policeman banging on the door?”
“Yes.”
“Me too, me too. Um, I don’t have a question.”
“Will you bash his face in if he doesn’t have a question?”
“No. No, I won’t.”
As they turn and lobby questions at Ellen she finds herself struggling, with some success, to configure theaffirmation. She begins to focus her eyes on what it is that they’re doing on the bank. A busy geometry of forms begins to emerge. It sits lit on the surface of the dark and appears like a computer language, a dense and complex glyphic architecture. The patterns emerging are uniform all around her. Ellen recognizes something in the tightly braided wall. She remembers doing things. After she got sick. She remembers emptying an ice cube tray into the sink and filling it again. Returning it to the freezer. And the terrible waiting for the water to freeze so that she could refill it with fresh water. It was in filling those awful hours that Ellen built, out of the contents of a cupboard, her library of seals. She recalls her surprise, her astonishment, that she was able to create and retain an infinite machine on a single shelf in the pantry. The complex stability of the number six in a can of pears, each half-fruit changing. The not-yet-ten in tiers across the cookie bag. The disappointing threes risen into a number only guessed at, but always guessed correctly, by a red hexagonal tower in the shadows. And when she had finished visiting her shelf she would check the ice cubes. And if they were not yet frozen, maybe nearly, little windowed boxes of water, she’d sit at the kitchen table and feel comfortable that she had set things in motion.
On the surface of the white cupboards a scroll of light marks fly rapidly from left to right — the stories released by the machines behind their doors, and Ellen memorizes each one. Some days they are the long, incomprehensible speeches of angels. Sometimes they detail the death of a child. And other times they list allof the things that Ellen hasn’t said yet. If these marks were to stop moving and rise in relief from the cupboards, and lift off like a new wall, slipping through the floor to line the banks of a pond in the dark, then Ellen would be looking at them over the shoulders of busy zombies. She strokes the head of a giant fish banging against her knees and opens her legs.
These poor people have all suffered strokes. A
zombie approaches the pool carrying a large, full garbage bag. She empties the contents out onto the surface of the water behind the working zombies. They reach, without looking back, to scoop up eggshells and plastic bottles.
28
Hungry Like The Wolf
What is an autobiography? What can fairly be said to lie within its bounds, share in its purpose? Is there someone hidden in Les Reardon? Was he a garbage truck driver who had a psychotic breakdown? Did he then become a drama teacher? Did a woman one month pregnant leave him in the middle of this career shift? Did he battle zombies across Ontario in a stolen car with his son wailing in drug withdrawal beside him? Are these little autobiographemes inserted into imagined lives? Probably. But still, that’s not autobiography. Not really.
Is this an autobiography?
Yes.
29
Autobiography
Twelve years ago you were living on the streets of Vancouver. You panhandled every day on Robson with a partner named Tommy. Those were miserable days — the good ones spent on the nod, the bad ones spent in a Lysol induced aggression. You had come to these dire straits in the usual way — an enduring dependence on substances and a persistent holocaust of personality. Usual, yes, but very difficult to survive. You tell this story not to mark yourself with it or to gain sympathy — it is, after all, only the story of a stubborn little bastard. You are telling this story, or at least just enough of it, so that you will never have to mention it again.
This one day you stirred to life beneath a shrub in Oppenhiemer Park. The shirt you
“Yes.”
“Me too, me too. Um, I don’t have a question.”
“Will you bash his face in if he doesn’t have a question?”
“No. No, I won’t.”
As they turn and lobby questions at Ellen she finds herself struggling, with some success, to configure theaffirmation. She begins to focus her eyes on what it is that they’re doing on the bank. A busy geometry of forms begins to emerge. It sits lit on the surface of the dark and appears like a computer language, a dense and complex glyphic architecture. The patterns emerging are uniform all around her. Ellen recognizes something in the tightly braided wall. She remembers doing things. After she got sick. She remembers emptying an ice cube tray into the sink and filling it again. Returning it to the freezer. And the terrible waiting for the water to freeze so that she could refill it with fresh water. It was in filling those awful hours that Ellen built, out of the contents of a cupboard, her library of seals. She recalls her surprise, her astonishment, that she was able to create and retain an infinite machine on a single shelf in the pantry. The complex stability of the number six in a can of pears, each half-fruit changing. The not-yet-ten in tiers across the cookie bag. The disappointing threes risen into a number only guessed at, but always guessed correctly, by a red hexagonal tower in the shadows. And when she had finished visiting her shelf she would check the ice cubes. And if they were not yet frozen, maybe nearly, little windowed boxes of water, she’d sit at the kitchen table and feel comfortable that she had set things in motion.
On the surface of the white cupboards a scroll of light marks fly rapidly from left to right — the stories released by the machines behind their doors, and Ellen memorizes each one. Some days they are the long, incomprehensible speeches of angels. Sometimes they detail the death of a child. And other times they list allof the things that Ellen hasn’t said yet. If these marks were to stop moving and rise in relief from the cupboards, and lift off like a new wall, slipping through the floor to line the banks of a pond in the dark, then Ellen would be looking at them over the shoulders of busy zombies. She strokes the head of a giant fish banging against her knees and opens her legs.
These poor people have all suffered strokes. A
zombie approaches the pool carrying a large, full garbage bag. She empties the contents out onto the surface of the water behind the working zombies. They reach, without looking back, to scoop up eggshells and plastic bottles.
28
Hungry Like The Wolf
What is an autobiography? What can fairly be said to lie within its bounds, share in its purpose? Is there someone hidden in Les Reardon? Was he a garbage truck driver who had a psychotic breakdown? Did he then become a drama teacher? Did a woman one month pregnant leave him in the middle of this career shift? Did he battle zombies across Ontario in a stolen car with his son wailing in drug withdrawal beside him? Are these little autobiographemes inserted into imagined lives? Probably. But still, that’s not autobiography. Not really.
Is this an autobiography?
Yes.
29
Autobiography
Twelve years ago you were living on the streets of Vancouver. You panhandled every day on Robson with a partner named Tommy. Those were miserable days — the good ones spent on the nod, the bad ones spent in a Lysol induced aggression. You had come to these dire straits in the usual way — an enduring dependence on substances and a persistent holocaust of personality. Usual, yes, but very difficult to survive. You tell this story not to mark yourself with it or to gain sympathy — it is, after all, only the story of a stubborn little bastard. You are telling this story, or at least just enough of it, so that you will never have to mention it again.
This one day you stirred to life beneath a shrub in Oppenhiemer Park. The shirt you
Similar Books
