"It's a gift"
I feel like Fagin, it's cool. This one is so much brighter. He drops something on the bed and I don't look at it until much later.
"Are you OK?"
I'm always OK. There is a really profound hole in my gum, where that tooth was. My tongue is fascinated by it. It's like the part of the hole my tongue can access is only the tip of some mythical iceberg. Beyond this shallow entrance is some unknowable cavern of infinite proportion. When I open my mouth very wide in front of the mirror I feel faint with possibility.
He's still there, it doesn't seem right.
"You probably shouldn't use it. It's just a gesture"
"So what should I do with it?"
He shrugs, looks out of the window. I still feel like Fagin. Dream briefly about being hung. I mean hanged. I don't know what I mean.
He says: "Should I make you some tea?" and it's terrifying.
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Who/what is Fagin?
ReplyDeleteAh, that glorious cavern!
Fagin is the kinda pimp in Oliver Twist? Yes, full of glory, that cavern. Does this make any sense - apart from the dental porn?
ReplyDeleteOnce again, I'm probably much too literal, but if you (or your narrator, or whoever) is feeling like Fagin, I'm assuming that the bloke you are talking must somehow have some semblance to a young thief (but than, that might just be my particular bias), and the thing dropped on the bed that nevertheless holds less interest than the hole in your gum might somehow be something akin to stolen goods. But why you shouldn't use it, in what way it is a gesture, and why his offer of tea terrifies you, I am at a total loss...
ReplyDeleteBut just as with the mail I'm not really expecting an explanation to present itself - had I been holding my breath, I should already be putrefying satisfactorily, 'coz other than dear Lou, I am rather dependent on my regular air intake...
(the tea thing still makes the most sense, though... in a vague "autumn of silent screams" french cinema sort of way...)
ReplyDeleteAnd Fagin isn't any pimp, he's a fence...
ReplyDelete(And faced with the prospect of the gallows he is everything but blasé...)
ReplyDeleteFoxy - is my stuff annoying you more just through - familiarity or saturation? or has is changed somehow into something inherently more irritating? Ok but you're hardly adding strength to your case by unpicking the supposedly obscure narrative with no apparent difficulty - except the credit card bit maybe. I am replying - there was a whole lot of stuff to address there - it's taken me a while.
ReplyDeleteFagin is so a pimp - it's just not an explicitly rendered thing. That he wasn't blasé about his imminent execution is pretty much the point?
You're right. I was thoroughly annoyed yesterday. In part that was nothing to do with you. But it was more than just that, and it's been on my mind last night all through work.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't that what you show is too obscure (though I wouldn't have guessed the credit card) but that it doesn't lead anywhere.
I think it's mostly that I really, really like your, hmm, how to say it, your work-pieces. The elements.
"There's a storm maybe, he doesn't remember - just the cold shock of the water - being pushed, by the sea, onto this shore." or "He shrugs, looks out of the window. I still feel like Fagin. Dream briefly about being hung. I mean hanged. I don't know what I mean."
They touch me, deep inside, and I shudder. It's like a phyiscal reaction, like piss shivers, you know, when you shudder all over at the end of a piss, or like that hick-upping jerk when without apparent reason suddenly some bile rises up, or like the sort of whimpering quivering orgasm one sometimes has when doing it all covertly and under tension and silent and so? It's like that in my heart when I read your stuff. It's like a match almost setting something on fire, and the flame is already licking along the paper or kindling or straw, and then it dies.
And I hate that. I hate that... you don't fulfil your promises. I mean, I know you don't really promise anything, but your words do, they do, they promise meaning and vastness, and depth, and passion. And then they just choke. Then you choke them in this, this... I dunno... in this.
And it annoys the hell out of me.
You're kahretsin emotionally blue balling me, again and again. Gah, I hate you for that, you know. I do.
(And you're right about Fagin. And about the mail. Sorry. that was just me being in a snit about something that has nothing to do with you.)
I don't know how to respond to this. I don't really - see that? But your reading is pretty much more important than my writing, or something. I think - you want a different thing, you want some kind of mirror on a profound experience - like a triumph of content over form. but this is just writing, it's struggling with the inadequacy of language and still being wowed by the kind of bitter beauty of this inadequacy, but yeah - choking on it all the same.
ReplyDelete"A triumph of content over form" Hah! I LIKE that. Though do I really? I thought I wanted form to transport content. It can be subtext, or, I dunno, supertext? (Is there such a thing?) Or maybe metatext. But I want it to to carry content, not just be pretty, I guess. But I don't think yours is. It doesn't feel empty. It just feels... occluded? I may be totally wrong, but it feels as if you are vaguely ashamed of the meaning, like, afraid it might sound like a "moral", and so you work hard to make it less obvious... sometimes to the point of losing the signal in the noise... at least for this porr cryptographers inept and uncultured brain. ^_^
ReplyDeleteInadequacy... I don't think so...