Prosopagnosia

  

We begin with a shot of a man kissing his bee-hived wife and two young children - a boy and a girl - at the entrance of a detached house with a tidy garden and white picket fence. Jolly music is playing but as the man leaves for work a low rumble comes in off-key to let us know that something is amiss. Our character is middle-aged, early 40s, with an affable, shaved face and manner. He is wearing a suit that looks neither cheap nor expensive. We see him greeting a blonde waitress at a diner as he buys a coffee. He waves to a redheaded grocer and a butcher with an eyepatch as he passes by their stores. He then enters his office, functional with in and out trays on every desk, and greets a grey-haired receptionist. He then joins his colleagues who have their backs to us and are already working together over a large white sheet of drafting paper. As he begins to discuss something with them the camera pans up and away.

 

The next scene takes place on, presumably, the following day. Our man goes through the same motions as before, saying bye to his, presumably, beloved wife and children and buying the same coffee from the same blonde waitress. But, what’s this? The redheaded grocer who he waves to looks different. Still redheaded, medium height and build, but wasn’t he handsomely square-jawed yesterday? This man is plain on his best day and, if we are being honest with ourselves, is actually ugly to the point of producing disgust. Our man waves at him and the butcher with the eye patch just the same as he did yesterday. Maybe we misremembered? No matter, the rest plays out the same, the greeting of the grey-haired receptionist followed by work on the large white sheet of drafting paper with colleagues. The cheery music sounds a little sourer, the rumbling undertone that little more ominous.

 

Another day. We know what to expect now. Our man’s demeanour is the same as yesterday and the day before. Does he ever change? He leaves his beautiful house, wife and children and heads off to his diner. There is a different blonde waitress today, yes, we are sure of it. He greets her as amiably as he has had previously. Maybe he knows her too? Can we make out her name tag? Joan. What was the yesterday one’s name? We can’t recall. And now here comes Mr. Greengrocer. Redheaded for sure but, yes, different from the day before. We could never forget that gruesome visage. This greengrocer is average in the extreme. Bland, even. Our man gives him the same wave as always. What is going on? We mull this over and forget to take a proper look at the butcher with the eye patch as the man goes by. We refocus our attention as he enters the office. We wait with baited breath but the grey-haired receptionist remains the same and the large white sheet of drafting paper – architectural work? is this important? – is present and correct so he and his colleagues can bow their necks to work.

 

On the fourth run through we are determined to stay vigilant. As he leaves his adorable family we scan their faces with intent. They remain the same. As we thought, the waitress is blonde, she is Joan, she is someone else. Her eyes are a little sadder, her face is a little dumpier. The redheaded greengrocer is all points and angles today, the butcher still wears the eyepatch and, yes, finally, the receptionist has changed. The same cheery demeanour and grey hair but now she has tight eyes and jowls. Our man is oblivious and he quickly gets to it with his anonymous colleagues over the large white sheet of drafting paper.

 

The fifth day and the music is now much more ominous thrum than jolly tune. In fact, what melody there is distinctly warped and skewed. His wife is brunette with beehive still but now has a strangely familiar mannish face whereas before she had been sweetly feminine. His children’s faces are switched, with the girl having the boy’s face and the boy having the girl’s. It is unsettling. There is no reaction from the man apart from his customary kisses. All of the other characters in our drama - if we can call it that - have changed now. The blonde waitress has the grey-haired receptionist’s face from yesterday, the grey-haired receptionist has the blonder waitress’s face, the redhead greengrocer the butcher with the eye patch’s and so on and so forth. There is no reaction from the man. He works over that large white sheet of drafting paper with his faceless colleagues as if it were the only thing in the world.

 

Before the sixth day begins, we hear a thudding sound and the screen visibly shakes before resting on the now familiar starting scene. There is no music, no sound at all, when our man greets his wife and children. Today, they have faces that are almost, but not quite, smooth. Eyes, nose and mouth are all present but are mere abstractions - the idea of an eye, mouth or nose rather than an actuality. They are fleshy and real enough but wrong. Very wrong. All of our other characters have these same features - we assume, as we cannot see one of the butcher’s eyes, hidden as it is by the eyepatch. The scene finishes, as usual, with the man and his colleagues leaning over that large white sheet of drafting paper. Whether the colleagues have changed as well is a moot point as their faces remain, as ever, hidden from us.

 

Now, between scenes, there is a black screen. We hear what sounds like very distant muttering but we cannot be sure. We wait and wait and just as we are about to get up, the seventh day begins. The music is back, but it is jollier than it has ever been, sugary enough to induce a coma. The man kisses his bee-hived wife and children whose faces now contain only a child’s drawing of eyes, mouths and noses. From the man, nothing, no reaction at all. We see the blonde waitress and the redheaded greengrocer with their crudely daubed faces and we wonder if the butcher’s eyepatch will be drawn on too, but it remains as solid and real as ever over what we can but assume is his crayon eye. The grey-haired secretary has the same affliction as the rest. The man, along with the colleagues with their backs to us, get to work over the large white sheet of drafting paper.

 

Here, instead of fading out, the camera moves to a previously unseen window and shows us the scene outside. We see a field, yellow and stubbly with chopped corn. As the camera pans up we notice a blur moving quickly up out into the sky. The camera zooms in and attempts to track its movement. The object never becomes fully clear but we are sure that just before we lose track of it that it is shaped like a saucer.

 

The screen fades to black for the final time.

 

 

Loss

  

For a long time, I used to fear losing my memory. I have to confess that it still agitates me to this day.

As a child, to fight this apprehension, which was constant and infiltrated my every idle moment, I made lists, wrote extensive diaries and - in my bed, before sleep - recounted everything I had done that day. Back then, I had no idea where this feeling came from. Not that I would have had the self-awareness to do so, but I would never have thought to question this anxiety, as it seemed to me to be the most natural thing in the world to me. If anything, I was confused as to why others did not share my consternation.

I feel my obsession may have stemmed from some primal fear that I could not possibly have articulated at that age: did I fear that I would lose all of the good things in my life if I did not constantly recall them? That to not be thinking of them would mean that they would be lost forever? Or was it that if I didn’t hold onto my memories, I myself would disappear?

Well, whatever the cause of my fixation, instead of fading into the background with the years, as most childhood worries tend to do, by the time I became an adult, I had seen enough to tell me my fears were not unfounded. If anything, this dread redoubled its efforts and took a full hold of me.

The main driver for this was my dawning realisation of the realities of ageing. I knew that, along with my body wrinkling and becoming infirm, my memory would eventually leave me; I desperately did not want to become what I had seen my grandparents become - what I eventually saw my parents become: empty vessels whose dementia created a constant anxiety that could never be placated.

More than merely losing my memory, the thought that when I was an old man, relentless anxieties would haunt me - never allowing me to relax or know peace - would awaken me in the middle of the night.

Mr Worthy, you have visitors.

And these predecessors of mine, the “source” of my adult worries, what became of them?

Well, first, for the sake of completeness, I must tell you that my paternal grandfather died before I was born; gone before he could even be remembered. He was my first taste of death and the unknowable void that followed. As a child, I would stare at his sun-weathered photographic portrait that adorned our vestibule and wonder.

My curiosity remained unanswered, until the day I finally became brave enough to ask,

“Papa, was Grandfather dead in this photo?”

Which caused much mirth in my family and, much to my chagrin, became an anecdote to be trotted out whenever they reminisced over him.

Years later, I discovered that family photos in the Victorian era would sometimes contain the corpse of a recently deceased relative, dressed in their finery, propped up next to their kin for one final depiction. Perhaps they did this out of an unwillingness to let go of their loved ones, or perhaps the novelty of the technology meant this was their first and only chance to capture their family in its completeness.

Whatever the reason, this fact makes my family’s laughter all the more galling.

No, no one’s laughing at you. Don’t worry

My Grandmother Madeline was the next of my relations to die. In the misty memory of my youth, she is a blurry haze of rose water and unwanted embraces before she crystalises in my mind’s eye as the confused old woman she became in my adolescent years. Then, unsure as to when and where she was, she obsessed over a sum of money which was so paltry as to be laughable, but in her mind remained sizeable. The sum, as we were often reminded, was two-hundred-and-thirty pounds and the dispute was with a paternal cousin. She feared she had been robbed of it and would say as reliably as a skipping record,

“It’s not right, he has swindled me and it is imperative we get it back!”

and

“We must act now or he will keep it forever!”

On and on.

My mother attempted to protect me from this talk, vainly trying to give me only Grandmother Madeline’s good days, but I could always see the worry behind her eyes. Mother would be forever on guard against the stopping mid-sentence, the non-sequitur, the freight train speeding inevitably towards its destination of the sum of money that had been taken from her. No matter what efforts she put in, it was impossible to derail my Grandmother Madeline’s talk from its destination of the two-hundred-and-thirty pounds and its supposed theft.

As much as I pitied my Grandmother Madeline - and worried for my mother - I feared for myself the most. How would it be for me? WouId I eventually become trapped 50-years-ago in an all-consuming worry? Would I exist in a living hell conjured from my own faded memories?

I can still see her, frail and wrinkled, but now she complains of a different amount of money, a different family member, before she is led away to another room.

He’s having a good day today.

How are you?

After Grandmother Madeleine’s decline, and the forced admission that he could no longer care for her himself, my maternal Grandfather, a proud man, fretted constantly that they were going to take him away to a home. He was terrified that they would sell his house, the very home he had toiled his whole life to purchase and maintain, and that we must never allow this to happen.

The most vexing part was that he continued in his attempts to extract these promises from us even after we had made his worst nightmares come to fruition. We had placed him in a retirement home, with its all-pervading odour of beef stew and antisepticised effluence, and had used the proceeds from the sale of his house - his very home - to pay for his care.

Some days we admitted our sin. On these days, when we were honest and confessed to our transgressions, he did not become angry but even more scared and confused; the end result was that this man with papery skin, who had once been my grandfather, would weep like a child.

On other days, we denied that we had put him in a home and changed the subject.

Eventually, we took to telling him that he was enjoying a holiday; that this was a break from his everyday cares and worries.

“Why are there so many old people here?” he would ask.

Sometimes we would laugh.

Sometimes we would inform him that, actually, he was aboard a cruise ship and he was aware how fond retirees were of cruises. If he ever wondered why the room was not swaying back and forth, or where the sea was, we did not know as he never felt the need to ask.

And somehow, the indelible odour of that home has never left my nostrils.

Shall we go and see the birds then? You always like the birds.

My Grandma-ma was a perfectly healthy women - in both mind and body - until her 91^st year in which she died peacefully in her sleep, so does not concern us here.

It’s nice weather for this time of year.

The most painful experience of all was for me to be a bystander as dementia ravaged my mother’s once brilliant mind. A meticulous woman who ran her life like clockwork, seemingly taking the sorrows of life on the chin like a professional pugilist, she too became a prisoner of her delusions in the end.

And it pains me to say that I became the cause of her sorrows and never the solution to them.

Namely, my mother was always looking for me.

I would tell her I was here.

I would say, “Here I am.”

That I was fine.

That she was not to worry.

That I am here.

Then the pressure would relent for a moment. I would pray that she had abandoned her search for me, that she would realise she had reached her target, that her cherished child was indeed with her… until she would again ask where he – I - was.

 

And, no matter how much I steeled myself, every time my heart would shatter into a thousand pieces.

 

In all of the times we enacted this farce, I was never able change the script, to placate her by shifting her attention elsewhere. My pride wouldn’t let me.

 

Each time she asked, “Where is Mark?”

I would have to tell her,

“Maman, I am here!

Can’t you see?

I am here!”

Yes, you are here.

You’re not going to disappear.

Then, at last, to my father, split from my mother for so long we could hardly believe that they had ever been together. Shortly before his death, he lost his faculties rapidly and depressingly. He became confused and was suffused with anxiety over having lost something, anything; his house keys; his wallet; his automobile.

Anything of value that could be recalled at that moment, he would fear to have been lost and it was vital that, right then, right that second, it be retrieved. I could never tell him the sole thing he had ever actually lost was his mind. And that was never coming back.

However, this time fate was merciful. Rather rapidly, he went from a permanent state of anxiety to a blank nothingness. All that remained of him were the functions of his body and then not even those.

Dust.

…

I have been taught a painful lesson watching time ravage the memory of my loved ones and so have spent my life fearing that I too would become stuck in the past, lost in memories of money or possessions or family that were already gone.

I decided to try and relax.  I needed to know that if - when - I lost my faculties, I would not be like them. I would not become an anxious wreck, searching for a lost place, searching for a lost time.

Come back inside.

No, no, you won’t be like them.

Don’t worry. Don’t worry, Mr Worthy.

For a long time, I used to fear losing my memory. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T̶h̶e̶ ̶L̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶M̶a̶n̶

  

When you started studying, the days seemed grey and endless and pounded on your head like a cluster migraine. They were a persistent type of grey where you thought that that the sun might never shine again; that perhaps even your memories of the Sun were placed there by God just to increase your suffering.

You couldn’t stand it. And yet you did.

University and all that it had promised had been cruelly juxtaposed with the reality of living in a hall of residence covered floor to ceiling with antiseptic surfaces that were somehow never clean. Nothing seemed to matter. You couldn’t connect with anyone you met until the time you got drunk enough to mention the Little Man.

That night you had methodically drank a bottle of cheap whisky and joined them in your antiseptic shared kitchen. You had sat with them and you had listened and you had smiled with your mouth and you had laughed with your larynx and you had winced at both yourself and the wooziness you felt inside.

You don’t know why or how you started talking.

You had been trying your hardest not to say a word in a vain, deluded effort to fool these people into thinking you weren’t as you were – that, in fact,  you were just like them.

“Yeah,” you must have said (about what you have no idea), “like the Little Man.”

And they must have looked at you with eyes wide and confusion in their faces. They must have said What? or What the fuck? and laughed.

And on autopilot, for there was no other way you could have said it, you must have finally let it all out.

You must have told them about the Little Man that sat in your childhood “playroom” (which was really just a little corner of your living room with a blanket tacked up over it) and about his little blue chair that you could never touch. How the chair was the slightly larger than a doll’s chair and how its gnarled form seemed to grow from the ground.

You must have described how some days the Little Man was there, sitting stolidly on his little blue chair, and some days he was not. And you must have described his wizened little head with his long white beard which flowed like water - for if you mentioned him at all, you must have mentioned these things.

You must have explained that you weren’t allowed to look directly at the Little Man and how you had always known this. That no one could have told you not to look at the Little Man in just the same way no one could have told you about the Little Man. You must have explained that from before you were even able to form the words to explain that there was a little man sitting there, you knew well that he was not to mentioned.

And that it wasn’t just that you shouldn’t mention him: it was that you couldn’t - it was an impossibility. To think that anyone would be able to talk about the Little Man would be a category error. Like thinking you might detach your shadow or that you could eat Mathematics.

You must have told them that you had always assumed that everyone else could see him too until, one night, when you were safely - safely? - wrapped up under the covers in your bedroom, where he could not see you or hear your thoughts, you asked yourself if this were actually true? Were others really aware of him like you were? Or were you - you alone - the only one who knew about the Little Man?

And that the day after you asked yourself this, he was gone.

And you hadn’t mentioned him after that. No, you had never mentioned him. All things were as they had to be in this universe. Your shadow remained attached to you. Mathematics was inedible. And not one word left your mouth about the Little Man.

And yet, that night, there in the kitchen, you somehow broke the omerta. And, drunk as you were, you knew you had done something very, very wrong. You wanted to vomit. You felt as if all the dread that had been pooling inside you had finally burst open and the horrors that lay hidden beneath the surface of the world were being released. 

But you stayed sitting on your cheap plastic chair the same as you were before, looking from the outside just like a human being, whilst you gripped the underside of the chair as if your life depended on it.

And then, to your surprise, they said: Yes.

Yes, the Little Man had been in their houses too. And, Yes, they could never look at him.  And, Yes, they had never been able to speak of him until today. Until just now.

And then you watched as they calmly reached their hands to their faces and began to peel them off, bit by bit, layer by layer, from skin to flesh to bone and when you thought there was no more that they could possibly remove, they peeled off one more layer to reveal the Little Man inside. Except this time, this time you were able to look directly at him. And he was smiling at you. And you tried to scream, to throw yourself to the floor, but you remained unmoving on your little chair, forced to look upon his grinning face.

Then you awoke. You decided that the Little Man had been the horrifying realness of the alcohol induced dream. But your conversation? Well, that felt solid, somehow. That night you had spoken of the Little Man. You had somehow detached your shadow and feasted upon Mathematics.

And, days later, when you finally gained the courage to re-entered the antiseptic scene of your crime, you nodded to them and they said “Hi” to you and you said “Hi” to them but the look in their eyes told you not to mention the Little Man and that they too were deliberately not looking at the space next to the sideboard where a little gnarled blue chair was growing up out of the ground.

But at least you weren’t alone anymore.

How I plan on living forever

Even the nerds have facial tattoos today.

Especially the nerds, I should say.

It’s an easy signifier. “Hey,” it shouts on behalf of the nerd, “Hey! Look at me – I’m not a nerd – Look at me! Would a nerd have a facial tattoo?”

It’s a nice closed loop which we can consider thusly:

 

The Nerd’s Facial Tattoo Theorem

 

Axiom 1: Nerds don’t have facial tattoos.

Axiom 1 (restated): Facial tattoos are never on nerd.

Statement: Look at my sick ink.

∴ I cannot be a nerd.

Q.E.D.

Corollary: If anything, I’m edgy.

 

I remember being a younger man, often hearing other people’s tattoos being commented upon (by those without them, naturally) with a tut and a cluck,

“They’ll regret those when they’re older.”

This is not true and was never true. What the betatooed will regret is not a tattoo existing upon their bodies - upon their faces - when they are old but the very fact that they are now old. The tattoo should be the preserve of the young! Those whose bodies are bedecked by artwork – a stylish spiderweb, a mermaid or a labubu perhaps - would trade all the supposed dignity of not-having-a-tattoo for the thrill of being young and supple and stupid. The fact that a crinkled, old tattoo looks shit is the purely fault of the body it is on and not the tattoo itself.

Me, myself, I intend to stay young.

Therefore, I will never get a tattoo.

How does this follow? Well, whilst the nerds’ initial premise was faulty, my mathematics is impeccable.

Let me explain:

Once upon a time, it may have been true that a nerd would not have felt the needle -something which I myself doubt – but, today, tattoos have reached critical mass. Right now, at this very moment, everyone has got one. They have all tried to co-opt the tattoos inherent hipness, their innate cool.

Look, they say. This is me! This is me! I am young, I am unique and glowing and a canvas for someone else’s art! I will endure the pain and admire myself in the mirror every day until it becomes something that is merely on me, part of my body’s architecture, and I forget it’s there. Then I might get another one. This is me! I will proclaim. And all my friends have one!

So, a whole generation of people, slowly, ever so slowly, ends up tattooed in some-way, small to big, torso to neck. It might take a few years for them to get there but get there they will; just look at Lionel Messi, a clean-cut superstar for years until he was beguiled by the ink…

And the generation below them? Will they express themselves this way? Not so much.

And why? Well, as we observed, even the nerds have facial tattoos these days. What reeked of rebellion to one generation reeks of conformity to the next. Tattoos become what mullets and hairspray, flares and denim, were to us, way-back-when, in our younger, non-tattooed days. Tattoos will become 1 word: uncool.

I predict, nay I know, that the next generation will have no tattoos. And me, I will be with them. I will not have a tattoo to regret. I will not have something that places me amongst the haggard and wizened. People will look upon me, looking for signifiers, triggers to tell them, consciously or not, where I sit in the life cycle of a man, and they will not find what they are looking for. No.

 

My Tattoo Theorem

Axiom 1: Every old person has a tattoo.

Axiom 1 (restated): Only young people don’t have tattoos.

Statement: Look at my lack of ink.

∴ I cannot be old.

Corollary: If anything, I’m young.

 

And, am I saying that this – my lack of tattoos, my non-tatooedness - will make me immortal? No, I am not that naïve. But it’s certainly part of the plan.

 

The Crab/ Cartesian Carcinoma

  

All through my training, I idolised my mentor. I shouldn’t have - I know that and I knew that - but I wasn’t yet enlightened. What could I do? Did he know how I felt? Did he discourage me or encourage me or did he just sit and allow me to make my own the path?

When I couldn’t sleep, I thought of the all words I would use to describe him. Brilliant. Beatific. Beautiful. I knew that there were gates I was supposed to be traverse and that I was crashing into them like some lower order of ape.

But eventually, as I was instructed to in my early life, I put away my childish things. I tried to take his example and find the way. And I did. In a way.

For all this, I remain a man, and spend my days looking back. When I think of him, I do not – cannot - picture the brilliant, enigmatic teacher I first knew. I know, in my head, that he was a great man who taught me explicitly through his lessons and implicitly through his actions; his dedication to routine and dharma. But in my heart, I do not believe this.

Instead, I see him on that first day. The day he began picking up piles of sand and letting it fall through his fingers, grain by grain, over and over again. He started that morning as the light’s rays began to filter through the slats and continued until we could no longer see the sand but merely hear the shhh shhh shhh as the it hit the bare floor.

The next day, when we returned with crowing of the cock, he was still pouring the sand, grain by grain, onto the floor, through his fingers. We meditated upon it.

We thought: I dwell not in the past.

We said: I dream not of the future.

We concluded: I concentrate mind on the present moment.

He stopped with his usual practice and teaching, and continued in this way instead - pouring the sand seemingly endlessly. I never saw him start and I never saw him finish; I merely observed him scooping up the sand and letting it fall forever.

We thought of the lesson of master who ate the same dish every day. When questioned on how he could eat the same meal every day, he replied, “How could I possibly eat the same meal every day?” I suppose you can’t step in the same river twice.

We tried to take in his message. Some of us followed his example and began to pour sand through our own hands. Some continued the routines as previously set. Some were not as skilled as others, and let the worry show on their brows.  What anyone really thought was hard to say.

And, as with all temporal things, this continued until it didn’t. One day, he began to stop letting the sand sift through his hands and positively began to play with it.  

Throwing it into the air.

Swirling it on the floor.

Throwing it at the walls.

Placing it grain by grain into his mouth.

Spitting it out at the neophytes.

Some thought of the Laughing Buddha. Some thought of the master who killed with the keisaku. Others, the wise ones, thought of the Parable of The Poisoned Arrow.

Soon after that, my mentor’s face drooped on one side. Saliva spilled from his mouth as freely as the sand had from his hands.

He was taken to the hospital and the tumour was confirmed. He died shortly after.

In his hospital bed, he was no longer the master I had known. He had begun to curse his carers and grasp at invisible things. His body was no longer him. He had become an old, scared, angry man.

I so strongly desired an end to my own personal Buddha’s suffering. I desired the end of my suffering. I needed the serene man who had achieved bodhi, who was destined to leave our wheel of suffering, not this cruel trick our corporeal world had played on him - on his body.

As I look back, as in a mirror dimly, I ask myself if he left the saṃsāra and ascended as I was sure he would when I was his disciple. My mentor was perfect, enlightened. Could I take it that he, himself, had gone from his body before his mind changed?  Did his soul ascend to nirvana the second the first sarcoma cell split in his brain? Was the body that lay in the hospital bed merely the husk of who he had been?

I try and I fail and I am doomed to repeat in my next life. That is a given. But for him, my mentor, I cannot help but wonder if it is the cancer that will continue the cycle of existence – preferably reincarnated as a slug or a nematode - and that he, himself, has achieved liberation.

 

One Cyclopean Disaster

Did I check before I left? I’m pretty sure I checked before I left. But I can’t stop the feeling. They’re shrinking. I can feel it. They are scrawny twigs hanging from my sides. They feel smaller. They do.

What if I didn’t check? I can’t remember. Did I check? I have a feeling I checked but what if I didn’t check? If I checked – I did check, I always do, don’t I, how could I not - I have a feeling that I didn’t start at the bottom of my triceps because I got distracted by those rustling leaves and I rushed. I always rush and now I’ll be late. I checked. I checked and they were fine. I know. They were fine.

I don’t want to get my Jack out again. If I use him too much, I’ll damage him and I’m late. But I can’t not know. I have time for one more check, surely? It’ll be fine.

I pull him out of my pocket and hear a crack. I must be more careful!  He doesn’t seem to be squirming as much as usual. If he’s dead, what use would he be? He’d rot and he wouldn’t be the same size and he’d be squishy and I’d have to ask for another one and they’d ask why and then they’d know and they’ll think I think it was a big deal because why else would I mention it? But I’ll tell them it wasn’t a big deal, I just needed to him to check, then they’ll ask why I need to check and I won’t be able to explain. They’ll think that I think they’re shrunken! I will tell them… I will tell them… I was only using him to measure… but they’ll want to know why I was using him to measure and then they’ll look at my arms and see my arms and they’ll think…

Oh! A prick on my leg. Ok. Breathe. Breathe. Focus on the task in hand.

I speak to him, tell him to rouse his blood and shake him. He begins to moan. I roar and coax and move him closer to my mouth, smacking my lips, he gets so close that I can taste the smoky metallic taste coming up and, as he thinks I’ll gobble him up, at the last second, I lower him down and finally - finally - he stands up straight as a bean pole. Good man. 

Hmmm, I can’t put him on the floor, as he might try running again and I can’t risk him falling from a branch so I will just use my free hand… and… yes, it clears him still. Have I lined him up properly? It seems to be fine. I’ll check again to be sure. In my haste, I have smushed him completely against my arm. Is he bent? No, no, no… it’s fine… he can straighten up and I can see they are fine, definitely fine.

Repeat a thousand times: Tree trunks would envy my arms.

I shove him back into my pocket. He served his purpose today. Or did he? Was he stooping? Did I check properly? Was his back broken? I was so relieved by it all that I wasn’t careful again. Gargantuan Idiot! I can’t check again lest I damage him more and I’m so late, will they ask why I was late?

It’s ok. It will be alright. But what if, when I get there, he wriggles about and starts to moan and they hear him squeak and ask me why I keep him and I have to tell them? I will tell them I was keeping him as a snack. Yes, as a snack. I will practise and then they will never know. Never.

“I was keeping…”

Errgg, I’ve set the trees to rustling again. Focus, get there, no time to lose.

Where was I. Ah, yes. Confident: “I was keeping him as a snack.”

Once more. Deeper.

“I was keeping him as a snack.”

It felt ok. They are fine. Did I measure from the base of the arm? They still feel withered. Maybe my jerkin was billowing too much and I was measuring the cloth rather than the muscle? Just once more and I’ll roll up my sleeves this time to make sure it’s accurate…. There…

Ow! A prick and…. The little blighters are everywhere. Swarming. I do not have time for them today and …. Oh Typhon! They saw me measuring! They saw! They know!

“Bare arms!”

They are looking at my arms! How dare they! I must have stumbled onto a village of them whilst I was checking and... what if they tell the others about my arms?! They’ve seen them naked!  I’m going to have to crush them all and I don’t have time. I do not have time.

“Fe…” I start to bellow but I can hear that they’re still shouting in their shrill voices. Not scared enough. They don’t fear me because of them?

“Raise arms…” Yes, this one is calling at me in his little acorn hat. Raise arms? They dare tell me what to do? They dare tell me to show my… my... lilliputian arms.

Then they’re throwing their little sticks at me.

That one drew a speck of blood! My jerkin!  I’ll crush their bones and make them my bread!  No, wait. It’s Jack. Blefuscu!

He’s no use now! I need to get him out and find one that’s the same height. This will take all morning. I guess I needed a replacement anyway. It’s ok, I’ll tell them I got attacked but what if they ask why I took ages and then they think it’s because of my little-ended arms. What if…

*Brobdingnag*

I go down with a titanic crash. Fi! When did they tie my legs?

My Jack is all smooshed up and my clothing is all gooey. I can’t even get someone the same size as him now. Fo!

Easy enough to tear their weak string… But…This is embarrassing. They’re looking at me, staring at my scrawny arms, judging me, planning on telling the others, “They’re tiny! They’re tiny!”  they’ll say. Oh Pantagruel! Don’t let them see. They can’t look any more. Tuck the arms under my back. They can’t see them now, not even a thumb. It is ok. I am safe.

What’s that? Something smells like iron… hot, boiling iron…

The Pedant

 

For reference:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Paperclips

 

It was three in the morning. Why the fuck was he ringing?

Casting off the dreamworld where I was a giant – or something, it was something big, anyway – and coming reluctantly back into the mundane world, I accepted his call.

Predictably - even in my gargantuan sleep-filled state, I could predict it - he started his spiel with no hello, no apology, no preamble:

“I’ve done it! You’re going to love it! The saddest story ever told! Everyone thought I couldn’t do it in 6 words… but I could and I did and I could!

“Johannes,” I screwed my cyclopean eyes shut and tried not to let the fury show.

But then I realised I was a normal sized man and it was 3 in the morning and he couldn’t see me.

He continued, “They all said it couldn’t be done but I’ve fucking done it. Me! Johannes!” It all seemed a little redundant.

“JOHANNES!” I let the fury into my voice. Who cared? I allowed myself to curl my lip in the way you always hated. At this point, I didn’t need to hide my feelings from my tone and I sure as shit didn’t need to hide it from my face.

I took the speaker away from my ear. Feeling the pressure in my bladder, I knew I would have woken up soon anyway. Not much sleep lost by his interruption. A small blessing - a gift from a tardigrade.

I could just make out a blur of words of billowing from the phone. “Genius,” was one. “Epochal” was another. “Held in the hands of the Lord!” were some others.

“Johannes,” I said again. Third time, as they always say, was the charm.

“Yes?” he said.

My bleary larynx winced its way into the conversation.  “I need to piss. I’ll call you back…”

I hung up.

_________________________________________________________________________

Once pissed, I was awake. Fully. What the tardigrade gives, it can take away.

I tried to snuggle back into bed but the bed was no longer that kind of bed anymore. I was no longer Pantagruel, just a regular man, and the membrane of sleep could no longer be punctured.  

It wasn’t like I has anyone around I complain to about being woken up and, as I said, I was awake now. Fully. So I rang him back

“What, Johannes, may I ask, is your world changing idea?” I inquired, rubbing my brow.

If a voice’s eyes could bulge, his did then. “You know how Hemingway was challenged to write the saddest story ever using only six words?”

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t Hemingway who wrote that story but – even at 3:04 in the morning and as much as I may bitch - it was nice to hear Johannes so happy and I didn’t want to rain on his parade. But, then again, I couldn’t lie to him about that story’s provenance. I fudged by grunting.

*Grunt* I said. He took this for assent.

“Well, I’ve one-upped him. I’ve written a sadder one. In just 6 words. Do you want to hear?”

It wasn’t a question. Why did he ask it as a question if there was only one answer?

“Sure,” I said.

“Ok,” he said and paused. I assume it was dramatically. I don’t know. I was busy staring at my ceiling. There was nothing dramatic about it.

He spoke:

 

For Sale: Paperclips, never used.

 

I sighed to myself.  As quietly as I could.

“I hate to blow my own horn but it’s so much sadder than a dead baby. I feel there’s a Nobel in it for me. I wonder if I’ll be knighted? I’d probably have to turn it down, for moral reasons, you know, but Sir Johannes Birnehaus iii has such a great ring to it, don’t you think? And..”

I couldn’t take it. I tried. I really tried. I tried just to say, well done and very clever and all that but all this boasting after he was so clearly wrong?

“Johannes, listen to me!” I snapped. “Firstly, Hemingway didn’t write that short story!”

Damn it. Oh well, it would all come pouring out of me anyway, like so much Brobdingnagian verbal vomit.  Presently, I continued, “Secondly, you need to know that stupid fucking story in the first place for your story to work.

“AND THEN you have to know...” I took a deep breath and held in my sigh. I was trying. I really was. “Then you have also have to know what the Universal Paperclip Machine is for your story to work.”

I was kind of annoyed that I actually understood his story to be honest. I had spent too much time with him; thought too much like him. Oh well.

“And the original story is sad – that’s if anyone think it’s sad – because it’s about one DEAD BABY. Which everyone thinks is sad.”

He tried to cut in but I stopped him.

“Yes, I know yours is about the whole planet being dead because the Universal Paperclip Machine has made so many paperclips that there’s no other resources left and everyone’s died so no one can the paperclips.”

I heard him say, “So you did get it?” but I wasn’t done.

“But it’s based on sci-fi fantasy story and it’s too abstract for any… ummm … emotional heft.

“And finally… finally… it’s only five fucking words, Johannes!”

We sat there. Well, I assume he sat there as well. I would say the air was thick between us but we were many miles apart. Probably just some thin air meandering about between our beds

Eventually Johannes said, “But you thought it was a good story?”

“Pretty good, Johannes” I replied. “Pretty good.”

 

Later, I lay there thinking. I couldn’t leave it alone.

I began to think. And it’s hard not to. I am a petty, petty man. And I now needed Johannes to know I could outdo him.

I thought, it’s the rhythm that makes it.

I thought, it’s the six words thar are important.

I thought, it’s the punctuation that’s paramount.

I thought, it’s got to seem pithy.

I thought, it’s got to appeal to fucking morons.

I thought of yet another stupid, apocryphal tale which had Picasso charging thousands of pesos for a quick doodle and when questioned over the price saying, “Why yes, it took me only 30 seconds to draw, but a lifetime to learn.”

So, what would my take be? My take honed by a lifetime of precision?

Something modern. Something weird. Something that referenced the riddle of the original. Something that would reply to the original’s implication with a referential wink and grin.

Something the morons would lap up.

I texted Johannes:

 

Not dead: baby born without feet.

 

No comma, he replied.

 

Fuck you, I thought.

The Author Can Never Die

 

Writing is killing me.

Every word is a pain.

You cannot comprehend the effort I expended in typing this sentence.

And this one.

And this.

And still.  Still, I write.  For whom? For you. Because I love you.

And what do you reward me with? Sheer indifference. Indifference of the purest, most unadulterated kind. Which is beautiful, in and of itself, I suppose.

5 days this has taken me.

Every. Single. Word. A toothpulledout.

I just needed to you know what it has cost me.

And why, why does writing hurt me so? Why, when the bard told us all that all talk is cheap and any bird can go cheep cheep cheep and to type this doesn’t even tax my poor vocal cords?

It’s the fact that, no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I think, no matter how many times I edit, my sentences rot and fester and eventually turn to shit.

If Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote, had written that line, everyone would be clap-clap-clapping - including myself, naturally. But reading it back doesn’t move me. It wouldn’t move anyone. It couldn’t: it’s mine.

If Richard Brautigan had written this line, it would be a thing of beauty. Something to be enjoyed, admired, cogitated upon. Something that improved our three-score-and-ten. The exact same sentence, in the exact same place, from me is stinking garbage.

Even worse: it’s tedious. The world is a worse place for it existing. The Universe regrets creating the matter and energy required for its writing and reading. Every word I write makes a mockery of existence.

But why? Why is my writing so bad? I typed the whole of The Catcher in The Rye out and it was crummy - phony even. It was all crinkly ashes and tension headaches. It was the opposite of whatever Chicken Soup for The Soul is. I picked up a copy from the library and read the ostensibly the same thing. The exact same words in the exact same order. Then, I was spellbound, putty in Salinger’s hands.

I even erased Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 word by word and replicated each letter with my own hand. Syllable by syllable, foot by foot, it became darker and gloomier. In the end, it was not comparable to a summer day, not even a little bit.

And now, 25 days since I began, covered in sweat and yowling with pain, I am near to finishing this.

For you.

I can’t go on. I must go on. I can’t go on.

Haiku (Senyru, actually)

For a long time,
I was writing haikus wrong -
with no reversal.

Focussing on form:
like a rhyming limerick
lacking a punchline

Though lacking nature
- shorter than five seven five -
here I've written one:

A thesis;
an antithesis...
synthesis!

Quotations

All the words in this story are quotations which, I think you'll agree, lends it both a feline playfulness and a deep profundity. Of course, some of these quotes are plain and obvious, “Gimmes”, if you will. Who amongst us could miss the fact that all the “thes” are taken from Franz Kafka's “In the Penal Colony” ? But did you notice that some of these “thes” are taken from Willa Muir's early translation - these having a more austere bent - and others from Malcolm Paisley's later work, with all the importance of punctuation surrounding the “the's” that this implies?

Did you clock that I cheekily (and some what arbitrarily) took the words “Franz” and “Kafka” from two different sources? Kafka is obviously from Borges's “Kafka and his Precursors”, yes, but have you considered the implications of this? And Franz itself is borrowed from Harvey's “Franz Ferdinand: And the Pop Renaissance” which, naturally, is not as shallow as it seems at first glance.

Although brief, the multitudes contained in this piece should, as James Joyce once said, "keep the the professors busy for centuries". Where's that Joyce from? And that Joyce? And that Joyce?

Johannes vs The Supermarket

    When I met Johannes in the park he seemed a little gloomy. It was a bright rain-had-finally-gone technicolour kind of day, which I assumed would lift his spirits but sadly this appeared not be so. I asked him what was up.

“I went to the supermarket yesterday.”

Great story, I told Johannes and he grunted at me. We walked past a young couple lying on a blanket who were busy trying to paw at each other in a surreptitious manner and failing at deception miserably.

Eventually, Johannes continued.

“Well, I was walking down the aisles of a supermarket and it struck me how uniform everything was. Aisles of the same item, in giant corrugated metal huts. This was reality. As real as real got. Can't get more real than a supermarket. But it was all boring and pointless. Reality was boring and pointless.

“I took a can of Heinz beans and paid for it at the self scan and left. Then I just stared at this can for a while and it struck me that this was so mundane that it could be the key - the key to it all.”

I puzzled as to what the hell he meant as we walked past a mother pushing her giggling jamsmeared child through the park.

Johannes then continued, “So I thought, 'screw it!' - walked back into the shop and did a loop. I took the same can of beans out of my pocket and bought it again. Why not? Why not, aye?”

I told him that I guessed he could do that, but why would he want to?

“Because I could!” he almost shouted, eyed wide in disbelief, “because I could!

“I carried on; I did another loop and bought the tin for the third time, then a fourth! I don't know what I expected to happen but for someone to at least notice. I kept on expecting, the fifth or sixth or ninth or tenth time that someone would stop me, that they'd realise that I'd bought this can from them over and over again.

“After a while, I just couldn't stop. It was like the loop was running me. Leave the store, go in, walk to the aisle, pull the beans out of my pocket and buy them again. Leave the store, go in, walk to the aisle, pull the beans out of my pocket, buy them again...

“I spent hours looping through that supermarket buying this one tin. I kept all of the receipts. I went through 153 times and then finally the shop just shut.”

Not for the first time, I felt concerned for Johannes and lightly put my arm on his back. I looked across at an old man scattering seeds, surrounded by a bunch of pigeons who were variously pecking and taking flight. I asked Johannes why he did it so many times. He shut his eyes and looked genuinely pained.

“Well,” he said, sighing through his nose, “I thought it might break reality... it's such a ridiculous system that I thought that it would maybe, I don't know, point out the arbitrariness of it all and it'd stop and,” he let out another sigh, “break reality.”

The reality of Supermarkets? I asked him.

“Yes but... I was secretly hoping that everything might just stop and we'd get to the next level. Leave this crappy bit behind as I'd finally seen through the cracks and blown them apart. Someone would draw up the curtain, tell me well done and show how me how things really are.

“But I'm still here and I've spent £114.75 on one tin of beans.”

I didn't quite know what to say. So I ventured a 'maybe next time.'

“Yeah, maybe,” he said and carried on walking.

The Great Soloni

Gregor was famed throughout the land for being a wise man, a thoughtful man and, above all else, a scholar. Kings, astronomers and merchants of all types came seeking form him advice; to see if he could impart any of the arcane wisdom he possessed. He was reputed to have the greatest library in the kingdom and when asked from where he attained his wisdom, he would reply, “I always study, I always learn,” and then he would smile. 

 

One day, Gregor was strolling abroad through a forest where he came upon a clearing in a copse containing a great lake. Weary, he took off his shoes and socks and placed his feet in the cool water. He skimmed a stone, listening to the birds chirping in the sky and felt contented with the world.

Just then, a figure rose from the water of the lake. It was a giant carp like creature with billowing wings of red and gold where its fins should be. Gregor looked upon this apparition and saw it to be both beautiful and terrible in equal measure.

“Greetings, traveller,” said the monstrous carp. “I am Soloni of the Djinn and I come to grant you three wishes.” His voice was at once melodious and booming and the trees shook as he spoke these words.

Now, Gregor, being a learned man, knew well of the djinn. He knew that these spirits were tricksters and what's more the gifts they granted to mortals always came with a deadly catch. Many a man was reputed to have wished for riches only for these diamonds and gold to become the very root of his downfall. 

 

Gregor thought for a second and looked into the spirits polyp eyes. “Oh mighty djinn,” said Gregor, in a voice as measured as he could manage, “I am humbled by your offer but I have no need for any favours. I merely seek the knowledge of the ancients and to this end I have accrued a library greater than any man could read in his lifetime. I am content and ask you for nothing.

“However, maybe I could offer you something.” Gregor reached into his travel sack and produced three tomes, gilt edged and well thumbed.

“Oh Soloni, from these scripts I have gained more wisdom, more knowledge and more succour than all others. I beg of thee to take them and enjoy them as I have.”

Gregor stood waiting expectantly for Solani's response.

“Traveller,” the spirit cooed, soft as a lamb's wool, “I think you misunderstand me – we djinn live to grant what your heart desires, so I, great Soloni, cannot take your gift.”

Gregor, realising his life stood in the balance, thought again, and used the craft and guile his learning had bestowed upon him.

“Very well, djinn,” he said. “My wish is that you take these volumes and imbibe the peace, wisdom and happiness contained within.”

He then took the books and threw them one by one over the water to the great fish.

Solani leapt to take each one and gobbled them in turn. Gregor smiled, and, turning from the djinn, felt pleased by his day's work...

However a djinn is not bound by the liquid that surrounds it and it will always get the terror it wishes to reap. And so presently, the water began to boil and violently the trees began to shake. Gregor turned and saw multitudes of teeth gleaming out from the carp's mouth and his three tomes on it's deep blue tongue.

“MORTAL,” awesome Soloni boomed, “these books are yours and you shall be returned to them!” And with that Soloni flew from the lake, opening his giant jaws to swallow Greg whole. A giant GULP made the earth rumble.

Smiling, Soloni returned to the lake, receding silently into it's cool, dark waters.

Free Will

Q: Do you believe in free will?

A: Mu.

Q: Do you believe in free will?

A: I don’t think it’s important either way.

Q: Do you believe in free will?

A: Does free will believe in me?

Q: Do you believe in free will?

A: Let me tell you a story:

Free Will was walking through the street one day, though the cars, through the people, through the traffic lights and, of course, through the air. Free Will stopped off in a shop and bought some chewing gum, a packet of cigarettes and a can of coke. Free Will scratched itself and then Free Will retraced its steps.

Q: Do you believe in free will?

A: If free will was a dog it would bark like any other dog.

Q: Do you believe in free will??

A: Do you believe in free will?

Q: Do you believe in free will?

A: Mu.

Nothing

Consciousness was an emergent property of the complex system that was the human brain and nervous system. Probably.

He couldn’t tell if this was true or not, for a given value of true.

He couldn’t tell if anyone else was really conscious and aware and thinking or if they just gave the appearance of it. In fact, he couldn’t really be sure if he himself was conscious or not. He seemed to be, but then he could never be 100% sure. Not really.

He thought he had no idea of  how it all worked. He was aware that he had a body but could not tell you where his liver was or the function of his gallbladder. For all the concrete evidence he had, his insides may as well be a solid continuous mass. He thought it strange that there were so many bits to him.

In fact, as he suspected, consciousness was an illusion. There didn’t seem to be any design behind it, it just so happened that everyone appeared to be conscious and then… one day they weren’t. All of a sudden, just like that, in a split second, everyone was no longer conscious apart from him. There was no higher thought or abstraction. Humans began to act like animals and animals continued to act pretty much like animals.

This was very distressing for him, as you can imagine. He tried to communicate with the people, who now lacked the appearance of consciousness, but only got the response he would from a dog. People’s basic natures seemed not to have changed, his loved ones still seemed to love him and strangers were still wary of him and those who had been aggressive to him in the past continued to be aggressive to him now. So things weren’t all that different.

He took as good care of those close to him as he could. He kept them virtually as pets, raiding supermarkets for food, cleaning up after them, washing them down occasionally. It wasn’t so bad. He began to get used to the situation, with the unconscious all around him, when one day another shift occurred.

Not only, as it turned out, was consciousness an illusion but so was organic life. The ability to reproduce and exhale and grow and move under one’s own steam turned out to be, again, a massive coincidence. The “creatures” (humans, dogs, cats, birds, bacteria, fungi, waterlilies, viruses etc etc etc) had shown what had previously seemed to him to be a complex, but ultimately logically organised, system which as it turned out was just completely random. A complete fluke that all of it seemed so organised and ordered, with things growing and dying. It was more like seeing your name written in the stars or Jesus’s face in a loaf of bread than an actual pattern.

So everything that he ever knew to be alive stopped. Birds dropped from the sky and his loved ones fell to the floor and the trees remained as they were but no longer shed their leaves. He was saddened by this state of affairs.

He stopped eating, but of course, this had no effect, as the whole of the biological realm had been just one massive coincidence and he had no need for food to sustain him. Eventually, he discovered he needn’t even breathe. He discovered this as he walked into the ocean for a while and didn’t drown.

He wondered why he had been “spared” when all other life on the planet had stopped. It never occurred to him that if it was pure chance that everything had settled into a pattern that resembled self-replicating “life” and then ended abruptly, why shouldn’t a part of it, one discrete part of it, just carry on? It was just as likely as any other scenario.

Eventually, as with the loss of his family and the rest of humanity, he got used to it. He made his peace with God. He watched the sunrise and the sunset. He felt the wind on his skin and the sand and the ocean on his feet.

Then, as with so many other things, cause and effect revealed themselves to be a highly unlikely but remarkably (up until this point) consistent hoax. If he pushed a stone it would no longer move or it would move by its self. The universe, with its lack of rules now apparent, started to flush apart and do whatever. He was not sure.

Then, of course, the universe itself ceased to be. It had been a remarkable set of circumstances that gave the appearance of a closed system with matter and energy and forces and things like that, but alas, for him, that was not the case.

So he remained in the nothingness. You could say he was floating but then again you could say he wasn’t. It didn’t really matter.

He would never know that his consciousness and continuation were just as random and as chance driven as the rest of the universe had been. In fact, as he continued to “think” his “thoughts” of his old life he would never realise that he had never thought anything at all.

In fact he had never even been there.