(no subject)
i finished that story i was working on!
check it out @ wpham.com under fiction: "the unlimited savagery."
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After some time she appeared out of a hallway, still in black, and smiling slightly. A picture of the dead man and the woman still alive, framed, occupied a level of a wooden bookshelf, painted gray. There was a coffee table of a subtle color. She sat on top of it, tucked her skirt underneath her legs, uncrossed, and looked at me, still smiling, still in black, I looked at her and had nothing to say, words failed once again, as always, as they ever had and ever would. But she spoke, she spoke quietly.
"When did you meet him?" she asked and it was very clear who this "him" was, her tone was hushed, appropriately reverent, reverence for the deceased who had done such great things while alive but now was dead. But I could not summon reverence, I had not loved him though he had been my friend, though I had been with him when he died, for some reason my tone was flat, I wanted sympathy, to empathize, but the sounds were not there, the pitches and tones of sympathy were absent.
"We met at our university. At first, from a distance, he didn't seem the type I'd be friends with. I was comfortable with my little group, we amused ourselves in our small ways, and he was a personality, a name, a vastness that I never thought I would approach in any sense of amiability or camaraderie. I mean, you yourself saw the sorts of people here today, it was the same back then, a name surrounded by other names, never people, they never seemed like people to me. It was judgmental of me but it was the way I perceived things, and yes, so often reality betrays perceptions, and that was how it was with him."
We were in her bedroom, now, their bedroom, and I looked at a painting hanging on the wall, a Magritte reproduction, a pipe that is not a pipe. She did not say anything so I continued.
"We met in a literature class. We were studying testimonial fiction, fiction that testifies, that bears witness," and here I laughed a short, dry, laugh, the only laughing I did that entire year, "and so how funny it is that now I am testifying about him, I am bearing witness to his life because he is dead. I'm sorry, I don't know why I laughed, but it is ironic, isn't it? A kind of irony, I think. He certainly would have thought so, I imagine, because he was the one with the sense of humor in this class, always the cutting remark, not in an insulting way, because that wasn't his personality, but cutting to a kind of humorous truth, a sense that there was humor in everything, even in fiction that attempts to evoke the Holocaust, there's humor there and he found it. He always found the absurdity in it, the core, the 'essence' was how our professor spoke of it, the carefully placed word that unraveled the whole thing, and that is itself absurd, that a single word should pull at the seams of an entire work, but it happened, he did it, whether the author wanted it to happen or not, that was how he was, and that was how he distinguished himself from a name, from an archetype, to become a person to me, my antisocial judgmental self, my wry expressions whenever someone misspoke. I was not an ideal classmate, and yet he sought me out."
I turned my head away from the painting and she was standing there, right there, behind my right shoulder, and I turned away quickly, back to the painting, trying to escape that expression, that quiet smile, it sent a shock through me, unexpected but not unwelcome, and I attempted my very best to suppress it. But I had imagined the expression earlier that evening, when she said to stay, I had wanted the expression, not only to see it but to experience it, at this proximity, I had imagined it exactly as it had happened, with her behind my right shoulder, and that quiet smile. She said nothing and I looked down, at the hardwood floor of this bedroom, of their bedroom, and continued.
check it out @ wpham.com under fiction: "the unlimited savagery."
---
After some time she appeared out of a hallway, still in black, and smiling slightly. A picture of the dead man and the woman still alive, framed, occupied a level of a wooden bookshelf, painted gray. There was a coffee table of a subtle color. She sat on top of it, tucked her skirt underneath her legs, uncrossed, and looked at me, still smiling, still in black, I looked at her and had nothing to say, words failed once again, as always, as they ever had and ever would. But she spoke, she spoke quietly.
"When did you meet him?" she asked and it was very clear who this "him" was, her tone was hushed, appropriately reverent, reverence for the deceased who had done such great things while alive but now was dead. But I could not summon reverence, I had not loved him though he had been my friend, though I had been with him when he died, for some reason my tone was flat, I wanted sympathy, to empathize, but the sounds were not there, the pitches and tones of sympathy were absent.
"We met at our university. At first, from a distance, he didn't seem the type I'd be friends with. I was comfortable with my little group, we amused ourselves in our small ways, and he was a personality, a name, a vastness that I never thought I would approach in any sense of amiability or camaraderie. I mean, you yourself saw the sorts of people here today, it was the same back then, a name surrounded by other names, never people, they never seemed like people to me. It was judgmental of me but it was the way I perceived things, and yes, so often reality betrays perceptions, and that was how it was with him."
We were in her bedroom, now, their bedroom, and I looked at a painting hanging on the wall, a Magritte reproduction, a pipe that is not a pipe. She did not say anything so I continued.
"We met in a literature class. We were studying testimonial fiction, fiction that testifies, that bears witness," and here I laughed a short, dry, laugh, the only laughing I did that entire year, "and so how funny it is that now I am testifying about him, I am bearing witness to his life because he is dead. I'm sorry, I don't know why I laughed, but it is ironic, isn't it? A kind of irony, I think. He certainly would have thought so, I imagine, because he was the one with the sense of humor in this class, always the cutting remark, not in an insulting way, because that wasn't his personality, but cutting to a kind of humorous truth, a sense that there was humor in everything, even in fiction that attempts to evoke the Holocaust, there's humor there and he found it. He always found the absurdity in it, the core, the 'essence' was how our professor spoke of it, the carefully placed word that unraveled the whole thing, and that is itself absurd, that a single word should pull at the seams of an entire work, but it happened, he did it, whether the author wanted it to happen or not, that was how he was, and that was how he distinguished himself from a name, from an archetype, to become a person to me, my antisocial judgmental self, my wry expressions whenever someone misspoke. I was not an ideal classmate, and yet he sought me out."
I turned my head away from the painting and she was standing there, right there, behind my right shoulder, and I turned away quickly, back to the painting, trying to escape that expression, that quiet smile, it sent a shock through me, unexpected but not unwelcome, and I attempted my very best to suppress it. But I had imagined the expression earlier that evening, when she said to stay, I had wanted the expression, not only to see it but to experience it, at this proximity, I had imagined it exactly as it had happened, with her behind my right shoulder, and that quiet smile. She said nothing and I looked down, at the hardwood floor of this bedroom, of their bedroom, and continued.