3-Day Novel 2010 (Part 3)
Eric Weisman, bearded, ruddy, rounds the corner, abstracted...
...considering the times through the darkness of the street. Of the eight street lamps lighting both sides of the block, three are burned out and one is flickering repetitively, while another flickers only intermittently. The whole effect makes the left side of the street appear to pop in and out of existence.
He kicks the thought, bounces it around a bit: these are the times. The times of collapse. The times of increasingly shuttered storefronts on once lively streets. The times when banks are closing branches in the most crowded intersections. The times when Western capitalism seems to be saying “fuck it” to everything, including itself, and is busy starving itself, eating itself up as though from an autoimmune disorder.
Or it seems that way from down here. The newspapers have been scrambling to supply appropriate metaphors for what was happening. Autoimmune disorder is his current favourite, though he likes the vividness of others too crude for print: intestinal blockage (as in constipation), intestinal hemorrhage, appendicitis, colorectal cancer of the world-spanning economic system. Shit going wrong with the shit-delivery system.
He turns the corner from the street of flickering lights onto a better-lit arterial road, populated during this evening hour mainly with younger people spilling out of the bars for smoke breaks. The sounds of their voices, muffled somewhat by the slush piled everywhere, are nevertheless defiant. One shrill, projective voice pierces the generalized din--“I could have fucked him, but no, I stayed wrote the goddamn thing myself...”--before falling back into sync with the seven or eight other conversations under that pinkish fluorescence escaping from the inside.
This particular nameless bar is also a concert venue, and the subcultures milling outside are different every weekday, although it had not escaped his attention that the subcultures were drawing closer to each other, almost imperceptibly, in styles of dress. In this, the subcultures that already emphasized cheap clothes seem to be winning, unsurprisingly.
As the block unrolls, he passes the other keystone species of this block, at this time: the old Chinese cart ladies, out for their endless-seeming evening collections of empties and recyclables. Their trade must be doing well these days, he wagers. Winter must provide a great seasonal windfall, since the cold is a disincentive to take the empties back, and the cramped quarters and general hopelessness are a positive incentive to drink more than ever, for the young and middle-aged population to party hearty, to drink up the wine and the beer and the liquor, for tomorrow we may die. He wonders about the old women’s sagacity, something he will never know because of the language barrier. Do they see things usually only reserved for friends’ or lovers’ eyes because of their unobtrusiveness? And how do they churn those observations in their minds? Do they share them? Where and with whom?
With the old lady out of sight, his thoughts and actions turn to preparatory motions for entering the streetcar: finding change, or a token, scanning the street for indicators as to how long he may expect to wait. He cannot see more than two blocks down the street because of the iciness on his glasses and the generally reduced visibility on account of the sewers spewing steam out over the boulevard, as if Tim Burton were standing on one of the rooftops shouting “Behold!”. So he doesn’t know how long since the last streetcar left the stop--or cluster of seven streetcars, like yesterday, which forced him, after half an hour, to slog through yesterday’s blizzard. But those are yesterday’s frustrations.
The presence of only three other people at the stop is not encouraging. So he slumps his back against the shelter glass and tries to turn up his collar to the wind. And he half-sits there, goring colder, trying every stratagem to leave his body. He ponders each stranger in turn, categorizing and rating them (6.5, 7, 6 out of 10, respectively), then replays the vacuum of the day, tries to hum some songs, but blows his load and gets to the chorus too quickly, counts the streetlights, counts his breaths, rubs his fingers together, thinks about what April will be like, with its wet, dark trees, thinks about the great depression, about Nazi iconography, about the pictures of smoke columns over Islamabad, about Anny, shifts to relieve the pressure in his solar plexus, thinks about how quickly the streetcar track is rusting, about the anachronistic use of sand as a braking mechanism, about how he knows that factoid, searches, remembers that it was a promotional poster some months ago, thinks about commercials and advertising more generally, tries to remember the name of a psychologist whose book he read a long time ago...Lotus?, Lottis?... remembers it was a woman, jump-cuts to the asymmetry of Anny’s collarbones, the result of a horseback riding accident, thinks about April mists at the horse farm, desperately squirms and looks straight ahead, evaluates the colour scheme of the sushi restaurant (red on brown with yellow Kanji characters) as unsatisfactory, gives some attention to the pulsing between his solar plexus and chest, thinks about intercostal muscles, about the opponent circuits in the medulla oblongata that control breathing rhythm, trying to recall the circuit diagram from, oh sweet Jesus, eight years ago, thinks about garbage and dust, floating in the wind, the chorus of “Dust in the Wind” helpfully inserting itself and running in the background for the rest of the trip, as he continues to picture abstract shapes of no earthly hue, thinks about H.P. Lovecraft, about the contrast of something-jumps-at-you horror and existential horror, the anxiety of meaninglessness, thinks about Paul Tilich the theologian that Rev. Denison mentioned the week before he died, which was, oh sweet Jesus, three years ago, thinks about aging, dust, flaking skin, about lights, about voids, abysses, the Marianas Trench, which sets of an annoying repetition of the phrase “Mohorovicic discontinuity” which crept into him when he took geology oh so many years ago...
...and finally, after so many iterations and others besides, the streetcar comes, and he climbs on, and pays, and stands, and shifts to accommodate more people packing on at other stops, and thirteen stops later gets off, and walks half a block left, then turns right, and then right at the funny-looking tree and goes down the alley and round back and unlocks the door and takes his boots and two layers of clothing off and enters the living room, all in a reverie, not having noticed any of these things, because of the tripartite “blessing” of his solar plexus flickering, “Dust in the Wind” dissolving him, and the Mohorovicic discontinuity giving him an odd feeling, like the shock before a poem kernel sprouts.
But he has not written poetry in something like seven years.
Consider: "[She] who looks on a true friend looks, as it were, upon a kind of image of [herself]: wherefore friends, though absent, are still present; though in poverty, they are rich; though weak, yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, though dead, they are alive."
...considering the times through the darkness of the street. Of the eight street lamps lighting both sides of the block, three are burned out and one is flickering repetitively, while another flickers only intermittently. The whole effect makes the left side of the street appear to pop in and out of existence.
He kicks the thought, bounces it around a bit: these are the times. The times of collapse. The times of increasingly shuttered storefronts on once lively streets. The times when banks are closing branches in the most crowded intersections. The times when Western capitalism seems to be saying “fuck it” to everything, including itself, and is busy starving itself, eating itself up as though from an autoimmune disorder.
Or it seems that way from down here. The newspapers have been scrambling to supply appropriate metaphors for what was happening. Autoimmune disorder is his current favourite, though he likes the vividness of others too crude for print: intestinal blockage (as in constipation), intestinal hemorrhage, appendicitis, colorectal cancer of the world-spanning economic system. Shit going wrong with the shit-delivery system.
He turns the corner from the street of flickering lights onto a better-lit arterial road, populated during this evening hour mainly with younger people spilling out of the bars for smoke breaks. The sounds of their voices, muffled somewhat by the slush piled everywhere, are nevertheless defiant. One shrill, projective voice pierces the generalized din--“I could have fucked him, but no, I stayed wrote the goddamn thing myself...”--before falling back into sync with the seven or eight other conversations under that pinkish fluorescence escaping from the inside.
This particular nameless bar is also a concert venue, and the subcultures milling outside are different every weekday, although it had not escaped his attention that the subcultures were drawing closer to each other, almost imperceptibly, in styles of dress. In this, the subcultures that already emphasized cheap clothes seem to be winning, unsurprisingly.
As the block unrolls, he passes the other keystone species of this block, at this time: the old Chinese cart ladies, out for their endless-seeming evening collections of empties and recyclables. Their trade must be doing well these days, he wagers. Winter must provide a great seasonal windfall, since the cold is a disincentive to take the empties back, and the cramped quarters and general hopelessness are a positive incentive to drink more than ever, for the young and middle-aged population to party hearty, to drink up the wine and the beer and the liquor, for tomorrow we may die. He wonders about the old women’s sagacity, something he will never know because of the language barrier. Do they see things usually only reserved for friends’ or lovers’ eyes because of their unobtrusiveness? And how do they churn those observations in their minds? Do they share them? Where and with whom?
With the old lady out of sight, his thoughts and actions turn to preparatory motions for entering the streetcar: finding change, or a token, scanning the street for indicators as to how long he may expect to wait. He cannot see more than two blocks down the street because of the iciness on his glasses and the generally reduced visibility on account of the sewers spewing steam out over the boulevard, as if Tim Burton were standing on one of the rooftops shouting “Behold!”. So he doesn’t know how long since the last streetcar left the stop--or cluster of seven streetcars, like yesterday, which forced him, after half an hour, to slog through yesterday’s blizzard. But those are yesterday’s frustrations.
The presence of only three other people at the stop is not encouraging. So he slumps his back against the shelter glass and tries to turn up his collar to the wind. And he half-sits there, goring colder, trying every stratagem to leave his body. He ponders each stranger in turn, categorizing and rating them (6.5, 7, 6 out of 10, respectively), then replays the vacuum of the day, tries to hum some songs, but blows his load and gets to the chorus too quickly, counts the streetlights, counts his breaths, rubs his fingers together, thinks about what April will be like, with its wet, dark trees, thinks about the great depression, about Nazi iconography, about the pictures of smoke columns over Islamabad, about Anny, shifts to relieve the pressure in his solar plexus, thinks about how quickly the streetcar track is rusting, about the anachronistic use of sand as a braking mechanism, about how he knows that factoid, searches, remembers that it was a promotional poster some months ago, thinks about commercials and advertising more generally, tries to remember the name of a psychologist whose book he read a long time ago...Lotus?, Lottis?... remembers it was a woman, jump-cuts to the asymmetry of Anny’s collarbones, the result of a horseback riding accident, thinks about April mists at the horse farm, desperately squirms and looks straight ahead, evaluates the colour scheme of the sushi restaurant (red on brown with yellow Kanji characters) as unsatisfactory, gives some attention to the pulsing between his solar plexus and chest, thinks about intercostal muscles, about the opponent circuits in the medulla oblongata that control breathing rhythm, trying to recall the circuit diagram from, oh sweet Jesus, eight years ago, thinks about garbage and dust, floating in the wind, the chorus of “Dust in the Wind” helpfully inserting itself and running in the background for the rest of the trip, as he continues to picture abstract shapes of no earthly hue, thinks about H.P. Lovecraft, about the contrast of something-jumps-at-you horror and existential horror, the anxiety of meaninglessness, thinks about Paul Tilich the theologian that Rev. Denison mentioned the week before he died, which was, oh sweet Jesus, three years ago, thinks about aging, dust, flaking skin, about lights, about voids, abysses, the Marianas Trench, which sets of an annoying repetition of the phrase “Mohorovicic discontinuity” which crept into him when he took geology oh so many years ago...
...and finally, after so many iterations and others besides, the streetcar comes, and he climbs on, and pays, and stands, and shifts to accommodate more people packing on at other stops, and thirteen stops later gets off, and walks half a block left, then turns right, and then right at the funny-looking tree and goes down the alley and round back and unlocks the door and takes his boots and two layers of clothing off and enters the living room, all in a reverie, not having noticed any of these things, because of the tripartite “blessing” of his solar plexus flickering, “Dust in the Wind” dissolving him, and the Mohorovicic discontinuity giving him an odd feeling, like the shock before a poem kernel sprouts.
But he has not written poetry in something like seven years.
Consider: "[She] who looks on a true friend looks, as it were, upon a kind of image of [herself]: wherefore friends, though absent, are still present; though in poverty, they are rich; though weak, yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, though dead, they are alive."
posted by A. D. at 10:50 AM
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