(no subject)
posting from a starbucks, a work-in-progress, the product of writing for the past 40 minutes without pause:
We were traveling underground. How long had it been, since we started traveling? I'm not really sure, and what does it matter, anyway? Don't ask me these kinds of questions because I'm not prepared to answer them, I'm not in a state of mind to answer them, and what does it matter, anyway?
Well it was very dark, that's easy enough to tell you. It was very dark and there were many of us in the beginning, a great deal of us wanted to strike out on this grand adventure, and then we stared at the mouth of the hole and I think it was then that we realized how it wasn't going to be a grand adventure, we were simply grand idiots. Either it was then or when the bears attacked that we realized this grand realization.
They weren't necessarily "bears," though, not "bears" in the classical sense of moderately peaceful omnivorous creatures with large paws and black noses, but that's the closest analogue, the term we could all agree on after there weren't so many of us, just a few actually, just a few who were left. The "bears," and here I will drop the significant intonations that tell you I am thinking of the word with quotation marks around it, and hereon they will just be bears, they had great big claws, great big vicious claws, and they lumbered very quickly, and their giant bodies were covered with fur. I would tell you the color of the fur but it was dark and also I was very scared for my life, so things like colors, concepts like shades or hues, these things escaped me.
What mattered in the end was the unlimited savagery of the beasts. I closed my eyes and moved, moved very quickly or as quickly as I thought I could, I pushed people aside without thinking, a rapid-fire sequence of crimes that were not premeditated, but in a civilized place, a crowded shopping avenue or amusement park, there would be shouts. "Hey, you!" they would yell. "No manners at all!" the grandmothers would hiss through their wrinkled lips. There was nothing approaching an indignant response in the tunnel when the bears attacked, ripping ripping ripping, tearing and tearing, there were barely screams, there were only screams at first until they were replaced by something much less than screams, screams are the response of a violated consciousness, but nothing was conscious there, not at that time.
Can you imagine? No, you can't, and neither could I. This was not something to be imagined, or dreamt of, this was not a thing to be conceived of, to conceive is to give birth to a thought, but there weren't any thoughts, I think I already told you that. But neither is this a thing to be remembered, so why should you trust me in the first place? You can't, really. You can't trust these words, because they will betray you, they will escape at first chance, like an alleycat, taken in and nursed to perfect health, leaping off of the fire escape railing, to freedom, to brutal freedom, back to the darkness that bruised it, scabbed its skin, pulled away at its fur, leaving behind only reminders of pain and nothing good. Nothing good can come of words because when there is only darkness and un-screams, non-screams, sounds of such suffering as I could never have predicted, the words are the first thing to go. Before I closed my eyes, and shut my ears to the sounds, and before my lungs seemed to explode with every wracking breath, before all that, I had no words. Words were the first thing to fail me, before I eventually collapsed to the ground, exhausted, so completely exhausted that I fell asleep even though my feeble mind seemed to be shouting at me, "Hey, you! No manners at all, collapsing here, where there is still very obviously a great deal of danger!"
And when I woke up I remembered nothing, nothing at all. I picked myself up off of the ground, and waited until my eyes readjusted to the absence of light, ignoring the blood on my clothes, there was so much blood, how could I have ignored it? But I did, irregardless, and stepped over the dead, people whose funerals I would later attend and still, still, even then, at such ceremonies where words are so incredibly needed by the mourning families, the wives, the husbands, the children, it's not the quantity of the words that matters, but rather the significance, the meaning, the quality, and so at a funeral one could simply say, "I'm sorry," and why is this person apologizing? This hypothetical person did not kill anyone, what are they sorry for? But to know that someone sympathizes, this person may not understand, who can understand, really, but that this someone attempts, attempts at comfort, at solace, that is usually enough.
At one of these funerals for one of these dead, this dead person happened to be very wealthy, and left behind a lot of that wealth, unspent, at his funeral reception I had a very strange encounter. This dead person had no family, none that I knew of, only a girlfriend, and this girlfriend was in attendance, and many of his friends. He was young, not so very young, but young enough to be popular in a number of crowds in the city, he could not walk across a shopping avenue or through an amusement park without someone recognizing him and the inevitable two and a half minutes of meandering conversation that would follow before goodbyes and promises to meet again at some undisclosed and undetermined, indeterminable location and time. There were lots of these kinds of people at this funeral, all offering condolences, a multitude of words, and here, again, as always, as has always happened, words failed.
The girlfriend cried until her body could not biologically create any more tears, and her skin seemed very much like transparent vellum. Nothing made any sense to her, neither the death of her boyfriend nor this funeral nor anything else, really. Once the lens is shattered it cannot be replaced, no matter how well-constructed the camera may be, it cannot be replaced as it was, only a facsimile can take its place. And if someone should suffer very, very much, then they will have facsimiles of facsimiles, ersatz perspective filtered through ersatz eyes, again and again until everything is so unlike any conception of reality that it is assumed everything is very real. It is a circle, a very terrible circle. The girlfriend was about to embark on such a terrible circle.
I was so frustrated with the other guests that I stepped into a bathroom to escape, one of many in the dead man's house. There were marble counters and gold-plated fixtures, and the faucet handles themselves may have been real diamond. The towels were very soft, and the mirror was impeccably free of spots or stains, very much unlike what I was used to. I turned off the lights and waited for my eyes to adjust to the absence of light and turned one of the handles which I soon discovered was the handle for cold water. I discovered this when my eyes had finished adjusting and I leaned forward into the darkness and rinsed my face by cupping my hands together to form a sort of bowl, which I filled with cold water, and the coldness was surprising at first but not surprising enough to cause me to break apart my sort of bowl, and I splashed this bowlful of water onto my face. I repeated this six times before there was a knock on the door and a quiet voice asked, "Hello, is someone inside? If so, please excuse me, I'm sorry, I'll wait."
I splashed cold water onto my face again and turned off the faucet and wiped my face dry with one of the very soft towels and turned on the lights and opened the door, and there she was, the girlfriend of the dead man, she appeared very beautiful and very sad, as is appropriate of a girlfriend of a dead man at his funeral reception. She wore a men's blazer, and dress shirt, and skirt, and tights, and high-heel shoes, all in black, as was her hair, and if she had not looked away at that moment I would have predicted, incorrectly, that her eyes were black as well.
"Hello," I said.
She did not respond for a very long time and I could not begin to imagine what was occurring inside her heart at that moment. I have never loved the dead, and I would say that if I loved a woman and she died I would not stop loving her, at least not for a very long time, at least two years, that is the proper time, and maybe at least forever, maybe that is for the best. When she finally spoke, she spoke in a quiet voice, and she said, "Would you please stay after the other guests have left," and this was not a question, nor was it a demand, it was simply a statement, almost whispered, and considering the context I could not refuse. It was an invitation to speak to the dead. This was something impossible at a funeral reception but perhaps it was possible after the funeral reception in the dead man's house, with the dead man's girlfriend.
Two hours later the last of the guests had left. I walked through hallways which seemed to be pantomimes of each other, very austere pantomimes. I returned to the main parlor, which was now marked by wine glasses of varying emptiness. I sat on a large leather chair and it was very comfortable. I waited.
We were traveling underground. How long had it been, since we started traveling? I'm not really sure, and what does it matter, anyway? Don't ask me these kinds of questions because I'm not prepared to answer them, I'm not in a state of mind to answer them, and what does it matter, anyway?
Well it was very dark, that's easy enough to tell you. It was very dark and there were many of us in the beginning, a great deal of us wanted to strike out on this grand adventure, and then we stared at the mouth of the hole and I think it was then that we realized how it wasn't going to be a grand adventure, we were simply grand idiots. Either it was then or when the bears attacked that we realized this grand realization.
They weren't necessarily "bears," though, not "bears" in the classical sense of moderately peaceful omnivorous creatures with large paws and black noses, but that's the closest analogue, the term we could all agree on after there weren't so many of us, just a few actually, just a few who were left. The "bears," and here I will drop the significant intonations that tell you I am thinking of the word with quotation marks around it, and hereon they will just be bears, they had great big claws, great big vicious claws, and they lumbered very quickly, and their giant bodies were covered with fur. I would tell you the color of the fur but it was dark and also I was very scared for my life, so things like colors, concepts like shades or hues, these things escaped me.
What mattered in the end was the unlimited savagery of the beasts. I closed my eyes and moved, moved very quickly or as quickly as I thought I could, I pushed people aside without thinking, a rapid-fire sequence of crimes that were not premeditated, but in a civilized place, a crowded shopping avenue or amusement park, there would be shouts. "Hey, you!" they would yell. "No manners at all!" the grandmothers would hiss through their wrinkled lips. There was nothing approaching an indignant response in the tunnel when the bears attacked, ripping ripping ripping, tearing and tearing, there were barely screams, there were only screams at first until they were replaced by something much less than screams, screams are the response of a violated consciousness, but nothing was conscious there, not at that time.
Can you imagine? No, you can't, and neither could I. This was not something to be imagined, or dreamt of, this was not a thing to be conceived of, to conceive is to give birth to a thought, but there weren't any thoughts, I think I already told you that. But neither is this a thing to be remembered, so why should you trust me in the first place? You can't, really. You can't trust these words, because they will betray you, they will escape at first chance, like an alleycat, taken in and nursed to perfect health, leaping off of the fire escape railing, to freedom, to brutal freedom, back to the darkness that bruised it, scabbed its skin, pulled away at its fur, leaving behind only reminders of pain and nothing good. Nothing good can come of words because when there is only darkness and un-screams, non-screams, sounds of such suffering as I could never have predicted, the words are the first thing to go. Before I closed my eyes, and shut my ears to the sounds, and before my lungs seemed to explode with every wracking breath, before all that, I had no words. Words were the first thing to fail me, before I eventually collapsed to the ground, exhausted, so completely exhausted that I fell asleep even though my feeble mind seemed to be shouting at me, "Hey, you! No manners at all, collapsing here, where there is still very obviously a great deal of danger!"
And when I woke up I remembered nothing, nothing at all. I picked myself up off of the ground, and waited until my eyes readjusted to the absence of light, ignoring the blood on my clothes, there was so much blood, how could I have ignored it? But I did, irregardless, and stepped over the dead, people whose funerals I would later attend and still, still, even then, at such ceremonies where words are so incredibly needed by the mourning families, the wives, the husbands, the children, it's not the quantity of the words that matters, but rather the significance, the meaning, the quality, and so at a funeral one could simply say, "I'm sorry," and why is this person apologizing? This hypothetical person did not kill anyone, what are they sorry for? But to know that someone sympathizes, this person may not understand, who can understand, really, but that this someone attempts, attempts at comfort, at solace, that is usually enough.
At one of these funerals for one of these dead, this dead person happened to be very wealthy, and left behind a lot of that wealth, unspent, at his funeral reception I had a very strange encounter. This dead person had no family, none that I knew of, only a girlfriend, and this girlfriend was in attendance, and many of his friends. He was young, not so very young, but young enough to be popular in a number of crowds in the city, he could not walk across a shopping avenue or through an amusement park without someone recognizing him and the inevitable two and a half minutes of meandering conversation that would follow before goodbyes and promises to meet again at some undisclosed and undetermined, indeterminable location and time. There were lots of these kinds of people at this funeral, all offering condolences, a multitude of words, and here, again, as always, as has always happened, words failed.
The girlfriend cried until her body could not biologically create any more tears, and her skin seemed very much like transparent vellum. Nothing made any sense to her, neither the death of her boyfriend nor this funeral nor anything else, really. Once the lens is shattered it cannot be replaced, no matter how well-constructed the camera may be, it cannot be replaced as it was, only a facsimile can take its place. And if someone should suffer very, very much, then they will have facsimiles of facsimiles, ersatz perspective filtered through ersatz eyes, again and again until everything is so unlike any conception of reality that it is assumed everything is very real. It is a circle, a very terrible circle. The girlfriend was about to embark on such a terrible circle.
I was so frustrated with the other guests that I stepped into a bathroom to escape, one of many in the dead man's house. There were marble counters and gold-plated fixtures, and the faucet handles themselves may have been real diamond. The towels were very soft, and the mirror was impeccably free of spots or stains, very much unlike what I was used to. I turned off the lights and waited for my eyes to adjust to the absence of light and turned one of the handles which I soon discovered was the handle for cold water. I discovered this when my eyes had finished adjusting and I leaned forward into the darkness and rinsed my face by cupping my hands together to form a sort of bowl, which I filled with cold water, and the coldness was surprising at first but not surprising enough to cause me to break apart my sort of bowl, and I splashed this bowlful of water onto my face. I repeated this six times before there was a knock on the door and a quiet voice asked, "Hello, is someone inside? If so, please excuse me, I'm sorry, I'll wait."
I splashed cold water onto my face again and turned off the faucet and wiped my face dry with one of the very soft towels and turned on the lights and opened the door, and there she was, the girlfriend of the dead man, she appeared very beautiful and very sad, as is appropriate of a girlfriend of a dead man at his funeral reception. She wore a men's blazer, and dress shirt, and skirt, and tights, and high-heel shoes, all in black, as was her hair, and if she had not looked away at that moment I would have predicted, incorrectly, that her eyes were black as well.
"Hello," I said.
She did not respond for a very long time and I could not begin to imagine what was occurring inside her heart at that moment. I have never loved the dead, and I would say that if I loved a woman and she died I would not stop loving her, at least not for a very long time, at least two years, that is the proper time, and maybe at least forever, maybe that is for the best. When she finally spoke, she spoke in a quiet voice, and she said, "Would you please stay after the other guests have left," and this was not a question, nor was it a demand, it was simply a statement, almost whispered, and considering the context I could not refuse. It was an invitation to speak to the dead. This was something impossible at a funeral reception but perhaps it was possible after the funeral reception in the dead man's house, with the dead man's girlfriend.
Two hours later the last of the guests had left. I walked through hallways which seemed to be pantomimes of each other, very austere pantomimes. I returned to the main parlor, which was now marked by wine glasses of varying emptiness. I sat on a large leather chair and it was very comfortable. I waited.