The Beautiful Story
"She
is the most beautiful girl in the world. Words cannot describe this teenage
beauty. She's kept out of sight by her father, like she's the jewel's gem. To
gain admittance, you must do what he asks. No-one has ever seen her save her
priests."
With
that, I set off for the remote city. Months later, I arrived at her home. I
knocked at the door and was greeted by a butler in mourning.
"I
want to see the princess."
"You
cannot see the princess."
"Can
I speak to her father?"
"Come
back in a week, and we shall see."
I went
back in a week, and I was given entrance to her father. He was in mourning.
"I'm
sorry," he said, "but my daughter has passed on. My jewel, my gem."
I
offered my condolences, and returned to my hamlet.
Years
later, I was telling a new friend about the experience.
He said:
"I had the same experience. The journey, the butler, the father. And that
she had died."
"We
must have been there at the same time, in 1978."
"No,
I was there in 1993."
We
agreed we meant the self-same girl, no doubt about.
*
The day
suited my mood: both were rainy and dark, with thunder off. The woman I loved
was leaving me, or so she said: and there was nothing I could do about it,
unless I changed my ways (which I had no intention of doing). I walked through
the park we'd once walked together, cursing every tree and bush.
Suddenly‑‑and
I mean suddenly, for the event lasted less than a second‑‑a bright
light and heat ripped through my insides and there was a tremendous noise. My
soul had created a lightning bolt! It leapt from the top of my head, and I
happened to be looking in the right direction at the time to see it leap to a
twig of a tall oak, then proceed to a branch, a limb, climbing ever higher up
that tree, and into the sky above the tree where I watched in awe as my
creation zigged and zagged higher, ever higher, into the sky, in search of an
appropriate ionized cloud ready for its reception. Finding a proper receptacle,
the cloud shuddered and spread red to the horizon.
As I
fell, I realized I was mistaken believing I could not change.
*
As
above, so below.
"This
whole place," said God, "I'm going to let it freeze. I'm putting into
place a law. I think I'll call it 'entropy'. Everything is going to function
according to its heat, and, when things lose their heat, they're never going to
be able to get it back again. Eventually, in a couple of years to you and me,
everything's going to be frozen, incapable of action, because it'll have no
energy. Who wants to live forever, am I right my boys?"
And the
cherubim and the seraphim and the orders and the angels nodded in agreement.
As
above, so below.
"Jimmy,
Phil, Paul, can you believe it? Nothing is getting done anymore. The computers
are slower, meals take longer to cook, movies take forever to end. It's like
everyone has kind of given up on stuff. Maybe this is how civilizations end.
Everybody gets slow, gets lazy, and then, because of that, everything else gets
slow, everyone else gets lazy. Maybe that's the real virus going around. We
can't even be bothered to go on long trips anymore. Anyway, the drinks go fast,
don't they?"
And then
Jimmy and Phil and Paul nodded in agreement.
*
On Eight
I went
to see my boyfriend at his office today. The building‑‑the
skyscraper, I mean‑‑isn't entirely finished, so his floor‑‑the
ninth‑‑is all cladding and drywall and stuff. However, they've got
it structurally sound, and there's offices way up top that are operating
already. He had a mattress down instead of a couch; the mattress was right on
the edge of the atrium, without a railing or anything installed yet. Kind of
hazardous, but that didn't stop us from having sex on it.
Afterwards,
he told me: "There's two elevators that go all-the-way-to-the-top, and
eight from ground-to-thirty, six from thirty-to-sixty, and three from
sixty-to-eighty. I know one of the guys operating one of the sixty-to-eighty
elevators. He tells me everyone gets dizzied, even him. Railings aren't quite
finished up there, just like down here."
I rolled
only my back, and I could feel myself starting to slip off the edge of the
atrium. I flexed away from it; my heart started pounding and I started
trembling. My boyfriend gave a little laugh at me.
"Hey,
Joan, it's not like we're on the eightieth floor or something! We're only on
the eighth. It's just the eighth."
*
Mistakes doc
First
mistake: I get on the first thing that seems to be going in the right
direction. I look up every once on a while: then I have no idea where we are.
The driver turns off the lights: "End of the line, pal." I get off
and recognize King St.: but from the south?
Second
mistake: Last night I had to have a fob with a barcode attached to it. I found
it: put the old one in my pocket: forgot the working one. I can't get into the
building. I have to get a 'temporary pass,' with everyone looking suspiciously
at me.
Third
mistake: I'm outside Paupers, waiting for Frank. I think he's late: as it
turned out, I was the late one. He was already inside, wondering where I was. I
finally wondered: "What time is it?" That was when I found out he was
already there, waiting for me.
Fourth
mistake: which I've done many times before: I get onto the wrong subway train.
Don't I know east from west? Am I that bad at basic comprehension? (I waited
for the wrong train a long time, too.) (Then, at another station, long time
too.)
*
It
couldn't go on forever, after all.
Herb Farlie was a hundred years old, after all. He died last
week up in Port Carling. It seems likely his children were there, so it must've
been a reasonably respectable time, after all.
Every
year for something like twenty-five years, we'd have a conversation with him.
He slowed down somewhat, but very slowly, and he never went dotty, and he never
forgot things. We got to his place by bus, by taxi, and recently by rented car.
He kept track of it all, after all.
He'd sit
up in the Balahy Motel and Cottages' office, and be
in control of things, if only symbolically. It was all his, after all. He'd
built it all, after all.
Back in
the 'seventies, I'd get driven past his gas station, though we never stopped
there; but since he was there for certain, I knew him for nearly fifty years in
a certain sense, after all.
Things
will change now, somehow, because every person take a world with them, and that
world gets filled in by other worlds: but never completely so, after all.
We were
lucky to have known him, and them all, after all.
*
Against Type
My
intention was to stay 'just friends' with Carla, even during that day, walking
through the park, all during which I tried to be a 'just friend.' We turned a
corner on the cedar-strewn pathway, and there ahead of us was one of the strangest
sights either of us had ever seen.
In the
air, floating, was a rather menacing-looking irregular ball, moving around like
it was in search. It moved a little closer, and we could see it was made of
newspaper, and hear it crinkling in the slight breeze. Knowing it was
not-of-this-world, we picked up some handy sticks and started battering it.
Punctured, it hissed, and fell slowly to the ground. It continued to deflate;
if it had been alive, we'd killed it.
"Problem
solved," I said.
Carla
grabbed me and hugged me and didn't let go. My body responded, and she could
easily tell. We walked away, and returned later. The ball of newspaper was
gone.
That
night, Carla called me. She'd gotten sick to her stomach. I asked if I was to
blame; that wasn't it. She said she'd been vomiting lead type; the text wasn't
so awful, but the headlines really hurt.
*
The day
suited my mood: both were rainy and dark, with thunder off. The woman I loved
was leaving me, or so she said: and there was nothing I could do about it,
unless I changed my ways (which I had no intention of doing). I walked through
the park we'd once walked together, cursing every tree and bush.
Suddenly‑‑and
I mean suddenly, for the event lasted less than a second‑‑a bright
light and heat ripped through my insides and there was a tremendous noise. My
soul had created a lightning bolt! It leapt from the top of my head, and I
happened to be looking in the right direction at the time to see it leap to a
twig of a tall oak, then proceed to a branch, a limb, climbing ever higher up
that tree, and into the sky above the tree where I watched in awe as my
creation zigged and zagged higher, ever higher, into the sky, in search of an
appropriate ionized cloud ready for its reception. Finding a proper receptacle,
the cloud shuddered and spread red to the horizon.
As I
fell, I realized I was mistaken believing I could not change.
*
The Louisiana Ring Road
As any good map will show you, Louisiana is
surrounded by a single road, now a highway, which has come to be called the
'ring road'. It starts to the east, south of Perlington,
deep in the bayous, proceeds northwesterly around the entire state, ending at
Sabine Lake. Plus, as everyone who has attempted to cross in Louisiana, it is a
one-way highway. Approaching Louisiana, you have no choice but to turn right,
proceed a stretch, then turn left, into Louisiana proper.
As an advanced historian, I've often been
asked why that road is of its particular make-up. I've grown tired of replying
orally, so here I will write the history of that highway.
When the U.S.A. purchased the state from
France via François Barbé-Marbois, the American powers,
fearful of a reclamation, built the road for military purposes. After ten years
of peace, the road became a civilian road. However, the Americans, falsely
believing the Louisianans drove on the left side, devised a system whereby
right-driving vehicular traffic could become left-driving. A single-direction
buffer was discovered to be the most efficient means to affect this.
Louisiana is without doubt the most
interesting of the forty-eight states.
*
Capricorn
If you
try, Capricorn, you can know the final score of any hockey game five minutes
before anyone else does. You can't walk all the way around a house without
thinking of a white bear. Your favourite colour is intrinsically green, but, if
you're pressed to answer, you'll choose a different colour almost at random. As
suiting to a winter sign, you've taken up some snow sports, though never beyond
the enthusiasm of non-Capricorns, unless you've got a gift for them. You've
sought out in the past some extreme sexual experiences, and everyone knows it,
and they also know who with, and when, and where. You have a cat that is afraid
of shoes and one other object. You are the child of the wintery moon and the
before-dawn sky. Religiously, you are bifocal, at times atheist, at other times
Lutheran, with nothing in between. You've had dreams of falling down manholes,
so IRL you avoid even going near them. There's always old food in your
cupboard, but cleaning it out is always a hassle so it's always left for
another day or someone else. You have a soft spot in your heart‑‑who
knows why?‑‑for pointless jazz.
*
"Sometimes,
we like to end our news broadcast with what we call 'The Message.' This
evening, we will spend somewhat more than forty-five seconds discussing a
matter with which we are deeply concerned. Some nine weeks ago, we reported
that a horrible crime‑‑a physical attack, and thus suited to our
purposes prejudiced-preconceived-and-prurient‑‑had taken place in a
local neighbourhood. We made a story of it, promoted and broadcasted the
stuffing out of it, then we went to bed. Next day, we naturally turned our
audio-visual ears and eyes to other fashionable outrages.
"However,
as revealed in a lawcourt hearing today, the victim was actually the
perpetrator, and the perpetrator was actually the victim. The narrative we
created nine weeks ago, in a huddle, was bass-ackwards. We were wrong. We were
led astray by our nastiness and socio-economic class interests.
"Speaking
on behalf of our whole crew, we shall never again refer to this the reversal of
our narrative. Since we do not want to distress unduly the loyal viewer of this
our news broadcast, we will never again refer to that nine-week-old event. We
hope you mentally dismiss our error. We're no different from you: we have to eat."
*
Rolling
through the endless fallow fields and sky-high days end-over-end we tumbled,
with our arms held crossed and tightly to reduce any interference with our
rolls down the hills. We'd all heard about this thing called sex, which was
something we would be growing into some day, but that would come later; for the
now, it was only something we imitated, pretended, doctored, at times when we
weren't obsessed with rolling down hills. We deserved gold medals, '76 Olympic
gold medals, didn't we, because we were so good at rolling down hills. Therese
made motions as if (or so I interpreted) she was throwing snow in my face, and
I replied in kind. Two sexless kids, at the bottom of a stubble hill,
pretending, in late July, to throw snow at one another and reacting as if we'd
been hit and blinded by snow. We fell and rolled around, crying and groaning
dramatically, as if struck by the inevitable nuclear fireball that was sure to
come; we wanted to go off the world, to Jupiter or Saturn, where we could have
sex: but we were at the bottom of a hill, and we had no place to roll to anymore.
*
Will
anything come tonight? It's Christmas Eve. It's the eve of the birthday of
Jesus. Jesus gives gifts; he gives the gift of eternal life, and he had
enlisted one of his saints to give a sign of that promise via the distribution
of gifts. The gift will get given, and all that crap about 'naughty or nice' is
very much against Christ. Even incipient hoodlums get their gifts delivered to
from the saint. It's not a thing to be judged by us; otherwise, why are there
priests serving in prisons?
The
whole deal is in play, at least for some. There's a chimney, and it's big
enough to get down through if you let your imagination work. The knit stockings
are all hanging out, ready for the orange and the chocolates and the book of
crossword puzzles and the Archie Digest. It wasn't easy to find what was going
to be in the stocking since all the stuff was so small it could be hidden away
quite easily; the big presents were easy to find and partially unwrap. But the
stuff from Santa Claus, it must have come down the chimney, because it was
nowhere to be found. Santa!
*
It was
an enormous explosion that smashed or rattled windows for miles around, yet
they tell me it never happened. The centre of the blast was a warehouse, or
perhaps a high school, or maybe it was both at different periods; I'd been in
it on numerous occasions, and I saw the bomb being planted, and yet they tell
me it didn't happen. How could I believe them when I saw with my own eyes the
red numbers counting down almost like a digital clock might if it was
programmed to count by tens rather than sixties and twenty-fours. The numbers
were very big; they were so big I could see them from high overhead, which was
where I was when it went off, and yet they have shown me newspapers and
journals which say no such explosion took place. "That doesn't mean it
didn't happen!" I'd answer sharply and they'd merely shrug. I had allowed
it all: the bomb to be built, to be placed, to be detonated; they say it had
taken place entirely in my imagination. I don't know where in my imagination
they could mean. The explosion took place, yes, but they tell me I'm wrong.
*
We were
worried about the present, certainly. Terrible things continued to take place
in every corner of the universe, after all, and there had to be a cure
somewhere. Since the present couldn't be changed to suit our tastes, we
unconsciously and consciously decided to change the past.
Changing
the past wasn't as difficult as it sounds, we were surprised to learn. It was
surprisingly easy. Only one copy of a vast majority of newspapers still
existed, so we methodically altered that single copy, and voila! no-one would
have access to any other copy with which to compare our revised editions.
Which
made it easier to alter the books, of course; many rely on newspapers, but
since the historical evidence didn't support the text, they were automatically
discredited and subsequently destroyed. A new history emerged based on our new
facts.
Everything
flowed from there, despite our errors and contradictions. We changed the past
and in changing the past we changed the present. And who was going to stop us?
Were ghosts going to seek revenge upon us? The days of ghosts are over, man.
The dead couldn't bother us any more; we'll suffer the same fate too, but who
cares?
*
The
airplane lurched around her. Had they hit a bit of turbulence? She'd heard of
turbulence, but she'd never experienced it before. So, was it turbulence?
Nothing happened for a minute; then she felt slightly lighter than normal.
Something wasn't right. She turned to the older woman beside her to ask:
"Is there something wrong with the plane?"
"No,
nothing at all. It's just that we're going to landing soon."
"Landing?"
"Yes,
we're almost there."
Turning
back to the small window, the younger woman looked out the window. Almost
there, what did that mean? Isn't that a little fatalistic? She didn't think it
would end this way. Not so soon: she had so many years left to live!
Experiences! Lovers! Work!
She'd
heard of airplanes crashing. Airplanes crashed so often that some people said
they were planned. She'd figured this to be just crazy talk, but now she
figured differently. The plane was definitely going down, and she was inside
it. The stewardesses were acting like nothing was happening; they were
obviously in on it.
Her ears
did funny things to remove her hearing. The ground was getting closer and
closer. She closed her eyes as tightly as she could.
*
Stagecoach
Up on
top: The driver of the coach, an old Injun fighter name of Ark, chewing and
spitting tobacco all the way from St. Louis to the Oregon frontier
: His
sidekick and apprentice, all of fourteen years grown, terrified of what would
come, startling at every sagebrush, played harmonica too
Inside
the coach: Mr. Rich, dressed in fine silks, off to tend to a nickel mine in
disarray, impatient of all the time lost and thinking about those flying
machines everyone was working on
: Mrs.
Rich, trophy bride before her time, with more than a couple notches in her
notch, hoping this trip didn't become permanent
: the
Rodeo Kid, fast with a six-shooter, thinking about revenge on the varmint who
shot off his left one
: Julia,
an honest woman of some repute, fleeing a madman and looking for some frontier
riches, doesn't laugh, tragic character
: Shady,
a shady character, all in black, looks like Lee Marvin but he's no Lee Marvin,
as I said mysterious
: and
Jones, a simpleton who got on the coach without knowing where it was going, so
long as it wasn't St. Louis, where he had some legal problems.
*
COVID Brain
(après Funkadelic)
I was
walking down the street the other day, and I came upon a woman standing at a
curb, as if she was waiting to cross. I didn't see any cars coming, so I
ventured to stop beside her, with some concern for her well-being. After a few
minutes, I said: "Hello, are you waiting to cross the street?"
She
replied: "Yes, I'm waiting to cross the street."
I looked
again to confirm there were no cars coming. "There are no cars
coming."
She
pointed to a Datsun some ten yards away. "That car was coming in my
direction a half hour ago, then it parked. It's going to start up again, I just
know it."
"Yes,
unless it's abandoned there, it will start moving again."
"Any
minute now, it could start again. And what if I'm crossing when it does?"
"I
think you'll have some kind of warning. Its engine has to turn, for
instance."
"But
it could be one of those quiet cars.... And if so.... My God!"
"You
could jump out of the way."
"But
I might not make it! I have to wait, thank you."
I continued
on my way, in uncertainty.
*
From Consecon
Out for
my morning walk, thinking of Consecon in the summer.
Our nights in the converted mill, we were way up in the top apartment, nice
design, and they had to make the ceiling strangely-shaped to hide the most
mill-like residues. I had to go up three flights of stairs three times to get
everything (including myself) up. Windows in all directions, and able to see
the bridge, the river, the park nearby. We had to walk out of the town to find
a place to eat, which was a pizza place with picnic tables outside and very
good pizza: Strato's. Walked back in great darkness.
Next day was an event called Porchfest: musicians everywhere, with a final
blast of music in the nearby park. Out for my morning walk, thinking of Consecon in the summer. A restaurant next to the mill, a
fancy restaurant, good food and service: Adega Wine
Bar. At the Consecon Public Library, local children
were choosing their mascot: frog, bird, or squirrel. The frog was winning. This
all happened six or seven months ago, and I've already forgotten some details.
Old houses, some new houses. A town that should be happy with itself.
*
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