Opportunity
Many years ago, nearly forty years ago, I
ran out of money and food. I had less than a dollar. So, I had to go one
morning to sell some books to buy rice.
Down on Queen Street I went to ABC Books,
and they gave me seven dollars in exchange for a copy of Vanity Fair and
some others. (I bought Vanity Fair again a few years later.) While I was
walking to the grocery store, a car honked at me.
Now, I was quite young then, and I didn't
look my age. I could have passed for sixteen for the longest time. The car
window rolled down--it was an expensive car--and the driver said to me, in a
German accent: "Will you come with me? I will pay you well."
I laughed and said: "No, sorry, I
have to be somewhere," and I went on my way.
I don't know how you feel about mistakes,
but I should have risked it. I had no money, and what could the guy do to me,
really? He didn't seem dangerous. Plus his car was
very nice. I missed out that day. I should have considered it more!
*
Pornograph
What
tools are you currently using? Are they good enough? Maybe you need some better
lenses or lights to do your job right. There's a whole world involved in the
production of even one of your works. Have you ever read 'I, Pencil'? Good, so maybe
you see what I'm getting at. Tools, we are tools here! We can provide you with
pretty much everything. How's the height of your studio? There are ways to make
your space bigger, using more modern materials. You've heard of 'nano'? There
are more ways to improve than there are grains of sand on that beach you see
out my window. Every single one is an improvement, and a bundle of them means a
bundle of improvements. Land for sale. We have land for sale. I can bring over
some prospectuses this evening if you want a look-see. There's going to be
rentals on space stations not so long from now, let me tell you. The sky is the
limit. I have every major catalog in my back office. Look at the pictures.
Pretty exciting, aren't they? I also have a secret stash. If you gain my trust,
I'll let you see it.
*
White
Helen was something else.
When we got to my studio, she was
trembling with excitement. "I've never done anything like this
before," she told me. I replied: "There's a first time for
everything."
I set up the lights and loaded a plate
into the camera. I took a shot of my colour registry and set the plate aside.
Then I loaded up another plate.
"How do I look?" I turned, and
she looked very fine, and I told her so.
"Where should I go?"
"The couch there. I'm all set up for
you."
She reclined and posed, and I took some
two dozen plates. "That should be it for now," I told her.
"Let's see where the development leads."
In the darkroom, we developed the plates.
The first one, the registry, looked good, even in its neg inter. However, the
next one was entirely black. I made a pos of it. The image was white.
"Something about the camera."
I developed the next five, and they were
all the same. Just white. Then I did the last one. White again.
She was looking over my shoulder. "I
do wrong?"
"No, no. I suppose some people are
just too special."
*
Cupboard
After watching the game, Joey went down to
the kitchen to start dinner. He opened a cupboard and saw three cans of soup,
two bars of crackers, a bag of rice, and soy sauce.
What had happened to the rest of the food?
Where was the spice rack, where were the artisanal olive oils, the fancy
pastas, all the chocolates?
Someone was playing him some trick. Candid
Camera. He knew to remain cool.
Joey calmly walked into the living room.
Someone had changed all the furniture and installed an actor whose feet were on
a table, who was eating potato chips, who was wearing a baseball cap, who
looked at him and said: "What, did you see a fuckin' ghost?"
Joey went along with it. "Maybe I
did, and maybe I didn't." He sat down beside the actor and took the chips.
A small tv showed Kirk and Spock. The episode was very familiar to Joey. Had he
seen it before?
One bong later, Joey said: "I'm hittin' the hay." He went into the hallway to note the
kitchen had shrunk to a galley, and all the rooms were arranged differently. He
opened a door. It was his room.
*
Simple
"Thanks
for giving me a part of your time! I know you're a very busy woman, but I have
to sell you on one of the most fantastically simple schemes ever to have graced
God's green earth! You know, I'm sure of it, that sometimes systems take on a
life of their own, with so many moving parts that it's hard to get a grip on
what's going on, and that it can lead to despair: A need for simplicity,
simplicity! is what I think we're all after. I have come up with a stunningly
simple scheme, and I'm sure you'll agree with me that it's devilishly simple!
There's only one step involved. It's not even an exchange! There's only one
part to it, namely: One: You give me money. And that's the whole thing! What
could be simpler than that. You gave me money. We don't have to inform anyone,
or get anyone else involved. You give me money, and that's an end to it.
There's nothing outside of that. It's as simple as a Zen
garden, isn't it? You give me money. It would be a beautiful thing,
praised by all if understood. So: Give me money!"
*
Crazy
"No, man, that shit's crazy."
I asked him to elaborate, there in the
seminar. We were on the first line.
He replied: "Are we supposed to
believe the ship's wrecked? And even if it's shipwrecked ... I don't have a
ship. How can I relate to that? I don't have a ship to be wrecked!"
He had a valid point. I opened it.
"Anyone else have problems with the first line?"
"I've never heard the word
before," said Tanya in the second row.
I said: "It's some kind of an
executive on the ship, that's what the word means. I think he's the
steerer."
"How could we possibly know
that?"
"I think we should change the
word," said Tanya. "I think it should be, right, you're right, it
should be 'steerer'."
"We'll make that suggestion down the
line. For now, imagine it's 'steerer'."
"How can we do that? You can't simply
imagine things!"
"You might imagine the wrong things,
and where would we be then?"
"I don't think we should be reading
this."
"It's already making us feel
bad."
"We should move on to something
different."
"Can we go back to the video game
stories?"
"What about Marvel comics?"
*
Streaks
There was once a flash in the sky, at
night, in a field. Both boys were witnesses, and the flash suddenly moved to
one side, and turned red, and ejected a beam at the end of the field. Since
Close Encounters had just been released, the boys turned and ran away from the
beam.
Once they were safely away, and still
alive, and not burned to death, and not probed, they felt safe again.
"I think we've had a close
encounter," said one.
"It certainly seems like that,"
said the other.
They puzzled about it for at least four
days nonstop.
It became time to write public address
speeches, for school. One of the boys decided to write about UFOs, and he was
going to talk about what happened to them.
The other boy didn't want the public
publicity; he didn't want his name mentioned. (He was already too much of a
curiosity for words.) But the speechmaker insisted. "It's a matter of
historical record," he argued. Not even a bribe worked to keep the
former's name out of it.
The speeches too place, and UFO things were
accurately described.
The other boy wrote a whole speech about
betrayal.
*
Obituary
I knew Ernie almost exclusively from
playing poker with him; the only exception was the one time my gang decided to
try something different. In that exception, we all piled over to his house to
try our hands at a war-and-diplomacy game that took far too long to learn, and
was thus abandoned before it was over.
But we played poker together many times
over the past twenty years or so, and he was a clever player and hard to read.
He could pull cards out of nowhere, and one never knew what his hand was.
The second-last time we played, he told us
he was sick, and the last time we played, he had a cane with him.
He was a clean guy. He didn't drink, he
didn't smoke, at least as far as I could tell. (I guess you never can tell.) He
never got mad, he never disputed, he knew how to lose and he knew how to win.
He'll be sorely missed at the next game.
How can it be that we've lost him? Never again shall we have to explain rules
to one another. Never again will he try to make out my hand.
*
DADAS
All the women over there are painting
pictures of men, and over there all the men are painting pictures of women.
Short people are all feeling small when
they're in a forest of tall people, while the tall people are all feeling big
when they're in a meadow.
The people who live across my street I
often catch watching me in the middle of the night, maybe as often as I am
caught watching.
You look across the table and you want
what the other person is eating. Meanwhile, the other person is acting hostile.
Somewhere in Herodotus there's the story
of the Persian king, watching his millions of soldiers crossing a bridge to
Greece, taking counsel from his wizard. The king says: And they'll all be dead
and forgotten in a hundred years. The wizard replied, Yes,
but every one of them, at some point in his life, has also wished to be dead
rather than alive.
Everyone knows the Rolling Stones wanted
to be the Beatles and that 'The Good Boys' wanted to be 'The Bad Boys'.
Everything that's inside of us is dying to
get out, and of course we generally let everything of outside in.
*
Blanks
What will happen to this day? Billy was
sitting at his window, watching the pavement dry. Will something momentous
happen, or will it be a day of nothing at all?
He went down to the kitchen to find
something to eat. There was nothing momentous in the fridge, and nothing
momentous in the cupboard. Same as yesterday.
He made himself another helping of toast
and peanut butter.
He looked out at the backyard for a while.
Spring, and things were starting to grow. Perhaps this will be the year the
roses come out. That would be momentous. This day won't be remembered by the
roses as momentous, probably. It's just another day for the roses.
It was mid-afternoon. Billy was re-reading
a comic book. He wondered about dinner. Where was everyone anyway?
They showed up finally. Sister Debbie was
carrying a box.
Mother said: "So, the adoption agency
finally coughed up your papers. After five years! We have something for
you."
Was it in the box? No, Mother gave him an
envelope. Billy opened it. A birth certificate, for himself. And it had today's
date on it. It was his birthday!
Billy said: "Well, how contrived can
you get?"
*
Den
The Den of Thieves had a
better-than-average crowd the night Jimmy got back after a stretch in prison.
He pushed his way to the bar and looked around. He saw his buddies sitting at a
table, so he went over to them.
Snug, seeing him approach, grabbed his
collar nervously as he said: "Well, if it ain't
Jimmy!"
Jimmy sat down on the fourth chair.
"So, I'm back."
Dick looked at him without emotion.
"Good to see you."
"Good to see you all too. So, I'm
ready for some action. Any burglaries or heists cooking?"
The Gnat stated: "You've been thrown
out of the conspiracy."
Jimmy was shocked and he looked the part.
"Why? What have I done?"
"It's what got you sent up. It was
stupid. It was dumb."
Jimmy knew they meant how he'd got caught
for breaking and entering. "The lights were off; I thought it was
safe."
"You were acting alone, and that's
why you got caught."
"Well, I'll be! A spare person
would've slowed me down."
"Yes, most definitely; however, you
needed slowing down."
"What are you referring to?"
"It was during a power outage."
Jimmy shrugged resignedly. "I guess I
should have consulted."
*
Lots
I felt a shadow arising over the course of
many months. I was busy tending to my inhabitants during the time, and it was
with some surprise that I found a tall apartment building on my south edge.
"Building!" I shouted.
"What are you doing here? You're ruining some of my vistas!"
The building looked down at me and said:
"I'm here because of you. It's one of my selling features: a big park
across the road, namely you."
"You can't stay! Get torn down and
rebuilt somewhere else!"
The building laughed. "I'm not going
anywhere."
"Well, isn't that just the way!"
I talked as if to myself with him being merely an overhearer. "Culture
intruding on Nature! Isn't that the story of these sad modern times!"
The building laughed again. (How
annoying!) "You? Nature? Not unless you put Nature in quotation
marks!"
"I don't see it that way."
"Everyone else does. You're a
construction too, don't you know? In fact, you have been cultivated with the
idea of myself being beside you."
Very upsetting and existential that was.
"So, I'm culture too?"
"Yes. In a sense, I was here
first."
I chose not to think about his statement.
*
Farce
"I laughed out loud when I saw it. On
TV, there were a dozen bulldozers on a vacant dirt lot, and they were
pirouetting or moving like those tippy birds. It looked so phony, then I saw it
was CCTV. I was in a crowd, we were watching the news, and I laughed out loud,
derisively; I wanted to say: 'It's total propaganda, folks, the Chinese aren't
building extra hospitals. Look at how fake it looks!' A woman in the crowd gave
me a dirty look, and I realized they'd fallen for it,
"Even though the 'dozers weren't
dozing anything. Maybe the people around me, as is likely, didn't know the
first thing about construction, so they thought maybe there was something
magical in it what they were seeing. It was the most obvious nonsense I'd ever
seen, and these city people couldn't see it was fake. And I don't know about
what happened in your town,
"If you saw the clip or not. I'm sure
it can be found somewhere. And maybe someday we'll look back and laugh about
how we were (mostly) such gullible suckers that day. We pulled the wool over
our own eyes, and died!"
*
Rests
We stopped at a roadside rest spot,
because it was time for some sandwiches and pop, and we didn't know how far the
journey lay and we didn't know how the road went and we didn't know about any
of the twists and turns that were bound to take place once we got to the
mountain. How much for this? How much for that? We didn't have a clue about the
answers to these questions, or to what these questions referred. All of us were
asking the same questions, and no-one could properly answer them, and the
potentialities diminished the further we thought. Were we going to encounter an
obstacle that would forever delay us? What if the police had made do, and put
up the roadblocks they'd been threatening to put up? We thought, or someone had
proposed, that we go around the roadblock or wait til
a good moment to break it through. However, we weren't sure there would be any
roadblocks at all: the future was as hazy as last night's dreams. However, we
knew where we were, and we had our sandwiches to eat. It was a nice early
afternoon. There was a stream nearby.
*
Dance!
Down at the Opera House, a fight began.
No-one could later describe what the fight was about. Some said it was about a
key signature; others said it concerned reeds. Neither party won
fair-and-square, as they say. Thus were consumed
eleven years of existence, as they two paired off again and again in
competition.
I was there at the last competition: the
dance competition. The musics spent eight months in
composition and the dances spent six weeks in choreography. It was a
world-famous thing, and it was even simulcast.
They flipped a coin to decide who drew
first. "The music has to be through-composed, thirty-nine to forty-one
minutes in length." (That's the ref speaking.) "The corps must number
eight, visible to the audience at all times." (There were many other rules
which I omit.)
The coin toss won,
the ballets began.
I could no longer pay attention to what
was taking place. Figures were on a stage, and I heard sounds, but I couldn't
fit the two together. Eleven years of history gone past, that event being something
of a culmination. I was moved by the performances, and I knew whereof a time
well spent.
The second ballet won.
*
Harminoes
Atomic motion produces electromagnetic
waves around itself. Like a pebble in a still pond, hence absent swans, the
wave moves in concentric circles of quality diminishing with distance.
What if there's a swan?
Shut up! These waves are spherical,
three-dimensional, which leads all reasonable people to think: what about
through time? And, gentleman, for certain reasons, we cannot measure them,
though certainly they must be there, through time, absent swans.
Again with the swans?
I thought I told you to shut up! Where was
I? Oh yes about the swans, no, I mean time, ripples and so on. However, as with
any wave, such as our old friend the sine wave, there are peaks and valleys
such that the effects can only take place at intervals.
Tell us more about the swans, sir.
I'm merely using 'swan' as a signifier of
another phenomenon, and I couldn't well expect you to understand that clearly,
so I said swan. The ripples affect everything else in the universe, you see.
Imagine a 3D grid, with many phenoma, phenomena, and
try to judge the interplay.
Like the swirls of swans, sir?
Yes-yes-yes. Oh bother. The swan is our
largest waterfowl.
Cf. Dante, Yeats
*
Gutterfish
Come on, dummy, look down here, into the
gutter, the next time you're out walking in the rain because boo-hoo, you got a
broken heart and you're in pain and hoping you get pneumonia, at that next time
look down, look down into the gutter, and you won't see us because we're barely
there, we barely exist, we're lower than tadpoles, we're handfuls of cells,
we're the gutterfish. 99.9999999999999999 percent of
us will die in the next five minutes, we're microscopic and dispensable, if you
had a microscope handy maybe you'd foolishly see me, maybe not, but you don't
got a microscope on you, because boo-hoo. (I'm only calling ourselves 'fish'
because you don't know anything about--what are they calling us these days?--we microbes. Call it personification or fishification or whatever, doesn't matter. Where was I?
Yeah, dummy, you don't even see us, but we keep your party going, circle-of-life
and so on, we make you what you are, and there are a trillion of my cousins in
your very gut, you know. Do I weep? You're lucky to have eyes. Am I
heartbroken? You're lucky to have all the usual organs, including your oh-so-fragile
silly heart!
*
Abbreve
She asked: Do you think time travel is
possible?
I replied: What do you think I'm doing
now?
*
Who?
It was a Halloween party, yes, and Gary
Wagner had it. On one of those branch streets off Queen Street. Everyone,
including me, got really drunk. We were all fucked up. This redhead busted in
on an intimate moment in a bedroom and spat at a girl I'd known and
respected all my life. This crazy redhead I had to pin down telling him to get
the fuck in order.
Almost everyone went home, but I was
watching Gary to see he didn't die, because he was really fucked up.
He'd kicked a bottle and smashed it, I didn't know
why. Something pissed him off. Something serious.
I was there at the end. Everyone else
fled. I had to go home, it was late, but this redhead freak fought with me
because he wanted to fuck me. That was the only time I punched anyone. (A very
boring milieu, some stairs in Beaches.)
It was quite the fight, getting out of
there. The insanity or him! Begging, grabbing.
I'm male. I fought him off.
I know women who have been raped. They
weren't strong enough to fight off their rapists. All I know is I felt a terror
there.
*
Noises
It started on a Tuesday, or perhaps it was
a Wednesday; I'm only speaking for myself, because I was later to understand
that for others it started on Monday, perhaps Tuesday, or Sunday, perhaps
Monday. I didn't know anyone who could give a precise time for its onset;
rather, it crept in barely perceptively, and it was only in retrospect that
anyone could give an account of its onset.
Some noise, some low rumble, from a
distance, something like a continuous thunder many miles away. When I first
noticed it, I went outside to see if I could trace where it was coming from,
but in vain, for it seemed to come from all directions at once. I touched a
post to see if it was vibrating, for I felt it was possible that the sound was
coming from the earth. The post was not moving in the least.
The rumbling went on for something
approaching a week. Although everyone was experiencing it, the newspapers were
spooked and refused to write anything about it, possibly due to superstition.
The sound faded away just as we were resigned to it. We didn't know precisely
when it stopped; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?
*
Throddled!
Something had gone wrong with all his Art,
for it appeared to be being throddled. (Throttled? He
really must look into buying a spell-checker some day.) About a month ago, one
of his opuses, as he attempted to post it, was greeted by the blogger with a
warning, saying something to the effect that it had to be restricted!
Since it ran to some six thousand words of miscellany, he had no idea what the
blogger had been offended by; perhaps it was because of his satire on religious
terrorism. (Someone or something didn't understand satire.)
Then, all in one day, the blogger wrote to
him in an automated way that a further four of his opuses were being throddled in likewise fashion. (He didn't recognize the
titles, but he could tell they were titles of the likes he like to make.) So:
who was doing this? One of his enemies? In which case, he had no control.
However, perhaps it was being throddled by one of
those A.I. machines! crawling through his material, sniffing out forbidden
words and usages! Well, if that was the way of the contemporary world, to hell
with it! He would restrict everything himself!
*
Date
I don't quite remember how I met the
theatrical producer and director, but somehow or another we made a date, for
after one of her performances.
Her troupe was made up entirely of
football players wanting something to do in the off-season. The musical I saw
was a pop-song-infused version of North Dallas Forty, and I enjoyed it as much
as I could.
As instructed, I went backstage
afterwards. The actors were in all sorts of undress: some were in good
proportion while others were not, I may add. They gave my date a cheery
goodbye, with some waving, and off we went to a nearby bar.
The date did not go particularly well, for
it seemed I had been drawn there under false pretences. Having heard of my
publications, she wanted me to write her a football tragedy of Shakespearean
quality. I had to tell her that all I knew about football came from myself
carrying the nickname 'Pigskin' when eight years of age. She made the best of
it by pretending she'd never asked.
We parted outside the bar, going separate
ways. We never had a second date. Recently I heard she was managing a football
team.
*
Let's
You could take a train somewhere. It's
easy. Go to the station, read the schedule to find the place you know the least
about (which will be one of the furthest away ones). Go buy a ticket to that
place, and sit and wait for the hour the train departs. On the train you'll
find a comfortable spot beside a window, and the train will gather speed, and
you'll be on your way.
You spend a good amount of your time
looking out the window. All these things you've never seen before (though for
some time they appear familiar, soon they are quite alien to you). A person
sits across from you, but you're not interested in the person. The window is
what's capturing your attention. You're going down a hill or up a hill, doesn't
matter which.
When you get to your destination you will
look around the town. You'll decide to stay at least a night, and you'll find a
place to stay that's not expensive (because few people go there, really).
You'll find something amusing for your evening, a concert perhaps, or there'll
be a movie theatre, or some library or museum. Maybe you'll find love.
*
Watcher
Hey, Watcher! Can't you see what's going
on? Out there, in the dark and the water, a boat is starting to flounder. Can
you hear someone crying for help? I'm sorry: Do my thoughts interrupt yours?
How goes the novel? You must be on Book Three by now. (I'm assuming you're
writing it sequentially.)
Don't you hear, Watcher? It's two in the
morning, and the ocean is relatively calm, and there's a voice on the wind, and
the voice is crying: "Help! Help!" You're closest to the crier:
vastly closest to the crier. Yet you won't stir, you won't do anything to help.
Come on, you must be able to hear. Are you deaf? Maybe you're crippled in some
way. Maybe you don't know how to swim. (Do you have to know how to swim to be a
Watcher?)
Hey, Watcher! I'm assuming you can hear. I
will shout. Get up! Get out to the rocks and look out the water! Something is
happening! And you're missing out! The voice is moving away! The morning tide
is turning! The boat is heading to land and rocks! Why won't you do anything?
Are you afraid of being the responsible one?
*
Finalle/Overture
"What, did you see a fuckin'
ghost?"
Joey went along with it. "Let's see
where the development leads."
In the darkroom, we developed the plates.
There are ways to make your space bigger, using more modern materials. The car
window rolled down--it was an expensive car--and the driver said to me, in a
German accent: "Will you come with me? I will pay you well."
It's not even an exchange! There's only
one part to it, namely: One: You give me money. You look across the table and
you want what the other person is eating.
Meanwhile, the other person is acting
hostile. "I think we've had a close encounter," said one. He had a
valid point.
I opened it. He wondered about dinner.
Where was everyone anyway?
(That's the ref speaking.)
How much for this? How much for that? The
building laughed. "I'm not going anywhere."
Jimmy sat down on the fourth chair.
"So, I'm back."
We didn't know precisely when it stopped;
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?
Abbreve. Something pissed
him off.
Something serious. Call it personification
or fishification or whatever, doesn't matter.
Again with the swans?
"We pulled the wool over our own
eyes, and died!"
