ONE
June 8, 2006, 3:30 PM
Here's something you desperately need to know: the world you live in is not the world you think you live in, and if you try to live in it believing you know it, one day you'll find yourself surprised way beyond the powers of your poor synapses to express surprise—as if a spider has suddenly climbed into your mouth and bitten you on the tongue and made you unable to move, or swallow, or spit..
That is what I live with constantly. A spider on my tongue.
My name is Abner W. Cray and, long ago, I knew lots of things—what time to get up in the morning, what to do after I got up, what to do after that, who to kiss and who to avoid and who to listen to, who to be afraid of, or joke with, what tasks to leave until later and what to accomplish within the moment that was upon me.
Now, this day (this beautiful, grotesque morning) I have only a spider on my tongue. Now I can not move, or swallow, or spit.
And here's something else you need to know: You can not trust me, or anyone, about anything. You can not even trust yourself because I can not trust myself —about my survival, about my death (whether it has happened or will happen or should happen), about those who crowd me constantly in this little house, about the places I can go to, about the places I can never go to again, even though I've been to those places ten thousand times in what surely has been one-hundred thousand years.
~ * ~
June 9, 8:00 AM
Beautiful morning, grotesque morning—like a cherubic face with a bleached skull beneath the skin. And that describes all of us—you and me, the UPS delivery man, the shapely woman in green (whose eye is easy to catch), the neighbor who stalks your cat because it kills songbirds, the sibling you foolishly thought you knew so well, the lover who leaves you with a godawful mess.
"Do you know what you are?" I say to some of those who crowd around me here, as if I am simply nonexistent, or as if my existence were no great matter, and I see them (certainly I do) cock their heads or shrug their shoulders or raise their eyebrows to tell me I'm being impossibly stupid or that the question simply doesn't pertain.
It is not their open mouths or their poor plastic smiles or their marbled eyes that so disturb, it is their foaming and enthusiastic ignorance which proclaims loudly that others in their universe (which is our universe, too) welcome that ignorance and want to share it. Perhaps in a kiss.
Phyllis Pellaprat is elsewhere. And everywhere. At last. She came to me (long ago) when it should have been impossible for her to come to me, and impossible for me to take her, and she gave me as much of herself as she was able to give, then dissipated, like smoke.
You know her, you knew her: she shared your bed and tickled you at all the right times, in all the right places; she made much and nothing of her nakedness and her mischievous predilections; she said you were her world made of skin and hair and cartilage; she saw you even when you were nowhere near, and, at last, she left you only after she shed many tears, as if leaving you were an impossible task, but she left you nonetheless.
She was as real as pain, and that was something she could no more avoid than she could have avoided her life, and her death.
I think I love her as much as God allows, and I say that as someone, now, who has every reason to believe in a God, but doesn't.
~ * ~
1:45 PM
If you want me to take you back to the beginning of this tale, I won't, I can't. And I can't because I don't want to. If you had written previously, and almost endlessly, about your stupidity and (some would say) your perversion, would you want to look backward at it, or even glance backward at it, for Christ's sake! That would smack of masochism, and I'm not a masochist. (Although you must remember what I wrote earlier. Trust me and I may disappoint you, because I can't trust myself. Existence, however, is a lot more interesting that way,
June 8, 2006, 3:30 PM
Here's something you desperately need to know: the world you live in is not the world you think you live in, and if you try to live in it believing you know it, one day you'll find yourself surprised way beyond the powers of your poor synapses to express surprise—as if a spider has suddenly climbed into your mouth and bitten you on the tongue and made you unable to move, or swallow, or spit..
That is what I live with constantly. A spider on my tongue.
My name is Abner W. Cray and, long ago, I knew lots of things—what time to get up in the morning, what to do after I got up, what to do after that, who to kiss and who to avoid and who to listen to, who to be afraid of, or joke with, what tasks to leave until later and what to accomplish within the moment that was upon me.
Now, this day (this beautiful, grotesque morning) I have only a spider on my tongue. Now I can not move, or swallow, or spit.
And here's something else you need to know: You can not trust me, or anyone, about anything. You can not even trust yourself because I can not trust myself —about my survival, about my death (whether it has happened or will happen or should happen), about those who crowd me constantly in this little house, about the places I can go to, about the places I can never go to again, even though I've been to those places ten thousand times in what surely has been one-hundred thousand years.
~ * ~
June 9, 8:00 AM
Beautiful morning, grotesque morning—like a cherubic face with a bleached skull beneath the skin. And that describes all of us—you and me, the UPS delivery man, the shapely woman in green (whose eye is easy to catch), the neighbor who stalks your cat because it kills songbirds, the sibling you foolishly thought you knew so well, the lover who leaves you with a godawful mess.
"Do you know what you are?" I say to some of those who crowd around me here, as if I am simply nonexistent, or as if my existence were no great matter, and I see them (certainly I do) cock their heads or shrug their shoulders or raise their eyebrows to tell me I'm being impossibly stupid or that the question simply doesn't pertain.
It is not their open mouths or their poor plastic smiles or their marbled eyes that so disturb, it is their foaming and enthusiastic ignorance which proclaims loudly that others in their universe (which is our universe, too) welcome that ignorance and want to share it. Perhaps in a kiss.
Phyllis Pellaprat is elsewhere. And everywhere. At last. She came to me (long ago) when it should have been impossible for her to come to me, and impossible for me to take her, and she gave me as much of herself as she was able to give, then dissipated, like smoke.
You know her, you knew her: she shared your bed and tickled you at all the right times, in all the right places; she made much and nothing of her nakedness and her mischievous predilections; she said you were her world made of skin and hair and cartilage; she saw you even when you were nowhere near, and, at last, she left you only after she shed many tears, as if leaving you were an impossible task, but she left you nonetheless.
She was as real as pain, and that was something she could no more avoid than she could have avoided her life, and her death.
I think I love her as much as God allows, and I say that as someone, now, who has every reason to believe in a God, but doesn't.
~ * ~
1:45 PM
If you want me to take you back to the beginning of this tale, I won't, I can't. And I can't because I don't want to. If you had written previously, and almost endlessly, about your stupidity and (some would say) your perversion, would you want to look backward at it, or even glance backward at it, for Christ's sake! That would smack of masochism, and I'm not a masochist. (Although you must remember what I wrote earlier. Trust me and I may disappoint you, because I can't trust myself. Existence, however, is a lot more interesting that way,
Similar Books
