Sin, Death & the Rio Grande

"The one seem'd Woman to the waste, and fair, but ended foul in many a scaly fould voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm'd with mortal sting: about her middle round a cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd with wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung a hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep if aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her womb, and kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howld, within unseen." [2.650-660]

"The other shape, if shape it might be call'd that shape had none distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, for each seem'd either; black it stood as night, fierce as ten furies, terrible as Hell, and shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head the likeness of a kingly crown had on." [2.666-673]

"Him the Almighty Power/Hurld headlong flaming from th'Ethereal Skie/With hideous ruine and combustion down/To bottomless perdition, there to dwell/In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire/Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms." [1.44-49]

-- John Milton, Paradise Lost


~~~

"Life shouldn't fit inside a cunt." A wheezing exhale followed by a sharp intake of breath. "But it does." And with that, Abuela expired. A unanimous choked sight went up through the packed assembly with Mama sighing the loudest of all, tears spraying from her chubby sockets like a sprinkler, rocking back and forth on her knees like a Romanian orphan. But Maria was distracted by a strange sensation that began to creep up the arm of the hand grasping the cooling dead one. Abuela was about to teach her that death is really just the Great Disappearing Act.

~~~

While other teachers used the final useless weeks of June to force their students to clean their classrooms, Sister Cecelia took them to the beach. She was the sort of teacher who took pleasure in explaining plant respiration. She would hug the trees, breathing in and out slowly, feeling as though she were taking part in some sort of communion.

~~~

She would live in the pocket of adventure that danced between bill and palm. And it gave her hope, this evidence that it was not always all about pussy or power. Those times when she saw her own desperation mirrored in the struggle of the 24-year-old newly minted stockbroker ripping off the expertly tied tie his girlfriend had yoked around his neck that morning, tossing it aside like a purple heart and falling into her, searching for that bottomless perdition. And there would be dreams and there would be time. Looking out the window with the yellow slits just breaking over the gray city still humming with lust, she knew there would still be dreams and time.

~~~

She had managed to avoid the Great Disappearing Act in the Big River, but there were still many chances ahead to make Houdini proud. In front of her lay miles upon miles of sand and beyond that she knew would be the fence and men with guns, lots of men with guns.

~~~

Mary stood on the railing and looked out at the sunset. Suddenly, the ground sprang up and met her skull, watering the slices with blood and then when the world went red her mind said "Yes" and it split open and went flying to the four corners of the universe with a front row seat to all of space and time.

"Oh abuela, don't you see..."

Robert

One by one he plucked them off, until he had finally relieved the hundred-legged creature of its limbs. Next came the antennae, then the eyes. He had no use for the body, as it appeared nearly hollow and made for an unremarkable splat beneath his sneakers and so it was left discarded among the other dismembered specimens on the basement floor. He so would have liked to have had a pocket knife to perform the procedure, but his mother was the type not to let Little Boys play with Dangerous Weapons. And so, he was left to do the job with her eyebrow tweezers, a chore made as much out of spite as of necessity. He had just finished scooping the last orb from its socket when he was startled by a voice that he could never get used to.

"I told you not to go down there, Robby."

He paused, then sighed, releasing his grip on his surgical instrument, letting the little amber ball fall to its final resting place on the bed of limbs watered by drops of quick mix lemonade in the Dixie Cup. Stood up. Turned around. His stepfather loomed from the top of the stairs.

"What are you doing, anyway?"

He was the picture of competent, casual authority. Easygoing in his management of law and order. Confident that they could forge a relationship of Mutual Respect. They could be buddies. They would be pals. He approached his new child in the same way that he got to know his clients, by first learning to sympathize with their perceived weaknesses.

Right now, he saw below him a pathetic figure, indeed. Thin, but flabby from lack of exercise. Pale from the lack of sunlight. Awkward from lack of social interaction. Poor kid, he thought. Bad grades, no friends, the athletic prowess of a slug.... You couldn't imagine a tougher spot to be in as a ten-year-old boy.

No, this was not the way. He was expecting too much from him. Rules only work when your subject understands them, and Robby doesn't understand anything. Let him hang out in the dark if it makes him happy. He'll come around. Baby steps. Just tell him to ask before he goes down here again.

"You know, if you really want--"

"My name is Robert."

"What?"

"I said my name is Robert. Call me Robert."

On the other hand, he was getting sick and tired of the little shit. Whose presence in the basement meant the next day appearance of large, eyeless worms surrounding his Norditrack. Who was not interested in the multitude of boyhood items he was, selflessly, willing to provide him with his generous salary as a consultant for Madison Avenue's largest advertising firms. Who did not respect the inherent superiority of penthouse over rent control. Who was weird and didn't care to change.

What had he gotten himself into?

~~~

At night he would watch them, observing their respective restless sleeps encased in immaculately ghost-white linen. Side by side, they slept on their backs. His stepfather straight and stiff with only the occasional snore betraying sentience. His mother also straight, but only to a point--as though she could only be contained from the waist down, her arms twisting wildly about her head. A knife and fork tucked in a napkin.

She dreamed the same dream she dreamed every night, the one where she climbs the top of the fanciest turret at the top of the most expensive apartment on Storrow Drive, and swan dives into the murky depths of the river Chalres.

She went ahead. She bit the big apple. She didn't mind the maggots. Or worms or whatever those things were that seemed to follow Robert around. What was the matter with Robert? There was nothing wrong with Robert.

Freedom Pie

An arm, a leg--bones still inside
Rigor mortis, extra dry
Snapping like slim jims in an eagle's beak
Amniotic fluid with a bang! And a dash!
Sandy brown eyes for crunch
The brains so tasty
And when the blood seeps out like a venomous secret
It only leaves a grease stain
To edit the continuity errors
To charm blood clot snakes into liberty dancers
Into scarlet satin, oxygenized by a martyr's heart
But when the blood explodes off the cutting-room floor
Like a scream in the red on our motion picture
Soundtrack
Cooking show
We eat their guts
We'll pour it like gravy on their guts
And eat

Love in the Time of Cholera

If he had not given in to the many temptations at hand before he experienced Fermina Daza's love, he certainly would not succumb now that she was his official betrothed. So Florentino Ariza lived with the girls and shared their pleasures and miseries, but it did not occur to him or them to go any further. An unforeseen event demonstrated the severity of his determination. one afternoon at six o'clock, when the girls were dressing to receive that evening's clients, the woman who cleaned the rooms on his floor in the hotel came into his cubicle. She was young, but haggard and old before her time, like a fully dressed penitent surrounded by glorious nakedness. He saw her every day without feeling himself observed: she walked through the rooms with her brooms, a bucket for the trash, and a special rag for picking up used condoms from the floor. She came into the room where Florentino Ariza lay reading, and as always she cleaned with great care so as not to disturb him. Then she passed close to the bed, and he felt a warm and tender hand low on his belly, he felt it searching, he felt it finding, he felt it unbuttoning his trousers while her breathing filled the room. He pretended to read until he could not bear it any longer and had to move his body out of the way.

She was dismayed, for the first time that they warned her about when they gave her the cleaning job was that she should not try to sleep with the clients. They did not have to tell her that, because she was one of those women who thought that prostitution did not mean going to bed for money but going to bed witha stranger. She had two children, each by a different father, not because they were casual adventures but because she could never love any man who came back after the third visit. Until the that time she had been a woman without a sense of urgency, a woman whose nature prepared her to wait without despair, but life in that house proved stronger than her virtue. She came to work at six in the afternoon, and she spent the whole night going through the rooms, sweeping them out, picking up condoms, changing the sheets. It was difficult to imagine the number of things that men left after love. They left vomit and tears, which seemed understandable to her, but they also left many enigmas of intimacy: puddles of blood, patches of excrement, glass eyes, gold watches, false teeth, lockets with golden curls, love letters, business letters, condolence letters--all kinds of letters. Some came back for the items they had lost, but most were unclaimed, and Lotario Thugut kept them under lock and key and thought that sooner or later the palace that had seen better days, with its thousands of forgotten belongings, would become a museum of love.

The work was hard and the pay was low, but she did it well. What she could not endure were the sobs, the laments, the creaking of the bedsprings, which filled her blood with so much ardor and so much sorrow that by dawn she culd not bear the desire to go to bed with the first begar she met on the street, with any miserable drunk who would give her what she wanted with no pretensions and no questions. The appearance of a man like Florentino Ariza, young, clean, and without a woman, was for her a gift from heaven, because from teh first moment she realized that he was just like her: someone in need of love. But he was unaware of her compelling desire. He had kept his virginity for Fermina Daza, and there was no force or argument in this world that could turn him from his purpose. [76-78]

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly. (1)
...
She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Jamie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid. [11]

-- Zora Neale Hurston

Adult Education

What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice. -- Baudelaire 

~~~~~

"So, what do you think of Walt Whitman?"

He's talking to me. He has to be; there isn't anyone else in the classroom. I sigh and turn around.

"Um, I liked 'Song of Myself.' It's good to be exposed to writers like Whitman, because otherwise I don't read that much poetry. I'm more into fiction."

I'm disgusted with myself even before I see him gearing up for a retort. He shuffles excitedly in his seat, pushing the thick spectacles up the bridge of his acned probiscus, folding his hands together on his desk before launching his sermon.

"Well, I don't think it's proper to compare mediums. Poetry is about truth. Fiction is false. I mean, I read books too, you know? I just finished The Plague, and it was entertaining and all but it wasn't real. It wasn't true."

Right. Whatever you say, asswipe. Nevertheless, I find myself eliciting a coquettish giggle and tilt my head to the side.

"I take it you don't consider yourself an absurdist, then?"

I admonish myself silently. The mistake you make every night of your life--sucking up to a man. And man oh man what a man we have tonight. Unwashed dandruff-ridden rug on the head. Pit stains. Obnoxiously obvious boner. You can look forward to him humping your leg for the rest of the semester. 

He takes the bait, launching into a rant about "the absurdity of philosophy," hands wave, eyes sparkling. I sit back, smiling, pretending to listen. Yes, you're full of yourself to think you deserve better, but you should still know better by now. You've seen this type in virtually every community college liberal arts class. The gangly, pedantic closet misogynist who won't let social awkwardness get in the way of trying to get laid. It's a kind of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds that makes Gandhi look like a hack. One would think countless rejections and putdowns would prove discouraging, but here you are, a nice girl, proving that sometimes miracles do happen. 

"Amazing," you murmur. He lights up a 100 watts. "Yes, it is, isn't it?!"

The Tropics' Cancer - Memories, Images

"Life shouldn't fit inside a cunt."

She turned back to her story. Mother Angelica.

"But it does."

As usual, it was a curt nonsequitor from the mouth of grandmother that settled the morning dispute. Maria was going to work that day. Again. Like always. Because grandmother was right. She shouldn't have been so disappointed at the prospect of spending the majority of her remaining foreseen days enclosed in a dark, smelly sweatbox, plucking blossoms for others. In all its horror, it was still the mere natural order of things.

That is, it was until Maria's body began to talk to her.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The images soon began to take shape and form; the pictures began to tell stories. They began to change. A typical sexual image, a woman's breast, for instance, would age before Maria's eyes, the bright red nipples frosted with dead skin, the areolas crackling like dead leaves. A male hand plucks it away to reveal...a gum drop. The hand brings the candy to a mouth that chews and swallows.

What it meant, or even if it were real at all and if she were awake and not asleep that remained unanswered for Maria.

Today!

A young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves....

air raid

"Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. But dawn was near and the war far away. The first to hear the hum of the siren were those who couldn't sleep--the ill and bedridden, mothers and sons at the front, women crying for the men they loved. To them it began as a long breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn't long before its wailing filled the sky. It came from afar, from beyond the horizon, slowly, almost lazily. Those still asleep dreamed of waves breaking over pebbles, a March storm whipping the woods, a herd of cows trampling the ground with their hooves, until finally sleep was shaken off and they struggled to open their eyes murmuring, 'Is it an air raid?'"

-- Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise

Irene Nemirovsky

Settled on the sofa, a notebook on her lap, she developed a technique inspired by Ivan Turgenev. As well as the narrative itself, she would write down all the ideas the story inspired in her, without any revision or crossing out. She filled notebook upon notebook with thoughts about her characters, even the minor ones, describing their appearance, their education, their childhood, all the stages of their lives in chronological order. When each character had been detailed to this degree of precision, she would use two pencils, one red, the other blue, to underline the essential characteristics to be retained; sometimes only a few lines. She would then move quickly on to writing the novel, improvising it, then editing the final version. (423)

Nemirovsky began Suite Francaise, as was her habit, by writing notes on the work in progress and thoughts inspired by the situation in France. She created a list of characters, both major and minor, then checked that she had used them correctly. She dreamed of a book of a thousand pages, constructed like a symphony, but in five sections, according to rhythm and tone. She took Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a model. (427)

-- from the preface to the French edition of Suite Francaise

i wish i were a duck

He knew the truth and I didn't. I'm not bitter now, but I'm very, very tired.

I would see him coming a quarter mile off, walking down the Sunday morning ghost town street. I loved the way he walked. Every otherwise seemingly mundane step revealed a secret, a slight hint of the preciously guarded pain only spoken of inside the protective cocoon of darkness in the citadel of intertwining arms and legs.

I casually remarked on this once and it made him very angry. He felt betrayed. It were as though he had finely felt OK enough to bend over to get the soap he needed to clean up his life and I had violated him by verbalizing his vulnerability.

Memories are life partially digested. Memories are dead.