Straight News

Straight News

 

Henry and June lived in Pastrami-on-Wye, near the municipal museum. One day they go to thinking and agreed it was about time for them to look to the inevitable and settle up on their wills. Obviously, Henry would leave everything to June and June would leave everything to Henry. That's reciprocity. That's fair. They filed the documents with the same lawyer. Signed on the dotted line.

As they were leaving the lawyerdom, June queried about a mutual demise. If we board the same omnibus, and it crashes, all we've done's for naught, innit? Henry saw the beauty of the logic immediately. They could no longer be together.

They separately moved away from the house near the municipal museum on separate days. Henry moved to Calling-on-Avon and June moved to Stallion-on-Mare. Distant communication was allowed, but they could never be in the same zone, earthquaky or otherwise.

Strangely, they grew apart. Phone calls grew infrequent. Soon, they were essentially strangers.

In December, two airplanes hit one another mid-air. June was on one, and Henry was on the other. It is sad to note an additional 213 people had to die, for this inevitable nemesis by the gods to occur.

 

*

 

"That's the thing about these Russians. What's up with their names? I don't mean they've all got their fathers' names in their names. That's easy enough. But what about having so many Tolstoys? So there's the War and Peace guy, whose name was Tolstoy, and there's his son who wrote stuff, and he's also named Tolstoy. That's two Tolstoys. Now, can you imagine being in a house with two people with the same name? Wouldn't that be awful confusing? Think about the poor woman who was the wife of one of them and the mother of the other. She had to be awful careful about bedtime not to wind up being incestuous. "Oh Tolstoy, oh Tolstoy!" "Yes, mother?" "Sorry, not you!" They didn't have the sense to go like that guy Cato the Elder who everything knew was going to have a big-deal son one day so they all called him Cato the Elder. And they should have been like the years, you know, in 372 BC New Year's Eve they're all: "Goodbye, 372! Hello, 371!" The Brits had the good sense to crown an Elizabeth I. I confuse her with her daughter all the time. I'm getting off topic."

 

*

 

Satchel: An Introduction

 

I met a new girl this morning at about 5:45.

When exactly I first laid eyes upon her is fuzzy; she may be the daughter of a man I saw wearing a big brown pea coat which had its left sleeve mysteriously covered in blood. (I'm pretty sure I missed some details, or that details were supposed to follow but didn't.) I crossed the campus, past the naked Frisbee throwers, and found her in my bookstore.

She seems to be about nineteen and thin and awkward and a bit zitty. I was taking a nap and she said, when I woke up exposed, that she didn't mean it. "I didn't mean for her to die. I just wanted to steal stuff."

I told her I'd teach her how to steal stuff safely.

She asked me: "What's a savadosa? It's a kind of a book."

We tried a few dictionaries, but the word was in neither.

Then I had to go, to go across the shopping centre to where I'd left my knapsack. She was sad to see me go. I told her: "I'll try to see you tonight. I'll really try."

I've decided to call her Satchel.

 

*

 

I'm pretty mad right now. I was coming home from work, from the streetcar, along Riverdale, and my timing was just right to run into an older guy with a walker as he was trying to get across the snow up to his front door. He said: "Can you help me with this?" I got in front of the walker and pulled the front wheels over the snow. We were at the bottom of the steps leading up to his front door. "Can you help me with this?" I got the walked up all the steps as he asked me if I wanted a beer. I said no. He was fumbling with his keys, so I took them and opened his from door then I lifted his walker into his front hallway. He asked what kind of harder stuff I liked. He proposed: "Rum?"; I said I was more of a scotch man. He asked me to de-ice his driveway; out I went with two cups of the blue stuff and tossed it all over the driveway. I gave him back the cup, said I had to get going, and left. Why the hell can't I be a nicer guy?

 

*

 

-So, Mr. ... 'Bond'.... Let us see how smart you are. Here is the box. You have three minutes to open it; otherwise, the world may end.

-Let's see. Mahogany, with sections in ... cedar?

-Two minutes forty-four.

-Yes. So. This looks pressable. A-ha! It clicked! I daresay I'm halfway there! Am I?

-Two twenty-one.

-It won't budge! I suppose I must press two, or perhaps three, points at once. No. No. No. Am I to burn it?

-That would trigger the failsafe, Mr. 'Bond.'

-Then I'll avoid that. Oh, it seems this part slides laterally, at around 115 degrees. The design is quite ingenious. Hand-made?

-One minute and fourteen seconds.

-It only slides so far. This is difficult! I fixed a VCR once. It took two hours.

-The clock, Mr. 'Bond.'

-Ingenious, truly ingenious. I beg of you, a hint!

-Forty-nine seconds.

-I don't even know where to begin!

-Concentrate on the box.

-It's a solid piece of wood!

-It's mahogany and cedar.

-And glue! Plenty of glue!

-Twelve seconds left.

I looked at the walls. I looked beyond the walls. I could not see her anywhere. I cried:

-Oh, Satchel! Where are you when I need you most?!

 

*

 

2019 02 12

 

"Yes, hello, Montreal, I'm calling from Ottawa. Yes, that's right. Now, you are one of the higher-ups in charge of building that Light Rapid Transit line? Right. Is this a secure connection? Well, anyway. I've got a little job for some good guys in your organization. It's a delivery job. Yes, a delivery job. Well, I'm looking to have a rizzoto delivered to Ottawa. You heard me right, R I Z Z O T O. Well, I can't give you her, the, address right now; she's kind of in transit at the moment. But I'm sure your guys can find her for the delivery. This line is really secure? Let's put it this way: I'm calling from Ottawa, and I understand you have some kind of arrangement with SNC-Lavelin. And I'm sure you read the papers today. Are you putting two and two together? Right! Yes, I'd like a quick delivery of this, you understand? Sure, a hundred thousand, my group can handle that. So, we'll have delivery tonight? Do it right, and a big tip. Oh, one last thing: is your concrete sustainable and environmentally friendly? Good. The boss insists. It's in some directives and everything."

 

*

 

Having heard one morning six months ago the mountain nearby was in fact an incipient volcano which could literally erupt any day in literally the next four hundred years, I knew that I could do but one thing and that was to purchase a classic wooden chair in which to sit atop the mountain and await the end.

The climb was steep to the three known peaks but that number reduced to a singularity when with surveying tools I discovered the northernmost peak to be an inch and a half taller than the penultimately highest peak. So thereupon on the northernmost peak I set my chair seat to await the end.

Upon setting the seat down upon the peak I noticed (putting my posterior down) that I wobbled atop the mountain that was to explode someday. I'd failed to realize three is superior to four in terms of legs for chairs, yet rather than start from square one I rather sent my trusty factotum Satchel down to fetch a handsaw, and a measuring tape since I was quick to discover that my surveying tools collected no straightedge.

To that end I patiently waited with chair upturned, awaiting my Satchel's return.

 

*

 

NOSTALGIA

 

There are ridges of dead skin on my baby toes, since they've been shoved against my ring toes in socks and shoes for years now. Meanwhile, under my big toes, it's all dead cells by the millions. I could scrape with pumice these places to make them look decent again, but it's so hard to reach down to my feet these days.

I remember, a long time ago, I had beautiful feet. They were barely an inch from heel to toe, and pink with blood vessels still forming. They hadn't been used for walking, yet; they were almost always in the air, moving crazily from place to place. You could have put wedding rings easily around my ankles, and I would not have minded. My head was big and heavy, with giant eyes that were still learning to focus on my mother's face and breasts. I had hands no bigger than matchbooks, but I could still grasp my father's pinky tightly. My mind was a pre-black pink, and I was getting used to the higher registers.

Why won't the death on my feet simply shed away anymore? Why am I daily becoming more and more dead--heel to toe?

 

*

 

Sunup was approaching more quickly than we'd realized. We'd managed overnight to make some fill for him during the one moment he'd awakened and opened his eyes; we'd sprung into action to create the room for him, and the clock on the chair, and the window and its night lights behind, in time enough. Of course there'd been a moment of inchoateness for him, but that's how waking up in the middle of the night works. But now that dawn was approaching, we had to put our backs into it. Light is hard to work with.

 We made him a more solid set of sheets and we danced dusty motes in the air. We made the walls for him, and the ceiling and the floor. We built for him a door and a good amount of stuff behind the door, namely a hall and a washroom and a working toilet with water coming in and a way for him to let it out. We got the stairs downstairs done and we built a tree outside his window and we put a couple birds there.

He woke up and we watched him look at the world we'd created for him. Nice!

 

*

 

We love our flowers. A field's the pleasantest place to lie supine, what with big blossoms at both ears to listen closely to, with the sky's empty endlessness nigh unto the sensate horizon giving up no buzzy distraction. It's May, maybe, with the wet wild daisies dancing like Carmen Mirandian mermaids. They move in unison unconsciously as caused by a second party of the wind, with their dainty daisy petals (remember believing in the prescience of daisies?) fluttering aslant their sideways planes.

Number in pen the numerous petals and odds are you'll find a prime, and circle the fifths and you'll return to where you started, but now enlightened and an octave higher.

You're looking through the nothing of the sky and peripherally at the superabundant flowering dancing daisies, thinking there are well more than a hundred adjectives one could add to them. They're aflame these lovely flowers with a billion shades from russet red to callous yellow and they're indifferent to your ears and eyes for they're happy just being what they are. They don't need you to smell them; they are a pure gift, nothing ventured nothing gained, so love them for what they are, in an unconditional.

 

*

 

"So okay I'm using double quotes instead of single quotes but that don't make me American. Berlin Alexanderplatz I'm reading again, on page 98 or something. This is literary criticism. I'm barefoot now because my feet stink otherwise. It's complained by the translator that Döblin's other stuff pales by comparison--which it does, as I found myself, because his novel called November 1918 sucked balls. There's other stuff in the world. You seen this, stud? Russkie TV show called The Road to Calvary, for me the mystery was why the Russian Federation paid to have these Stalin Prize novels made into a TV show, an' it was all because the show was about the unified spirit of the Russkies, something Stalin and Putin could agree upon. I have to get up early Tuesday. I'll have to be setting the alarm for 4:30. I got a grip on Henry James now, having learned there was a book written about his errors. I read a bit about it in the TLS, which means my mentioning it qualifies me for NB's tally of the TLS mentioned in Literature. It don't make me American, these double quotes, but I like their looks, and so."

 

*

 

An old god creaked down from reality's rafters

to give forth volume two of Sylvia Plath's letters

(ISBN-13 978-0062

(740588) who

returned to heaven then, leaving us to

once again uselessly attempt to

make her immortal mortality a thing to eat

like any other smelly prof of lit;

for sure she had an acceptable enough weight

and yup she probably was an average 1932-born height;

yet she's a silvered myth, like Klytemnestra,

Cleopatra, Catherine Wuthering, Medea,

consumed by love and resentment, plus a cold oven;

apparently Ted Hughes wasn't interested in children

but Syl could think of little else, so the story

goes; and now a monument of mind's been gloried

that travels fast as thought; the woman scorned,

the biting lip, the children reluctantly born,

some little writer for Good Housekeeping dwarfed

by a Cornish cock of the chalk believed

to be the next thing in more Anglo than Saxon

raw blood spilled on the ground versification;

and she, so small you could hold her waist in two fists,

living by trying to rely on her womanly wits;

and now she's know more by her death than by her lines‑

for her poems aren't that much better than mine.

 

*

 

We've finally come to the end of 2018! It took an extra fifty days, but it's now officially 2019. The year got extended, as you know, by a couple deaths and funerals in December and January, but those times are done now.

It was an eventful year, especially at the end. However, this New Year can't statistically be as eventful, all things considered. Firstly, 2018 had 415 days while 2019 will only have 315: that's about 75% fewer days. Secondly, those two deaths could have happened but once, and they both happened in 2018.

So here's to 2019! Cross fingers!

The Killer

And so he ran.

He ran through midnight streets, past houses that looked like phony facades, so little did they say to him, running, running, constantly expecting to see something that spoke. Though he had to change direction seven times, he made sure he was always travelling west, where certain illumination would come to him soon. He saw a tall building ahead of him, and he adjudged that it would become familiar as he neared it, and so he ran for that tall building with all his strength. The top of the building became lost to his field of vision as he realized it was a hospital of some calibre. He slowed so as to not alarm the doctors and nurses and administrators, and he got inside, breathing heavily though not wheezily, and sat himself down in one of the green plastic bowl seats that lined the wall facing the intake desk.

The clock spoke to him. It said 03:26. His left palm was sticky, with blood. His fingers were cut, on the insides, laterally, the cuts lined up, they'd all been sliced at the same time. Seeing as he was in a hospital, in the emergency, he went up to the desk and spoke through the glass barrier.

And now. in the middle of this story, it cannot continue, despite how intriguing it is.

I intended it to be quite long, and (if I remember correctly, for I wrote the above twelve days ago) it would have to do with memory, the memory of a crime committed, by the He of the story, about which he has no memory. So basically it was going to be ambiguous and Oedipus, with plenty of characters and none of them appearing more than once (except for He, who would be present throughout). I often work that way, with just a general idea of what the effect is meant to be; in that, I follow Poe that there should be one big effect to a short story. There's always some special effect involved.

However, it is not going to continue, because about an hour after I wrote the first half of this strip I got routed a message from my sister, that my mother, who'd been in the hospital for a little over three weeks, had taken a turn. I went to the hospital, and the following day my mother died.

I've been getting volumes. Every month, a hardcover journal arrives at my door. They all look the same on the outside, but the insides often differ wildly. One of the contained an illustrated epic ballad running to some six hundred pages with colour and illustration everywhere. I now have in my hands a volume that seems to be an engorged issue of The New Yorker, complete with high-end advertisements and cartoons with typically interchangeable captions. However, there are a couple Thomas Ligotti stories in it, so on balance it's a good thing.

The covers, as I said above, are all the same in that they are black with text that manages to reflect the contents briefly and accurately, like a catalog entry more than a showy display, as if they were already classically archival. I stock them away reverently, lining up their spines, dusting their uppermost edges....

How many false memories inhabit me? I remember, I like to think, signing up for these deliveries; perhaps, I even sought them out--or I am fabulating the whole thing? It's simplest to go along with accepting that I did want these volumes to show up: for I am living with interchangeable captions.

It snowed all day today, from ten o'clock on, and coming home was difficult but not impossible; however, I found myself on a street I didn't recognize because the snow was blowing all over the place and the sidewalks were obscured and though I turned out to be on the street I mostly thought I was, for a moment I was confused about where I was and in what direction I was heading, and though I was not wrong it was a curious feeling; and I've been out shovelling the sidewalk and I did a pretty good job of it, for the snow was light and fluffy and it didn't hurt a bit to get it all done (which only took about twenty minutes anyway), and it's still snowing out there so I'll have to account for a bit of time in the morning to put the finishing touches on the tidiest walk on the street, and I'm wondering how much snow there is up in Brooklin, probably more, and I was to pick up the phone and call my mother in Brooklin to ask how much show they have up there, but I can't call my mother, never again.

I copped a consultation with the King through my close connection with my cousin the courtier.

I stopped at the stairs to steady my stick, sticky with sweat. How would his highness reply to my proposal to measure landmasses with the meter I'd made? Fortune, would I find faith in my principled proposal to proceed with production?

"Your Greatness," I began, "with craft I've created a cunning corrective to the nonsense I see so seldom seriously ... corrected."

"Enough with the flowers," said my King. "Show, don't tell."

"Ah, yes. Here it is." I handed over my stick.

He weighed it in his hands. "It's a stick."

"Yes, it is a coarse representation of the ideal line, which, as you know, is the shortest distance between two points whose shadow can be reduced to a point in itself. How would one represent a point passing through time? Why, with a line!"

Crickets.

Finally he said: "Don't you have something better to do?"

I'd gotten off on the wrong foot. I started again. "It's called a meter, and it can measure things all across the kingdom to the same standard."

The King said: "That's not important." Then he ordered my execution.

I'm going to crib a lot of information from my sister-in-law's eulogy here. My mother, Janet May, was born in Peterborough but almost immediately was moved to Oshawa. She worked at a golf course and a library. Then she became a nurse, graduating tops. She met my father that same year, on New Year's Eve, got engaged on Valentine's Day, and married in August. Then came along five babies, of whom I was the last. During all those years she worked at the Oshawa General Hospital, until 1993, at a variety of stations. Her husband, my father, died in 2009.

Such are the details. I can't provide you with much in the way of anecdotes, but she was one of my best friends. I remember getting ridiculous about a stupid haircut when I was seven or so, and she sat calmly, waiting for my tantrum to beat itself out. We'd play miniature golf in the summer, go to the library a lot, and I learned how to read well mainly by reading aloud to her. I also stole from her; a dollar here and there, the odd cigarette. If she ever suspected anything, she never said so. Too much trouble.

In the basement student lounge, I bent down and opened the beer fridge. Nine tidy clear bottles of ale stood behind a can of some de-alcoholised rubbish and two open stale pints of Germany. I thought ahead, to the three assignations I was destined to keep that evening: with Duchess Kate (dinner and a hotel), with actress Donna (drinks and a motel), and with triathloness Hilde (dessert and a sauna). I'd come down to the beer fridge knowing I'd put a couple cans in there earlier in the day only to find out that I'd misremembered, and I believe my misremembrance took place during the tryst with Ellen in a halted elevator. I thought then unthought of going to the beer store; I looked at the clock. Let it come down, I decided, scooped up two clear bottles, and thrust them into my knapsack. If questioned about the missing, I would rectify gladly, but I would certainly not selfishly volunteer the information. I donned the knapsack and ascended the stair to street level. It was a nice summer day, and Kate was waiting hardly for me at La Maison. Surely I won't get caught, I thought. Surely not, surely not.

I didn't go to work the day after the funeral; I had some vacation days to burn and besides I didn't want to see anyone. I had a curious feeling, and it took until early afternoon to realize: Hey, I'm not worried about anything.

Having no parents left changes a person. I've been wondering almost daily: Who am I performing for? I have no parent left to disappoint. I can do whatever I want! Oddly enough, this has made me not want to throw my cares to the wind. I feel like I have to straighten up and fly right, now, finally. (I may get back to this later.)

I can't go crying to Mommy, even if I wanted to.

I'm thinking of the dining-room table. Six of us sat around it for a decade or more. If I remember correctly, Mom was to my left, David was to my right; across from me was Joanne, and Paul was beside her. Dad sat between Paul and David. And now three--half--of those people are gone.

The night before Mary's father died, I said it wasn't just a matter of one death; it was the dying of a family, too.

Once upon a time, we had different water. Its melting point has been estimated to be a comfortable twenty degrees Celsius (this was before the codification of any measuring scales), and all the people could skate to business and to pleasure. They didn't have to use skates, either; simply by exerting themselves, perpetual motion was possible. There was no point to racing, or to sports in general, for everyone was the equal (in skating as in everything else) or all.

With just one kicked of a perpendicular foot, we could all easily circumnavigate the globe. Distance (though not time) lacked having meaning. As a consequence of this, shipping costs were non-existent. The average woman could have an average man delivered to her boudoir with handling only. This logic extended even unto salaciousness.

I was but a boy at the time, but it was a wonderful time. Imperceptively, things changed. Ice became somewhat seasonal, and unreliable in its slickness. My friends seemed to move away, as 'distance' came into itself as a concept. Oceans appeared and continents formed. It's another world now.

Distances increase daily, imperceptively. Soon enough, all distances will approach infinity. It'll forever be the end of the ice.

From the child's point of view, mother is the beginning of the whole world. Everything that follows is tied to and proceeds from mother. Everything good and everything bad is from mother. When I cover my head alone in bed to escape from the monsters, mother is the monster and also the one who could protect me from the monsters. I cover my ears and cannot hear. For many years, father was the monster, and mother did not protect me. She abandoned me. I cowered in fear under an orange blanket, entirely alone. How could she sleep with the monster my father? They looked together almost normal during the daytime, loving, yet I had to cover my head so as not to hear the monster ay night. My mother must have been part of the monster, no two ways about it. She let him terrify me; she was absent as I slid to the wall-side bed-edge. The child lives in this ambivalence through his life; loving her, hating her, depending on her, and sometimes giving up on her. Mother is the beginning of the whole world; and it's not easy to be the mother of a child of a mother.

I present to you space. I can show you borders within my borders, mountains in my folds, and waters made from ink. Find yourself with a pinprick, cross land with walking fingers, scan the span between Czech and Slovak with three degrees. Put me in your glove compartment whenever you go anywhere at all. Don't trust those new-fangled computers; this is the date now--4 February 2019--and this is what it looks like. Who knows when modernity becomes obsolete? You're better off knowing that what is is is what is is now. I'm ready for the transparent tape across my creases, in the careful index on my verso. I promise: You'll never mistake me for the territory. Does a fissure of a tear separate the west half of Hay-on-Wye from the east half of Hay-on-Wye? Do their citizens have to call across this abyss? There is no rip through Hay-on-Wye. You know it's not there. You know what contingency is. You know who I am. You cannot mistake me for something I am not, which is something I wish I could say about you. Look down there. It's the mark of my make-believe. It's called SCALE. Aren't you envious?

There's a common fallacy called the naturalistic fallacy. It's the belief that if something is natural it is simultaneously good. You see it all the time.

My mother died what can be termed a natural death. This is to say, she had an infection in her blood that starved her entire body and gave her extreme pain for more than two weeks, and there was nothing I could do. She was repeating words to make the pain controllable; she cried out: "Help me! Help me!" but I had to tell her there was nothing I could do. Only near the end, when death was inevitable, did she get narcotized to a complete sleep. The day she died, in the palliative ward, she was breathing strenuously. The nurse said she was giving oxygen to her inner organs; her limbs were already cold. Her eyes opened, slightly, blankly, for a few minutes, then closed again. (I had seen Mary's father do the same, precisely four weeks before.) I was holding her hand, which was moving slightly; then the motion slowed, then stopped. Some fifteen minutes later, all motion stopped. It had happened. Nothing was left to do; all we did was cried.

 

March 17, 4:08 pm.

Hi, it's mom, as you probably know. Just returning John's phone call. There was a concert this afternoon and so I didn’t get it right away. Anyway, I'm fine and I'll talk to you later. Bye.

April 1, 10:34 am.

Hi guys, it's mom. I know you're not there but I'm just calling to wish you a happy Easter. You'll get this message when you get home after having a good time in in the glorious United states. Anyway, love you guys. Bye now.

April 3, 8:43 pm.

Hi guys, it's mom. I just thought you might be back by now. But anyway, give me a call sometime. There's no emergency or anything. Thank you, Bye.

July 24, 2:28 pm.

Hi John, I found my email address for the Kindle. It's Jan May Skaife at Gmail 9621.

July 30, 4:20 pm.

Hi guys, it's mom. I just didn’t know when you guys were leaving for Halifax, whether it was today or tomorrow, but anyway maybe if you're still around you can give me a call. Thank you, bye.

August 5, 4:02 pm.

Hi John, it's mom. I just wondered how you’re doing, how Mary's dad is getting along. Give me a call if you’ve got the time. Thank you, bye.

August 26, 2:39 pm.

Hi, it's just mom calling to say hello. I'll talk to you later. Bye now.

October 5, 9:52 pm.

Hi, John, it's mom. It's for lunch on Sunday. Jo and Carlo are coming too. I hope that’s not too inconvenient for you. Anyway, see you Sunday. Okay, bye honey.

October 27, 9:13 pm.

Hi John, It's mom. I'm just returning your call from last night. Maybe you're not home from work yet, but anyway that’s all I'm doing. You can call me back if you want to. Thank you honey bye.