truthfront

Category: writing

  • The fifth year

    ratner

     

    In the child’s fifth year it fully memorized all five of the sacred texts and decided to destroy them. While the rearing mother was outside the hut tending to the matters of the village the child tore the pages from the sacred texts and left the books spineless, ripping the lifeless pages even further so that the floor of the hut was littered with small bits of paper like shaved ice. The rearing mother arrived to find the child seated on the carpeted floor with a mound of paper scraps before itself, a sullen look on the child’s face, and the rearing mother didn’t understand what had happened until her eyes fell upon the disconnected spines of the texts, whereupon her eyes metamorphosed into a darkness deeper than night and she rushed over to the child, beating it with her open fists, screaming that the child was a devil, nothing but a devil, a devil all along, the child unconscious after the first ten or twelve blows to the head, and it wasn’t until an adolescent male villager outside the hut overheard the violence within and opened the hut door to find the holy child’s rearing mother astride the bloodied and motionless body of the pale king. The young man separated the rearing mother from the child and set her outside to face the fate of the profane while inside he tended to the child and ensured it was still alive, it was still breathing and could move. As the child’s broken bones healed and its wounds became scars the people in the village orchestrated a ceremony whereby the rearing mother was beheaded with a machete and her head displayed upon a stick for the people to parade about the woods with their torches of fire guiding them in the night. The people of the village sang and howled at their joy, they celebrated the holy death of the heretic, they returned to the village to find the child of god huddled by candlelight over its papers, its ever-present words and ideas that the papers couldn’t contain, for with age the human intellect activates, and the child, for reasons unknown to this omniscient narrator, had finally become convinced that the words he or she had been writing so feverishly were words or the pictures of words delivered directly from god, messages for the people, for the future, for all time and all people from the heavenly king. Everyone had been right, all the people of the village were correct, the rearing mother had indeed been the caretaker of a holy person, a medium between the common man and the god they worshipped, the child thought. The electric current of power slid though the child, intoxicating and rapturous.

  • Writers of the world

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    She: Who are your favorite living North American authors?

    Me: DeLillo, McCarthy, Denis Johnson. Those are the three that come to mind.

    She: That’s it?

    Me: For North Americans, yes. I mostly read works in translation. Or writers who do not write in English.

    She: Why is that?

    Me: I don’t know for sure but, speaking of North American writers, it seems those who get the most attention or readership aren’t stretching the limits of consciousness. I’ve found that those who write in other languages are. Those are the types of writers I most enjoy reading. I suppose that is the type of writer I am.

    She: How about European writers who write in English?

    Me: How about them? The same idea applies. Of course there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of writers I have yet to discover. I cannot speak for them. I cannot speak for anyone.

    She: So what does that say about writers who write in English?

    Me: I don’t know.

     

  • in a parallel universe

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    There’s a man writing in a notebook and his hands are scarred and discolored from years of sun allergies and intentional damage, the scratching and kneading and pulling and tearing at the skin while in slumber. There are times when his hands don’t resemble his own but his father’s, or more like the memory he has of his father’s hands, so large and commanding, so devastating, a landscape of skin dominated by long, winding wrinkles and impossibly large veins that as a child, the writer thought were fat blue worms sleeping just beneath his father’s skin. The back of the writer’s hands have a spatter of light brown hairs beneath the pinkie knuckle, and this too he remembers as a characteristic of his father’s hands, a farmer’s hands, a ball player’s hands, a god’s hands. His cuticles, the writer’s, are dry and white with hardly any pale crescent lunula at the bottom, and the nails, carefully and frequently shorn so that very little white exists at the free edge beyond the fingertip, are deeply ridged in parallel vertical lines. He works with his mind but his hands are responsible for the effects of his work: elucidation, translation, illustration. The insides of his hands (the palms), are deeply seamed with wrinkles (age, use) and hard, gelatinous callouses like yellow patches at the base of each finger. It amazes him, his hand. He wonders what his hands say to others about him. There is a purpose for everything on this planet, he thinks, and thus writes. He feels that he is a failure, this man, and that he is forever damned to failure. Perhaps his hands will save him, they’ll claw their way up from the premature grave of the writer’s design, they’ll brush the clumps and grains of moist earth from his body.

  • Slumber party

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    I wake thrashing in the night, bedclothes soaked through and enfouled. Something is wrong, there is an intruder in the darkness. I don’t remember having dreamed but there is fear and panic and I cannot waste time, for I must arm myself with whatever is close at hand to defend my body and defend my home and I reach for the bedside lamp to douse the room in light to find the intruder (monster) standing over me or my sleeping wife who’d never hurt anyone, not purposely, not ever, and as quickly as my mind seeks her out in the darkness it returns with impossibly horrific images of her corpse and with a flick of my hand the light snaps on and of course there is no one but the intruder of consciousness within pulling me back into dream and then I begin to remember. I look to my wife sleeping (ostensibly) peacefully and there’s a flashlight clutched tight in my hand raised to attack and I set it down gently, though the panic has not yet abated in full, for I know that the stranger lurks still in the room, it is I, the stalking assassin of my dreams.

  • At sea

    bird_lives

    I looked over at her. The breeze tossed her hair, a dark nest of serpents at dusk. She looked out to the darkening world beyond the lights of the vessel and I could see that she was in her forties but that time had been gentle with her. I was curious about her, as I knew she was curious about me, but with age comes a particular degree of respect and decorum, and neither of us would yet voice our curiosities.

    The solitude, the mystery, she said. I can’t help but hark back to a time when the sea was all there was.

    I smiled and nodded, leaning over the deck and looking down at the water again. The pitch and roar of water cascading upward towards me.

    I hope I’m not disrupting your peace, she said.

    No, I told her. It’s fine. It’s nice to hear a voice other than the voice in my head.

    I can certainly understand that, she said, and for the first time we looked each other in the face.

    How long have you been aboard? she said.

    I boarded this morning in Madrid.

    After a lengthy pause, she said, I’ve been on this ship for three months tomorrow.

    I looked at her, wondering what might have brought her out to sea for so long, what sort of personal outrage forces a woman and her family to seek refuge in the great abyss for such an extended period. Then I remembered almost immediately that the abyss calls for all of us at one point, and we all of us must answer that call.

    Have you found it particularly dangerous? I asked.

    Actually quite the opposite, she said. I’ve found these past few months, and especially the last few days among the most peaceful of my life.

    Congratulations, then, I told her. The erstwhile world is not nearly in the same condition.

    Would you be interested in a brandy? she asked me.

    I’m afraid I would, I said, smiling at her.

    You don’t strike me as someone who fears many things, she said.

    We left the deck sinking into shadow and walked down through the narrow corridors of a labyrinth to her cabin, which was not far from my own. I sat on a stool near her cot and watched as she poured brandy from a small bottle into two plastic cups. She sat on the bedding and we touched cups and drank, feeling the gentle rock and sway of the ship in the water. The brandy was good, almost as fine as something Jorge would have kept stowed in his desk drawer, but not quite, perhaps a bit too sweet. The woman’s cabin was similar to mine and everything was tidy and well kept, much like the woman herself, who looked at me through dark pools and then down to her cup, and in the soft light of the room I could at last make out the delicate contours of her face and neck, the elegant geometry and proportionality, her eyes and hair a matching depth of black, and she said to me, or perhaps to the room in general, to herself, to no one, I’ve dreamt that the world is going to end.

  • Subtle differences

    I sat alone at the bar contemplating life and the bartender’s bare legs and everything else swept past without my knowledge, without my understanding, for I was lost on that current and was happily lost, pleased with myself and contented in thought without restraint and the world continued to pass me by for an hour, two hours, three or four drinks, I’d lost count, there is nothing so noble (nor elucidating) as losing count and yet not feeling the effects of the alcohol, not absorbed in anything save the self and rumination and the paths upon which the self propels me. Two years ago I sat in the same bar on the same day thinking different thoughts (drinking different drinks) and my appearance had changed and yet not. On that day I’d had four or five drinks (I forget now), I was still that person with the twitching eye and the black hat and the sore muscles and what the fuck. But the bartender was there just as she always is (just as she is now) and the lights in the place are dim enough for me to see clearly, without regard for my appearance, for all that matters is thought and contemplation and deep labored breaths and the thirst I always feel for a beer or two or perhaps three (I’d prefer to lose count) and those smooth legs beginning down at the soiled ground and rising to a place warm and unseen and no doubt soft and salty, but then again I should probably refrain from such thoughts, as I’m married, and I lied just now, there is no bartender, or there is a bartender but it’s a male bartender wearing pants rather than a female in shorts (as I’d imagined) and so I must come clean, I must admit my lie and restate the obvious fact that nothing is what it seems, either for a reader or a writer, nothing is ever what it seems. In the future I’ll discard such nonsense as it swirls about the canopy of my mind, I’ll write about something that matters, I’ll feel inspired and the inspiration will cast me to a place far and clean and clear and thus my mind will follow, I’ll write about important matters and I’ll explore the hardships that plague others or the hardships I’ve encountered through the years and the infinite whispers, the hardships and the methods I’ve discovered to combat them, and if not combat them then accept them, and if not the hardships then the malaise, the depression (though I despise that term), the melancholy. I appreciate music but only a select few types of music (whatever marks the soul of the listener with the scars of he or she who’s created the music, just as with all forms of art), and thankfully an example of those scars plays from the speakers overhead and it all reminds me of another winter in another time but at this same bar with a different bartender and someone else’s legs (different drinks) and I sit here thinking of that other time and how there have been so many other times in this particular bar, I’ve carried the torch for this place for a decade or better. My typewriter (wireless computer) is like an instrument, I weave chords and percussive rhythms in haste and one of these days I’ll write something meaningful again, I’ll have nothing to worry about and my words will immortalize me (different words). When the future arrives I’ll know it, it will be too stark and recognizable to pass me by, unlike the present, which flings past like so much molecular warfare, down there in the trenches, literal and figurative, and now I’m not entirely sure in which direction my destiny points. Words fling past and ricochet far too quickly for my taste or my comprehension of them (different words) and I try to capture the words before I can no longer, I do not want to be left behind by the words and perhaps my attempt at understanding fails me because I’m simply not capable, I don’t have the strength or intellect nor the fortitude and so I must refine my game, if I must call it that, refine my skills and sharpen my sword, so to speak. Nobody will read this, and that’s fine with me, perhaps it’s not meant to be read except only by a select few, just like my novels (different stories), or such is the fate the novels thus far, a select few prone to thought and fear and trembling and all attitudes of despair, no, give them a bit more credit, find a current for them to ride that doesn’t include me, for they are different and have paid their own fare on this route, they are perhaps more capable of living a life without self-disgust, self-disregard, capable of reading many things that inspire and provide sustenance of some kind, when the same should be said about my novels (different flavors), if only other people could read them, for I do not waste my time and I do not feel a need to justify my life via any means other than in the words, for it is always and only in the words, it is in the peculiar pattern of words on the page in which I exist, solely on the page where the breathing occurs (different breaths) and the dreams live and die and tomorrow will be a better day and the blood that courses finds reason to continue its course just as I continue to read to breathe to write to continue living this farcical dance. 

  • Intimidation

    I pedaled into a roadblock just out of Edmonton. The road had been a long, winding path of concrete and mud and the security police had set up a robust blockade to check everyone heading east out of the city’s barren reach. They do this often, to ensure no one is trafficking any weapons or subversive materials away from Edmonton. It’s really just a display of authority, a systematic and unorganized symbolic intimidation. They stopped me with their rifles drawn and had me get off the bike. They unhooked my bedroll and my large bag of personal items and they dumped everything out. One of the officers did all the work while two others watched with their rifles ready. The officer squatted down. He reached in and fingered my smaller items and then he grabbed this notebook and picked it up, thumbing quickly through the pages. What’s this, he asked, showing it to me.

    It’s a notebook, I said.

    What’s written in it, he said, and started looking closely through it.

    You can’t look in there, officer, I said.

    The officer looked from the notebook up to me and then he smirked.

    You can’t read what’s inside, I said.

    The two men with the rifles gripped the guns tighter and I could hear the sound of skin stretching on metal, I could hear a hawk or something caw from up on high, the breeze warm and stale in my face, carrying dead fish and earth and pine.

    I swallowed and said, That’s personal property. As a member of the courier’s guild I am entrusted with important documents, and have, by order of the governing forces of this land, a right to carry personal property while en route to delivering parcels, whether it be a weapon or written materials.

    The officer stared up at me and then he looked at the other two guards, both of them primed for whatever directive the officer would give. The officer looked down at the notebook and clapped it shut and stood up, handing it to me. The two guards stepped back a bit but they did not lower their guns as I packed up my scattered belongings and strode onto the bicycle and pedaled east toward the long and winding dirt path, the stench, and the darkening skyline. The officer told me to hurry, leave, before any threat of penalty, and after a few seconds or so I was surprised to not have felt the bullets tearing into my back, my legs, my neck. My lungs were already on fire at thirty meters and after counting to a hundred I looked back at them. They were still watching me.

  • The fear begins

    Roots

    I wake thinking of my mother, just as with every morning, no matter the haze or the rain, no matter the cold, I wake with the birds outside the window and air chilled taut seeping through the crack, I wake thinking of my mother though I hadn’t dreamed of her. I dreamed instead of a bulbous tree root, rotting yet strong, predictable, nothing exceptional other than its existence, a bulbous tree root deep in the ground where a faint seedling hatched long ago, springing upward toward the world of light and air, a seedling burst open like a cellular flame into the high day. On my right hand is a scab and I don’t remember how or when the wound was received and yet there it is, about the size of a small coin, scaly and maroon by the light of the window in morning repose. I lick the scab and it is dry and salty, its saline scales bulbous like the tree root of my dream, bulbous and asymmetrical. I pick at the scab, I study it, I try to understand. Is not the human body remarkable? Does not the world seem as though it were made for man alone? 

    I wake thinking of my mother and continue thinking of her until I force myself up out of bed with the birds singing somewhere outside, bleeping, chanting, a coded gesture of communion, I force myself up out of bed and to the desk, looking down at it, the clutter of papers and three books, all rented from the library and thoroughly read, my current notepad nearly full of words, a glass of water from last night, just a few hours ago, an apparition, myself a walking apparition. I think of my mother just as I do each morning despite not having dreamed of her and I don’t know what to believe, none of us really knows what to believe, we’re all apparitions, or the memories we so tightly clutch are all apparitions. Apparitions of apparitions. This desk, the books and notepad, the finger-smeared glass of water, this is my life. This is my life now as I know it. I sigh and sit down to write, the chair so familiar beneath me: