He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.
As his practiced fingers danced on the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.
As ivory confetti fell into the big glass bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.
He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then wrapped around his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then he pulled the lid of his laptop down.
She thought she heard a sound, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled herself back to an upright position. And then she took a swig from the bottle of Baileys.
He could sense her looking again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.
She grated her cheese, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked going back to their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady block letters. Cream. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.
She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; within seconds there was a solid, blocky smile on her face.
He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. After that she just sat, staring. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked.
He stood up, the back of his knees scraping the chair away. He looked at all the books on the shelves of his desk, and it suddenly seemed wrong that the books were stolidly in their places. He could still sense her looking; at that moment he wanted nothing more than for her to leave him alone. He looked at the books, and nursed the feeling until it grew steadily in his sternum. As it spread through his ribcage. As it leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.
Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and then she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.
He looked out into the careless flashing light of Shenton Way.
She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but that was stupid and she was not stupid. He was not a Stilton man; never had been, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.
He turned away from the window. She swallowed and took another handful.
The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer out again. The letter was still in the drawer.
The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly wondered if that was too much. She felt like a fraud for acting out.
He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he flipped the envelope over and took out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 am”, except he’d asked her once whether the entire department was sloppy. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She told him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.
As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but it could be brought forward. She was looking forward to seeing her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But like an uninvited guest a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.
He stared at the cursive handwriting until the letters unlinked. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.
She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused. After a moment, she kept the door open with one foot, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. She held the bowl by its rim as she slid it into the refrigerator. When she was done, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed another long slow swig.
She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and suddenly felt tired and in need of food.
She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. She suddenly became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.
He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of Stilton cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan.
She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In their living rooms no less, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.
He sat on the chair in the kitchen. She thought about punching the picture.
He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left to think about. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.
She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the empty room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.
She did it, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.
They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d taken her hand awkwardly while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away again, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?
They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. What did you want me to do?
Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.
Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.
Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.
Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.
Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.
What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?
You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?
I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?
Fuck you.
Fuck. You.
And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:
I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.
You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?
And yet later:
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.
She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.
The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later. Two days of silence later.
He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning weightlessly across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.
And then it was over. I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.
Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. And then she felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the slightly inadequate feeling of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.
He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go at the end, just to feel the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. The television. He needed noise.
The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.
The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute pass by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. Then the picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.
“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger after she was gone. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.
The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.
She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. Sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.
He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.
Her eyes closed.
His mind wandered.
And soon they were dreaming of hearing each other again.
(Revision)
He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.
As his practiced fingers jabbed at the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.
As pale white shreds fell into the big glass bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.
He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then limned his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then he pulled the lid of his laptop down.
She thought she heard a sound, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled back to an upright position. And then she chugged the bottle of Baileys.
He could sense her looking again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.
She grated her cheese, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked going back to their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady block letters, cream on red. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.
She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; a solid, blocky smile fixed her face in place.
He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. After that she just sat, staring. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked.
He stood up, the chair wobbling against the back of his knees. He looked at the books lining the shelves of his desk, and it seemed suddenly wrong that they were abreast. He could still sense her looking. He looked at the books, and nursed the wrongness until it lurched in his sternum, like liquid lead. It spread through his ribcage, and leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.
Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and the purple patina vanished, so she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.
He traced on his window the flashing light of Shenton Way.
She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but then she shook her head at the stupidity. He was not a Stilton man; never was, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.
He turned away from the window. She swallowed and raked another handful.
The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer again.
The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly worried about a stain. She felt like a fraud for acting out.
He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he flipped the envelope over and took out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 pm”, except he’d asked her once whether she was as sloppy when she taught. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She never said it as a question, only as a playful challenge. Then she’d tell him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.
As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but she could negotiate an earlier date. She was looking forward to seeing her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But then a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.
He stared at the handwriting until the flowing lines smudged. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.
She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused, aware of the flatness of her stomach. After a moment, she used a foot to keep the door open, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. After she slid it into the refrigerator, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed another long slow swig.
She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and felt tired and in need of food.
She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. She suddenly became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.
He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of moldy cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan. He scuffed his foot against the floor, getting rid of something sticky.
She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that fourteen-dollar plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In large print and in their living rooms, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.
He sat on the chair in the kitchen. She thought about punching his smile.
He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.
She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the empty room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.
She’d gotten the abortion, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.
They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d taken her hand awkwardly while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away again, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?
They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. I asked you if it wasn’t the right time, and you agreed. What did you want me to do?
Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.
Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.
Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.
Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.
Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.
What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?
You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?
I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?
Fuck you.
Fuck. You.
And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:
I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.
You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?
And yet later:
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.
She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.
The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later.
He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning and floating across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.
And then it was over.
I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.
Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. And then she felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the pulling of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.
He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go at the end, just to feel the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. It was the same feeling he’d felt when her father had cried. The television. He needed noise.
The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.
The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute slide by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. Then the picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.
“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger after she was gone. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.
The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.
She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. Sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.
He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.
Her eyes closed.
His mind wandered.
And in their dreams they heard each other again.
(Revision)
He sat at his desk. She grated cheese in the kitchen.
As his practiced fingers jabbed at the keyboard, he thought about the letter in the drawer.
As pale white shreds drifted into the bowl, she listened to the sounds of a silent apartment. They seemed all around her, the susurrus that emanated from the walls, the more insistent hhhhhnghhhhh of the fridge, the padded pulse of the party upstairs. Even the ghosting of air from room to room.
He tried to concentrate on the screen, but the corners of his eyes tightened. The glare touched his eyes, then limned his eyeballs. He tried for a minute more. And then with a grunt he pulled the lid of his laptop down.
She thought she heard a noise, so she leaned sideways to peer, but all she saw was his smiling face. Tired, but smiling, as always. She looked at him for a little while, and then she pulled back to an upright position. And then she chugged the bottle of Baileys.
He could sense her gaze again, but he said nothing. He wasn’t worried about what to say. He was worried about what he would say if she replied.
She grated her cheese, back, and forth, back, and forth, back, and forth.
It was better to think about her, these days. He especially liked their first half an hour. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he saw her: bent at the waist over the remainder bin, and then she was standing, a glossy hardcover in her hand. His name was stamped on the spine in steady cream letters. His name matched her hair. He had smiled, and then filed the sentence away. It was a good line.
She teased him about that smile many times. A plastic smile any woman can kiss, only thirteen dollars and fifty cents. Most of the time she said it in an ironic voice. Unless she’s stupid enough to pay full price. She smiled now, at that memory, and at others. He used to tell her she was lucky she got to kiss the real deal for free. Her lips froze at that; a solid, blocky smile fixed her face in place.
He felt tiny weights lining his closed eyelids. She stopped grating, put the triangle down on its ragged side, and wiped the back of her hand across her lips. He burst open his eyes, and then – blinked. She sat, staring.
He stood up, the chair wobbling against the back of his knees. He looked at the books lining the shelves of his desk, and it seemed suddenly wrong that they were abreast. He could still sense her looking. He looked at the books, and nursed the wrongness until it lurched in his sternum, like liquid lead. It spread through his ribcage, and leeched into the hollows at the outlines of his chest. He could feel it pause at his shoulders, and he urged it on. Just a little bit farther. But then it receded, and then it receded, and then it receded. And once it was gone it was gone, leaving behind only a strained relief. He shook his head. He suspected he would have balked at the end anyway. He did not like being noisy.
Her eyes hurt and her chest hurt. She waited a moment more, just a moment more, but nothing happened. So she blinked, and the purple patina vanished, so she blinked again, and then she took a handful of cheese and stuffed it in her mouth.
He traced on his window the flashing light of Shenton Way.
She chewed the strips of Stilton in her mouth. She thought about leaving the bowl out, just in case, but then she shook her head at the stupidity. He was not a Stilton man; never was, and never would be. When they went into the cheese store on Third for the first time she’d told him it was a blue cheese. He’d looked at it, then said with a joke in his voice, Yet another thing in America pretending to be white, I see. And then an instant, and then he’d grimaced so she couldn’t miss it. But because he never said it again, she pretended he never had.
He turned away from the window. She swallowed and raked another handful.
The letter was still in the drawer. He pushed the drawer slowly, watching the letter disappear centimeter by centimeter. And then he pulled the drawer again.
The noises were crowding her. The cheese felt ganky in her mouth, and it gummed her back teeth. She turned and spit the mouthful onto the floor, and then instantly worried about a stain. She felt like a fraud for acting out.
He took the letter. As he looked at the handwriting on the envelope, dominoes in mid-fall from left to right, a sound thumped in the apartment somewhere. He wondered if it was she, and then he shrugged. Nonchalantly. Suddenly feeling a little foolish, he turned the envelope over and teased out the sheets of paper. They smelled of lavender two seasons old. This time I’m arriving on the fifteenth at five in the afternoon. You better be holding a bottle of Baileys when I see you. She would have written “15th” and “5 pm”, except he’d asked her once whether she was as sloppy when she taught. She’d said the word ‘sloppy’ was sloppy, and then she’d put on her best teenager’s voice and said, “What”. She never said it as a question, only as challenge spiked with playfulness. Then she’d tell him her students loved her impressions. He usually refrained from replying. Or he rolled his eyes and then pulled her close.
As she threw the sodden tissues away she thought about going home. The flight had been booked, but she could negotiate an earlier date. She knew she could, even if the fine print said otherwise. She wanted to see her students again. She would go to the cheese store and pay a normal price for her Stiltons again, she would even look forward to apartment-hunting, to filling out forms. But then a thought barged into her head and lodged itself: she wondered if he would follow her.
He stared at the handwriting until the flowing lines smudged. Suddenly, a voice in his head said, This was the type of woman Mrs. X was: on envelopes she wrote in black block letters, but in letters she was curls and lavender scents. It was a good line. He filed it away. He had become Christopher Fucking Robison.
She stood up and took the big bowl of cheese. She cradled it in one arm as she pulled the refrigerator door, and then suddenly she paused. The glass rim curved against the flatness of her stomach. After a moment, she used a foot to keep the door open, and then took the bowl by its rim with her free hand. After she slid it into the refrigerator, she stepped into the hallway to look at him again. He was still smiling. Of course. She needed to kiss the bottle again.
She had been holding a bottle of Baileys. He had been holding a bottle of Baileys. You can’t. Get drunk. On That Shit, was what she said, every time. Tough Chick Rapping, she called it. She was high on the adrenaline of an eighteen-hour flight, her eyes shadowed and shining. He was high on the writing of a passage he secretly loved. They were adult children, basically, and after two bottles of Baileys they fucked like adults with the enthusiasm of children. And the carelessness. He heard her giggles as he put the letter back in the drawer. He shook his head, and felt tired and in need of food.
She took one step towards him, Baileys in hand. And then another. At some point she became aware that she was tiptoeing. On her ninth step the skin on her upper left arm twinged. She ignored it as she ignored all the other phantom pains.
He stared at it for a while, and then he took the bowl of moldy cheese out, and dumped it, cheese and bowl, into the trashcan. Then he scuffed his sole against the refrigerator, getting rid of something sticky.
She looked at him now, him with his smiling face. She pressed her lips against the acrylic shield, against that fourteen-dollar plastic smile, feeling a little morbid. My parents’ idea, he’d said, reddening. He reddened the same way whenever he told people who his parents were. Asian parents like to keep trophies, and they like their sons to keep trophies too. She’d said, grinning, In large print and in their living rooms no less, I see. Later, when he’d told her, It isn’t the right time, it had been his mother’s voice that she heard.
He sat on the chair in the kitchen, rubbing the soles of his feet together. She thought about punching his smile.
He thought of her butt on the downy cushion. She loved to sit in this chair stuffing her face with cheese. She made a face at him whenever he said that. He thought of that, and he thought of the Stilton in the trashcan. He thought of L’Ecole, and Starbucks, and Forever 21, and the East Village Cinema, and Dulce de Leche, and Kiehls’ Facial Fuel. Then he thought about Orchard Road, and char kway tiao, and durians and her revolted face, and malls connected by walkways, exhausted days and exceeded budgets, and rain thunderstorming outside on quilt blanket days. Then there was nothing left. Nothing except the sullen summer past, and the hours stretched between patience and deliberate ignorance, and everything else.
She was in his room now. She had to remind herself of that. It seemed too empty to be his room. She trailed a finger across his desk, and looked around the bare room again. Through the window she could see the traffic light on Shenton Way flashing, green, green, red. She hoisted herself up his desk, wobbled to adjust her butt, and then sat watching the flashes. Every change of the light made her feel a little less – made her feel a little less.
She’d gotten the abortion, and they had decided not to talk about it. Both of them had decided. So they filled the silence with sounds, but they couldn’t get rid of the other silence, the silence that bounced off the walls and settled on their shoulders, the silence of other people having fun, the silence of a ghost in the room with them. He heard it now too. There were more ghosts now. He could sense her, sometimes.
They had stood at that very street corner, beneath that traffic light. He’d brushed his fingers against hers while they walked home from the movie, she’d gradually slid her hand away, his face had set in rigid impassiveness. Then, under the traffic light, while they waited, she had finally shouted, after weeks and weeks of silence. The summer was ending and the flight was only two days away, and she could not bear the thought of going home with those words still in her. You don’t want to talk about it? You think I’m afraid to shout here? I’ll shout as loud as I want, so why don’t you walk away, huh? Are you staying so you can take notes? Where’s your fucking notebook, huh? Eight years I’ve never seen you without your notebook. Where is it, huh?
They were two adults shouting like children, flinging and hurling every stone they could scrape up. He’d done his share of the shouting, and more. You’re a twenty-nine year old teenager. I asked you if it wasn’t the right time, and you agreed. What did you want me to do?
Hurting. You’re a remainder-bin writer who underlines errors in other people’s books.
Pushing. Yeah. Tell me again, what are those files you’re hiding away in that folder in your laptop? Yeah, I thought so. At least I took a chance once.
Is that why you went to Paolini’s book signing? Is that why you told him about the “continuity mistake”? A nineteen year-old and he doesn’t even know you exist. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Stilton cheese? Stilton. Cheese? Stilton cheese and Baileys? Who does that? That’s fucked up, you know that? And you think wearing Donna Karen with J-Crew makes you eclectic? Interesting? It doesn’t. You’re still a high-school teacher, teaching high-school kids and going nowhere. And that’s not going to change no matter how hip and cool you try to make yourself.
Your parents made you hang up that picture. Yeah, right.
Tell me why all your previous boyfriends were also bananas. Go on. Tell me.
What about you? “Yet another thing in American pretending to be white”? Passive-aggressive, much? You think I haven’t seen the way you look at Singaporean women? You think I don’t know why you like coming to America so much? You’re fucked up, that’s what you are. What, not blaming this on your parents as well?
You can’t even keep to a hundred dollar budget. What makes you think you can deal with a baby?
I can’t deal with a baby? Please. You’re the one with the commitment problem. Is your second book coming, huh? Ever? Guess not, huh. What do you do with your days? Sit around and read those ‘promising debut’ reviews?
Fuck you.
Fuck. You.
And then later, when the anger had burned itself out:
I’m tired of being around you. You make me feel like I need to be saying something, even when I am.
You smiled at me once like it meant something. But then I saw you smile the same way at your students, at the flight staff, even at the fucking 7-11 cashier. What happened to us? You and me?
And yet later:
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I don’t, either. In fact I’d like nothing better if we never talked to each other ever again. That would be great. That would be heaven.
She’d gotten up, and started walking. He didn’t call her name.
The traffic light was blurring, but she kept looking at it, and she forced herself to think about the drive to the airport two days later.
He stayed in the chair, and he thought about the silence in the car, and the silence in the two days prior. Silence, silence, silence. And then right after the roar of metal crunching, as they were spinning and floating across tarmac, a silence as if light itself had been sucked out of existence. They were voiceless.
And then it was over.
I’m sorry. We did everything that we could.
Something was gripping her chest. She had trouble breathing, and then the room swirled around her for a moment. She felt a sharp pain around her shoulders, and then – nothing. Nothing. There was only the pull of exhaustion left. And even that felt – silly, after a while. She pushed herself off the desk slowly, and left the room. The couch in the living room caught her eye, so she went to it, and sank into its left side. Her side.
He felt stretched. Thinking about it always made him feel that way, in the end. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought about it, just to feel the sharpness of letting go, and the blunted weariness afterwards. Then he felt self-conscious, again. It was the same feeling he had felt when her father had hugged him. The television. He needed noise.
The couch felt soft and yielding at the back of her neck. She thought about him, about his inky hair and eyes, about the cremation, about the half of the ashes given to her two days ago. She thought about going home, and then she wondered if he was somewhere in the room, somehow, watching her. She did not think it was entirely impossible. Sometimes she saw him, in the second after she turned, through the crack of a door swinging shut, in the moments when dream and waking merged, as a shadow if she stared until the world turned purple. And then there were the times she was sure he was there, somehow, in the chair, at his desk, only invisible to her.
The right side of the couch received him like forgiveness. He let the seconds of a minute drift by, less silent, more quiet. Then he took the remote and pressed the red power button. Gunshots and sirens. The picture came on, a movie they’d seen six thousand times. He said it was fun. She called it the cockroach of movies. He could sense her, again. Sometimes it felt like if he had the right word she would be there when he turned.
“Tell me what I need to do,” she said, softly. She did not know if they were the right words, but it felt good to know that those words were in the air, that they might fold into the other noises and linger in her absence. Until he heard them, somehow, wherever he was. Then maybe there would be a sign.
The television suddenly blipped “what I”, and then the gunshots resumed, but he was still tense. A clear sign, a clear sign was all he asked, every day. But nothing else happened. He shook his head and sank into the couch again, half-snorting at his own credulity. And then he said, “Please”. And then – “I’m sorry.” Just in case.
She shifted to a lying position, head resting on the left arm of the couch, legs lopped over the right arm. She was tired, and sometimes when she was tired enough the right arm felt like his thighs.
He closed his eyes and let the television’s blare wash over him in restful waves. His hand crept to the left side of the couch, and stayed there.
Her eyes closed.
His mind wandered.
And soon they were dreaming of hearing each other again.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Story: Memoria
Ella Fitzgeralds at every street corner, trapped in giant speakers, singing their countless lungs raw in blue streaks of sound. “For this time is the one, where the first time is the last time. I’ve got beginner’s luck…” Strips and bits of paper fall from the sky, confetti of garbage and dead trees. The store windows are Omnicolor brilliant as they transmit moving scenes from a not-so-moving life. Mine. I stop, my compadre walks on, and I hear myself saying, like Keanu, “Whoa.”
My voice sounds like it’s coming from my sneakers. Why is that? Why are my sneakers so scuffy? What have I been doing?
“Move along now.” My companion’s standing there, waiting, his fingerless hands punching the sides of his stomach. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. He has no fingers because he’s a Gingerbread Man, browned to my skin tone. “Come on.”
I just realized I have no idea where his voice comes from. How does he talk when he has no lips (and thus presumably no voice box)? I hold up three fingers, and they are an arm and a half’s length from my head, because I shift my face to the side like a Hindi movie. I am squinting and making my best fishhook mouth.
“Three fingers, and you are squinting and making a fishhook mouth.” He sounds exasperated. I can hear him mutter “druggie, murderer, hopeless – druggie, definitely” because he underestimates my hearing powers. He sounds like me when I can’t find my fucking Houdini keys. And now he’s walking towards me.
His breath smells like dead squirrels, even though he has no nose. “You are not supposed to be here, but since you are here I will give you what you need. What you want.” He’s gesturing to the store windows with a Doraemon hand: screen after screen the tablets of Christopher Jonathan, last name More-ron. Done this. Didn’t do that. Did her, and many times over, oh yeah. I wonder whether Alison McNee is successful. She always was a smile slut.
“Focus.”
.
I wasn’t on drugs anymore. This was for real. When he said “focus” the fog in my head… wasn’t. It didn’t evaporate, it wasn’t sucked away, it wasn’t blown away by a giant fan. It was. And then it wasn’t.
But after the fog wasn’t he still was. Ella was still there, and all her copies, and the sky was still falling to pieces everywhere.
He looked at me while I went through the stages of shock, and when I was finally done he tossed me a sheet of paper, literally tossed it. That sheet of paper had the weight of a bomb, and the words nailed every bit of my head: “Ella Fitzgeralds at every street corner…”
After I finished convulsing again his moon face twisted where his mouth should have been, and I shivered.
Then he took me by the hand, and he carried me in his doughy arms, and he piggybacked me, and together we went through all the streets of New York, New York, Alphabet City to Columbia University, Hudson to East Rivers. The stores were all gone, vacated, doors removed, each storefront turned into a still or video, definition higher than shit like Blu-Ray or HDTV. He made me look at each still and video, and he said, “Yes or no”.
I killed him in the end, of course. Or at least I think I did. I don’t know if there had been any other option. He stopped fidgeting, and his neck stopped pulsing under my hands like all other necks, and then he just dissolved. Wind blew the crumbs into the air, mixed it up with the shitstorm. He smiled just before the end, another twist of the dough, and I said, “You’re welcome”. And I meant it.
I think that if you are reading this it means that you have offed me in turn. I found a piece of paper after I killed my predecessor, and I assume that this is some sort of pass-it-down tradition, so I have followed the formula, changing the details, of course.
A couple of final things:
It will suck a little at first. You will think to yourself, was I really such a stud when I lost my virginity? Occasionally you may also wonder whether there was more to the world beyond the East and Hudson Rivers, and beyond Alphabet City and Columbia University. Or, if we were in another city when you came, beyond the gray walls sheer like glass and beyond the lines dividing street and smoke. You may wonder that.
And yes, it will sometimes get a little boring.
But this is my personal theory, free: if you got here, and if you actually managed to kill me, and if the knife appeared to you after that, then you must belong here.
So this is what you need to do later, as passed down for god knows how long this place has existed: you need to take the knife, and you need to slice off your nose, gouge out your eyes, shave off your lips, and straighten the lines of your head. You have to chop off the toes too, but the hands will take care of themselves after you finish everything else. And, I’m sorry, but the penis has to go too.
I’m not sure what happens if you turn out to be a woman. I didn’t get any instructions about that. Sorry.
And if you’re afraid, prick any part of your body first. You’ll see why this place ruxors, like a buddy of mine used to say. Go ahead. Isn’t that the neatest thing? And once you do all of that, just sit and wait. The rest will happen to you without you doing anything. I promise.
The power to change the music and the storefront channels will come in time. I recommend Times Square (if you’re in New fucking York) for your best memories – lots of triple-plus-size shops there.
And, lastly, before you do anything else, you need to write down something like what I’ve done here. Copy the piece of paper I tossed at you, write down how you felt when I took you through your life, brag about how you killed me or whatever, and then just basically copy this set of instructions, adding your personal details as you like, I guess. Remember to do this first before anything else. I was here for you, so don’t mess it up for the next guy (or girl). Have a sense of pride, yeah?
And then go ahead and cut, and cut, and cut, and then wait.
And have fun with this city. I know I did.
My voice sounds like it’s coming from my sneakers. Why is that? Why are my sneakers so scuffy? What have I been doing?
“Move along now.” My companion’s standing there, waiting, his fingerless hands punching the sides of his stomach. It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. He has no fingers because he’s a Gingerbread Man, browned to my skin tone. “Come on.”
I just realized I have no idea where his voice comes from. How does he talk when he has no lips (and thus presumably no voice box)? I hold up three fingers, and they are an arm and a half’s length from my head, because I shift my face to the side like a Hindi movie. I am squinting and making my best fishhook mouth.
“Three fingers, and you are squinting and making a fishhook mouth.” He sounds exasperated. I can hear him mutter “druggie, murderer, hopeless – druggie, definitely” because he underestimates my hearing powers. He sounds like me when I can’t find my fucking Houdini keys. And now he’s walking towards me.
His breath smells like dead squirrels, even though he has no nose. “You are not supposed to be here, but since you are here I will give you what you need. What you want.” He’s gesturing to the store windows with a Doraemon hand: screen after screen the tablets of Christopher Jonathan, last name More-ron. Done this. Didn’t do that. Did her, and many times over, oh yeah. I wonder whether Alison McNee is successful. She always was a smile slut.
“Focus.”
.
I wasn’t on drugs anymore. This was for real. When he said “focus” the fog in my head… wasn’t. It didn’t evaporate, it wasn’t sucked away, it wasn’t blown away by a giant fan. It was. And then it wasn’t.
But after the fog wasn’t he still was. Ella was still there, and all her copies, and the sky was still falling to pieces everywhere.
He looked at me while I went through the stages of shock, and when I was finally done he tossed me a sheet of paper, literally tossed it. That sheet of paper had the weight of a bomb, and the words nailed every bit of my head: “Ella Fitzgeralds at every street corner…”
After I finished convulsing again his moon face twisted where his mouth should have been, and I shivered.
Then he took me by the hand, and he carried me in his doughy arms, and he piggybacked me, and together we went through all the streets of New York, New York, Alphabet City to Columbia University, Hudson to East Rivers. The stores were all gone, vacated, doors removed, each storefront turned into a still or video, definition higher than shit like Blu-Ray or HDTV. He made me look at each still and video, and he said, “Yes or no”.
I killed him in the end, of course. Or at least I think I did. I don’t know if there had been any other option. He stopped fidgeting, and his neck stopped pulsing under my hands like all other necks, and then he just dissolved. Wind blew the crumbs into the air, mixed it up with the shitstorm. He smiled just before the end, another twist of the dough, and I said, “You’re welcome”. And I meant it.
I think that if you are reading this it means that you have offed me in turn. I found a piece of paper after I killed my predecessor, and I assume that this is some sort of pass-it-down tradition, so I have followed the formula, changing the details, of course.
A couple of final things:
It will suck a little at first. You will think to yourself, was I really such a stud when I lost my virginity? Occasionally you may also wonder whether there was more to the world beyond the East and Hudson Rivers, and beyond Alphabet City and Columbia University. Or, if we were in another city when you came, beyond the gray walls sheer like glass and beyond the lines dividing street and smoke. You may wonder that.
And yes, it will sometimes get a little boring.
But this is my personal theory, free: if you got here, and if you actually managed to kill me, and if the knife appeared to you after that, then you must belong here.
So this is what you need to do later, as passed down for god knows how long this place has existed: you need to take the knife, and you need to slice off your nose, gouge out your eyes, shave off your lips, and straighten the lines of your head. You have to chop off the toes too, but the hands will take care of themselves after you finish everything else. And, I’m sorry, but the penis has to go too.
I’m not sure what happens if you turn out to be a woman. I didn’t get any instructions about that. Sorry.
And if you’re afraid, prick any part of your body first. You’ll see why this place ruxors, like a buddy of mine used to say. Go ahead. Isn’t that the neatest thing? And once you do all of that, just sit and wait. The rest will happen to you without you doing anything. I promise.
The power to change the music and the storefront channels will come in time. I recommend Times Square (if you’re in New fucking York) for your best memories – lots of triple-plus-size shops there.
And, lastly, before you do anything else, you need to write down something like what I’ve done here. Copy the piece of paper I tossed at you, write down how you felt when I took you through your life, brag about how you killed me or whatever, and then just basically copy this set of instructions, adding your personal details as you like, I guess. Remember to do this first before anything else. I was here for you, so don’t mess it up for the next guy (or girl). Have a sense of pride, yeah?
And then go ahead and cut, and cut, and cut, and then wait.
And have fun with this city. I know I did.
Story: The Lapedusivian Military
The conscription of women into the Lapedusivian Military began very simply. It began on the morning of September 4th 2004, which would turn out to be a particularly rainy Saturday, when a clerk pressed the return key on his Dell computer.
In the two seconds that followed the pressing of the return key, within the inner workings of the laptop a complex series of algorithms streamlined itself into a very simple line. As it appeared before the clerk’s panda eyes, this line spiked a few minor times, but valleyed almost catastrophically again and again, not so much jumping as falling and bumping and falling further as it made its way across the screen to Year 2020.
The end point of the line was so far below its beginning that the clerk had to press the ‘fn’ and ‘page ’ keys in combination twice before he could see it.
Within twenty-four hours, the Defense Minister of Lapedus was notified of the document, which the clerk had helpfully printed out and labeled in red ink “Projection of Lapedusivian Birth Rate – Revert Soon”. Within forty-eight hours a committee was convened, its members spanning five branches of the incumbent party. The Prime Minister, after all, was expected to announce the date of the once-every-five-years Election Day soon. Several names for this committee were considered, and at the end of three and a quarter hours the acronym MIW was selected by popular vote among the seven committee members, none of whom actually owned cats. One member of the newly created Military Institutional Watch remarked that their constituents would probably start calling them the Men In White soon. There was a distinct pause before someone laughed.
A week and two days later, the Prime Minister made his announcement, and over the next six months the MIW, its function, and its ability to upgrade existing military technology were at the center of a ferocious debate between the incumbent party and the fragmented opposition. Regardless of the Lapedusivians’ feelings on this matter, however, on February 18th 2005 the People Action Party was returned to power for the twelfth consecutive time. Of the 14 wards that were not ruled walkovers due to election parameters, three stalwart opposition wards remained stalwart opposition wards, while the remaining eleven wards kept the PAP’s white flags flying for the weekend-long celebration, before removing them in accordance with the city-state’s laws regarding flag usage.
And while the PAP had won only 58 percent of the 1.22 million votes, 81 PAP Ministers took seats in the new 84-member Parliament. This was perhaps crucial.
Two months after Election Day, a member of the MIW presented the committee’s findings during a Parliament Session. His opening statement was this: “Perhaps it is not time to ask whether the Lapedusivian Military is ready for upgrading. Perhaps it is time to ask whether the citizens of Lapedus are ready for equality in the military.”
*
Anna Lazarin was about to make Marksman. And even though it was long past midnight, and even though she had to knuckle her eyes practically every minute, she could not help herself: she found the notion of making Marksman more deliciously ironic than celebratory. This was not because of the gender inappropriate title, which would be corrected as soon as possible, according to that day’s Routine Order. She cared nothing for gender inappropriateness. She only wondered how, after making Marksman, she would tell Betty Irkinson, now her bunkmate, but forever the bitch who had sniped her through doors repeatedly in Counterstrike when they were both wearing pinafores in the same high school. Betty Irkinson had turned out to be the sort of girl who couldn’t hit a cyalume stick-outlined target in real life.
But Betty Irkinson was not Anna Lazarin’s sole motivation. It was also vitally important to Anna that the next two shots hit their targets because she had discovered her utter and complete ineptitude at most things military.
In Week One of Basic Military Training, she had run one kilometer, and vomited twice afterwards. Worse, one of the two was a bout of only dry heaving. This was because she had, contrary to warnings, only picked at the brown goo that constituted breakfast.
In Week Two, she had only realized that she had not secured her MOP 4 goggles properly after stepping into the chemical chamber.
And in Week Three, she had laughed, but laughed incredulously, when four girls in her bunk, including Betty Irkinson, started calling themselves the Lape Mi Girls. And then she had failed to laugh when Mimi Shimujima, a second generation Lapedusivian, made a racist remark about the Lape Mi Girls to her while they were showering in adjacent stalls.
Yes. It was indeed vitally important to Anna Lazarin that she made the next two shots. As Recruit Anna Lazarin, she was Lazarin to her superiors, and nothing to her bunkmates. As Marksman Anna Lazarin, she would still be Lazarin to her superiors – but perhaps she would be Anna to her bunkmates, maybe even Lazyrin. She had only been not unpopular in Saint Joseph’s Convent, and she had learned that sixteen-year old girls in the military were still sixteen-year old girls. She did not want to sit alone in the cookhouse anymore; she was running out of pocket-sized books, she would not get off the island for another two weeks, and lately Shirley Mazinro had begun to give her hopeful looks from her own one-woman table across the cookhouse. If anything could give her all the determination she needed, it was the prospect of breakfasting, lunching, and dining with Shirley Mazinro. So as she lay on her stomach at the 300-meter mark of the shooting range, she thought of that prospect.
I am going to make the next two shots, she also told herself in the meantime, as she made sure that the dial on her M-16 was not turned to ‘auto’ or ‘safe’, as she made sure that the bullet casing deflector that marked her as a troublesome left-hander was secure, and as she made sure that her front and rear sight posts were aligned. She could hear Betty Irkinson giggling about the male safety officers – as if they wanted to be there, after the incident with Third Sergeant Charlie Sysinkis – and she could sense Shirley beside her, bored and unhappy about the gritty grass and the kamikaze mosquitoes, but she put everyone out of her mind, including herself and her petty concerns. So as she closed one eye, trained the other through the sight posts, and blocked out the noises around her, she told herself: In the circle, on top of the spike, fire. In the circle, on top of the spike, fire.
And then something moved in the circle, and so she fired.
The first thought in her head after that was that she had forgotten to wait for it to be on top of the spike.
The second thought was that she was very lucky the spike didn’t matter after all.
In the two seconds that followed the pressing of the return key, within the inner workings of the laptop a complex series of algorithms streamlined itself into a very simple line. As it appeared before the clerk’s panda eyes, this line spiked a few minor times, but valleyed almost catastrophically again and again, not so much jumping as falling and bumping and falling further as it made its way across the screen to Year 2020.
The end point of the line was so far below its beginning that the clerk had to press the ‘fn’ and ‘page ’ keys in combination twice before he could see it.
Within twenty-four hours, the Defense Minister of Lapedus was notified of the document, which the clerk had helpfully printed out and labeled in red ink “Projection of Lapedusivian Birth Rate – Revert Soon”. Within forty-eight hours a committee was convened, its members spanning five branches of the incumbent party. The Prime Minister, after all, was expected to announce the date of the once-every-five-years Election Day soon. Several names for this committee were considered, and at the end of three and a quarter hours the acronym MIW was selected by popular vote among the seven committee members, none of whom actually owned cats. One member of the newly created Military Institutional Watch remarked that their constituents would probably start calling them the Men In White soon. There was a distinct pause before someone laughed.
A week and two days later, the Prime Minister made his announcement, and over the next six months the MIW, its function, and its ability to upgrade existing military technology were at the center of a ferocious debate between the incumbent party and the fragmented opposition. Regardless of the Lapedusivians’ feelings on this matter, however, on February 18th 2005 the People Action Party was returned to power for the twelfth consecutive time. Of the 14 wards that were not ruled walkovers due to election parameters, three stalwart opposition wards remained stalwart opposition wards, while the remaining eleven wards kept the PAP’s white flags flying for the weekend-long celebration, before removing them in accordance with the city-state’s laws regarding flag usage.
And while the PAP had won only 58 percent of the 1.22 million votes, 81 PAP Ministers took seats in the new 84-member Parliament. This was perhaps crucial.
Two months after Election Day, a member of the MIW presented the committee’s findings during a Parliament Session. His opening statement was this: “Perhaps it is not time to ask whether the Lapedusivian Military is ready for upgrading. Perhaps it is time to ask whether the citizens of Lapedus are ready for equality in the military.”
*
Anna Lazarin was about to make Marksman. And even though it was long past midnight, and even though she had to knuckle her eyes practically every minute, she could not help herself: she found the notion of making Marksman more deliciously ironic than celebratory. This was not because of the gender inappropriate title, which would be corrected as soon as possible, according to that day’s Routine Order. She cared nothing for gender inappropriateness. She only wondered how, after making Marksman, she would tell Betty Irkinson, now her bunkmate, but forever the bitch who had sniped her through doors repeatedly in Counterstrike when they were both wearing pinafores in the same high school. Betty Irkinson had turned out to be the sort of girl who couldn’t hit a cyalume stick-outlined target in real life.
But Betty Irkinson was not Anna Lazarin’s sole motivation. It was also vitally important to Anna that the next two shots hit their targets because she had discovered her utter and complete ineptitude at most things military.
In Week One of Basic Military Training, she had run one kilometer, and vomited twice afterwards. Worse, one of the two was a bout of only dry heaving. This was because she had, contrary to warnings, only picked at the brown goo that constituted breakfast.
In Week Two, she had only realized that she had not secured her MOP 4 goggles properly after stepping into the chemical chamber.
And in Week Three, she had laughed, but laughed incredulously, when four girls in her bunk, including Betty Irkinson, started calling themselves the Lape Mi Girls. And then she had failed to laugh when Mimi Shimujima, a second generation Lapedusivian, made a racist remark about the Lape Mi Girls to her while they were showering in adjacent stalls.
Yes. It was indeed vitally important to Anna Lazarin that she made the next two shots. As Recruit Anna Lazarin, she was Lazarin to her superiors, and nothing to her bunkmates. As Marksman Anna Lazarin, she would still be Lazarin to her superiors – but perhaps she would be Anna to her bunkmates, maybe even Lazyrin. She had only been not unpopular in Saint Joseph’s Convent, and she had learned that sixteen-year old girls in the military were still sixteen-year old girls. She did not want to sit alone in the cookhouse anymore; she was running out of pocket-sized books, she would not get off the island for another two weeks, and lately Shirley Mazinro had begun to give her hopeful looks from her own one-woman table across the cookhouse. If anything could give her all the determination she needed, it was the prospect of breakfasting, lunching, and dining with Shirley Mazinro. So as she lay on her stomach at the 300-meter mark of the shooting range, she thought of that prospect.
I am going to make the next two shots, she also told herself in the meantime, as she made sure that the dial on her M-16 was not turned to ‘auto’ or ‘safe’, as she made sure that the bullet casing deflector that marked her as a troublesome left-hander was secure, and as she made sure that her front and rear sight posts were aligned. She could hear Betty Irkinson giggling about the male safety officers – as if they wanted to be there, after the incident with Third Sergeant Charlie Sysinkis – and she could sense Shirley beside her, bored and unhappy about the gritty grass and the kamikaze mosquitoes, but she put everyone out of her mind, including herself and her petty concerns. So as she closed one eye, trained the other through the sight posts, and blocked out the noises around her, she told herself: In the circle, on top of the spike, fire. In the circle, on top of the spike, fire.
And then something moved in the circle, and so she fired.
The first thought in her head after that was that she had forgotten to wait for it to be on top of the spike.
The second thought was that she was very lucky the spike didn’t matter after all.
Story: Certifiable
Joshua leaned against the hood of the camouflage-colored Jeep Wrangler. “I don’t know if I should get in the car,” he said, turning to Alex, his fingernails tapping in metallic consideration. Looking at Alex, he shrugged, a sly smile on his face.
Alex folded his hands across his chest. Joshua mock surrendered. His raised arms twisted into a grotesque dance as he swayed his way to the passenger’s side.
Alex snorted and took the four cans of Heineken off the hood of his car. When he got into the driver’s seat, he dumped the cans in the backseat, where they crinkled introductions to the other cans already there. Joshua made a face, and palmed his ears.
Alex ignored him, and shoved the key into the ignition slot. After he revved the engine twice, he leaned over Joshua to pull at Joshua’s seatbelt. Joshua didn’t move an inch, and Alex could feel his friend breathing on his neck.
“Sorry,” Joshua said, when the seatbelt cinch was secured.
“No problem,” Alex replied. He pulled the shift stick into gear, kept both eyes on the rearview mirror, and slowly reversed the car out of the garage.
The tarmac before them was flooded in yellow fluorescent light, but beyond that the road shivered in an orange glow latticed by shadows. As they glided down the highway, Joshua leaned into the dashboard, twisting his head this way and that to look at the stars. Alex jabbed at the radio buttons every few minutes.
It was a long time before Joshua laid a hand on Alex’s fingers. By then they were already on Medway Drive. “Great song,” Joshua said, taking Alex’s fingers off the buttons and wrapping them around the steering wheel.
“Whatever,” Alex said. Joshua was already drumming on the dashboard with both his index fingers. For the next two and a half minutes Frank Sinatra crackled New York, New York to Joshua’s beat.
When they finally pulled up outside Joshua’s house, Alex switched the engine off. “It’s good,” Joshua insisted, as he fumbled with the seatbelt. Alex watched him go on for another minute, and then released the cinch for him. Joshua rolled his bloodshot eyes and muttered something.
And then they sat there, neither one of them moving, for a few moments. And then Joshua got out of the car, and then he slammed the door closed. One hand ready to push his car door open, Alex watched Joshua stumble up the tiled path.
After the front door closed behind Joshua, Alex pulled closed his own car door. Then he turned around and counted the beer cans in the backseat. Six cans of Heineken, four cans of Tiger, and eight cans of Bud. He shrugged, and was about to turn back when two red cylinders glinted in the light of a passing car.
Alex reached into the backseat and took the two cylinders. When he settled back in his seat he tossed his into the passenger seat, and twisted the cap off Joshua’s.
The graduation certificate was curled up, and he had to smooth it across his lap several times before it would stay somewhat flat.
Rooting in the glove compartment, he found the red marker pen. Then he scribbled diagonally across the certificate, “Stay jack-assy in New York.” Then, in smaller letters, his e-mail address underneath. He rolled the certificate and slid it into the cylinder again. He screwed the cap back. Then he switched on the engine again.
He leaned and rolled down the window on the passenger’s side. “Josh!” he shouted. After a few moments, the front door swung, he pitched the cylinder at it, and then he slid back into his seat and floored the accelerator.
In the rearview mirror, the red cylinder gleamed in the moonlight as Joshua picked it up.
Alex folded his hands across his chest. Joshua mock surrendered. His raised arms twisted into a grotesque dance as he swayed his way to the passenger’s side.
Alex snorted and took the four cans of Heineken off the hood of his car. When he got into the driver’s seat, he dumped the cans in the backseat, where they crinkled introductions to the other cans already there. Joshua made a face, and palmed his ears.
Alex ignored him, and shoved the key into the ignition slot. After he revved the engine twice, he leaned over Joshua to pull at Joshua’s seatbelt. Joshua didn’t move an inch, and Alex could feel his friend breathing on his neck.
“Sorry,” Joshua said, when the seatbelt cinch was secured.
“No problem,” Alex replied. He pulled the shift stick into gear, kept both eyes on the rearview mirror, and slowly reversed the car out of the garage.
The tarmac before them was flooded in yellow fluorescent light, but beyond that the road shivered in an orange glow latticed by shadows. As they glided down the highway, Joshua leaned into the dashboard, twisting his head this way and that to look at the stars. Alex jabbed at the radio buttons every few minutes.
It was a long time before Joshua laid a hand on Alex’s fingers. By then they were already on Medway Drive. “Great song,” Joshua said, taking Alex’s fingers off the buttons and wrapping them around the steering wheel.
“Whatever,” Alex said. Joshua was already drumming on the dashboard with both his index fingers. For the next two and a half minutes Frank Sinatra crackled New York, New York to Joshua’s beat.
When they finally pulled up outside Joshua’s house, Alex switched the engine off. “It’s good,” Joshua insisted, as he fumbled with the seatbelt. Alex watched him go on for another minute, and then released the cinch for him. Joshua rolled his bloodshot eyes and muttered something.
And then they sat there, neither one of them moving, for a few moments. And then Joshua got out of the car, and then he slammed the door closed. One hand ready to push his car door open, Alex watched Joshua stumble up the tiled path.
After the front door closed behind Joshua, Alex pulled closed his own car door. Then he turned around and counted the beer cans in the backseat. Six cans of Heineken, four cans of Tiger, and eight cans of Bud. He shrugged, and was about to turn back when two red cylinders glinted in the light of a passing car.
Alex reached into the backseat and took the two cylinders. When he settled back in his seat he tossed his into the passenger seat, and twisted the cap off Joshua’s.
The graduation certificate was curled up, and he had to smooth it across his lap several times before it would stay somewhat flat.
Rooting in the glove compartment, he found the red marker pen. Then he scribbled diagonally across the certificate, “Stay jack-assy in New York.” Then, in smaller letters, his e-mail address underneath. He rolled the certificate and slid it into the cylinder again. He screwed the cap back. Then he switched on the engine again.
He leaned and rolled down the window on the passenger’s side. “Josh!” he shouted. After a few moments, the front door swung, he pitched the cylinder at it, and then he slid back into his seat and floored the accelerator.
In the rearview mirror, the red cylinder gleamed in the moonlight as Joshua picked it up.
Poetry: Still
Then I kept my hand on his kneecap, and underneath
the flat of my palm a field of hairs flattened into
cold clammy flesh. He
had gone very still, and in his stillness time seemed to stop… So.
I knew his eyes had not strayed. Not once. Never from the screen –
then his fingers – they tapped. tapped tapped. the Nintendo buttons. So
I gripped. And I – patted. Then, slowly, my hand grazed, upfield.
-----
But, after that day, he still put his arm around me.
Still joked about tennis skirts and girls who wore them.
That was why, six months of four-classmate movies and five-friend meals
later, three months before final year exams,
when a friend, looking away, taught me the word everyone knew –
zengkunophobia: only a word, after all –
I slept. Woke. Slept. And why if awake I memorized dreams.
-----
And I did exceptionally well for my exams. Do, still.
Entered a top, if unexpected, junior college.
Still. Time passes. One day I glimpsed a man, and moved on. And on…
-----
Until I grasped that time passes and stops. I grow older, and
stay fifteen. So in love I will always be gently haunted
by a hand resting on a field of hair and flesh, waiting.
Still.
the flat of my palm a field of hairs flattened into
cold clammy flesh. He
had gone very still, and in his stillness time seemed to stop… So.
I knew his eyes had not strayed. Not once. Never from the screen –
then his fingers – they tapped. tapped tapped. the Nintendo buttons. So
I gripped. And I – patted. Then, slowly, my hand grazed, upfield.
-----
But, after that day, he still put his arm around me.
Still joked about tennis skirts and girls who wore them.
That was why, six months of four-classmate movies and five-friend meals
later, three months before final year exams,
when a friend, looking away, taught me the word everyone knew –
zengkunophobia: only a word, after all –
I slept. Woke. Slept. And why if awake I memorized dreams.
-----
And I did exceptionally well for my exams. Do, still.
Entered a top, if unexpected, junior college.
Still. Time passes. One day I glimpsed a man, and moved on. And on…
-----
Until I grasped that time passes and stops. I grow older, and
stay fifteen. So in love I will always be gently haunted
by a hand resting on a field of hair and flesh, waiting.
Still.
Poetry: This Is What "Yep" Meant
I wait in the dark,
my eyes closed, my hands poised.
Sometimes it seems like nothing will come.
I open my eyes:
A white screen, a blank life.
A spark of anger flares up and fades.
I look at the clock:
two fifteen, two forty.
My mind begins to skitter and grasp.
I start to tap keys,
Foraging, accreting.
A vomit of letters piles up and reeks.
I barrel ahead
Ignore it, but I can’t
And yet I’m typing, forgiving myself.
Even though I know myself this writing is:
An accelerating unraveling: strands
drawn from desperation,
pulled apart to fill up space,
which is stuffed with straw and dross
from thin memories fattened up.
Strands unraveling from a height,
falling and tangling
to jumble together, but together.
If meaningless.
---
I gave you my page
last Wednesday, I did it.
Sometimes it seems like I wasn’t wrong.
I thought you would talk
about it, or something.
I thought you would be… clear if not kind.
I didn’t think you’d think
it was good, or thought through.
But you said nothing, nothing at all.
I cannot stand this,
I cannot, I will not.
I should have told you: nothing did come.
I’m doing that now:
forgive me, I’m sorry.
I hope you will say – don’t do it twice.
Even forgive me, by telling me writing is this:
A slow tying together – ropes
of patience,
of the need to fill an emptiness,
of straws made into twine,
made to sustain.
Ropes making a bridge that stretches ahead,
sturdy if flawed,
but not unraveling –
connecting.
---
Maybe. But that’s what kills me.
Do you remember?
I gave you my page.
Our eyes met, a beat passed.
“A great job today,” and then, “All right?”
“Yep,” I said. And I left you
in the dark.
But no more.
my eyes closed, my hands poised.
Sometimes it seems like nothing will come.
I open my eyes:
A white screen, a blank life.
A spark of anger flares up and fades.
I look at the clock:
two fifteen, two forty.
My mind begins to skitter and grasp.
I start to tap keys,
Foraging, accreting.
A vomit of letters piles up and reeks.
I barrel ahead
Ignore it, but I can’t
And yet I’m typing, forgiving myself.
Even though I know myself this writing is:
An accelerating unraveling: strands
drawn from desperation,
pulled apart to fill up space,
which is stuffed with straw and dross
from thin memories fattened up.
Strands unraveling from a height,
falling and tangling
to jumble together, but together.
If meaningless.
---
I gave you my page
last Wednesday, I did it.
Sometimes it seems like I wasn’t wrong.
I thought you would talk
about it, or something.
I thought you would be… clear if not kind.
I didn’t think you’d think
it was good, or thought through.
But you said nothing, nothing at all.
I cannot stand this,
I cannot, I will not.
I should have told you: nothing did come.
I’m doing that now:
forgive me, I’m sorry.
I hope you will say – don’t do it twice.
Even forgive me, by telling me writing is this:
A slow tying together – ropes
of patience,
of the need to fill an emptiness,
of straws made into twine,
made to sustain.
Ropes making a bridge that stretches ahead,
sturdy if flawed,
but not unraveling –
connecting.
---
Maybe. But that’s what kills me.
Do you remember?
I gave you my page.
Our eyes met, a beat passed.
“A great job today,” and then, “All right?”
“Yep,” I said. And I left you
in the dark.
But no more.
Poetry: To Robert Jason Leahey
I had in mind your fallow hair,
in hands your curious face.
You entered thoughts and lurked in words,
a shadow near or far.
So then my plots I under lined
with clumsy traps that showed
the angled mirrors of a boy
who longed for tricks of light.
But when the weeks began to glue
and months began to build,
I thought you time and page had shelved
in memories turning cool.
So clumsy traps were set aside
and mirrors hid away,
and pen was put to paper now
in search of truths that’d fled.
But as I waited through the nights
my page and lives were blank.
My mind askittering would grasp
that nothing had been known.
I’d built my hopes with gossamer strands
and stuffed them full of dross.
I’d twined my castles and their floors
with memories fat and stray.
So now I looked with twice-opened eyes
and tried to build anew
a different home, a different way
to put me up above,
beyond the shadow of your touch,
beyond the clumsiness,
beyond the stains of memories,
beyond your startling reach.
Unwriting you from page and ink
I cleaned you from my thoughts;
since time and page had gathered dust
I tore you from new work.
But then the words were hollow and
the lines rang grey and false,
and he who pried apart the page
would nothing under find.
And calibrated angst and smarts
would only build to this:
a careful house and careful days
of waiting craziness.
So now I take the clumsy but
I take away the traps;
I take the mirrors and the dreams
but take away the light;
I put them all in front of you
in all this messiness;
I was given this to live and use,
this home, this time, this you.
I have in mind your fallow hair,
in hands your curious face.
You enter thoughts and bolster words,
a shadow next to mine.
And when this home should fall to ground
and when this time should pass,
your fallow hair and curious face
will stay and mark these truths:
I stopped and knew it would not do
to hide behind my words.
And if I have but all these words,
these here are due to you.
in hands your curious face.
You entered thoughts and lurked in words,
a shadow near or far.
So then my plots I under lined
with clumsy traps that showed
the angled mirrors of a boy
who longed for tricks of light.
But when the weeks began to glue
and months began to build,
I thought you time and page had shelved
in memories turning cool.
So clumsy traps were set aside
and mirrors hid away,
and pen was put to paper now
in search of truths that’d fled.
But as I waited through the nights
my page and lives were blank.
My mind askittering would grasp
that nothing had been known.
I’d built my hopes with gossamer strands
and stuffed them full of dross.
I’d twined my castles and their floors
with memories fat and stray.
So now I looked with twice-opened eyes
and tried to build anew
a different home, a different way
to put me up above,
beyond the shadow of your touch,
beyond the clumsiness,
beyond the stains of memories,
beyond your startling reach.
Unwriting you from page and ink
I cleaned you from my thoughts;
since time and page had gathered dust
I tore you from new work.
But then the words were hollow and
the lines rang grey and false,
and he who pried apart the page
would nothing under find.
And calibrated angst and smarts
would only build to this:
a careful house and careful days
of waiting craziness.
So now I take the clumsy but
I take away the traps;
I take the mirrors and the dreams
but take away the light;
I put them all in front of you
in all this messiness;
I was given this to live and use,
this home, this time, this you.
I have in mind your fallow hair,
in hands your curious face.
You enter thoughts and bolster words,
a shadow next to mine.
And when this home should fall to ground
and when this time should pass,
your fallow hair and curious face
will stay and mark these truths:
I stopped and knew it would not do
to hide behind my words.
And if I have but all these words,
these here are due to you.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Poetry: A Story For Young Employees
This is what they told me, this is what they said:
“Any names you want at all, except every name in red.”
So I looked through all they’d given me, lined and question marked,
And in the end I had my list, composed of thoughts and larks.
But when I brought my list with me, to a meeting with our top,
She looked at it then looked at me, and then the penny dropped:
“I notice that you’ve struck this off, and I’d like to just know why,
Because I’ve seen him work myself, and I do think he’s our guy.”
I should have mused and shrugged and left, I should have bit my lip,
I should have done just anything, but let this winner zip:
“It seems to me that when I pick, I think of work and worth,
But when you look at all these names, you see the last names first.”
So now I sit and file and sneeze, where once I dialed and signed.
Sometimes I type up résumés, but more to pass some time.
It’s hard to get an interview, when bosses recommend:
“This guy has so many honest bones, he’ll never break or bend.”
(Revision)
This is what they told me, this is what they said:
“Pick four to five you think are right, but not the names in red.”
So given what they’d given me, I thought and lined and ticked,
And in the end I had my three, the best I could have picked.
But when I brought my list to share, at a meeting with our top,
She looked at it then looked at me, and then the penny dropped:
“I know you’ve struck him off the list, but what about this guy?
I myself have seen his work, and think he’s worth a try.”
I should have mused or shrugged or caved, I should have bit my lip.
I should have done most anything, but let this zinger zip:
“It seems to me that when I picked, I saw their work and worth,
But when you looked at all these names, you saw the last names first.”
So now I sit and file and sneeze, where once I dialed and signed.
Sometimes I type up résumés, but those are wastes of time.
It’s hard to get an interview, when bosses recommend:
“This guy’s a bag of honest bones; he’ll never break or bend.”
“Any names you want at all, except every name in red.”
So I looked through all they’d given me, lined and question marked,
And in the end I had my list, composed of thoughts and larks.
But when I brought my list with me, to a meeting with our top,
She looked at it then looked at me, and then the penny dropped:
“I notice that you’ve struck this off, and I’d like to just know why,
Because I’ve seen him work myself, and I do think he’s our guy.”
I should have mused and shrugged and left, I should have bit my lip,
I should have done just anything, but let this winner zip:
“It seems to me that when I pick, I think of work and worth,
But when you look at all these names, you see the last names first.”
So now I sit and file and sneeze, where once I dialed and signed.
Sometimes I type up résumés, but more to pass some time.
It’s hard to get an interview, when bosses recommend:
“This guy has so many honest bones, he’ll never break or bend.”
(Revision)
This is what they told me, this is what they said:
“Pick four to five you think are right, but not the names in red.”
So given what they’d given me, I thought and lined and ticked,
And in the end I had my three, the best I could have picked.
But when I brought my list to share, at a meeting with our top,
She looked at it then looked at me, and then the penny dropped:
“I know you’ve struck him off the list, but what about this guy?
I myself have seen his work, and think he’s worth a try.”
I should have mused or shrugged or caved, I should have bit my lip.
I should have done most anything, but let this zinger zip:
“It seems to me that when I picked, I saw their work and worth,
But when you looked at all these names, you saw the last names first.”
So now I sit and file and sneeze, where once I dialed and signed.
Sometimes I type up résumés, but those are wastes of time.
It’s hard to get an interview, when bosses recommend:
“This guy’s a bag of honest bones; he’ll never break or bend.”
Poetry: Missing A Ride On A Train / Missing Rides On Trains
He entered; his flat heels clipped into a staccato; his head bobbed as he walked.
He had choices the length of the train, but he wasn’t looking.
You’d think he didn’t care.
I did –
These things can go in a blur.
He leaned; his sleeved arm pressed into the corner; his legs crossed at the sock.
He had headphones the size of my fists, but he wasn’t listening.
You could see it in his stare.
I did –
Behind my newspaper.
He moved; his shirt’s tail slid into my sideview; his hands laced on his crotch.
He kept tapping his balls of his feet, but he wasn’t annoying.
You might have found it hard to bear.
I did –
He was now my neighbor.
He shifted, his smooth jeans chafed into each other, his head turned as mine stopped.
He said sorry the way of something; was something starting?
You would have maybe dared.
I didn’t.
(Revision)
it started when
He entered as the doors were kissing, easing them apart.
His woolen skin was touched by beads his glove soon brushed away.
I saw his headphones size of fists, and soccer-married boots,
But still I tracked his every step, each dirt and ugly stain.
most of the time
He’d lean in when the train would shudder, press against the glass.
His meaty hands probed countless tunes in airy corner drums.
I heard his stages grass and sets, the sighs at perfect plays,
But still I parsed the many strains, each loud and crowding cry.
but then one day
He shifted as the crowds were leaving, body next to mine.
His jeans were crossed and hands were still like supplicating twins.
I felt his heavy heated parts, his presence close to me,
But still I paused at every turn – I paused at every turn.
until
He left.
And so did I.
He had choices the length of the train, but he wasn’t looking.
You’d think he didn’t care.
I did –
These things can go in a blur.
He leaned; his sleeved arm pressed into the corner; his legs crossed at the sock.
He had headphones the size of my fists, but he wasn’t listening.
You could see it in his stare.
I did –
Behind my newspaper.
He moved; his shirt’s tail slid into my sideview; his hands laced on his crotch.
He kept tapping his balls of his feet, but he wasn’t annoying.
You might have found it hard to bear.
I did –
He was now my neighbor.
He shifted, his smooth jeans chafed into each other, his head turned as mine stopped.
He said sorry the way of something; was something starting?
You would have maybe dared.
I didn’t.
(Revision)
it started when
He entered as the doors were kissing, easing them apart.
His woolen skin was touched by beads his glove soon brushed away.
I saw his headphones size of fists, and soccer-married boots,
But still I tracked his every step, each dirt and ugly stain.
most of the time
He’d lean in when the train would shudder, press against the glass.
His meaty hands probed countless tunes in airy corner drums.
I heard his stages grass and sets, the sighs at perfect plays,
But still I parsed the many strains, each loud and crowding cry.
but then one day
He shifted as the crowds were leaving, body next to mine.
His jeans were crossed and hands were still like supplicating twins.
I felt his heavy heated parts, his presence close to me,
But still I paused at every turn – I paused at every turn.
until
He left.
And so did I.
Poetry: Not Heard
This poem is meant to be read three ways: once through, then odd lines, and then even lines. The odd lines are meant to be in bold, but bolded white doesn't show up well (or at all; I can't tell the difference in any case).
And the last line is meant to be in bold.
---------------------
This is a country of four million
people, four million people with
smiles. This is a country
four million minds should very much find
worthwhile. In this a country
of four million smiling all dangers
four million will share. In this a country
of four million smiling in tandem
four million will fare
as one.
And the last line is meant to be in bold.
---------------------
This is a country of four million
people, four million people with
smiles. This is a country
four million minds should very much find
worthwhile. In this a country
of four million smiling all dangers
four million will share. In this a country
of four million smiling in tandem
four million will fare
as one.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
The New Paper Column: Lift
The residence hall I live in is called Third Avenue North, and while it is famous for many things, it is probably most famous for its notoriously unreliable lift.
This is not an exaggeration.
Taking the lift in Third Avenue North is like being on one of those Fear Factor episodes, where blindfolded people have to pick and eat a random dish.
There are many different possible outcomes, but nine out of ten of those outcomes are bad to varying degrees.
The Third Avenue North Lift (Of Death), for example, has been known to scare lift-takers by grinding to a halt, and then jolting, before going back to normal.
It has also been known to ignore its circuit board’s instructions, and simply meander up and down endlessly until it decides to stop.
These, however, are not the worst of the possible scenarios.
The Worst Third Avenue North Lift Scenario is when it simply throws a hissy fit and decides to stop working altogether.
Many people would probably call this a lift breakdown, which is fairly harmless in the grand scheme of things.
Those people would be wrong.
This is because when the Third Avenue North Lift decides to break down, it does not just break down.
I do not quite understand the technical aspects of it, but for some reason when the lift breaks down the emergency button fails to work as well.
In addition, the Third Avenue North Lift must have a fearsome reputation at the local repair shop, because a Third Avenue North Lift Breakdown takes roughly two hours on average to fix.
In the meantime, there is nothing a person can do except swear (again) never to take the lift, and make friends with whoever else is in the lift.
This, of course, usually turns out to be either the guy with the yellow Mohawk, or the girl whose vocabulary consists solely of ‘awesome’ and ‘that’s so spicy’.
This is probably the reason people who are allotted rooms above the sixth floor at Third Avenue North develop such healthy leg muscles by the end of the academic year, but if the lift is notoriously unreliable, I am equally notoriously lazy.
Given those two things, I have talked to many people of many different persuasions over the year.
There have been many Kodak moments of newfound understanding.
I have found, for example, that it is entirely possible to use the word ‘sweeeeet’ six hundred times a day and still be a fairly intelligent person.
I have also found, for example, that is it entirely possible for an otherwise fairly intelligent person to think that dark eyes are disturbing and wrong.
If there is one thing I have truly learnt, it is that Third Avenue North’s residents are just as unreliable as its lift, and sometimes just as surprising.
Sweeping generalizations about Americans or Asians or the younger or older generations are just that: sweeping generalizations.
Notoriously unreliable, and inconveniently so, and you only learn something when they break down and leave you scrambling.
This is not an exaggeration.
Taking the lift in Third Avenue North is like being on one of those Fear Factor episodes, where blindfolded people have to pick and eat a random dish.
There are many different possible outcomes, but nine out of ten of those outcomes are bad to varying degrees.
The Third Avenue North Lift (Of Death), for example, has been known to scare lift-takers by grinding to a halt, and then jolting, before going back to normal.
It has also been known to ignore its circuit board’s instructions, and simply meander up and down endlessly until it decides to stop.
These, however, are not the worst of the possible scenarios.
The Worst Third Avenue North Lift Scenario is when it simply throws a hissy fit and decides to stop working altogether.
Many people would probably call this a lift breakdown, which is fairly harmless in the grand scheme of things.
Those people would be wrong.
This is because when the Third Avenue North Lift decides to break down, it does not just break down.
I do not quite understand the technical aspects of it, but for some reason when the lift breaks down the emergency button fails to work as well.
In addition, the Third Avenue North Lift must have a fearsome reputation at the local repair shop, because a Third Avenue North Lift Breakdown takes roughly two hours on average to fix.
In the meantime, there is nothing a person can do except swear (again) never to take the lift, and make friends with whoever else is in the lift.
This, of course, usually turns out to be either the guy with the yellow Mohawk, or the girl whose vocabulary consists solely of ‘awesome’ and ‘that’s so spicy’.
This is probably the reason people who are allotted rooms above the sixth floor at Third Avenue North develop such healthy leg muscles by the end of the academic year, but if the lift is notoriously unreliable, I am equally notoriously lazy.
Given those two things, I have talked to many people of many different persuasions over the year.
There have been many Kodak moments of newfound understanding.
I have found, for example, that it is entirely possible to use the word ‘sweeeeet’ six hundred times a day and still be a fairly intelligent person.
I have also found, for example, that is it entirely possible for an otherwise fairly intelligent person to think that dark eyes are disturbing and wrong.
If there is one thing I have truly learnt, it is that Third Avenue North’s residents are just as unreliable as its lift, and sometimes just as surprising.
Sweeping generalizations about Americans or Asians or the younger or older generations are just that: sweeping generalizations.
Notoriously unreliable, and inconveniently so, and you only learn something when they break down and leave you scrambling.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
The New Paper Column: De La Vega
Spring has finally come to New York.
Walking around the city these days, you can see it in the sea of T-shirts. You can feel it in the breezy winds no longer freezing your skin off.
You can hear it in the hobo who has started shouting “All You Need Is Love!” at every person that walks along Third Avenue.
Springtime in New York is indeed a wonderful time. It is capable of softening and soothing everything and everyone, even New Yorkers.
Just the other day, one of my floormates was extremely annoyed at his computer game. Instead of punching and (further) cracking the sheet of mirror on our common room wall, he merely screamed. That’s springtime in New York for you.
As for myself, I’m wandering the streets more often, now that I no longer risk hypothermia if I get lost.
I’ve discovered a few more alternative cafes, a shop that sells only chess pieces, and a bookstore that also sells discarded street signs.
But best of all, I’ve rediscovered De La Vega.
I saw a De La Vega on my first day in New York. My virgin De La Vega was a goldfish bowl that held two goldfishes, with the words “Glass Bowl Living” inscribed by the side.
It was done in chalk, and the weather was turning bad. It rained that night, and by the next day the drawing on the sidewalk was gone.
Over the next few months I came across De La Vega’s sporadically.
One morning in October I woke up and found my dorm’s courtyard completely scrawled over with De La Vega’s.
He had come in the a.m. hours, invited by the guards.
I kept a lookout for his work afterwards, but after January, when the snows had come and the weather worsened, he seemed to vanish entirely.
Gone were the deceptively innocent drawings that depicted complicated social issues, the hilarious caricatures that reimagined his mother as Chewbacca and other movie icons, and the murals of just everyday people.
I worried. For a while.
I wondered if he had been prosecuted by the police, or whether he had simply given up, frustrated with the people that kept smearing and distorting his artwork.
But then homework piled up, my allowance started thinning out, and between grades and money, De La Vega disappeared.
But two days ago I was taking a walk through Alphabet City, trying to ignore the voice in my head screaming “Final Exams! Final Exams!”, and there it was.
Underneath a tree with pink flowers, amidst the gloss of the city: a chalk drawing of a goldfish bowl, inscribed on the side with the words “Glass Bowl Living”.
In less than a month I will return to Singapore. I will miss many things about New York. Coldstone Ice Cream. Netflix. The Strand Bookstore.
But if there’s one thing that I desperately wish to see in Singapore, it is a De La Vega.
Singapore has weathered many seasons and many storms. Is it not time for springtime in Singapore yet?
Walking around the city these days, you can see it in the sea of T-shirts. You can feel it in the breezy winds no longer freezing your skin off.
You can hear it in the hobo who has started shouting “All You Need Is Love!” at every person that walks along Third Avenue.
Springtime in New York is indeed a wonderful time. It is capable of softening and soothing everything and everyone, even New Yorkers.
Just the other day, one of my floormates was extremely annoyed at his computer game. Instead of punching and (further) cracking the sheet of mirror on our common room wall, he merely screamed. That’s springtime in New York for you.
As for myself, I’m wandering the streets more often, now that I no longer risk hypothermia if I get lost.
I’ve discovered a few more alternative cafes, a shop that sells only chess pieces, and a bookstore that also sells discarded street signs.
But best of all, I’ve rediscovered De La Vega.
I saw a De La Vega on my first day in New York. My virgin De La Vega was a goldfish bowl that held two goldfishes, with the words “Glass Bowl Living” inscribed by the side.
It was done in chalk, and the weather was turning bad. It rained that night, and by the next day the drawing on the sidewalk was gone.
Over the next few months I came across De La Vega’s sporadically.
One morning in October I woke up and found my dorm’s courtyard completely scrawled over with De La Vega’s.
He had come in the a.m. hours, invited by the guards.
I kept a lookout for his work afterwards, but after January, when the snows had come and the weather worsened, he seemed to vanish entirely.
Gone were the deceptively innocent drawings that depicted complicated social issues, the hilarious caricatures that reimagined his mother as Chewbacca and other movie icons, and the murals of just everyday people.
I worried. For a while.
I wondered if he had been prosecuted by the police, or whether he had simply given up, frustrated with the people that kept smearing and distorting his artwork.
But then homework piled up, my allowance started thinning out, and between grades and money, De La Vega disappeared.
But two days ago I was taking a walk through Alphabet City, trying to ignore the voice in my head screaming “Final Exams! Final Exams!”, and there it was.
Underneath a tree with pink flowers, amidst the gloss of the city: a chalk drawing of a goldfish bowl, inscribed on the side with the words “Glass Bowl Living”.
In less than a month I will return to Singapore. I will miss many things about New York. Coldstone Ice Cream. Netflix. The Strand Bookstore.
But if there’s one thing that I desperately wish to see in Singapore, it is a De La Vega.
Singapore has weathered many seasons and many storms. Is it not time for springtime in Singapore yet?
Story: Apologia
I write this to you. I do not know you, and you do not know me, but this is for you from me nonetheless. Because I do not know you, you are anyone. You are everyone. You are the person who sits across the table from me in the classes I am taking, the classes I have taken, and the classes I will take, that person who does not understand my silence, whose laughter I do not understand, and who will therefore only remember me – if at all – as a curiosity. You are my friend, whose history I have crafted with my gaze and mind, and who likewise creates me. You are my best friend. You are my mother, my child, my third long-lost twice-removed cousin, shared of my genes and yet separated from my DNA. You are from Mars, from Pluto, from the thirteenth planet lost in the oblivion of collective amnesia, or only waiting to be discovered by those who would know you. You are the person who does not know I love you. I love you. But even if I told you you would not understand, because you would equate my love with sex, with roses, with torture, with childhood pets, with loss, with taking out the trash, with a flood of sounds passing through my lips, and I would equate my love with something quite different – an amorphous, shifting, unnameable emotion that lurches within me whenever I look at you. This is why I do not tell you, because I do not know myself. I do not know you either. This, then, is why I write to you: of and for the space that eternally lies between us. But this is not why I apologize to you.
I wonder, sometimes, whether you think about me, and, if you do, what thoughts brush across your mind. When I consider you, whether you are sitting there in your chair or whether you are passing by me on the pavement, I wonder what it is that you see when you look at me, what it is that I notice when I look at you, and I wonder whether either of those things are any more than illusions we graft onto each other with our imaginations. I wonder where you end and my version of you begins; I wonder what capacity for distortion and enhancement is in both of us. But the longer I look at you and listen to you, the more I think about you, and the more I realize that what you are is entirely what I think you are. If you are to walk up to me and interrupt my thoughts, even if you are to tell me precisely who you are, you will not be able to control my interpretation of you. Even if I agree with your assessment of yourself, it will still be my choice, and my agreement will still be different from your assessment in all the small ways that end up making all the difference in the world.
It appears to me, then, that you must likewise be responsible for creating a version of me. When you listen to my voice, when you size me up, when you bump against me or when your hand brushes mine, when you eat the sweet you take from my palm, and when you wrinkle your nose at my thrice-worn clothes or when you inquire after the brand of shampoo I use, you must create a similitude of me as well. ‘You’, then, are truly mine, and ‘I’ must be truly yours, whether we are shadowy presences making up each other’s numbers, or known elements in each other’s social diagrams.
But if we are each other’s creations, then everything else must likewise be refracted through the disparate lenses of each of our minds. “Not everything is about you,” people cry insultingly, but as I have shown to you, how can it be otherwise? You are the one who experiences everything, and so am I. Even if a person we both know dies or marries, you must feel your private grief or joy, as I do mine. From Plato, who in “The Trial And Death Of Socrates” writes that “the mind (is) the disposer and cause of all” (96), to Immanuel Kant, who in “The Critique Of Pure Reason” writes that “it is impossible for human beings to escape from their own psychology” (“The Critique Of Pure Reason” 79), to you and I, each of us who has lived, are living, and will live in this world, then, cannot help but adapt it to our own versions. And so you are there, while here am I, and we are separated by this space that exists between our minds. When everything from a supernova to the meaning of ugliness must resonate uniquely within you and I, how can there be such a thing as a meeting of minds? You can only create me, as I can only create you, and so we can only lose each other.
It is this that infuriates me, that makes me think we must ask each other, for both our sakes, “Who do you think I am” and “Who are you,” phrases that have echoed and will undoubtedly continue to echo in infinitely and uniquely vain strains. But when the explanation of one word that means different things to you and I must necessarily involve more divisive words, I suspect that we will be reduced to silent fools, pointing at objects that again widen our understandings of each other. But more than this, I feel that I should object to certain words that you might use, not because they would be wrong, but because by using them you will have made them a part of me. If, for example, you were to call me arrogant, and point out aspects of my behavior that led you to that conclusion, I might see your point, and I should afterwards always wonder whether those aspects are indeed deliberately, if subconsciously, arrogance on my part.
It is this multiplicity of selves, then, that further gives me pause. Already I question my own actions and motives. When I push my chair back from the table while all my colleagues are tucked in, do I do so because I am reticent, or do I do so because I wish to be noticed being reticent? I cannot answer this question, because, being conscious of either possibility, I must concede that both are equally true and equally false, and that selecting one would be an entirely arbitrary, and misleading, decision. It seems to me, then, that no one, not you and I or anyone else, could ever tell another, “This is who I am,” not only because other selves exist, but also because other selves might exist.
And yet what is “This is who I am” but what we tell each other every single instant of every single day that we are together? Brent Staples writes in “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power To Alter Public Space” of “(whistling) melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers” as his “equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country” (610). This is his equivalent of telling others, “This is who I am.” What is your equivalent, and what is mine? Style of clothes. Silence. Laughter at a brand of humor. Books. Movies. Likes. Dislike. Even when you ignore me, or even when I snub you, it is a choice, like every other choice, that enables us to proclaim ourselves and thereby negotiate each other. But these choices, like all other choices, are entirely arbitrary and hence entirely questionable. These are what we use, you and I, to say to each other, This is who I am, trust me, but I am afraid that we are different people when we are with different people, and so how can trust be possible? I cannot trust you, because I cannot trust myself. I am afraid that when I am with you I am unable even to recognize that “I instantaneously make another body for myself,” as Roland Barthes writes in “Camera Lucida” (14). I am afraid that you do the same, for how can you not? And so the unknowable people that we really are shrink further into ourselves, crowded and obscured by these infinitesimally different selves, and the space between us expands.
It is this that I wish to convey to you, this enduring sense that I am never quite myself, and that you are never quite yourself as well. It seems to me that only by this mutual admission can we move towards each other, and so what I really want to tell you in addition is not who I am, but that I am a mess of contradictions, qualifications, and justifications. I can only imagine that it is the same for you. It seems to me that only by embracing this complexity of selves can we begin to close the space between us, and so oftentimes chaos of sensibilities clash within me when I look at you. I wish to tell you not who I am, but all that I am, whether the pieces are incongruous, harmonious, or extraneous, and even if what I know of myself can only be the fragment of a whole. But as I consider the words that are at my disposal, I cannot help but feel that language itself has failed me. These words that we form with our lips and tongues and teeth, these letters that scribble themselves across a page into coherence and meaning – none of them are adequate for the emotions that I feel and wish to convey to you.
“Language is form and not substance,” Ferdinand de Saussure writes in “Literary Theory: An Anthology” (89), and it is precisely this artificiality of language that repels me. I cannot help but feel that language is a ramshackle construct we lock ourselves in, and that the more words we add to this sprawling artifice the more lost we become in it. I wish to tell you that I love you, but love is a word with flowering meanings of affection, attraction, infatuation, and more, and I do not feel all of those things for you. I wish to tell you that my love is of a teasing, whimsical, terrifying quality, and yet none of those three words are entirely appropriate either. I wish to tell you that I hate you, but from hatred are born a million derivatives as well. And so while you sit there, I am compelled to remain silent, even as letters clutter within me in my impossible attempt to translate feeling into word. I can only watch you, and hope that you have also once experienced this paucity of language.
And yet what is there left to you and I, if we should not have recourse to words? Stefan Georg writes in “The Word” that “where a word breaks off no thing may be” (“Das Wort” 1), and it is in this amorphousness of untranslatable emotion that we are equally lost. “It is language that creates and forms our reality,” Martin Heidegger writes in “On The Way To Language” (“The Linguistic Dit-Mension Of Subjectivity” 5); how can we think and grasp what has no name? We can only sense it vaguely, this part of you and I “which feels… lonely and abandoned, and… out of place and out of sync with the rest of the world,” as Andre Aciman writes in “Underground” (118). It is this part in each of us that we feel to be in unison when we cry together, laugh together, or shout at the cusp of the Grand Canyon together, and yet it is also this part in each of us that we can never confirm to be in unison, because we can never pin it down in words. And so it is this part in each of us that remains forever a mystery, to others and to ourselves.
It is an uneasy truce, then, that we have with language. We can never truly find each other in the primal vastnesses of the cries of grief, the laughter of joy, and the screams of rage and frustration. We can never truly find each other either in the misleading confinements of language, because, as Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher write in “Lacan And The Subject Of Language”, “language names things and murders them as full presences” (4). But we can move towards each other, however awkwardly, in the interstices between word and feeling. “All speech possess a beyond,” Jacques Lacan writes in “The Seminar, Book 1, Freud’s Papers On Technique” (242). Happy, sad, angry – all words hint at something bigger than themselves, and yet smaller than the sounds that are their purest form. It is in the space where all these somethings dwell, then, that we will come the closest, and so it is in this beyond that we shall sense each other closest by, even if we can never meet.
It is not understanding that I ask of you, then, but your attempt at understanding. This space shall always exist between us at any point in time because of the limitations of language, the multiplicity of selves, and the impossibility of ever matching our versions of the world. And so when you break down in tears at something I find utterly prosaic, I ask you to attempt to understand that my stumbling and insufficient words and actions are not deliberate, but the limit to which I can strain towards you in providing solace. All I can offer you in return, then, is the same attempt at understanding, in the moments when you are unable to reach me just as I need you most. So it is with tears, so it is with screams, so it is with laughter, so it is with everything. So it is with lovers, so it is with friends, so it is with family, so it is with even strangers, so it is with you and I.
This monumental attempt at understanding, however, is not all that I have to ask of you, because this space between us is not only always present, but also always changing. Ngugi wa Thiong’O writes in “Enactments Of Power: The Politics Of Performance Space” that we must ask of any space “what memories does the space carry and what longings it might generate” (485), and because the future, the present, and the past are connected in myriad constantly changing ways, you and I must constantly readjust our answers to these questions. So, then, must we constantly renegotiate the space between you and I.
How can you and I, for example, predict the future, which is by definition something that does not and might never exist? And yet predict the future we must, because if one instant does not affect the next to come, then you and I are simply atoms drifting carelessly. And so if the present is to cause the future, you and I must believe in promises that can only be phantoms. Perhaps you will talk to me because you think you will like me. Perhaps I will shift my attention elsewhere because I think you will be dull. Perhaps I will not be likeable, and perhaps you will not be dull, but there can be no certainty in any scenario, only possibilities. The future for you and I, then, can only exist as a world of shadows, wavering between non-existence and permanence, and yet we must acknowledge its power in affecting us now.
But if the future reaches back and guides our way, so too does the past stretch forward to give us signs. Perhaps you will not talk to me, because you have heard the whispers from the grapevine. Perhaps I will be interested in you, because I have seen your vivacity. But if the future is a world of shadows, so is the past. Perhaps those whispers about me were exaggerated, and perhaps your show of verve was an occurrence as rare as its intensity. Even ignoring the rampancy of conscious lies and the rise of the occasional blue moon, who can deny the human failings of misremembrance and simple forgetfulness? The past, then, is such a fragile thing, so easily shattered and remade, and yet what choice have you and I but to believe in the distorted reflections that we see in it, if we should not become like blind children groping in the dark?
Emile Zola writes in “Therese Raquin” that “what one doesn’t know, doesn’t exist” (41), and this gap in knowledge is and can only be the state of things between you and I. And yet even if the past and the future can never truly exist because we can never truly know them, they still possess us. Hannah Arendt writes in “Between Past And Future” that “we are living and struggling in a Protean universe where everything at any moment can be almost anything else” (95). This, then, is what you and I must endure; each step we take can only bring us to a new brink, because the future is changeable and so is the past, and even if we are not experiencing change we must expect it, and so let it change us as well, like the man who saves a coin in case of poverty. And it is because of this, because we are constantly changing, that your attempt at understanding is not all that I have to ask of you. I have to ask of you faith as well, faith in shadows, and this faith is all I can offer in return. I have to ask of you honesty as well, honesty when faith fails so new compromises may be found, and this honesty is all I can offer in return.
But these are not all that I have to ask of you. I have one more thing to ask of you, and it is for this last thing that I apologize.
You might ask me, as I have often asked myself, why we should struggle with this space that divides you and I. If this space borne between us of language, act, time, and subjectivity can only forever separate us, because words betray us, because proclamations of motivations can only be deliberate and thereby inherently suspicious, and because time and subjectivity conspire to make liars of us all, why should we struggle at all?
Why should you and I hold onto who we are as individuals, and not simply adopt a commonality of clothes, mannerisms, lingo, and all other trappings and suits, in order that one day the same gesture, the same word, and the same object can bypass this space and strike the same chords within us? Or why should we not simply let go of each other and all others, and thus give up the struggle that accompanies such spaces?
The only answer I could give to you, if you should ask me these questions, is that neither conformity nor isolation is living. If I should become you, or if you should become me, we should both disappear, the individual becoming the pair becoming the individual. If you and I should let go of each other and all others, you keeping entirely to yourself and I keeping entirely to myself, even when you and I are with each other or amongst others, then we should disappear as well, because without others we cannot define ourselves; there is no good without bad, not smart without stupid, and living alone creates an invisible life, until it passes into oblivion like the sound a falling tree makes when nobody hears it. Jonathan Lethem writes in “Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn” of the “Doppler-effect fading of certain memories from the planet, as they’re recalled for the penultimate time, and then the last” (574). If you should lose yourself in me, or I in you, if you should keep entirely to yourself, or I to myself, then we can only become those memories, affecting no one and not changing ourselves, until we too ultimately fade away.
This, then, is why I apologize to you: not only because you must attempt to understand where no understanding is possible, not only because you must have faith in what can only be shadows, and not only because you must have the honesty to admit doubt when faith has failed, but also because, above, beyond and during all of these things you must do, you must continue to struggle, to be forever divided and yet forever linked to me, and so acknowledge me, even when all I can offer you are the same intangible things in return. This, then, is why I apologize to you: for this space that eternally lies between us and causes our strife, and yet defines us and allows us to live. This, then, is why I ask for your acknowledgement, even as I acknowledge you. This, then, is why I write this to you. This is my hello, the first step in many to come. And now it’s your turn.
WORKS CITED
____________________
Aciman, Andre. “Underground”. False Papers. Farrer, Strauss and Giroux Publishing. 2005. 118.
Arendt, Hannah. Between Past And Future. Penguin Books. 1993. 95.
Barthes, Roland. “Camera Lucida”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing. 2005. 14.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course In General Linguistics”. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. In J. Rivkin and M. Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. 1998. 89.
Georg, Stefan. Das Wort. Trans. Sebastiono Severi. 1994. 1.
Heidegger, Martin. On The Way To Language. 2004. 5.
< http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol8/dit-mension.html>
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique Of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp-Smith. 1929. 79.
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar, Book 1, Freud’s Papers On Technique. 1953-4. Trans. John Forrester. London: Routledge Publishing. 1987. 242.
Lethem, Jonathan. “Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing. 2005. 574.
Plato. The Trial And Death Of Socrates. Ed. Shane Weller. Dover Thrift Editions. 1992. 96.
Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie and Bracher, Mark. Lacan And The Subject Of Language. 1991. 4.
Staples, Brent. “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Ability To Alter Public Space”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing, 2005. 610.
Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. ““Enactments Of Power: The Politics Of Performance Space”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing, 2005. 485.
Zola, Emile. “Therese Raquin”. Seeds Of Modern Drama. Trans. Kathleen Boutall. Ed. Norris Houghton. Applause Theater And Cinema Books. 1963. 41.
I wonder, sometimes, whether you think about me, and, if you do, what thoughts brush across your mind. When I consider you, whether you are sitting there in your chair or whether you are passing by me on the pavement, I wonder what it is that you see when you look at me, what it is that I notice when I look at you, and I wonder whether either of those things are any more than illusions we graft onto each other with our imaginations. I wonder where you end and my version of you begins; I wonder what capacity for distortion and enhancement is in both of us. But the longer I look at you and listen to you, the more I think about you, and the more I realize that what you are is entirely what I think you are. If you are to walk up to me and interrupt my thoughts, even if you are to tell me precisely who you are, you will not be able to control my interpretation of you. Even if I agree with your assessment of yourself, it will still be my choice, and my agreement will still be different from your assessment in all the small ways that end up making all the difference in the world.
It appears to me, then, that you must likewise be responsible for creating a version of me. When you listen to my voice, when you size me up, when you bump against me or when your hand brushes mine, when you eat the sweet you take from my palm, and when you wrinkle your nose at my thrice-worn clothes or when you inquire after the brand of shampoo I use, you must create a similitude of me as well. ‘You’, then, are truly mine, and ‘I’ must be truly yours, whether we are shadowy presences making up each other’s numbers, or known elements in each other’s social diagrams.
But if we are each other’s creations, then everything else must likewise be refracted through the disparate lenses of each of our minds. “Not everything is about you,” people cry insultingly, but as I have shown to you, how can it be otherwise? You are the one who experiences everything, and so am I. Even if a person we both know dies or marries, you must feel your private grief or joy, as I do mine. From Plato, who in “The Trial And Death Of Socrates” writes that “the mind (is) the disposer and cause of all” (96), to Immanuel Kant, who in “The Critique Of Pure Reason” writes that “it is impossible for human beings to escape from their own psychology” (“The Critique Of Pure Reason” 79), to you and I, each of us who has lived, are living, and will live in this world, then, cannot help but adapt it to our own versions. And so you are there, while here am I, and we are separated by this space that exists between our minds. When everything from a supernova to the meaning of ugliness must resonate uniquely within you and I, how can there be such a thing as a meeting of minds? You can only create me, as I can only create you, and so we can only lose each other.
It is this that infuriates me, that makes me think we must ask each other, for both our sakes, “Who do you think I am” and “Who are you,” phrases that have echoed and will undoubtedly continue to echo in infinitely and uniquely vain strains. But when the explanation of one word that means different things to you and I must necessarily involve more divisive words, I suspect that we will be reduced to silent fools, pointing at objects that again widen our understandings of each other. But more than this, I feel that I should object to certain words that you might use, not because they would be wrong, but because by using them you will have made them a part of me. If, for example, you were to call me arrogant, and point out aspects of my behavior that led you to that conclusion, I might see your point, and I should afterwards always wonder whether those aspects are indeed deliberately, if subconsciously, arrogance on my part.
It is this multiplicity of selves, then, that further gives me pause. Already I question my own actions and motives. When I push my chair back from the table while all my colleagues are tucked in, do I do so because I am reticent, or do I do so because I wish to be noticed being reticent? I cannot answer this question, because, being conscious of either possibility, I must concede that both are equally true and equally false, and that selecting one would be an entirely arbitrary, and misleading, decision. It seems to me, then, that no one, not you and I or anyone else, could ever tell another, “This is who I am,” not only because other selves exist, but also because other selves might exist.
And yet what is “This is who I am” but what we tell each other every single instant of every single day that we are together? Brent Staples writes in “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power To Alter Public Space” of “(whistling) melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers” as his “equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country” (610). This is his equivalent of telling others, “This is who I am.” What is your equivalent, and what is mine? Style of clothes. Silence. Laughter at a brand of humor. Books. Movies. Likes. Dislike. Even when you ignore me, or even when I snub you, it is a choice, like every other choice, that enables us to proclaim ourselves and thereby negotiate each other. But these choices, like all other choices, are entirely arbitrary and hence entirely questionable. These are what we use, you and I, to say to each other, This is who I am, trust me, but I am afraid that we are different people when we are with different people, and so how can trust be possible? I cannot trust you, because I cannot trust myself. I am afraid that when I am with you I am unable even to recognize that “I instantaneously make another body for myself,” as Roland Barthes writes in “Camera Lucida” (14). I am afraid that you do the same, for how can you not? And so the unknowable people that we really are shrink further into ourselves, crowded and obscured by these infinitesimally different selves, and the space between us expands.
It is this that I wish to convey to you, this enduring sense that I am never quite myself, and that you are never quite yourself as well. It seems to me that only by this mutual admission can we move towards each other, and so what I really want to tell you in addition is not who I am, but that I am a mess of contradictions, qualifications, and justifications. I can only imagine that it is the same for you. It seems to me that only by embracing this complexity of selves can we begin to close the space between us, and so oftentimes chaos of sensibilities clash within me when I look at you. I wish to tell you not who I am, but all that I am, whether the pieces are incongruous, harmonious, or extraneous, and even if what I know of myself can only be the fragment of a whole. But as I consider the words that are at my disposal, I cannot help but feel that language itself has failed me. These words that we form with our lips and tongues and teeth, these letters that scribble themselves across a page into coherence and meaning – none of them are adequate for the emotions that I feel and wish to convey to you.
“Language is form and not substance,” Ferdinand de Saussure writes in “Literary Theory: An Anthology” (89), and it is precisely this artificiality of language that repels me. I cannot help but feel that language is a ramshackle construct we lock ourselves in, and that the more words we add to this sprawling artifice the more lost we become in it. I wish to tell you that I love you, but love is a word with flowering meanings of affection, attraction, infatuation, and more, and I do not feel all of those things for you. I wish to tell you that my love is of a teasing, whimsical, terrifying quality, and yet none of those three words are entirely appropriate either. I wish to tell you that I hate you, but from hatred are born a million derivatives as well. And so while you sit there, I am compelled to remain silent, even as letters clutter within me in my impossible attempt to translate feeling into word. I can only watch you, and hope that you have also once experienced this paucity of language.
And yet what is there left to you and I, if we should not have recourse to words? Stefan Georg writes in “The Word” that “where a word breaks off no thing may be” (“Das Wort” 1), and it is in this amorphousness of untranslatable emotion that we are equally lost. “It is language that creates and forms our reality,” Martin Heidegger writes in “On The Way To Language” (“The Linguistic Dit-Mension Of Subjectivity” 5); how can we think and grasp what has no name? We can only sense it vaguely, this part of you and I “which feels… lonely and abandoned, and… out of place and out of sync with the rest of the world,” as Andre Aciman writes in “Underground” (118). It is this part in each of us that we feel to be in unison when we cry together, laugh together, or shout at the cusp of the Grand Canyon together, and yet it is also this part in each of us that we can never confirm to be in unison, because we can never pin it down in words. And so it is this part in each of us that remains forever a mystery, to others and to ourselves.
It is an uneasy truce, then, that we have with language. We can never truly find each other in the primal vastnesses of the cries of grief, the laughter of joy, and the screams of rage and frustration. We can never truly find each other either in the misleading confinements of language, because, as Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher write in “Lacan And The Subject Of Language”, “language names things and murders them as full presences” (4). But we can move towards each other, however awkwardly, in the interstices between word and feeling. “All speech possess a beyond,” Jacques Lacan writes in “The Seminar, Book 1, Freud’s Papers On Technique” (242). Happy, sad, angry – all words hint at something bigger than themselves, and yet smaller than the sounds that are their purest form. It is in the space where all these somethings dwell, then, that we will come the closest, and so it is in this beyond that we shall sense each other closest by, even if we can never meet.
It is not understanding that I ask of you, then, but your attempt at understanding. This space shall always exist between us at any point in time because of the limitations of language, the multiplicity of selves, and the impossibility of ever matching our versions of the world. And so when you break down in tears at something I find utterly prosaic, I ask you to attempt to understand that my stumbling and insufficient words and actions are not deliberate, but the limit to which I can strain towards you in providing solace. All I can offer you in return, then, is the same attempt at understanding, in the moments when you are unable to reach me just as I need you most. So it is with tears, so it is with screams, so it is with laughter, so it is with everything. So it is with lovers, so it is with friends, so it is with family, so it is with even strangers, so it is with you and I.
This monumental attempt at understanding, however, is not all that I have to ask of you, because this space between us is not only always present, but also always changing. Ngugi wa Thiong’O writes in “Enactments Of Power: The Politics Of Performance Space” that we must ask of any space “what memories does the space carry and what longings it might generate” (485), and because the future, the present, and the past are connected in myriad constantly changing ways, you and I must constantly readjust our answers to these questions. So, then, must we constantly renegotiate the space between you and I.
How can you and I, for example, predict the future, which is by definition something that does not and might never exist? And yet predict the future we must, because if one instant does not affect the next to come, then you and I are simply atoms drifting carelessly. And so if the present is to cause the future, you and I must believe in promises that can only be phantoms. Perhaps you will talk to me because you think you will like me. Perhaps I will shift my attention elsewhere because I think you will be dull. Perhaps I will not be likeable, and perhaps you will not be dull, but there can be no certainty in any scenario, only possibilities. The future for you and I, then, can only exist as a world of shadows, wavering between non-existence and permanence, and yet we must acknowledge its power in affecting us now.
But if the future reaches back and guides our way, so too does the past stretch forward to give us signs. Perhaps you will not talk to me, because you have heard the whispers from the grapevine. Perhaps I will be interested in you, because I have seen your vivacity. But if the future is a world of shadows, so is the past. Perhaps those whispers about me were exaggerated, and perhaps your show of verve was an occurrence as rare as its intensity. Even ignoring the rampancy of conscious lies and the rise of the occasional blue moon, who can deny the human failings of misremembrance and simple forgetfulness? The past, then, is such a fragile thing, so easily shattered and remade, and yet what choice have you and I but to believe in the distorted reflections that we see in it, if we should not become like blind children groping in the dark?
Emile Zola writes in “Therese Raquin” that “what one doesn’t know, doesn’t exist” (41), and this gap in knowledge is and can only be the state of things between you and I. And yet even if the past and the future can never truly exist because we can never truly know them, they still possess us. Hannah Arendt writes in “Between Past And Future” that “we are living and struggling in a Protean universe where everything at any moment can be almost anything else” (95). This, then, is what you and I must endure; each step we take can only bring us to a new brink, because the future is changeable and so is the past, and even if we are not experiencing change we must expect it, and so let it change us as well, like the man who saves a coin in case of poverty. And it is because of this, because we are constantly changing, that your attempt at understanding is not all that I have to ask of you. I have to ask of you faith as well, faith in shadows, and this faith is all I can offer in return. I have to ask of you honesty as well, honesty when faith fails so new compromises may be found, and this honesty is all I can offer in return.
But these are not all that I have to ask of you. I have one more thing to ask of you, and it is for this last thing that I apologize.
You might ask me, as I have often asked myself, why we should struggle with this space that divides you and I. If this space borne between us of language, act, time, and subjectivity can only forever separate us, because words betray us, because proclamations of motivations can only be deliberate and thereby inherently suspicious, and because time and subjectivity conspire to make liars of us all, why should we struggle at all?
Why should you and I hold onto who we are as individuals, and not simply adopt a commonality of clothes, mannerisms, lingo, and all other trappings and suits, in order that one day the same gesture, the same word, and the same object can bypass this space and strike the same chords within us? Or why should we not simply let go of each other and all others, and thus give up the struggle that accompanies such spaces?
The only answer I could give to you, if you should ask me these questions, is that neither conformity nor isolation is living. If I should become you, or if you should become me, we should both disappear, the individual becoming the pair becoming the individual. If you and I should let go of each other and all others, you keeping entirely to yourself and I keeping entirely to myself, even when you and I are with each other or amongst others, then we should disappear as well, because without others we cannot define ourselves; there is no good without bad, not smart without stupid, and living alone creates an invisible life, until it passes into oblivion like the sound a falling tree makes when nobody hears it. Jonathan Lethem writes in “Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn” of the “Doppler-effect fading of certain memories from the planet, as they’re recalled for the penultimate time, and then the last” (574). If you should lose yourself in me, or I in you, if you should keep entirely to yourself, or I to myself, then we can only become those memories, affecting no one and not changing ourselves, until we too ultimately fade away.
This, then, is why I apologize to you: not only because you must attempt to understand where no understanding is possible, not only because you must have faith in what can only be shadows, and not only because you must have the honesty to admit doubt when faith has failed, but also because, above, beyond and during all of these things you must do, you must continue to struggle, to be forever divided and yet forever linked to me, and so acknowledge me, even when all I can offer you are the same intangible things in return. This, then, is why I apologize to you: for this space that eternally lies between us and causes our strife, and yet defines us and allows us to live. This, then, is why I ask for your acknowledgement, even as I acknowledge you. This, then, is why I write this to you. This is my hello, the first step in many to come. And now it’s your turn.
WORKS CITED
____________________
Aciman, Andre. “Underground”. False Papers. Farrer, Strauss and Giroux Publishing. 2005. 118.
Arendt, Hannah. Between Past And Future. Penguin Books. 1993. 95.
Barthes, Roland. “Camera Lucida”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing. 2005. 14.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course In General Linguistics”. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. In J. Rivkin and M. Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. 1998. 89.
Georg, Stefan. Das Wort. Trans. Sebastiono Severi. 1994. 1.
Heidegger, Martin. On The Way To Language. 2004. 5.
< http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol8/dit-mension.html>
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique Of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp-Smith. 1929. 79.
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar, Book 1, Freud’s Papers On Technique. 1953-4. Trans. John Forrester. London: Routledge Publishing. 1987. 242.
Lethem, Jonathan. “Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing. 2005. 574.
Plato. The Trial And Death Of Socrates. Ed. Shane Weller. Dover Thrift Editions. 1992. 96.
Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie and Bracher, Mark. Lacan And The Subject Of Language. 1991. 4.
Staples, Brent. “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Ability To Alter Public Space”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing, 2005. 610.
Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. ““Enactments Of Power: The Politics Of Performance Space”. Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing, 2005. 485.
Zola, Emile. “Therese Raquin”. Seeds Of Modern Drama. Trans. Kathleen Boutall. Ed. Norris Houghton. Applause Theater And Cinema Books. 1963. 41.
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