lift the corner

{Oct 30, 10}

The sun would be settling into a deep purple twilight, were it not for the rain clouds that scattered and diffused and made a mockery of the very idea of light. All day it had been thinking about raining without actually getting together the gumption to actively precipitate, and the air was thick with the damp and heavy with the burden of unrealized promise.

The wind picked up, died down, picked up again, unsettled as to whether to move the air from the east to the north or from the west to the south or to do nothing at all, a child started whining for a pacifier, for he was teething and couldn't identify the source of his anguish and did not yet have the words to express the deep agony of bone growth. The house shuddered into a more comfortable position, the framing and windows and foundation creaking in disparate moods of melancholy and exhaustion and anticipation, and outside the clouds obscured what would have been the thinnest crescent of a waxing newly born moon.

Listen as a bus passes, empty save for the driver and a man of indeterminate age with an indifferent destination, hear the quick deep swishing of the tires on damp asphalt and the creaking of the engine and the body slowing to a stop, the hydraulic lift and release as the bus lowers to a stoop closer to the sidewalk, the man struggles to a stand and carefully clambers down. The now empty bus continues back to the station, the driver surrounded by the emotions and passions and ambitions left on board by the departed passengers: as small children leave behind single gloves, comic books, report cards, apple cores, so do the adults forget to take with them the fear of job loss, the sorrow of decayed love, the resentment and jealousy and rage and forlornness of their lives, that day, deposited into the worn upholstery of the bus seats.

The driver has been driving this route for almost ten years, from the day it was established with community grand funding through the gentrification years to today, when its identity seems to waver between smug satisfaction and hopeless fate. Over time, watch shops open, close, rename, change ownership, thrive, close, remodel, watch infants become toddlers and the aged slowly lose mobility, watch the explosion in bicycle commuters and the addition of stops along the route, the route operates as an external vein, as an energy meridian, as an extension of the self, just as office workers become a part of their cubicles and the forts inhabited by small boys embody the burdens of their hopes and dreams.

The driver takes the empty bus to its destination at the end of the line, shares a cup of over-percolated but still weak coffee out of a styrofoam cup with the other uniformed drivers coming off of the end of the rush hour shift, transfers to a cross town bus that will weave through the damp streets to home, a home of elderly parents or of surly teenagers or of a displeased spouse or a completely empty home, bare except for a stack of magazines and a television and a folding chair.

Quietly now, quietly, the calm of the evening overcomes the anguishes of the day, as arguments are fought according to the established scripts of grievances and anxieties bloom into panic and in darkened rooms couples throw caution to the wind and the identity of the daytime is shed for the chores and expectations of being at home.

Parks bearing strictly worded No Trespassing After Dark signs are partially illuminated by street lights, benches abandoned by nannies and mothers and old men reading the paper to be populated by those who carry their lives with them, in rucksacks or grocery carts or shopping bags or in pockets, layers of hats, coats, trousers enveloping a body bearing the ravages of ill nourishment, disease, hopelessness, confusion, or antisocialness.

Every evening at ten p.m. the two policemen walk along the trails in an orderly clockwise procession, carrying truncheons, handcuffs, semi-automatic pistols, and every morning at five a.m. the walk is repeated in the anti-clockwise direction. They have been advised by the police chief to let sleeping dogs lie, and so make sure that violence is kept to a minimum and medical emergencies are reported to the state hospital, but turn a blind eye to displaced teenagers, wandering war veterans, discharged psychiatric patients, and more than a few undercover sociology students, creating what is, in effect, a wildlife refuge for those between destinations.

There have been stretches of relative stability, a core group of four or five who claim a corner of the park for their own, but this has inevitably led to feelings of ownership, of proprietary rights, and while the police chief is willing to overlook drifters, the city council has firmly drawn the line against the establishment of alternative communities living in public spaces forgoing property taxes and hot showers, due to fears of claims of squatters rights and the potential need to provide infrastructure services to those who have escaped the confines of civilized society.

The park, even without an established population, has developed its own expectations of rules and appropriate behaviors and mores and systems of justice, what level of lust or of crime is permissible before interference is justified, what friendships or alliances can be formed or protected. There are dogs, propane stoves, fires built in barbecue pits, sleeping bags, but always, after a few days or a few weeks, the need to continue through the city along invisible network lines sometimes paralleled by the bus or the river is implemented, and new inhabitants arrive as the others carry on their search for survival along the dimly lit corridors of the city.

Downtown, restaurants serve exquisitely sculpted works of art to couples who are contemplating falling in love, bars refill glasses full of the empty promises of self pity and grandiose ambition, plays enact the condensed and stylized attitudes and conversations of the members of the audience, musicians hover on the brink of enlightenment, and everywhere taxis dart like dragonflies between high heels and covered walk ways and apartment buildings.

The taxis do not fill with discarded and lost emotions as the buses do, for the taxi is the domain of the driver, filled with the echoing beat of foreign music, chattered phone calls to family members, hanging decorations. The passengers rotate through, swathed in a jumble of exhaustion, eagerness, ambition, and anger, but though they may leave behind briefcases or cold viruses or insufficient tips or evidence of overindulgence at the cocktail bar, they never mange to leave behind themselves, much as they may try, for the taxi is always the domain of the photographed, named, numbered, and licensed authorized operator, whose identity and existence is neatly labeled and cataloged with the company and the city, and there is no room for any additions from passengers. Taxi drivers always have families: while bus drivers may or may not return home to a variety of choices of relatives, lovers, friends, taxi drivers carry with them photographs of sons, daughters, grandchildren, cousins, parents, and pals, even the most isolated and strung out drivers surrounded by a cocoon of intimates whose personality occupies the front passenger seat, linked by cell phone or waves at corners or long coffee breaks.

Eventually, the roster of characters moves from the established evening crowd with their pre-ordained codes of behavior to the after hours patterns, stratifications just as rigidly enforced, waiters, cooks, actors, dancers, artists, and students living off the buzz of adrenaline, coffee, cocaine, alcohol that carries their passions through the darkest hours of exhaustion and oblivion into the company of peers, thoroughly repulsed by the meek order of the daytime world, carrying on conversations and searching for meaning in a place where life is a fun house mirror of daytime attitudes and conventions. Thoughts that could never be conceived of under sunlight spring into being during the dark hours, alliances formed between parties whose existence at any other hours would be suspect or preposterous, objects and designs conceptualized and created and rationalized and realized under the steady hum of incandescent lights and dance music and the steadily beating loathing of all that is held most sacred by the inhabitants of the day.

Here, in the enclaves of the awake, are nursed ambitions and grudges and dreams that may turn to violence or to love as easily as they may be discarded in the alley's refuse, but the tightly wound core of needing to be alive, needing to feel each moment and each experience as deeply and sharply as possible carries the darkest hours through to their conclusion, the conclusion a slow breaking away as individuals, couples, groups return to futons, couches, lofts, even houses where quietly sleeping others await their return.

The night shift pushes through the twenty minute warning bell, the overnight patrols weigh the need to enforce the law against the time required to fill out paperwork as a result of enforcing the law, the earliest caretakers and guardians of the community gather together brooms, trash bags, pass cards, car keys to realign the awakening city with the routines and schedules to come. The heavy clouds from the night before have not dispersed, but instead grown thicker, more determined, obscuring totally the daylight in a grey dawn of rain, a steady, heavy, thudding rain that fills storm drains and forms puddles of incalculable depth, soaking through shoes and washing away cigarette butts and anger, the rain leaving behind a sharp, clear sense of purpose, focusing the mind on the immediate tasks of the day.

Children in galoshes and raincoats struggle with backpacks, arriving at schools smelling of the damp hiss of radiators and the soggy heaviness of wet socks and chalk, to halfheartedly work multiplication tables and pass notes and fall asleep during social studies as the rain beats against the roof and windows. Office workers struggle equally with umbrellas and spreadsheets, toddlers beg to go to parks, disappointed by the unavailability of slides and swings and sandboxes, coffee is served piping hot, and in the buses the windows are obscured by the hot condensation of the breathing of workers in transit, puddles gathering under seats, as the cross town bus begins its course again, ferrying half formed emotions to their final destination.

portrait

{Oct 29, 10}

What you see first is the nose. Not just any nose, the way any face has a nose, has a snub nose or a straight nose or a long nose or a nose with a bump placed at just the right point for holding a pair of spectacles at the correct distance for reading the newspaper and then glancing up and over the paper to share a story about a bank robbery or a white tailed hawk with whomever happens to be sitting in the arm chair on the other side of the room, engrossed in the business section or a romance novel or staring out the window trying to weigh the options of radiation versus surgery, and not quite certain what bank robberies or spottings of white tailed hawks might or might not have to do with the matter.

But this is none of those noses; this is a nose which for thousands of years has been stamped in profile on Roman coins, a nose for which the face is only an afterthought of a very forgetful creator, a nose whose proportions rival that of elephants and anteaters. Attached to this nose is a chin, which every day sprouts forth a white stubble, stubble removed using a badger bristle brush and a cake of shaving soap in a porcelain bowl and a straight edged razor blade, under a forhead whose dimensions have grown over the years as the hairline has decreased. The nose has grown neither larger nor smaller, not as a result of truthtelling or fibbing or conveniently forgetting aspects of the narrative which may indeed have been pertinent to the situation; rather, the nose simply attained its desired dimensions and there remained, allowing the balance of the face and the physical body to mature around it.

The eyes are kind, the kindness of bearing responsibility for not merely brothers, sisters, parents, spouse, and children, but the kindness also of holding closely the responsibility for laborers, workmen, their families, and the corporation. It is a harsh kindness, a kindness born of knowing that indulgence is a curse rather than a benefit, that freedom can break hearts as well as bodies, and so a kindness kept under a cloak of uncompromising strictness of rules and expectations and demands which may be terse and curt and strongly worded for all that their intentions are sincere. Above the eyes are eyebrows that argue for prominence against the nose, the bushy effusive brows standing against onslaughts of wind, snow, sun, curses, and bad luck, not thinning with age but turning a bristly grey white.

Of the rest, you can already see: the strength of the hands, the pressure exerted to saw or to hammer or to sand or to weld or to hold tight, just so, until the wind dies down and all is safe once more. The shoulders are held back, proud, submitting to no compromises of exhaustion or rank, as uncompromising as the nose, as strong as the hands. Scattered through the body are the detritus of a life fully lived, the remnants of shrapnel and bullets, the scars from grafts and replacements, the torn or missing ligaments, the worn joints, all brought together in an orchestra of choreographed, disciplined will, the will to live, the will to love, the will to succeed, the will to experience, the will to overcome, the will to conquer, the will to rule, but to rule as benignly as possible in a world where failure, death, and unhappiness follow upon ill-made decisions.

Bearing the burden of family born from and created, of country, of humanity, coordinating the demands of duty and desire, and in the end what were left behind was an arbor of grape vines, two apple and two pear trees, a rose garden, a fig tree, a series of terraces constructed by hand laid stone, a recipe for baking bread, lectures on compound interest and investing, diatribes against Reagan, a disgust of the only true holy and apostolic Church, a loathing of indolence, and the firmly held belief that everyone, man or woman, held their own fate firmly in their hands.

interview

{actually, I have a feeling this is the flip-side of last week's piece}
{the application form was provided, with blanks}

APPLICATION
For enrollment as a character in the work of qualified writers

To expedite our consideration of your qualifications for the part, please respond as completely and as truthfully as discretion permits. Feel free to use additional sheets, attach supporting documentation, and/or solicit letters of recommendation from third parties.

Full name:
Mr. Smith, esq., but you can call me Bud.

Date of birth: 5/10/54. Taurus.
Where were you born? in the maternity ward. St. Paul's, Cleveland, OH

Any special circumstances or omens associated with your birth?
Yeah, you know, it was a pretty standard birth. Third kid so my mom knew the routine, contractions, water breaks, anesthesia, forceps, stitches. Unless you mean about the big old raven that followed the old Ford to the hospital, and roosted in the parking lot, or having a twin that they hadn't known about, on account of him not gestating properly and being still born. Kinda creepy, being crammed into a womb with a corpse all those months.

Father? Occupation.
War vet, Italian front, Mom war bride. Drifter, auto mechanic, short order cook, either died of alcohol poisoning or ran off with another woman in 1962, mom would never say which.

Tell us about your brothers and sisters.
Louise, she's the oldest, conceived in Rome as part of the Allied celebrations, cause of shot gun marriage between parents. Fred jr followed, nice enough guy but kept frogs in a shoebox under his bed and fed them crickets from a jar. That dead kid my mom called Simon. Little sister Lucy was never quite all there, but nothing really wrong with her. There might be a half brother if some of the stories are true.

Pet's names? Species?
Spud. Brown boxer dog. Cat. Cat.

Emergency contact?
What, for an inheritance? To sign a death certificate? Call my insurance company and get preapproval. That's more important.

Relationship to you?
My insurance company? I pay them, they charge me some more, but when my prostate started acting up our relationship got pretty close.

Level of education you've attained?
Street smarts all the way uptown to Harlem.

How do you feel you learned the things that have helped you survive?
This kid, Joe? He was in my third grade class at St. Mark's, and boy did he know some shit. Nine years old and where babies came from and how to win at marbles and poker. He's been in the pen since that incident in 1979.

What media of communication do you prefer?
"Media of communication" my ass. I watch TV, mostly ESPN, and sometimes old copies of Newsweek at the doctor's office. There's this talk radio show on AM and, yeah, I know they're all fucking crazy but some of the shit our government gets up to, you know, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but that stuff's crazy.

What jobs have you held?
Sweetheart, we can discuss this over a beer if you like. Get to be my age and what jobs haven't you held? Busboy, waiter, taxi driver, summer school janitor, factory line at GM, construction crew for houses and a few roads as well, and if you take my advice you'll avoid routes that involve certain bridges over certain rivers going down I-80. Did a bit of hustling but nothing that involved flesh. Some yard work and snow removal, that's called landscaping now.

[p. 2]

Which job would you say was most important to you, and why?
Most important to me? You gotta be kidding. We're talking finding a fuckin' PAYING job in OHIO with a barely earned high school diploma and a kid to support? You give me a paycheck and it's high priority important.

What would your dream job be?
So I met this guy and he wears those slick suits with dark ties and drives a BMW, and he was no smarter than me but he had this polish, ya know, and I bought him a drink, a Jim Bean, neat, and he started talkin' and I had no idea that time shares could be so lucrative.

Own home or rent?
Used to own a house, 'til I found out it was part of the capitalist conspiracy to tie up all your earnings in a totally frozen waste and it was worth way less than they said it was, so that was really a hassle. Walked away.

Have you got a sweetie?
Sweetie, there's always room for one more.
Do they go with you?
Not if you're interested in coming along.

Are you married?
Yeah, I've been married.
Is this a good thing?
Ma of my kid. Say marriage is better for families but she was a bitchy insane shrew who complained about my sneakers but absolutely covered the bathroom in hairbrushes and curling iron and mascara and lipstick smears.

Any children?
The kid. He's okay.

Why would you want this job?
It's not that I want this job so much as I want a job, and this one pays pretty well considering the pansy workload and all that free booze the author promised. This sounds ok.

Have you ever committed a crime?
I paid my debt to society but we're not talking felony and that is all your big innocent eyes need to hear.

If no, have you ever wanted to commit something, or just done something downright mean?
It ain't downright mean if she's coming after you with a steak knife because the bowling league ran overtime and you stopped for a beer on the way home and she's spent the evening with happy hour margaritas. That was self defense, not being mean. Crazy bitch.

What do you expect to be doing in five years?
Well, in five year's time if I move to France I'll be able to retire, but I won't qualify for social security for eight years, and they're so broke I doubt I'll pull out half of what I put in. You and me, babe, give us five years and you won't regret it.

How do you think it might be to work with this writer?
She said that the hours were pretty easy, mostly afternoons, and free booze, and I could carry on doin' what I've been doin', and that sounds fine to me.

Any accomplishments you can claim to set you apart from the horde?
I only lose at poker when I want to.

How do you feel about filling out this form?
Thirsty. Join me for a drink?

THANK YOU!

-----

Scene. The Peter Pan Cafe, a down at the heels bar that hasn't been renovated since it opened in 1972 and hasn't been cleaned since the owner's sister moved to Florida with her husband who had won a settlement in an asbestos lawsuit back in 1986. Gin is $1.75, beer $1, and bags of chips and hot dogs are available for the hungry. Everyone claims the hot dogs haven't been changed in ten years, but everyone knows that come eleven p.m., they'll hand over $4 and take a hot dog and enjoy it. Our character sits at the bar nursing a Jim Bean, neat.

So this wide eyed girl comes up to me in the bus station as I was minding my own goddammed business and she's all charming and sweet and hey, you need a job, and I didn't take her for a woman looking to earn a few bucks on the side with a pick up john in the Greyhound station, so I nod and she just keeps on talking, earnest and wide eyed and naive as a kitten, and she convinces me that I am absolutely the goods that her client, some writer hot shot name from the papers with a movie deal to her name, this author that this girl works for is apparently all dried up out of creative moxie but has a book due to the publisher in six weeks and a cocaine habit to support and is suffering from dry pen syndrome and needs a few good characters and is prepared to pay for them, cash, easy hours, free booze.

Well, you put a little girl like that in a bus station with that type of offer and my guess is she'd gotten her ass pinched a few times when she mentioned an application to fill out, but my bus was late and her eyes were big and so I humored her, never expecting this would actually lead to a job. I mean, she was more like a plant for the Census Bureau or the CIA or the Patriot Act or some car dealership, and I was as surprised as the next person when she gave me a business card and said she'd send a taxi to meet me the next day, and the next day at two p.m. exactly a not too filthy yellow cab pulls up and really takes me to see the author.

And this really is a hot shot author like the girl said, I recognized her from an interview on morning television last week, and she's just sitting all awkwardly in an armchair, smoking, and I don't see a pen or a laptop in sight, but she offers me a beer and who am I to say no? It still looks like a federal set up of some type so I'm not exactly volunteering information, but all she wants to do is visit my apartment three days a week and trail behind me two days a week, and I can do whatever the hell I want while she's around, and she'll pay $100 a day and cover the booze bill.

And then I'm like you fucking voyeur, $100 is nothing, and she gets testy and tells me to act like a professional, and it's cash, and it doesn't interfere with me working, because she's happy to sit around and watch me work, but she knows I'm between jobs and could use the money. Fucking crazy this lady was, got all testy when I got suggestive as to how we could spend that time, then I mentioned that I knew about the cocaine and while it wasn't my thing I had a friend who'd appreciate a bit, and she said I could choose cash and booze, or drugs, but not both so we worked out a deal and for he next month I had a crazy high strung chain smoking bona fide author following me around five days a week.

She bought me a cell phone so she could find me when she was ready to begin working, and some days it was ten at night or out of the blue six in the morning but usually she'd show up after lunch looking a bit paranoid and slightly hung over, so I assumed the book was going ok. So she'd call and I'd tell her where I was and once I forgot to mention that it was an out of town location and man was she livid when she finally found me. But it was $2000 a month, cash, and she kept her promise about the drinks, and, yeah, nothing really weird happened, but that woman, she was crazy, I tell you. Working on the road crew was easier.

If a wide eyed girl ever comes up to you with a form to fill out at a Greyhound station, you get on the next departing bus fast, I don't care if you end up in Sioux City, anything at all won't be as awful as that month, being treated like an exhibitionistic dog. Holy shit. Another drink, Pete.

---

reading
Calvino / Invisible Cities

weather
foggy foggy rain drizzle and two minutes of light a day, gone, means an hour a month

vituperation

Open Letter to the Management.

Dear Sir or Madam,

If we're going to continue to work together, there are some changes that will need to be incorporated in the very near future, if not immediately. Should these changes have been implemented last week, it would not be too soon, but things have gone on as is for long enough, and the line has been crossed one to many times. I won't stand for it any more; it violates all aspects of personal respect, dignity, and decency, to say nothing of the health code, the building code, the fire code, and the expectations laid down in the Bill of Rights. Copies of all of the above are here attached, should you need a reminder of the expectations laid forth therein.

At this point, the relevant documents held tightly in one hand and tossed on top of the table, the kettle came to a boil and the need to make tea overrode what was to be the writing of the second paragraph of a monograph entitled "Manifesto: The Legal Rights of Peons and Other Entry Level Employees in Today's World", and so she set her pen down and lit a cigarette. Not that nicotine and tea were the best combination of flavors, but it was more efficient to combine the breaks rather than make a cup of tea and then fifteen minutes later go onto the porch for a smoke, which in and of itself wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that her book manuscript was already six weeks past deadline, and if publication was postponed further there would be difficulties with the production schedule which would affect the book tour, and already radio and television appearances had been brought into question.

She had spent the advance on a drug filled weekend on Barbados, which, from what she could remember of it, had been an absolute blast, and the messages her editor was leaving for her were becoming angrier and more panicked by the day. Actually, she could probably use the text of the messages from her editor as her chapter headings, which would give "Manifesto" an interesting narrative arc. Excerpts from some of the letters she had received from the electric and phone companies threatening to cut off service would be potentially useful material as well, and, becoming excited, she began to rummage for the final letters her ex-husband (the rat) had sent her while the were working out the details of a combined alimony / restraining order package.

By the end of the afternoon, she had opened all the windows in her apartment and started chain smoking on the living room floor, surrounded by piles of papers from editors, former lovers, performance reviews, creditors, downstairs neighbors, and a particularly vehement one from the local girl scout troop following the sabotage incident of the girl scout cookie sale, and she felt her polemic on the rights of peons finally had the essential spark and element of passion her readers had come to expect.

Her earlier books had posed almost no difficulty in the writing stage; "Pole-axed: A User's Guide to Mother-in-Laws" she had written while on a drinking binge with an old flame in an unheated cabin in the Adirondacks, and had shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for three glorious months, thankfully after the divorce so the earnings were not calculated in the settlement she received from her ex.

Her follow-up book, "From Capitalist Pigs to Pulled Pork: A Guide to the Politics and Barbecues of Dixie", had its film rights auctioned off before the first printing had appeared, and had been hailed as the "best Southern guidebook on the marker" (Wall Street Journal) and "a bracing introduction to the ways of the works" (New Orleans Picayune).

Most of the book had been full page reproductions from turn of the century newspapers, gloriously royalty free, and in between she had put the highlights of her unfinished economics dissertation and the case notes from her file from her therapist, five years of digesting the traumas of growing up in South Carolina, before she had realized that her therapist was actually being paid by her sister to claim that she was of neither sound mind nor body and so should have power of attorney signed over to said sister, who would become legal guardian, controlling not only the payments received as royalties from her books, but also getting her grubby paws on a larger piece of their parent's inheritance.

Well, that wasn't going to happen; she fired her shrink and broke in after hours to find her case notes, which were then easily reprocessed into the chapters of "Pulled Pork". But "Manifesto", which was to be the crowning element of her trilogy, had proven much more difficult to grasp a hold of, and it was only now, in her hour of desperation, that a structure had finally begun to take shape, born from the sternly worded ravings of the managers of a callous capitalist world.

She wondered if there would be a fourth book; she loved the advances, she loved the interviews, she loved the book signings, as hosts and the audience listened to her rants and bits of juicy gossip with rapt attention, waiting to be shocked by another horrific revelation, then gasping audibly when she obliged. There had been threats of legal action, of course, from her ex-husband, ex-mother-in-law, and sister, but all publicity is good publicity, and the books flew off the shelves.

At the end of the tour for the second book, she had sensed a change in the needs of the public, away from memoir and towards empathy with the human condition and the downtrodden, and her instincts had been right, if pre-order figures for the unwritten but promised book were anything to go by; the public identified with the peon, and she was happy to meet their need.

For a time she had looked into outsourcing the writing of "Manifesto", of using researchers and ghost writers and just providing thematic and stylistic guidance, but after two full weeks of interviewing eager young things who were desperately, passionately committed to the cause of the common man or desperately, passionately committed to breaking into the rarefied world of publishing, she had had more than enough earnest compassionate bullshit and decided it would be easiest to write the book herself.

There had been very little progress since then, but, as she typed the contents of her archive into her manuscript, the fog of fear began to pull away, and the joy of writing took over, the dictation of monopoly corporations bent on manipulating an uninformed public filling in the blanks. This book might not be her masterpiece of vituperation, but it would tide her over until the arrival of her next idea and the next advance.

Maybe she would take on God; since she had already covered mother-in-laws, politics, and corporate greed, "The Sins of the Father: The True Believer's Exposé of Organized Religion" would be the logical, the compelling next step. She wondered if she could have it banned by the Pope, which would boost sales, and wondered if she could also raise a Muslim outcry, thus also earning the free publicity of a day in court and a fiery free speech first amendment case defense paid for and argued by the ACLU.

There was definite possibility there; all she had to do was finish putting the management in its place, and then God would have his turn.

---

reading
current studio work in the New York Times!!!

weather
oh, it's cold. too cold.

la familia

The clock chimed. The house was perfectly still.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

And then the chiming stopped. At the last stroke of the hour, there had been eleven tolls; no one was at home; the clock stayed quiet, withholding the final two bells.

What was wrong? She had been there, two days ago, in the family room, after dinner, after they had lit candles and said a prayer for grandmama in the hospital and for her brother fighting against the invaders, her father, tall, strong, had walked solemnly across the rug and wound the clock, as he did every Sunday evening without fail.

Had someone died, just as the clock was beginning to announce the new day? But no one in the house was ill, unless a messenger had arrived with news of her brother's death, undoubtedly a glorious death for the sake of the integrity of the country, but she had been awake, wide awake, all night, listening to the clock and the noise of the fire dying down to embers and the squeaks in the hallway as the wood settled into place for the night, and no one had banged the door, there had been no footsteps towards the entry way, no sound of a motor or of feet crunching on gravel around the house, no ringing of a telephone.

She wondered if it was safe to investigate, if she had perhaps simply miscounted on the previous toll or the current toll, if in the excitement of preparing for what lay ahead she had carelessly lost track of what was the most important part, the key to understanding and acting at exactly the right moment. It didn't have to happen at midnight, that was certainly true, nor did it absolutely have to happen tonight; there would be no repercussions from a postponement. But she had promised herself, and written it in all capital letters in her diary, and told her best friend, and then sworn her best friend to utter secrecy, and then mingled the blood of their forefingers together to swear on the swear, and so she was compelled.

But what time was it? The hallway was cold, dark, silent, as one would expect from a country house hallway in the middle of the night in winter, and there was no draft, no whimper from the floorboards, no one sitting in a chair waiting to accost her.

Her mother had disappeared on a night just like this one, silent, dark, four years ago, but nothing had been said, an extra place setting hadn't even been left vacant at the dining table, the movements of the household just continued, closed seamlessly around the hole. When she had questioned her father, her tutor, the cleaning lady, they had closed down, brushed the queries aside, pretended to have not understood.

She had started sneaking around the old house, first with her mother's room, every trace of her mother gone, disappeared, obliterated. Gone were the high heel shoes with diamonds on the toes. Gone was the dressing gown embroidered all over in blue and green and pink birds, gone was the silver hairbrush with the initials EAM delicately etched in a cursive script, gone were the scented sachets of lavender, gone were the pressed white notecards with her name in gold along the top. The novels she had thought would be gone, too, but months later had found them in the library, shelved randomly among the other books. Otherwise, attics to cellars, not the tiniest bit of evidence that her mother had ever existed remained.

She spent hours, days, avoiding her guardians to search surreptitiously throughout the house, looking for remnants or clues, or even just hints that she had had a mother. There were no photographs or letters, nothing hidden within the randomly assorted novels in the library, no hidden cubbyholes in desks or dressers or walls. Even her best friend was of no help, as they had been introduced at a birthday party the following summer, which she had been forced to attend, her father growing exasperated at her despondency, her refusal to carry on like a carefree girl, instead turning into a melancholic, sickly, stubborn daughter, alternating between rage and listlessness.

Doctors were brought in, but none had any news or information about her mother, they just nodded, said "there, there", took her temperature, listened to her heart, and prescribed rest, a pet parrot, new friends, a trip to the sea, a different school, a diet of cranberries. Her brother only visited once in all those years, a grown man far too intimidating to ask questions of, and he left the next day after receiving an important message.

She had never searched her father's study or his bedroom; not only were they always kept locked, but she was terrified what fate might befall her if she were caught in the act of rifling through his documents, and fear of hum overrode fear and loss for her mother. Tonight, though, she was going into his study. She had left the window in the far corner unlocked, and was almost certain she could walk windowsill to balcony to windowsill to reach it, and she just had to know, and now was the time, when the clock chimed twelve.

---

reading
The Watermelon King / Daniel Wallace

weather
frosts!

nom de guerre

I'm not obliged to explain it to you. In fact, in answering that rather leading question or proposition or whatever you call it, I might be breaking the government secrets act.

You go on and on and on about freedom of information, how information wants to be free, and, you know what? -- that's just bullshit. If freedom was the name of a dog, say a golden retriever, and, true to his name, all that dog wanted was to escape from the back yard and spend the afternoon chasing cars, you know, that dog would still be on the front doorstep come dinner time, ready for his kibble and to sleep on the bed. And don't try to tell me that information isn't just exactly the same: it may want to nose around the neighborhood, engage in some gentle flirtation, but, really, information knows where it belongs just like that dog does, and information really just wants to stay locked up nice and tight in the desk drawer. So you'll understand that your argument doesn't carry any weight, that I'm not at all obliged to explain it to you.

There have been plenty of times when I've explained these delicate matters to you before, yes, I know we go back years, that you've thus far been a good shepherd with all the bits and pieces I've thrown your way, but times have changed and things aren't what they used to be and management was shuffled and some new policies were implemented, and, wow, have you met the hot new reporter covering this beat for the Journal? Not that that has anything to do with this; you've just got to understand that I'm not obliged to explain it to you.

No, you're confusing obligation with desire. They're two very different values, as any old married couple can tell you. I have no obligation to share this information with you: we are bound by no contract, written or implied, made no promises, there was never even a handshake, just a series of favors requested and provided. And right now the score is even: I've asked, and you've asked, and I've asked, and you've asked, as infinitum, but that was always a matter of desire, and we're equal now, no favors owed, so you can stop tapping your left foot in annoyance because it just ain't gonna happen. I'm not obliged to explain it to you.

Oh, I know you have your reasons. Yes, I know they are all fail-safe, vetted, perfectly valid reasons. I know your intentions are only pure and good. I know that you hold to the highest standards, that your inclinations are respectable, that your thoughts are honorable -- but it isn't your motivations or your thoughts that I'm worried about. Your conscience may be the clear ringing of a glass bell of handblown Bavarian glass on a hilltop on a crisp winter day, but it doesn't matter. Are you getting this? I'm simply not obliged to explain it to you.

Yeah, we go back donkey's years. There was that incident with the firetruck back in '63 that neither of us will ever likely forget, and that questionable boundary issue when Eastern Europe was starting to go all Humpty Dumpty and we did a bit of currency running, and planting those letters in the in-box of the editor at the Tribune was something else, and of course I value the time we've spent sifting through dumpsters for triplicate documents that shouldn't have been there, and the thousands of cigarettes and gallons of coffee have meaning, just as the stadium prank had meaning, and scrambling all the broadcast channels at the factory had meaning and installing Warning: Red Tide and Urgent Notice: Shark signs up and down the Eastern seaboard that summer had meaning, and, of course I'm always going to value the time we managed to have Air Force One completely reupholstered in pale pink leatherette with mint green trim, all of these have strengthened my devotion and esteem, but, really, listen to me -- this time, I'm not obliged to explain it to you.

Right? There's a time, and there's a place, and this isn't it. Not this time. Not this place. Let it drop, stop pushing me, and back down. It doesn't matter about the Confucian saying about a drop of water wearing down a granite mountain, you're no drop of water and I'm no mountain, so there's not going to be any weathering away to a different outcome, answer, or solution. You can plead, curse, beg, promise, bribe, cajole, hint, lead, threaten, or torture, but that's all missing the point. There are limits.

You're being obtuse and unconvincingly coy if you try to pretend that you've always been honest and straightforward with me -- there's been plenty that you haven't deigned to tell me at the time, and there's plenty still that you keep nice and tight under your hat. Do you really think that I was totally unaware of the money laundering scheme in Rio, or that house you were "possibly interested in purchasing" happened to be a duplex with a shared wall with a certain someone who was having an affair with a certain someone else, or that the last minute birthday visit you took to your father's was actually a flight to Morocco, or that you were working for a very different organization that the one that appeared on your pay stubs as the employer? Of course I knew all these things, but did I inquire, did I push, did I prod, did I raise my eyebrows, did I grow angry, did I threaten? And here you are playing all high and mighty with some lame version of the freedom of information act, but you've just got to get it through your head that I'm not obliged to explain it to you.

You go on and on about rights and responsibilities and moral imperatives and that's just bluster. There's nothing you can hold over my head, dredge up from my past, blackmail or counter offer with. At this moment you have nothing that I want, I have no intention of discussing the topic further, and you need to calm down a few notches. That's all there is to it. Take one of the Valium pills from my mother's old stash; god bless her, with the dementia and all she won't be needing them anymore, or have some of that hippie herbal tea your doctor recommended, or go skip rocks on the lake or throw glass bottles as hard as you can at the recycling yard, or break a plate, I really don't care, but you're getting wound tighter and tighter and it's not going to do you any good, and I had hoped that starting this conversation over martinis would have helped matters, but hear me, dammit, I've said all I'm going to say about the matter, and I'm not obliged to explain it to you.

Breathe deeply and try not to choke on the olive, and when you're a bit calmer I'll call a cab for you and by tomorrow you'll understand that some limits are actual boundaries and non-negotiable, and instead of blustering and flushing like a drunk fish out of water you'll pull yourself together and be presentable, because there's nothing you can do or say about the situation. Regardless of your opinion of the matter, I'm not obliged to explain it to you.

---

reading
WSJ article: "A novel, to be compelling, has to have plot, dramatic incident and narrative momentum, but these are the very elements that are lacking in our daily lives, confused and messy as they are."

weather
ugh. Oct.