beside him. She waves too, but slower, her arms unblurred and small. She seems to cough.
In the foreground, diggers, thousands, scream, smile, celebrate, waving back with the same tireless fury they used to dig. Children wave. Mothers. Grandmothers.
Thousands. Millions. We know this picture well, the 37-cent stamp.
A videoscreen beside shows the shaky film from which the image was captured, played forever in a loop: the digger waving, the crowd screaming, waving, the digger jumping, leaping, smacking the ground with his shovel furiously, the crowds jumping, leaping, smacking the ground on their side of the hole in exultation as the digger’s wife slowly sits down at the edge, lays her head on her knees. The digger turns, spins, flings his shovel down into the hole deep under him. The crowds, in wild ecstasy, turn, spin, fling theirs down a mile from his, a mile exactly deep and far.
We say, my mother was there. We say, if only Grandpa could have seen. We say,
I remember when.
67
* * *
Exhibit #9
A window, equal and adjacent to the last image, impossible too, enormous, offers a view finally. We look left, right, the neat slow curve around, the neat line down. We look to the center to that old home. A minute at the binocular stand for a quarter.
The old door of the old house on the plateau is closed as it’s always closed, like the chimney, cold, never smokes. The house looks old, bare, needing paint. The flowers in the window boxes are gone, wilted, browned, and died years ago. The home seems inadequate next to the hole. We say they should replace it with something grander.
* * *
“Those who have dug will never forget,” says a plaque by the window. “Those who have dug will never be forgotten.”
“I don’t get it,” says little Timmy.
* * *
“I have these arms” he’s said to have said. “Hip-hip.”
68
* * *
Exit
This is the canonized version of the story. The version most easily told. Others tell it differently. We agree, disagree as we exit among gift shop postcards, souvenir shovels and hats, scale models, and punny t-shirts. Then we drive, slow in a tight train along the circumference, admiring the view.
“Heave-ho.”
______(TITLE)
______breathed as ______breathed: ______, ______(Masculine name) (Feminine name) (adjective) (adjective) breaths.
They ______at each other from opposite sides of the ______foot wooden (verbed) (number) plank under their ______. He ______on the end of the plank resting on the ground, (lowest body parts) (verbed)
______and secure, while she ______on the other end of the plank, ______in (adjective) (verbed) (gerunding) space over a ______, his weight counterbalancing hers. (deep hole noun)
Around them, ______(description of setting)
______
______.
He ______into her eyes from across the plank and she ______into his. As long (verbed) (verbed) as he remained, she would never fall. He thought this ______and ______: she will (adverbily) (adverbily) never _____. (verb)
She ______in the wind, even at his ______. (bouncy verbed 1) (superlativest) (involuntary bodily action)
Her ______beat a shimmer through her body, from her ______(blood pumping organ) (location of said organ)
69
70
to her ______to her ______to the plank under her that ______and (lower body parts) (lowest body parts) (bouncy verbed 1)
______in the shimmer. Beat, ______. Beat, ______. Beat, (bouncy verbed 2) (bouncy verb 1) (bouncy verb 2)
______. (bouncy verb 1)
* * *
“How do I _____ thee!” he ______. “Let me _____ the ways!” (verb) (dialog tagged) (verb)
“______,” she ______through the gag in her ______. (Fitting response) (dialog tagged) (body part)
“Shall I compare thee to a ______’s day!” he ______. (season) (dialog tagged)
* * *
Under him, the ground was ______and ______. The miles of security (adjective) (adjective) under him, the ______sensation of the ______, ______, ______, ______(adjective) (four layers of the Earth) supported his legs, ______his back. He knew he would not fall. This _____ made him (verbed) (noun)
______. He would have had to actually ______toward the ______and (emotion) (fastest mode of personal transportation) (deep hole noun)
______in to fall. He imagined this often. (verbed)
71
It would take him, he thought, ______seconds to reach the edge. (number)
______, he thought. Even if he ran, he figured, he could never _____ (Acceleration of gravity in given seconds) (verb) her hand in time to save her from the fall.
He could feel the plank ______as she ______, ______(bouncy verb 1) (bouncy verbed 1) (bouncy verbed 2) as she ______, but it was never enough to ______him. The plank (involuntary bodily actioned) (bouncy verb 1 or 2) communicated her weight only – an ______sensation. Through it, he knew her every (adjective)
_____, every ____. The plank told his feet exactly how she felt, how ______she (noun) (noun) (adverbily) stood. Her ______told him she was there, told him how she panicked and (bouncy verbs 1) when. He counted and measured, made ______notes of every fluctuation. (adjective)
He stared as she stared: eyes to eyes. She breathed when he breathed ______, (adjective)
______breaths. (adjective)
* * *
“My luve’s like an ______, ______!” he ______. (adjective) (adjective) (flower) (dialog tagged)
“______,” she ______. (Garbled response) (dialog tagged)
“______!” he ______. (sentimental poem) (tagged)
72
* * *
The fulcrum was off-center. He could see it at the lip of the ______. He (deep hole noun) counted ______between him and it, between it and her. He stood on the ______(units of measurement) (superlativest) end. Weight was on his side. If there were more hers on her end, he thought, ______, (number) maybe ______hers out there, the two ends would have ______together (larger number) (verbed)
______. Maybe the ______hers would have been enough to lift him, (adverbily) (previous larger number) and throw him forward by their compounded weight and all ______of (previous larger number plus one) them would have fallen into that ______, ______together. (adjective) (adjective) (deep hole noun)
But there was only one of her out there on that plank and he was secure,
______and ______, on his end. He counted hers to be sure. He felt the ground (adjective) (adjective) below.
* * *
“My love is as a ______!” he ______. “______nights—______nights!” (flu symptom) (tagged) (adjective) (adjective)
* * *
73
If he had an ______stick, he thought, he could save her. If he had an (adjective)
______with an ______hook, he though, he could grab her and ______(adjective) (tool) (adjective) (heroic fantasy)
______
______
______.
* * *
“______,” she ______as her ______began to _____. (Emotional outburst) (tagged) (lower body parts) (verb)
“Love ______forever like a ______!” he ______. (verbs) (body of water) (tagged)
* * *
Below her: ______at the wrists and ankles, shaking ______(implements of restraint) (lower body parts) a ______plank. The ground after: visible but distant. Out-of-focus. Clouds (bouncy verbing) between the plank and canyon floor.
Her legs ______when she let them _____ and the whole plank shivered with (verbed) (verb)
74
them. There were times, from ______, from nerves, from tired (involuntary bodily reaction)
______, from the ropes that ______into her skin, that the plank that would rise (body parts) (verbed)
______feet in ______and ______. It rose so high sometimes (number) (adjective) (bouncy verb 1) (bouncy verb 2) that it seemed she might _____ forward on the plank and somehow avoid ______off. (verb) (verbing)
She could inch forward like that, he thought. She could inch back to ______ground (adjective) and everything would be ______. (positive adjective)
As the plank ______up, though, it ______down, down so low he (bouncy verbed) (bouncy verbed) was sure she would just _____ off the back. He imagined losing sight of her for a (verb)
______as the plank ______low, and when it ______up again, he imagined, (small increment of time) (verbed) (verbed) she’d be gone. As ______as that, he thought. ______. (adjective) (Expletiving) (adjective)
* * *
“______lady mine,” he ______. “_____ this desolate world!” (Adjective) (tagged) (Verb)
“______.” (Pithy response)
“I shall _____ thee better after ______!” he ______. (verb) (a certainty) (tagged)
75
* * *
He watched her out there ______over the ______, her ankles (bouncy verbing) (deep hole noun)
______tight, her wrists ______behind her back. He watched, ______that she could (verbed) (verbed) (verbing) walk, just walk back across the plank as she watched, ______that he would never walk (verbing) again. Their ______hurt. They would ______if they let them. (body parts) (bouncy verb)
* * *
“How do I _____ thee!” he ______. “Let me _____ the ways!” (verb) (dialog tagged) (verb)
* * *
He ______as she ______; she ______into his eyes, he into hers. The plank (verbed) (verbed) (verbed)
______high and ______low. As it ______, she disappeared and reappeared, (bouncy verbed 1) (bouncy verbed1 ) (verbed) disappeared and reappeared, disappeared and reappeared.
76
______(Conclusion)
______
______
______
______
______
______
______.
NOTES FOR A STORY
Introduction:
The first line should be exciting, intriguing, baffling. It should fully engage the readers straight-away, drawing them inextricably in both by the artistry of its construction and by some inward, elemental need to explore the questionable (at best) connection to experienceable reality it suggests. It should provide in the reader an impulse to defend the nature and structure of the empirical universe, an impulse only satisfied through further ravenous reading.
It would be problematic to call this first line an introduction, though. Whereas it should introduce the style and tone of the story and the feelings of hollowness and emptiness at its heart, it should not necessarily introduce the content of the plot.
After reading the first line, the readers should exclaim, “Oh, another sad/tragic/hilarious story about existential despair and cognitive dissonance!” They should not exclaim, “Oh, a story about a thin apartment wall!”
This will be a very difficult sentence to write. It should be followed quickly by the sound of a train screaming in the distance, which will mean very little to the readers.
______
First Lines Not To Use:
“The wall separating me from my neighbor is very thin.”
77
78
“I can hear everything my neighbor does through this thin wall.”
“The wall between us is so thin that the light passes right through, casting my neighbor’s shadow up on my wall, which I watch lustfully, playacting a life for us together.”
______
Structure:
The story should be developed in short sections, each one separated by a thin line running from margin to margin. Through the course of the story, it should eventually become clear that the lines are symbolic reflections of the wall in the story. By extension, each section must therefore be a reflection of the two primary characters of the story, the narrator and the neighbor. Attempts by one section to overlap into the next – times when two adjacent sections seem not only topically linked, but also seem to flow seamlessly together so as to cause the readers to regard the line division as an unnecessary distraction – should be considered a symbolic representation of the characters’ desire to transcend the distance the wall imposes.
Normally, the sections should only be thematically or topically linked, a few sentences shy of direct connection. This way, the thin line, while ostensibly separating the paragraphs, will also act as the uniting element between them. This should be the ultimate conclusion wrought by the story: the narrator is on one side, watching the
79
neighbor on the other, and through this separation, through the shadow-play on the wall, the relationship is formed. Connection via separation.
______
A Scene:
The sun rises on the neighbor’s side, flooding through the windows and through the thin wall between, casting his or her shadow up on the wall, casting along with it his or her furniture, from sofas and dressers to art and clutter, up on the wall with him or her.
The neighbor’s whole life is broadcast, flattened into a two-dimensional display.
The neighbor’s alarm goes off, waking both the neighbor and the narrator. They stretch their arms high over their heads, looking groggy and content. A normal morning.
The neighbor’s shadows are so crisp, so clear on the wall that the narrator can accurately identify both the shape and material of his or her bedclothes. The wall acts as a scrim between them. It’s no wonder they can interact so well, so normally, under such abnormal conditions. From a certain perspective, the two really look like they are waking in the same bed.
This is an important contradiction that should be reinforced and repeated often: they act normally despite the abnormality; it is all very realistic despite the surreality. The narrator, three-dimensional and in full color, wakes next to the neighbor, a two- dimensional shadow on the wall. They stretch, scratch their heads. The narrator says, with a yawn, “good morning, dear neighbor,” and the neighbor echoes the same.
80
They then share a typical morning, drinking coffee at their kitchen tables, nibbling jelly toast, eventually showering and grooming and primping for their days. All the while, they should engage in highly artificial dialog about life and the mundanity of it all while also hinting at the greater meaning of things. They call each other “dear neighbor” and nothing ever else. This will be awful, but necessary. They say, “I’m lonely, dear neighbor. I’m lonely and alone.”
______
The Apartment:
The impression left by the first line should not slack through the course of the story. When describing the apartments that contain the wall and characters and “story,” the reader should never suppose that such a place does or could ever exist anywhere in reality. It should be abundantly clear that the entire set-up is nothing but an over-realized metaphor for the author’s over-documented conception of the human condition. The word
“apartment” should be repeated endlessly, especially at the beginning, until the readers, aware of the metaphorical nature of the story as a whole, may eventually come to understand that the word describes this condition, an apart-ment, rather than a physical dwelling.
______
81
The Set-Up:
The apartment-building, as a physical dwelling, sits atop a tall hill around which no other building or tree or other such distraction appears – a lone structure in a plain, cartoonish scene. There are only two apartments to the complex, one opening to the east, the other to the west, the wall between running north to south.
The readers can assume that the rest of the development has been destroyed, that there is rubble of previous tenements over these two or around them, pipes emerging from anywhere, going nowhere, etc. The readers can make this a very post-apocalyptic scene if they want to, as long as they don’t assume there was ever an actual apocalypse that rendered the place as such – as long as they understand that the rubble indicates previous failed apart-relationships, other failed attempts to connect, or something along those lines. The readers may also assume that the apartment-building is a lovely duplex fully intact and in good repair sitting up on a green, grassy knoll. It doesn’t substantially affect the meaning either way.
The interiors of the apartments, it should be clear, are mirror images of each other: sofa-to-sofa, clutter-to-clutter. The lives of the narrator and neighbor unfold in equal, opposite settings such that when the narrator sits at his or her table, the neighbor may sit with him or her at the other side of the space so the two may, from a certain perspective, share a delicious meal together or a warm cup of coffee. This also allows them to sleep together in beds only separated by that wall, one of them (assuming certain illumination schemes) 3-D and in full color, and the other in flat shadows. It’s all very platonic.
82
______
Another Scene:
The sun sets on the narrator’s side, flooding through his or her windows and casting his or her shadow up on the neighbor’s wall. A total reversal. His or her furniture, from sofas and dressers to art and clutter, cast up on the wall with him or her. The narrator’s whole life is broadcast, flattened, two-dimensional.
The narrator and the neighbor come home at the same time from their jobs and duties, entering through their opposite-facing doors, each of them carrying a briefcase or portfolio or some kind of iconic day-job-related item.
“Welcome home, dear neighbor,” one of them may say to the other. “Oh, how was your day in the world?”
The two will change their clothes, pour themselves drinks. They will sit down before the TV together and relax. Nothing out of the ordinary. They will discuss, in their particular tone, their lives and woes, their longings and what to make for dinner. Should they order pizza, they wonder. Is joy possible? Maybe some Chinese?
The scene should echo the first in its mundanity, even language. The readers should understand that these are normal people living normal lives, only separated by a thin apartment wall. They live rather contentedly together in their apart-ment. Their apart-ness.
83
The complication here is that the narrator can no longer see the neighbor and the neighbor can only just now see the narrator. This should come as a sudden and intriguing insight to the reader. The narrator cooks, lounges on the sofa, assuming all the while that the neighbor is with him or her, though he or she can’t be sure.
This has immediate and profound consequences that should not be shied away from by the characters. They should address it directly, the narrator saying at night, when he or she can’t see the neighbor, how he or she is lonely, how he or she misses him or her. The neighbor can say the same kind of thing in the mornings when the neighbor can’t see the narrator. Whichever character receives these lines should express that he or she doesn’t understand because that person can clearly see the shadow on the wall and is, in that sense, not alone. For example:
“I’m lonely, dear neighbor. I miss you when I’m here all alone.”
“I don’t understand, dear neighbor. You are with me on the wall.”
Neither the narrator nor the neighbor will ever fully explore this conversation and when either one does approach it, it will always end in confusion.
______
Gender:
It’s important to make the story gender-neutral for a variety of reasons. If the neighbor is female and the narrator male, the morning stretching scene risks appearing crass and voyeuristic. Any details added to such a scene may strike the readers as creepy
84
and may distract from the story as a result. The readers may find themselves wondering more about the author’s voyeuristic impulses than the symbolic elements of the scene, which would severely disrupt the integrity of the piece. It’s vital to the success of the story that the author not be considered creepy or unlikable in any way. If the opposite of this impression can be made instead, so much the better.
There is also the idea that gender neutrality may suggest a more general interpretation, that with nonspecific pronouns the readers may more easily assume that the characters, like the set-up, are more undeveloped abstractions than “people” and therefore shouldn’t be confused with real life. If the readers wish for more concrete details or characters, they will have to invent them themselves, which requires a more engaged reading.
It should be noted that repeating “his or her” and “he or she” for the entire story may very well counter this effect by annoying the reader out of the story. It will be hard line to maintain.
______
Reiterations:
The couple, if that is an accurate term, wake on Monday. They stretch and yawn, bid each other morning salutations. They coffee and breakfast together, bathe and prepare for their days. They stand at their opposite doors when the time comes and say sweet things, wish each other the best of days.
85
They do this again on Tuesday, on Wednesday, all through the week. The ritual, the routine, should be explained from every possible perspective and angle, every variation included. The neighbor’s sadness should be clear, talking through a wall at an unseen face, the contentedness of the narrator, in exactly the opposite situation, should also be fully articulated. There are mornings when they have slept well, there are mornings after a night of tossing. These are discussion points, variables to consider.
Evenings, Monday through Friday: the same. The narrator comes home, the neighbor comes home, they set about their routines. They exchange witty, artificial dialog while discussing dinner, life. They watch TV, go to bed. They make love some nights and complain about not making love on others. Mostly, they are content to simply fall asleep, ready to start the day anew.
______
Dialog:
Overall, the dialog should be slow, mundane, and elevated. The narrator and the neighbor are bored, lonely, and alone and the tone should echo such. They should never say, “Good morning, sweetums!” or “Oh, this wretched lonesome life of dread!” Rather, they should say, “Good morning, dear neighbor,” every morning without exception. The narrator should say, as the neighbor should say, “I’m lonely, dear neighbor,” without exaggeration or elaboration, but maybe “I’m lonely and alone.” There should be no exclamation points in the story.
86
Here and there, the characters should be allowed open questions about the state of life, such as “Why must there always be this wall between?” or “Sometimes it’s as if you’re really here, dear neighbor.” The character receiving these statements should never understand what exactly the other means by such things, though each will utter the same phrases at some point through the story.
Neither character should ask specific questions about these misunderstandings, but instead, consistent with the tone of the rest of the dialog, say, “I don’t understand, dear neighbor,” and then change the subject.
______
Stylistic Effect:
A distant train should whistle once at the beginning of the story and once at the end. This will provide a new dimension to the set-up, both characters encountering an outside event together, equally alien to each. These should be sad, hollow scenes. The repetition should suggest both an end to the story and the unending repetition of the lives it contains.
______
87
Climax:
Saturday, the sixth iteration, the alarm doesn’t go off. The narrator and the neighbor sleep in in happy, comfortable, well-deserved rest. By the time they wake, it’s already late in the morning - sun high, the neighbor’s shadow much less crisp than on usual mornings. The characters gradually rouse themselves from bed and enjoy a typical
Saturday morning and all it contains: a heartier breakfast, an extra cup of coffee. They read a newspaper, check their email. Maybe they each call their grandparents or mothers.
Throughout the scene, the dialog should continue as normal:
“Oh, dear neighbor,” the narrator can say, “you are so dim and distant on these days.”
“I don’t understand,” the neighbor can tell him or her. “I am all alone, dear neighbor, as I am always on these days.”
This should continue in real time as the morning slowly passes: mundanity, ennui, existential despair. This should continue, that is, until noon when the narrative focus suddenly becomes tight, the language markedly thicker and richer than it has been through the rest of the piece. The section should sing with piercing prose and grand, highly symbolic imagery.
For five minutes around noon, two and a half minutes before and two and a half minutes after, when the sun is at its zenith and the daylight is most intense, the sun will flood through both apartments at once, filling each room with terrific, penetrating light.
In this moment, the wall between will grow, though not quite transparent, translucent at least. It will be lighted in such a way that both the narrator and the neighbor will be able
88
to see, with a third dimension and a hint of color even, the furniture sets, sofas and dressers, art and clutter of the other through, not on, the wall. Along with this, of course, the narrator will be able, however dimly, to see the neighbor and the neighbor, for this short instant, will at last see the narrator as he or she sees him or her.
The significance of this should be immediately obvious even if the physics are a little fuzzy.
It will be important for the author to back off a little during this moment to let the scene and all of the heavy emotionality it presents ring fully and unambiguously. Every effort should be expended to guarantee that the readers register this swell of emotion and participate in it as much as possible without resorting to cheap sentimentality or cliché.
As far as action, both the narrator and the neighbor will freeze in place during the event and remain silent and still, each staring at the other with hard, unblinking stares through the duration. If the narrator, for example, were dunking his or her biscotti into his or her coffee, he or she would remain as such for the full five minutes regardless of scalding fingers or dissolving cookie. The neighbor, likewise, if in mid-itch at 11:57:30 would keep his or her hand still, however awkward, at his or her face until 12:02:30, staring silently with the narrator’s same joyous, miserable stare.
It will be a beautiful moment between them that will be terribly difficult to convey, given the restraints set forth by the structure of the story.
______
89
Conclusion:
After the five minutes, the sun will pass over and take with it the illusion of union it provided. The image of the narrator will be replaced with the shadow version and the neighbor will disappear until morning.
The final moment of the piece should be dialogic, something dry and understated, lines that have been repeated through the story so often they already echo a sad, endless echo. For example:
“I’m lonely, dear neighbor. I’m lonely and alone.”
“But I don’t understand, dear neighbor. I’ll never understand.”
This would be a good place to bring back the train.
COUGH
Your wife is coughing in the bedroom, in the next room, on the other side of the door. The sound of it cuts through the walls, its volume undisturbed. It passes unmuffled through sofas and books, tables and chairs. It circles through the apartment in sharp, snapping cracks and low animal grunts. It woops and it pauses, it crackles and it hacks. It exists, immutable, everywhere: a heavy, perpetual din. There isn’t room to contain it.
This is something you should know by now.
______
You are sitting at your desk, on this side of the wall, with three equal piles of business before you, your wife beyond, behind the door, unseen. This is the setting as you understand it.
______
Your wife coughs. She is coughing. She coughs and coughs and you sit, tapping your foot to the beat. This is your point of connection: four coughs to a breath, then three, sometimes a single, long roll from her as you tap your foot in steady, even measures, working out a complicated counter-rhythm with your pen. The two of you compose percussive symphonies like this – a master of coughs, a master of taps.
90
91
All of it is automatic and unnoticed, of course. At least on your end. There is no reason to interrupt the work of your higher functions to maintain this cough-tap relationship.
This is something you do know.
______
Cough-tap. Cough-tap. Tapity-tap-tap-COUGH.
______
The business on the desk before you has been imported from office to home and sorted into three even piles. This was a long, arduous process that requires no discussion here. The piles are neat, beautiful stacks of business you took great care in constructing.
You are proud of your work. The edges are straight, the corners are tight, and there isn’t so much as a staple in them to upset the balance. You’ve done a beautiful job.
While stacking them here, you also took the time to sort them chronologically according to the precise due date stamped in bright red in the upper right-hand corner of every piece of business. Although a tedious and time-consuming project, you are certain that it was not a wasted effort. The evenness of each stack would be of no benefit if every piece were not in its proper place. You are glad to know your business well enough to understand this point.
______
92
You wife is coughing just one room over. The drywall has done nothing to dampen the sound. There is a slow, almost undetectable crescendo to it now, switching to
4/4 and hitting every downbeat with heavier bass. Your foot and pen register the shift reflexively and develop a beat to match.
______
Your sorting efforts have left you with three stacks that represent three distinct states of business: On your left is the stack of early business – all of the work that, according to the due date stamps, is not yet but will shortly be due. In the center is the current business – everything that the stamps tell you you should be working on at this very moment. On the right, of course, pulled from drawers and inboxes and collated here into one, even pile, is that troublesome stack of late business.
______
Cough-cough-tappity-cough. Tappity-tap-tap-cough. TAP!
______
The rest of your desk is as clean and neat as the piles themselves. There is a small cup to the side for pens and related implements, and a neat tray of binding tools assorted by shape, size, and color. Under them, the glass has been polished to a radiant shine with
93
only a thin blanket of incidental ceiling dust on top that you remove every hour or so with the small brush from the small brush holder, just behind the pens.
You know these tools well. You know their precise location in relation to you at all times. You have made sure of this. You have trained yourself by endless repetition to select the appropriate instrument for any specific kind of business by touch alone and most efficiently employ it without involving your conscious brain at all. To this end, your home office has been designed to be a perfect replica of your office office, leaving no room for spatial translation errors to interrupt you in either setting. There is never a need for any situational detail to distract you from the business at hand.
______
If I were you, I would let this all sit idle for a while. I would lean back in my chair, link my hands behind my head, and let the vibrations shake the dust down like snow all around me. If I were you, I would lean back and imagine something wonderful.
Something far outside this business.
______
You do not do as I would do.
______
94
You have counted every item in the piles. You have laid them out carefully and neatly, each piece by each piece, sorting them by due date (measured by the minute) into their neat, perfect piles. You have measured the stacks carefully for height, width, and length – measured twice to be sure. You have recorded your findings meticulously, rounding to the nearest thousandth of an inch. You have checked, rechecked, confirmed: they are all equal – geometrically and figuratively equal. Perfectly so.
You are quick to note the incredible improbability of this. You want very much to think of it as a metaphor.
______
Your wife’s lungs move less than 15 in3 of air per breath, gasped in then expelled in the subsequent 1-3 coughs. Front to back, top to bottom, your apartment contains just under 23,000 ft3 of air for her to use for this purpose. In this sense, the total effect of a single breath or a single gasp on the total available air reserve (which is continuously re- processed and re-supplied by air conditioning, improper window seals, and the general breathability of apartment construction) is effectively nil. This vast disproportion makes it impossible for her coughs to have any discernable impact on even her immediate environment whatsoever besides, perhaps, noise, which is easy to grow accustomed to.
This is also something you know.
______
95
The second hand on the clock over your desk does not tick; it runs smoothly around its hi-def face, pointing out the hours and minutes and seconds, even the ten miniscule notches between the seconds with its needled point and atomic accuracy. It’s the kind of clock you can only find in in-flight magazines. And it is this clock that ruins the metaphorical significance of the business stacks.
The clock brings everything back to the surface and reminds you that you, foot tapping, subconscious counter-rhythming, are something physical and real. That is, you are something physical and real sitting before three physical and real stacks of physical and real business.
Most importantly, it provides a sense of consequence to the piles. It tells you that you are in trouble. Trouble with physical and real ramifications. It tells you that your rightmost stack is already past due. That there will be queries and requests for status updates. That angry superiors will want to know exactly what went wrong. That they are already somewhere consulting their watches, preparing their inquiries. It tells you that you will have to answer for what you haven’t done.
The clock, hyper-precise and relentless, also tells you that the center pile is composed of pieces of business that are all tagged with equally precise due dates for which, should you fail to meet them, you will also be in trouble. It tells you that even that benign-looking future pile contains due dates that will come eventually and eventually pass. There is trouble even there, you understand.
96
These stacks, the clock tells you, are real and physical things. Realer and more physical than any metaphor. These stacks, you think, are trouble.
______
Your wife woops in the next room – loud barks of cough, coarse and full. She coughs so hard the wall shakes between you – the sharp vibrations, the low vibrations, the fast and slow, cack and cough of it rattling the drywall on its screws. A fine dust rains down from the acoustic panels over head, raining powder over. Your muscles have been trained to retrieve the small brush from the small brush holder and gently remove the accumulation, careful not to upset the balance.
______
Tap-tap, gasp, you sing together. Tap-tap-tapity-gasp.
______
Through your previous work, you have been able to precisely calculate the time it takes to attend to each piece of business. If you employ all of the lessons learned, engage in only the most efficient systems you have developed through these lessons (holding your pen just so, sitting up straight, deep breaths, licking your thumb to achieve the precise degree of dampness needed to maximize your page-turning-rate-potential, etc.), it takes you exactly (t) time to complete one piece of business. You have experimented with
97
every variable, you have switched hands and multitasked, you have started at the end and started at the middle and started at the beginning, but the results are always the same: (t) time, every time: the terminal business-dealing velocity.
New work, work due in the future, you have similarly discovered, arrives in your inbox at even intervals of (t) time. You hardly had to check the due dates to notice that another piece of current business passes its due date at an even rate of (t).
______
The drapes in the front of the apartment have started to move.
______
You lean back in your chair, ease into its plush, leather-like cushions. The luxurious creek of it is barely audible over the coughs. You link your hands behind your head and tilt back, one foot on the desk, one foot below, pounding out the beats. You look, you would say, contemplative.
______
This is the point at which, if I were you, I would stop and imagine something significant. If I were you, I would stop to imagine, say, a woman, a particular woman, in a particular yellow dress. I would fill in all of the details. I would imagine her in the park, in the spring, her dress in the wind. (These are easy things to imagine. You could do it if you tried.) I would imagine her smiling, if I were you. I would imagine every detail from
98
the feel of the cloth to the taste of her lipstick. With the drapes blowing, with your business dusted, I would stop to remember every detail. I would act accordingly.
______
You do not do as I would do.
______
Instead, you consider starting with the late pile. Once that’s done, you think, all the trouble, all of those inquiries and superior requests, would finally be resolved. It would allow you to work through the rest untroubled and stress-free.
This seems tempting. But you know better than to jump unprepared into any action.
So you do not act. You plan: If you were to begin like this, you would begin with the steps you know best. You would lick your thumb just so, so as to leaf the first page from the stack in the most efficient manner. You would take the appropriate writing utensil from the writing utensil cup, hold it just right, and begin working through the matter in the careful-yet-efficient way that you know best, starting at the upper left-hand corner and working down to the bottom right. Once you have completed this, you would attach the appropriate attachment with the appropriate implement of attachment and file it exactly where it needs filed. Checking the clock, you would find that you had completed all of this in exactly (t) time.
99
During this time, you realize, three other actions would have also taken place.
First: one piece of business from the current business pile would have passed its due date, which would require it to be moved (with licked thumb, etc.) from the top of the current pile to the very bottom of the late pile (a slightly more complicated maneuver). Second: the topmost business item in the future work would have met its due date and been moved (in the particular method) from top-future to bottom-current. Third: a brand new piece of business would have been assigned and, with its due date not yet arrived, be moved to the bottom of the future stack.
If you were to measure these piles again after this (t) cycle, you would find that the height, weight, and length of each (despite the supremely efficient efforts expended) would remain totally unchanged – as if no work, no expert hand, had been applied at all.
This does not strike you as a good thing.
______
A fifth beat is abruptly added to the cough sequence. It throws you off your rhythm for an instant. It is a sour note, devastatingly loud, that adds a severe, arrhythmic hiccup to the previously even time signature. It is a horrible thing. You nearly sprain your ankle trying to incorporate it.
______
Tap tap taCOUGH!ppity-tap.
______
100
You lean forward to resume your pen-tap work.
You take off your glasses, rub your eyes. This is all very troubling business.
______
Less than 15 in3 of air in, ditto out, in a space 23,000 ft3 large. The apartment, if shut off, sealed up, would provide her with 18,400 breaths for 92,000 coughs, one fifth of which would be these new, arrhythmic, ankle-sprainingly catastrophic coughs. Even as you rub, fret, this comes to you naturally.
______
The curtains at the front of the apartment now suck in distinctly and are then expelled evenly four times. On the fifth, the front door bangs against its locks, the windows all shake and bow. There is a steady supply of dust that you attend to absently, hardly noticing the careful brushstrokes over the piles.
______
It’s getting hard for you to concentrate.
______
101
If you finish… you lean forward on your elbows to focus, rubbing your head vigorously… if you finish the late stack first, as you ought, and let’s see, well, you have already established the significant overall decrease in the trouble this would present. You count this as a good.
In the time it would take to process the late stack – to complete (x)(t) amount of work – (x) amount of current work would have become late work, (x) amount of future work would have become present work, and (x) amount of new work would have become future work, thus adding an additional (x)(t) time to complete each stack. Therefore, as you really focus now, resolving the trouble of the late business (good) would result in equal trouble from the transference of the present to the late (bad). In this case, all possible good cancels all possible bad just as the whole business cancels out to a great lot of nothing done, nothing doing, etc.
______
It doesn’t have to be the spring day. It doesn’t have to be one dress or another. It doesn’t have to be anything. But still, if I were you, I would imagine something. I would stop to consider, remember something, anything. The spring day is as good as any. The spring day, though it would require the use of some of your higher functions, though some of the details may be hard to locate, is a good day. A long ago day. If I were you, I would stop to remember.
______
102
You don’t, of course.
______
You reach for your glasses and miss. You reach for the small dust brush and you retrieve a fountain pen instead.
The vibrations have shifted your implements, have bounced your containers and cups to new and unexplored regions of the desk. Your glasses are on the floor, a long stream of binding implements (in an unsorted mess of style, shape, and sizes) dance across the glass to join them. The great stacks themselves have lost their neat edges, have begun to teeter, are threatening to fall. The coughs are a crescendoing beat. Everything shimmies, everything shakes.
You breathe. You stand. You fix the problem.
______
The point being that your wife’s lungs, no matter the severity of her coughs
(rhythmic or a-), move a totally insignificant amount of air when weighed against the total volume of air available in her environment. The point being that your wife’s coughs can have absolutely no effect on anything at all. You know this lesson well.
______
103
You have set your pen cup on top of the future business pile, placed a re- collected, re-organized collection of binding implements in their appropriate holder on top of the current business pile, and your right shoe on the past business pile. You have evened the stacks and straightened their edges. With the extra weight applied to them and your own weight leaned onto the glass with your elbows, the stacks hardly move at all anymore.
Though you can no longer dust the piles or most efficiently retrieve or employ the required business implements, as you look over the set-up, you consider the primary problem solved. You feel another surge of pride at your keen problem-solving abilities.
______
There are no normal coughs anymore. There is no rhythm. It is catastrophic cough, then tsunamic cough, then apocalyptic cough, then…
______
Just as well, you think, you only have one shoe to tap and no handy pen to wield.
You continue undaunted.
______
If you begin with the current work, you think, though its much harder to think now, leaning forward, applying weight, and what with the noise, instead of leaning back in plush, leather-like et cetera contemplative pose, you would be doing exactly what you
104
are supposed to be doing. Which is good. You would finish the stack in (x)(t) time (plus a little extra, maybe, under to the circumstances), during which time the stack would have replenished itself from the future stack coming due, and the future stack would itself be replenished by incoming new work. Through all of this, absolutely no business would have been added to the past-due file, which is another good. Everything already in the late pile at the start, however, would then be twice as late, which would be twice as bad.
Two goods and two bads, you reason, clutching your head from the racket and shake, just cancel out again. Nothing done, nothing doing, etc.
______
In the front of the house, some of the windows have broken inwards from the gasp backdraft, covering the floor with glass that continues to rumble and shake where it lay.
The rest have all been blown outwards, some pieces thirty feet out into the street. The door is splintered, lying both in and out of the room. Above it all, great seams have begun to open.
This is something you don’t know.
______
It was a spring day and there was no business. You were there, you remember it from your perspective. And she, in a dress you remember being yellow, but which may have been blue, even black. There were many days, good days, and they all come back.
You are aflood with days and dresses, a smiling woman. A collage of days open before
105
you. You remember almost all of the senses. You remember how it looked, how the sun felt, the scents and smells of it all. And she there smiling. There is, somewhere, a memory of sound. Of reality. Of little to tap to and no compulsion to try.
______
The wall before you is bowing. Sagging. Breathing. The entire wall bubbles toward you in five great blasts, then retreats in convex gasp. Your pictures have all been thrown to the floor and your desk pushed into the center of the room. Between coughs, you hear crashing throughout the apartment, glass shattering and furniture crunching.
There is a deep creaking in everything that you feel more than hear. Something opening, something giving way.
You have climbed up on your desk behind the business piles. You are leaning half of your weight on the late stack with one elbow and half on the future with the other. You are pressing as hard as you can on the present pile with both hands to keep it upright. You have your shoeless foot stretched out behind you to absorb the impact of the wall. Your glasses are somewhere, probably broken and scattered with your pens in the rubble.
The stacks are no longer so neat.
You think as loud as you can.
______
IF YOU TAKE CARE OF THE FUTURE WORK FIRST…
______
106
The wall buckles suddenly, bringing the ceiling, the roof, even the forgotten inflatable Santa down with it in a sudden, horrible roar.
You take a brick to the shoulder, a beam across the back as you apply your weight, as you keep your work up firmly, thinking about the potential good of finishing the future stack early. A thick dust climbs up from the falling bricks and crashing walls and you may be bleeding somewhere, somewhere possibly a lot, and there is another crack and some more buckling, this time beneath you. Finishing early is a definite good, no question about it, but doing so would also allow the entire current stack to pass into the late pile, thus doubling the overall quotient of trouble. Something is on fire. The water heater creaks then explodes, shooting steam and shrapnel and a great gassy fireball through the apartment, shattering walls and cutting through all remaining doors. You’re not sure, but you think there may be some additional good to not having a current pile because and then a crack below you and you feel the glass of your desk give way.
The business seems to float for a moment; seems, just for a second, to hold together in their even stacks as you fall. You grab for them, try to pull them to your chest and protect them, but your arms, untrained for such a maneuver, pass right through, sending them flying apart in a fluttering, shapeless cloud as you land in broken home, swallowed by walls and floors and roofs and the thick, total destruction of it all.
______
…
______
107
…
______
Your wife coughs in what was the next room, now open, facing destruction. She lays curled up on the undisturbed mattress, blanket to chin, so thin she’s hard to spot.
______
…
______
…
______
…
______
You slowly push one hand through the rubble, sending an avalanche of destruction down around you. You pull an arm through. Then another. And your head.
And eventually, amid a cascade of bricks and glass and splintered wood and everything else your apartment used to be, you emerge, caked in dust, blood, sweat. The neighbors are all in their yards, staring.
There are some pipes poking through the debris. Remnants of what could have been a bookcase or a sofa. Papers in the wind going wherever. Spurts of fire, porcelain.
Approaching sirens already in the distance.
108
You see her and the untouched half of room behind her through the smoke and dust. There is no door, no wall between you. She is not in a dress of any color. But you recognize her. She blinks and looks at you. You hear her little coughs. You do exactly what I would do.
NEITHER / NOR
Said 1
“I am beginning to believe, gentlemen, in a space beyond, a space neither this nor that, a moment that is neither dependant nor depended upon, an action that is neither caused nor causes, an option on which we have neither planned nor could have planned, a choice, that is to say, gentlemen, outside this chain, outside this polar split, outside this absolute this, this absolute that, outside the neat picture of I-call-they-come, outside your old religion, outside your either / or,” he would have liked to have said…
109
Cause / Effect
A thing: response. Action: reaction.
One schedules the from-trip right: late. That is, one schedules the from-trip, the return, early to allow one to leave late.
One must be sure there are no problems. No over-booked trains, no delays, no schedule conflicts, no inappropriate menu selections, no lack of power outlets. One confirms: no children, no delays, no storms, no detours, no wildfire routes, no unnecessary costs. And one buys, one is supplied with a wallet-stored confirmation number. One buys the tickets early to ensure one leaves late. To provide that last most-of- day of final exploration, the last late breakfast, the last early afternoon walk, the last of enjoying where one is, where one will soon not be, the last of it all before the long trip back.
The long trip back for which one has purchased the tickets, secured them in the zippered ticket-pocket of one’s bag alongside one’s travel clothes, alongside one’s etui with toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, soap, freshmakers, cleanmakers, pads, and pills, on top of which one has set books, notebooks, and pens, on top of which one has placed the crossword, at which one has yet to even peek, which one saves, with special agony, until one has watched the city pass behind.
Because one has planned for everything, one calls the taxi two hours early, which arrives fifteen minutes later. One enters and the cab turns right, then right, then two lefts
110
111
to I-5, then right, then left – a little over five miles in ten minutes over rivers and sounds, over bridges and through boroughs to the station. Then one snacks and talks. One sends postcards. One bides one’s time for one hour and twenty minutes, after which one boards, finds one’s seat, stows one’s bag, waits, then watches the city pass behind. Then, with secret pleasure, one reads clue one across.
One plans two hours for a ten minute ride, a fifteen minute wait. One plans for all disasters: traffic, blow-out, break-down, the tourist route, the better offer. One plans. One plans for everything.
If the first call yields no cab, one places a second.
Two hours for a ten minute ride, a fifteen minute wait. One hour and thirty-five minutes to drive 5.11 miles of unwalkable road. One has one’s fare in one’s pocket.
Generous tip. One hour and thirty-five minutes for 5.11 miles.
If the second call yields no cab, one places a third.
A Carefully-Crafted Agenda
2:45 – Call Taxi o 3:00 – Taxi Arrives • (South → University Way NE) <.1 mi • Right → NE 43rd St. .1 mi • Right → 11th Ave. NE .1 mi • Left → NE 45th St. .2 mi • Left → 5th Ave. NE <.1 mi • Merge → I-5 S. 3.4 mi • Exit (165A)→ James St. .3 mi • (Straight → 6th Ave.) .1 mi • Right → James St. .1 mi • Left → 3rd Ave. S .2 mi 5.11 miles o 3:10 – Arrive at Station o 4:30 – Board Train o 4:45 – Train Departs
112
Neither / Nor
Because it would imply something altogether different, he did not stand with his hands on his hips. That is, he did stand, but he did not stand with his hands so impatiently positioned, his elbows flared out into such angry triangles at his sides. His fingers meanwhile, with his arms thus hands thusly not positioned as such, did not flittle on his hips like a man in a cape, like an impatient superhero so superheroically postured may have flittled.
For the same reason, his arms were not crossed across his chest. He did not grip each bicep in existential desperation, that certain self-hugging dread. He did not wrap himself in himself to hope against the hopelessness of standing there flexed, adducted to so closed a posture.
As he stood, he was, in all appearance, hence all reality, not impatient, angry, nor existentially desperate; he was not anything crossed arms or hands on hips imply. He was instead all the things hands in pockets imply. He was all the things hands in pockets, upright but not rigid posture, worn, comfortable, and not entirely unhip clothes imply. He was slip-on shoes. He was a heavy bag at his feet. He was a satisfied grin. He was a little chilly.
It was from this you knew what he was. Just to see him, to see him unsuperheroic, unclosed, and standing as such, you knew right from the start that he was only there to leave there, that he stood there as such only because he would not stand there as such
113
114
forever. Though he made no move to move. You knew this from the hands in pockets, even before you knew from the heavy bag at his feet. And from the clothes that were hip and worn but not street hip, but not worn through. You knew, through it all, what he was: a leaving thing. He did not fit on that street, for a fitting thing would have akimboedly or adductedly stood. A fitting thing there, standing, would have glanced at his watch oftener, with more moue, or would have stood exactly as he was only on a different street, around a corner, across town, sipping bubble tea with the other hands-in-pocketses, though then his clothes would have been of that other sort and his bag would have been much less impressive.
As he stood, though, all was clear.
This has been said before. You knew it from the beginning when you watched him standing neither impatiently nor angrily with no outward sign of desperation on such a street that thronged around him in such a massive, heavy wave and pulse of angry, impatient, desperate motion.
115
&1
and you said you knew and you said it from the start, said it even when he thought it was this and not that or else that and not this, that it was, like he always said, either this or that, but you said you knew, said it with your hands in your pockets looking out and seeing shapes for patterns, seeing scribbles for graphs, not confusing the what-comes- after for the what-is-now, you told him there’s no connecting the unconnected, you told him there’s no sure, you told him there’s no absolute and sure and he said but if we stand here and wait, then, he said, things will either work out or they will not work out and you said but all we do is stand here and he said but we stand here and wait and if we’re standing here and waiting, then we must be standing here and waiting for something, something that either comes or doesn’t, he said, a thing that either happens or doesn’t and you said but all we do is stand and he said and wait and you said but I stand and he said but I stand and wait and you said there’s no connecting the unconnected and he said it’s
A then B and you said B? and
115
116
Either / Or
Neither of the Greenpeace panhandlers who surrounded him, armed with clipboards and pamphlets, who flanked him in passing and re-passing, sometimes one flank, sometimes another, sometimes crossing flanks just behind him such that they were on neither flank at all for a step as they crissed and crossed and told all those of the sidewalk all those Greenpeacey things, knew what he was. Not from the start. Not for sure, anyway.
Those of the street didn’t know what he was either. They couldn’t know. Not as they flittered past, past him and the Greenpeaces, as they walked into, out of, or past the bookstore in front of which he stood with his arms and hands as they were, behind whom the Greenpeaces paced their pace begging with clipboards the enterers, the exiters, the passersby to save the world via Visa or MasterCard, which only made the adducted and the akimboed enterers, exiters, and passersby (as their arms were inevitably positioned) whose postures were either slouched or rigid, faces stiff or desperate, paces too fast or too uncertain, quicken or question their paces, re-tighten or re-loosen their faces, straighten straighter or slouch more, hug themselves tighter or puff their chests more superheroically in impatience, anger, or desperation as they passed. That is, those of the street became more those-of-the-street-like when introduced to the Greenpeaces who, this way and that, told them effects, told them causes, told them of things to come, and so they (those of the street) arched away, away from them (the Greenpeaces), hence him (as
116
117
the center), into, from, or past the bookstore, though some who would have passed surely entered and some of those who would have entered passed and some of those who would have exited remained and still others who would have one of the three crossed the street just to avoid the situation altogether.
Through this, he remained in that way you knew, had to know, from the start, while those of the street didn’t know, just like the Greenpeaces who exaggerated them did not.
And you knew, seeing him there, the bubble-void behind him where no akimbo or adduct tread, where no face was slack or tight; where no implication of anger, impatience, or desperation paced: a bubble whose borders were patrolled by the
Greenpeaces, who pursued the enterers, exiters, and passerbys away from him, toward the store as they steered toward the store, away from them.
And this is how you knew what he was: the satisfied grin and the eyes straight ahead, half-closed, staring at but not at the cars that passed in the street before him. Cars that passed either slow to examine either the orange curb at his feet or the sign above it that discussed the nature of the orange curbs, or sped past those cars with horns and fingers, yelling angry, impatient, desperate things. The light at the corner turned from green to red without wasting time at yellow, which the drivers either noticed or didn’t, which caused the cross-traffic to either crash or pass.
The side of the street across the fast or slow cars, the considering or yelling drivers (crash/unnoticed or pass/aware), was a hectic mirror of his side. People moved,
117
118
shouldering for space to things and from them, into places and out of them. They passed by sometimes even when they’d intended to enter, etc. Somewhere in the throng, someone (someones) asked for money from those who moved about, which made those move-abouters who wore their arms across their chests hug tighter and the hip-holders position themselves hip-holdier, etc. One of the two postures, etc. Paces, etc.
And in this street of green to red, red to green, postures and paces, arms as such, fast and slow, and faces, he stood. And if you’d turned at just the right moment, you’d have seen behind him the Greenpeaces cross flanks (thus negating flanks) while a man behind them stepped half-in, half-out of the bookstore and a woman there between the
Greenpeaces and the enterer/exiter changing from a slouched to a rigid posture, from a slack to a tight face, from adducted to superheroed arms, from a desperate to an impatient implication such that on one side of him she was one set of positions and on the other she was the other. And if you had turned at just the right moment, you’d have seen right through them all. Right through the middle of things: neither either nor or. That is: if you had turned at just that right moment, you would have learned nothing you didn’t know already.
118
119
X / Y
Departure
Call Taxi 2:45 4: 45
119
120
On the graph above, place “time” on the x-axis, “effect” on the Y. Label the graph as such.
Note that the reality included here begins with the original agenda’d action at the original agenda’d time. For the purpose of this graph, these facts will be known as “first cause” (from which all subsequent effects will result) and “zero hour” (which marks the countdown to the 4:45 departure). From this point, assume that one unit of “time” equals one unit of “effect” such that a line projecting out from first cause / zero hour to the 4:45 departure – indicating linear progression – would climb at a precise forty-five degree angle. Draw a solid line on the graph accordingly between the two points, describing the two hours of linear reality from called taxi to departing train. From this point, draw a horizontal line – signifying the passage of time but not effect to the end of the graph.
Back at the point of change (4:45), continue the original 1:1 increase of both time and effect with a dotted line to the edge of the graph. Connect the end of the time-and-no- effect line to the end of the dotted time-equals-effect line. Lightly shade the triangle the space has created. Label it “Neither / Nor.”
120
121
Did / Did Not (~)
He did not look from the left to the right.
He did not look from the right to the left.
His eyes did not scan the road for signs of yellow or orange or red or whatever color they made them in this city.
He did not glance at his watch.
He did not stretch his back.
He did not move or look or seem to move or look.
He did not glance at his phone.
He did not stand in the road and shout.
He did not stand in the road and stomp his feet and shake his fists or glance at his watch and shout in the road, in the street, where the cars honked and the people stopped and stared.
They did not honk or stop or stare.
He did not fit.
The Greenpeaces did not confront him.
They did not ask him if he cared.
They did not ask him if he knew what had been done.
They did not ask him if he knew what would happen next.
They did not ask him if he knew what had to be done.
121
122
They did not ask him to give.
He did not give.
He did not lay a hand on them.
They did not go near him again.
He did not stand with his hands on his hips.
He did not stand with his arms crossed across his chest.
The cab did not come (~c).
He did not wait for one.
He did not even glance at his watch.
The space before him did not fill.
The space behind him did not fill.
He did not glance at anything to the right or left of, above or below where he stared before him.
His lips did not lose their grin.
His hands did not fidget in their pockets like his feet did not in his shoes like his bag lay tagged, sealed, ready and unmoving beside them.
The sign above him did not promise a taxi.
He did not shout.
He did not shake his fists.
He did not stand in the road and instruct.
He did not use the words “so,” or “therefore,” or “thus.”
122
123
He did not use if / then.
He did not say “if and only if.”
He did not have an agenda.
He did not, in the street, did not at all.
He did not demand anything.
He did not.
He did not call a fifth time (~5x).
123
124
This / That
This is not to say there weren’t echoes, that the voices that had said but weren’t saying didn’t say. This is not to say that he did not for as long as you knew. That you knew from the start that this was this says nothing of this being this from the start. From the start, it could have been that that led to this, that that was somehow the cause of this, that that and this were related or connected in somesuch, sideways way, that this evolved from that; that this was a consequence of that, that this had anything at all to do with that.
Or it could have been that this was only this and that that, that this was after that just because that preceded this: the temporal this and that, the sequential.
And this was maybe the echo. And the echo was filled with this, like the smack and clatter of peace and clipboards across the sidewalk you could still hear when you heard what had been heard.
124
125
&2
and the Greenpeaces knelt and prayed, clipboards and pens, clipboards and pens, their papers ariffle in the wind, held tight by the clip, showing wildfires and oiled seals, dead beached whales and the greens of Kilimanjaro, showing how it all moves from desert-war to SUV to cloud to rain to womb, how from cloud to rain to soil to root to stomach to muscle to steak to stomach to womb and they knelt and they prayed A to B to C to D to E to F to G to H to I to J to K to L to M to N to O to P to Q to R to S to T to U to V to W to
X to Y to Z and they prayed to the holy order, begged tithes from those of the street, spreading myth and gospel, truth and narrative and you said there they are and he looked and saw and
125
126
∀ / ∃
∀ 1 A • B
2 ∃B • C
∃B • D
1 Universal qualifiers denote absolutes – a truth of everything; an every time thing. Consider: a thing that's born will be a thing that dies. Consider: there will be a moment after this even if you're too dead to experience it (i.e. time persists even when action fails). If there is A, here, there must be B.
2 Existential qualifiers denote non-absolutes – a truth of something; a sometimes thing. Consider: sometimes a heart attack will kill you; sometimes it will put you on a diet. Consider: sometimes you proceed as planned; sometimes you retreat and plan again. Sometimes B leads to C, sometimes to D. That leads to this, though this can be any C through Z. This can be anything led to by that. This relationship must be clear. Existence is an active state of B leads to. From now to then. Fall and break. Attack to result of attack. Night to day. That: the harbinger of this. B leads to.
For this, a retreat is an effect of no C and a proceeding is an effect of C. The relationship is clear: existence is an active state of B leads to. And B can lead to any letter, so long as it leads to. This is clear.
126
127
One Knows / One Knows
One has planned for all disasters.
One knows the ways of things.
One knows how one thing meets another.
One knows how one thing causes another.
One knows that if the bomb is built and the fuse is lit, the bomb will explode.
One knows that if one calls the cab, one knows the cab will arrive.
One knows that one knows.
One knows how one thing leads to another.
One knows how cause causes effect.
One knows that if there is a call, there must be a cab.
One knows that if there is a cab, there must have been a call.
One knows this.
One knows that.
One knows exactly how that came to this.
One has planned for all disasters.
One has accounted for all things.
One knows one’s all things demand one thing lead to another.
One knows one’s all things demand one thing.
One knows one’s all things demand.
127
128
One knows one’s all things.
One knows one’s all.
One knows one.
One knows.
One.
128
129
Here / There
“Small steps, sir. Small steps.”
“Do you know, sir, that you, sir, can change the world?”
“They were small steps, sir, that brought us here.”
“Many small steps, sir.”
“Entropy, sir.”
“A butterfly bats its wings, sir.”
“A beautiful butterfly, sir.”
“Spots, sir.”
“Colors.”
“Spots and colors, sir. Gentle as anything.”
“Gentle and beautiful as anything, sir.”
“Bats its wings.”
“A small and gentle breeze, sir.”
“Imagine the breeze, a breath against a cheek, sir.”
“The gentle breath, sir, against a baby’s cheek.”
“And small things, sir.”
“Small things and small steps, sir.”
“Entropy, sir.”
“A butterfly, sir.”
129
130
“A beautiful butterfly, sir.”
“Bats its spots and colors.”
“Gentle and beautiful as anything, sir.”
“A breath of a breeze against a baby’s rosy cheeks, sir.”
“Until, sir.”
“Until hurricanes, sir.”
“Winds and terror.”
“Death and drowning.”
“Disease, sir.”
“Fetid water, sir.”
“Death now, sir.”
“And death later.”
“Small steps, sir.”
“Small steps.”
“But the way back, sir.”
“The way back, sir, is small steps, sir.”
“A dollar here, sir. Ten dollars there.”
“Small things, sir.”
“Gentle and beautiful as anything, sir.”
“As a wallet opens and closes, sir.”
“A gentle breeze, sir.”
130
131
“A new gentle breeze, sir. Another breath.”
“And small things, sir.”
“And small steps, sir.”
“And the waters are cleaned, sir.”
“And the walls are rebuilt, sir.”
“And the flowers bloom, sir.”
“And the flowers bloom, sir, in fields and parks.”
“Under blue skies, sir.”
“Where the world is clean, sir.”
“Under big, white, cottony clouds, sir.”
“Where the world is clean, sir.”
“Where the baby feels the gentle breeze.”
“Where the baby coos and giggles in the clean air.”
“Under the blue skies, sir.”
“Where the world is clean, sir.”
“Small things, sir.”
“Twenty dollars here, sir.”
“Fifty dollars there, sir.”
“Small things, sir.”
“The baby, sir. The baby’s soft cheek, sir.”
131
132
Being / Now
What he knew before he knew:
Existence is a state, an active state; being: a thing that will be, currently is, and everything however chaotic between. Likewise, the time “now” must be fluid and rolling, must adapt to succeeding chains of instances, of present moments. Now is the time it is because now continues to be the time it is. If frozen, if stopped, if pinned down, if now is, if even for a moment, then, it will never be now again. Consider: we were modern, so now we are contemporary.
So: to be is to continue being; to not be was; to be, to will be.
He is now.
He is now.
He is now.
He is now.
Existence and time continue inseparably. Now cause, then effect. Now cause, then effect. He is because he is now. He is now so he will be then. You knew then so you know now.
132
133
If / Then
In other words: x ⊃ c ~c ⊃ ~x ~x ≡ ~c c ≡ x ~x ⊃ ~c c ⊃ x c ≡ x ~x ≡ ~c x ∴ c ~c∴ ~x ~x ∴ ~c c ∴ x ∀c = x ∀x = c x • ~c
~c • x x • ~c
~c • x x • ~c
~c • x x • ~c
~c • x
x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c •
~x ∴ ~c c ∴ x ∀c = x ∀x = c
• ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x •
~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x ~c
• x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c
~c • x x • ~c
~c • x
• ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x •
~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x ~c
• x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~
~x ≡ ~c c ≡ x
• ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x • ~c • x •
133
134
&3
and he waited with his hands on his hips, tapping his foot, glancing at his watch now and now again before the seconds had even passed around, he waited adding, subtracting, tapping his foot, hands on his hips, tapping his foot and glancing at his watch as he stepped over the orange curb, put his head in the street and looked one way and then the other searching, desperate for yellow or orange or red or whatever color they made them in this city, checking the sign above him, reading it carefully, then looking, searching, desperate for color, tapping his foot, hands on his hips, glancing at his watch now and now again before the seconds had passed around, adding, subtracting, tapping his foot: an
A waiting for B or for not B as you stood behind him, hands in your pockets, looking at your feet and behind you the Greenpeaces explained how one slip, maybe you didn’t know, maybe a spill, an old car, oil on the street and, they said, it all comes around and, they said, everything is part of the system and, they said, everything leads to, so the old car oil-leaks on the street and the finches’ beaks fail to adapt and, they said, we don’t know we’ve lit the fuse, the cause is before us, but we light it and we all suffer, and he considered his Visa or MasterCard and you looked at your feet and smiled a grin and he searched the street, desperate, tapping his foot, hands on his hips, glancing at his watch now and now again as he tapped his foot, hands on his hips, yours in your pockets, theirs with clipboards and pens, clipboards and pens and
134
135
3:25
EFFECT
--- Neither / Nor Departure
Call Taxi 2:45 4:45 TIME
135
136
There are twelve squares between “2:24” and “4:45,” which means movement along the X-axis one square equals ten minutes of this reality. The agenda allows one and one half squares of horizontal movement for the taxi to come, an arrival that would be marked on the line at (1.5, 1.5), assuming that first cause yields first effect. Assuming, as one does, that A leads effortlessly into B.
It does not.
In this case, one is left standing and waiting, slowly understanding that the linear reality wrought by first cause remains despite the causal glitch: just because the taxi fails to come, does not alter the fact that one has only two hours to make it to the station; just because the machine of causal reality appears to have malfunctioned, does not remove the consequences one would meet by missing the train.
So one must design a second cause, which still exists on the 1:1 reality line, each cause connected directly by the lack of effect between them.
Assume a great deal of patience and self control initially abound on this either/or street. Count time by tens on the X-axis to 3:25. Label the line as such. Mark the point on the Y-axis that corresponds to this time. Label it “Call Taxi #2.”
Assume that A cannot not lead to B twice.
136
137
A ⊃ B
One strikes a match to achieve a struck match. Struck for cigarettes, perhaps. For a hint of illumination. For the smallest jobs of fire.
On the way, the struck match strikes the fuse by chance, which sparks its flame slowly toward the shell in the corner – an unnoticed dim red flash around the edges of the room as the match lights its cigarette, illuminates its passage; as it completes its small job and is shaken, cooled in water, and left out to dry on fireproof counters.
The lesson is, once lit, the match cannot control its burn. The way of things: from flame to spark to shell and, though the match was so safely, so thoroughly, so carefully extinguished, pyrotechnic stars are exploded from unnoticed corners because pyrotechnic stars are always exploded from unnoticed corners because pyrotechnic stars must be exploded from unnoticed corners. And so: blinded children, ruined flesh: the way of things.
Small steps, sir. Small steps.
137
138
&4
and those of the street pressed in on him, bumping, nudging, so he balanced on the curb, the orange under his feet, his last piece of land, as the shoulders of those who came of those who went of those who only passed by bumped him and nudged him as they walked wide circles around the Greenpeaces who stood midstream praying and begging, cutting a dry island into the stream of comers, goers, passers, pushing half of them to the stores and half of them to him and you beside him where they pushed him to the curb and bumped and nudged him off and he pushed back on and they nudged him off and he shoved back on and they bumped him off and he elbowed back on as on his watch the seconds passed and passed as he watched them, subtracting, subtracting, his hands on his hips whenever he didn’t push or shove or elbow and B floated at 4:45 and he subtracted, said A to B as he was bumped, A to B as he was nudged, A to B as he pushed and shoved and elbowed back to his narrow piece of ground and you leaned against the sign, only leaning, an A alone, and watched the sun on the windows next door and
138
139
A / B
One fills the shell. One measures carefully forty-four grams of potassium nitrate, forty-four grams of charcoal, six of sulfur, and six of dextrin and arranges it stars out in the hand-crafted, meal-coated rice hull. One adds a mound of flash in the center to meet the fuse (and a pinch more between the nitrate stars to be sure) before the shell is closed and wheat-paste sealed with three-inch strips of craft paper.
One has saturated the cotton string in damp black powder (equal parts nitrate and sulfur) and let it dry `til stiff and ripe. One wraps it around the edges, tucks it securely into the flash.
One strikes the match to achieve a lighted fuse. This is the lesson.
From the match to the fuse to the shell. The way of things: from flame to spark.
This without fail. But, though the fuse was so directly, so thoroughly, so carefully armed, no pyrotechnic stars are exploded from unnoticed corners even through pyrotechnic stars are always exploded from unnoticed corners because pyrotechnic stars must be exploded from unnoticed corners. And so: disappointed children, ruined celebrations: the way of things.
Small steps, gentlemen. Small steps nowhere.
139
140
Know / Learn
And there is a story. And if there is a story, it’s him and you. Him and you in the middle of a block, before an orange curb, below a sign, surrounded by nothing. Two indistinguishable people guarding your flanks. He stares and grins and you know. And nothing is said because nothing can be said because he stands there and stares and grins and you know. And this is not a story, only baggage at his feet and baggage at yours. The two of you leaving things, both of you, your slip-on-shoes, your jeans and shirts, your particular, absolute implications. Both of you leaving things that do not leave, and you, a knowing thing that does not learn. This is not a story.
And if there is a story, it’s him and you. Him and you coming to the middle, together, the distance around finally, not between. Him and you coming together at the middle of a block, between an orange curb and a sign, between enterers, exiters, passersby and the cars that pass slowly or with fingers and horns. And this is the story.
And if there is a story, it’s this.
140
141
Day / Night
Either: they lean back in their puffed-out chairs, folding the divider up, the footrests down. They look at each other, they look at their laps, they look out the window. They chase the next, heading east: day impatient for night, night for day, light for dark, now for later. The sun goes west 30 kilometers per second plus 80 miles per hour and they carve around mountains, through tunnels: across. Night happens fast and time adjusts to fit.
They hold hands and reserve dinner. They cover their legs with a blanket and study the crossword on his lap. He answers across. You answer down. They look at each other, they look at their laps, they look out the window.
Because of this: that.
And when he wonders he looks at you and says he wonders and how. And you think and you work it out, you and he, you start from the start and work through the end.
If A then B, he says. And you: if B then C. And together: if A then C. And he: aha. And you: all’s so. And he fills the answers across and you the down.
And because the sun will set, you will turn on the light. And because the time will come, they will dine. And because if A then B then C, they will sit and drink and they will look at each other and they will look at their laps and they will look out the window.
Their legs will be covered in blanket, their hands clasped between them.
141
142
And when he will wonder, he will say he wonders and how. And you will think and you will work it out, you and he. A’s and B’s and C’s, ahas, and all’s sos.
And night will come too soon and morning, then, before anyone expects it. And they will look. And he will wonder until aha. Aha until the puzzle’s done.
142
143
&5
and they called him sir and they nudged him to the edge and they called him sir and they nudged him over and they called him sir and he pushed back and they called him sir and they nudged him to the edge and they called him sir and they nudged him over and they called him sir and he searched for red or yellow or and they called him sir and time wouldn’t stop and they nudged him and time wouldn’t wait and he pushed back and you leaned against the sign, looked at your nails, picked a piece of lint off your shirt, and put your hands in your pockets, noticed how the sun shone sparkles off the brick of the building next door and they called him sir and they nudged him to the edge and they called him sir and they nudged him over and they called him sir and he pushed back and they called him sir and they nudged him to the edge and they called him sir and they nudged him over and
143
144
Earth / Sun
Or: they stand for a moment to look at each other and shake their heads. They stare at their watches, tap the faces, confirm with cellphone-satellited time, shake their heads, and rub their brows. A day that seemed too fast stops, the sun stuck, the Earth crawling its slow circle, an aching 30 kilometers per second with no plus per hour. And he puts an arm over and pats your back. They pick up their bags, sling them over their shoulders, bounce them to re-feel their weight.
And he says he wonders because it’s so. And you think and you work out the has- been-worked-out, you and he. All the As so Bs so Cs. They check and re-check from beginning to end. And they retrace their have-been-stepped steps, re-charge the has-been- charged card for a room they have met before. They drop their bags in the corner where their bags have already been dropped and you flop down on the couch where you have already flopped as he dials an eight he has already dialed for an outside line he has already reached to reserve a train he has already reserved.
And they look at each other and shake their heads. They stare at their watches, tap the faces, cellphone confirm, shake their heads, and rub their brows.
The sun is up, where it will remain for far too long.
He wonders about A, you about B, and they both swear to C.
144
145
And because the sun won’t set, you will close the blinds. And because time is lost, they will dine. And because if A then not C, they will sit and drink and they will look at each other’s watches and shake their heads. They will sleep on slept-on beds and wake earlier than before.
And when he wonders he will say he wonders and how. And there’s nothing you can say in return.
And night will come right on time, like the morning later. And they will look.
And he will demand a C. And you will insist upon it. Insist until C.
145
146
4:05
EFFECT
---Neither / Nor Departure
Call Taxi #2
Call Taxi 2:45 4:45 3
: 25 TIME
146
147
There are eight squares between “3:25” and “4:45” signifying one hour and twenty minutes remaining between “Call Taxi #2” to departure. One has planned for this, twelve squares allotted in the original agenda for the one square journey. Faith in the causal is not marred by moments of unpredictability. The global effects stemming from first cause are infinitely complex, they say, too complex to clearly see.
In the updated agenda, the taxi is called at 3:25 and it arrives at 3:40, then right right left left merge exit right left and one reaches the station at 3:55, allowing 50 minutes
(five full squares) still to board. All of this would be marked on the graph above unless the call to the taxi company again fails to yield the only result it can yield.
This is the case.
Time continues with effect following, each moment of time drawing closer to that final effect, after which one has no plan but retreat if failure.
By 4:05 (eight boxes from first cause) this reality is absolute: either the taxi comes and the train is caught and the consequences are avoided or the taxi does not come and the train is missed and the consequences are realized. There is by now only one box
(ten minutes) to spare.
Imagine this rarified perspective. Imagine the ramifications of an unfulfilled third call. Imagine the consequences at hand. Imagine the voice on the phone on a busy street communicating all of this along with all the details of the re-updated agenda.
Mark “4:05” on the X-axis at the appropriate location and “Call Taxi #3” at the corresponding point on the Y. Underline each for emphasis.
147
148
Proceed / Retreat
You and he stood as if waiting, as if expecting the once-expected to pull through even now, even too late. You and he stood before the No Parking curb, stood under the taxi stand sign. And if a taxi came. And if a taxi had come. And where were you. And where would you be. All the many things he didn’t explain to you, you didn’t explain to him. There is a course for the taxi cab, there is a course for the no taxi cab. There is a course for two filled seats, there is a course for two empty seats. There are crossed words and slipped-off slip-on shoes and window staring, and there is checking in, unpacking, slipping off slipped-on shoes, re-reserving, re-scheduling, and window-staring. There is action, there is other action. There is one way, there is the other. And there he stood, hands in his pockets, bags at his feet, grinning and. Grinning and. Hands in his pockets, bags at his feet, grinning and.
And you. Bags and hands. Grinning and. You.
148
149
Said 2
,” he would have liked to have said but he wasn’t the kind of man to say it, and couldn’t have, besides, because he didn’t quite know, not yet, and because his face, wet and red and exhausted and desperate, was too in motion, was too in flux to begin, with the sidewalk so full, overflowing, shoving him and jostling, his bag ever-kicked, ever- tripping, he couldn’t have said it even if he could have said
149
150
N/Either / N/Or
He stood with his hands in his pockets, grinning ahead with you beside him, the space before him as empty as the space behind. He was neither superheroed nor adducted; neither impatient nor desperate.
They did not look at each other, they did not look at their laps, they had no windows. They did not even glance at their watches.
They may have wondered, they may have not.
There was no because of from which they could act while the gap grew larger all the time.
150
151
&6
and the Greenpeaces explained the connections and he explained everything he’d done and the Greenpeaces explained how death traveled so swiftly along its causal destiny, from there to here and he explained how you and he’d bought the tickets early and the
Greenpeaces explained the butterfly and he explained how one hour and forty-five minutes for 5.11 miles and the Greenpeaces explained how we’d done it all wrong from the start and he explained how he’d done everything right, everything right from the start and the Greenpeaces explained and he explained but you didn’t explain anything except once something that would have solved everything but you were facing the other way and whispering into the wind and
151
152
Said 3
,” he would have liked to have said, but he wasn’t the kind of man to say it but was instead the kind of man to scream, his face wet and red and exhausted and desperate, his arms akimboed, superheroed at his sides, he was exactly the kind of man to scream at them, at the Greenpeaces, about how it was right, how it was right from the start, and did they hear him, he did everything from the start exactly as it should have been done from the start and, listen to him, if death could accident across the world, then, if it works, if there’s a system, any fucking system at all, he was the kind of man to scream, then he should be able to on-purpose himself across a city unless there was an infinity of things between and it was all not so simple, all not so easy and here and there, this and that
152
153
4:35
EFFECT
--- Neither / Nor Departure
Call Taxi #3
Call Taxi #2
4:05 Call Taxi 2:45 4:45 3
: 25 TIME
153
154
One square of time immediatly after “2:45” equals one square of time just before
“4:45.” Each square can be divided equally into ten even parts that can themselves be broken into sixy equal pieces. Objectively, there is no quantifiable difference between the squares. Subjectively, however, the squares are distinct and altogether different.
If, for example, one looks at one’s watch every five minutes, then to that person time moves only in great five-minute leaps. The minutes between are never seen in the present, so are not experienced. He is now at 2:45. He is now at 2:50. Time speeds past unnoticed, bounding ever forward from first cause to last in great, wide strides.
But if one looks at one’s watch every five seconds, then to that person, time is a different, slow event. Where the former one would travel one hour into the future in twelve looks, the latter would take 720 glances for the same duration. He is now at 2:40.
He is now still at 2:40. Time slows, every action is metered and controlled, every minute is noticed a dozen times, crawling those thousand steps to last cause.
If one were of the latter’s like, the last call would make perfect sense. In this case, at 3:35, there were still hours worth of time. With time measured in glances, one square watched at five second intervals would be plenty of time. One could still send postcards, one could still enjoy a snack.
The error here is easy to spot.
The subsequent call, the 4:44 call to the source, to the woman at the switches controlling the train, is a matter of narrative and thus will not be remarked upon here.
154
155
&7
and he called, he told the lady the taxi will come, while the people pushed, while the comers shoved, while the goers nudged, while the passers knocked against, he told the lady the taxi will come while shoving his way back to his tiny space on the edge, he told the lady it won’t be long, as the Greenpeaces explained about causes, he told the lady if she could hold it just for a minute, for ten minutes, as they called him sir, as they nudged him over, he told her to just hold the train ten minutes, there’s sure to be a taxi, there’s sure to be a ride, there’s sure to be a way and
155
156
Said 4
,” he would have liked to have said, but he wasn’t the kind of man to say it, so he took the nearest Greenpeace and pushed him back into the crowd, into the comers and goers and passers, he felt the rough hemp of the Greenpeace shirt over the body, felt the solid thing of him in his hands and connected, one person to another, connected long enough to shove him back, shove him back so hard he hit the crowd and tripped to the sidewalk below, so hard he tripped to the sidewalk and let his clipboard fall and slide across the space between walkers, the flyers, unclipped, flying free while he, standing over him, screamed something, something fierce, something neither, something nor, and you stood grinning in your expanding bubble-void
156
157
Res / Rei
4:45 and everything stopped.
He stood staring for a moment, something grinning on your face, his phone not quite open, not quite shut, the voice on the other end lost in crackle and white noise.
Everyone looked. Everyone stared.
The Greenpeaces had collected their clipboards, had chased stray forms through the street and had gathered them in messy piles against their chests. They didn’t get too close, but remained close enough that people had to walk around. That is, you looked like a group, the four of you. You looked suddenly, all together.
They’d stopped, the Greenpeaces, they’d stopped, stooped with forms, and stared at it not quite open, not quite shut in his palm. Looked at it as it crackled and hissed, not quite language, not quite noise. The four of them stared and waited. None of them understood it all, though you knew. None of them understood it all until they heard the whistle.
Some of those of the street heard it, connected it to a memory. A trip or a dream or a movie or something in which a whistle, that particular whistle, dopplerized in red shift, that whistle that starts high and then slides low, lower even than its stationary pitch, as it turns away, as it cuts through the mountains, as it carves around the trees. Maybe they remembered waving, maybe they remembered being waved to. Maybe it was traffic.
Waiting at the gates. Maybe it was all this. Maybe as his phone screamed the whistle
157
158
from the static everyone knew a different something. Maybe one knew leaving, one left, one late, one just the novelty of the gates, the counter-balanced, unmanned perfection; maybe a different image for everyone on the street. Maybe, but the four of you. The four of you saw it all together. The four of you stopped and stared.
None of you saw a wave. None of you waved. No gates. No unmanned perfection.
Not even a train. No train, no empty seats, nothing that cut through mountains or carved around trees.
Everyone stared at it in his palm, between open and closed, and heard the whistle’s sliding frequency, and then looked up, for a moment, at each other. You looked up, looked at them one by one and you all knew: 4:46. And even something beyond that.
And he snapped his phone shut and everything started again. Except him.
158
Effect / Cause
EFFECT
--- Neither / Nor Departure Call Taxi #4
Call Taxi #3
Call Taxi #2 3 4 4:05 Call Taxi 2:45 4:45 : : 25 35 TIME
159
160
First cause at “2:45,” time proceeds forward one unit for every one unit of effect.
Passage of time is synonymous with, is equal to, is a mirror of the passage of those tiny circuits: cause to effect – an endless circuit that becomes a process, every effect becoming (in its active state) the cause of another effect which becomes the cause of another effect which becomes the cause of another effect which becomes.
Past the details, the what is the A the what is the B, there is this: the system. The that-to-this locomotion of this active being.
So the Y-axis is indivisible between new circuits, the new sub-causes from which to effect because there is no accounting for Cs and Ds between beginning and end. There is no accounting for the infinitely complex. It moves steadily, its movement in time with time because existence is an active state of being in which B must lead to.
So time continues compulsively as cause falls to effect inertially.
And it all works and the taxi comes, or it doesn’t and it doesn’t. But even then, one can react, retrace, recharge. There is a plan even for ruined plans.
But: if it’s fucked. If causality crumbles. If one is left in a void on a curb. If one does not follow either the plan or the ruined plan plan. If one does not react. If there is a gap in the causal chain. If one does not fill it with action:
Then the actor would not act.
Then the causal chain would pass the actless actor by.
Then the distance between how-should (dotted) and how-is (horizontal) would increase 50% per unit of time.
161
Then the actless actor would be lost in the ever-expanding hole between time and effect.
Then the actless actor would both be and not be.
Then the actless actor would neither be nor not be.
162
Neither / Nor
He stood with his hands in his pockets, grinning ahead with you beside him, the space before him as empty as the space behind. He was neither superheroed nor adducted; neither impatient nor desperate. You, he: together.
162
163
Now / Being
Existence is a state, an active state; being: a thing that will be, currently is, and is everything however chaotic between. But if now is ever then, it will never be now again.
So existence and time continue. Existence and time are inseparable.
So he is now.
Like he is now.
Because he was then.
And he is now.
163
164
&8
and they heard the whistle and you shut the phone and everything settled, everything slowed, everything calmed and you did neither B nor not B – neither either nor or – like you had done from the start in your bubble outside and he joined and the bubble grew and he stood and you stood and he pocketed hands like you had pocketed hands and he and you, bag at your feet, the gap all over, a gap between him, you: them and
164
165
Neither / Nor
He was as he stood, lost his akimbo, lost his superhero. He was as he stood with hands in his pockets, a posture that said everything, clothes that did not. He was as you stood, as you stood from the start: outside the nudge, outside the pitch.
As they stood, all was clear. This has been said before. It was known from the beginning, when they watched standing neither impatiently nor angrily with no outward sign of desperation on such a street that thronged around them in such a massive, heavy wave and pulse of angry, impatient, desperate motion.
165
166
&9
and the gap eventually grew so large they lost the cause from which to effect and he turned to you and shrugged, his grin adjusted, and you, ever you, shrugged back and you both unpocketed and you both stood still and you raised your arm and
166