Eleventy Seven

Extracted from a larger work composed between 1991 and 1997.

79.

    Shouldn’t be too long they said so I took a seat the whole place was in there the honey comb dripped and the imported bees said that there were more flowers over the hill which we are now climbing it is no more since we met here a fortnight ago Tuesday so I pledged I’d meet her next week again and then a year passed by the barn door gate placed an amulet around his neck each morning it was raining so he didn’t go at all and the others were number five and I was number forty here at the end of your fingers it engaged them in a moment of excitement when she became the drama queen of the year at the awards ceremony see there it goes again the commercials are representatives of opposed political factions I was there the night the race horses ran down and escaped the fire hidden by the barn door quietly tucked behind a bale of hay and a bundled fleece he was over there in the North field with the windmill rotors hanging twisted smashed into a knotted black metal cloth all alone there beneath the apple tree it was somewhere about here waiting upon the answer in the tearing envelope which has sat upon the cellar shelf for the last twenty years it was a trick I’d learned at primary school.

    They said the old place was haunted now, no one ever went up there again like a dangling red fire hose in the vacant apartment building stairwell, wisps of cigarette smoke over the dining room table sliding back and forth. We entered the maze and he waited in the arm chair all night. The times are written out on a little note it has been arranged and devised to capitalise on the moment of which you are unaware. We were directed toward the exit the storm had arrived outside I was in that war I saw it all and returned home to tell you all about it dictionary roulette wheel disco throat party dusk till dawn boot load of asterisks lentil fury. I was there and saw it opened, you didn’t want to look, drained the batteries in a flashing instant, we were all running out of there trying to find a place to do the washing up, with so little experience the sail shreds, working on a number plate, tried to find another place which could not fit inside his head. We boiled the mussels in a tin can filled with brine on the pine nettles fire beside the plantation of home improvement lumber.

    At sunset the hotel’s shadows covered the beach. Into the room of perpetual midnight. When the director tells you what they don’t want try to work out what they do. When does more become less? I stepped outside it was raining, no, it was petals falling, when I awoke. There was statue there amongst the flag laden steel boughs you kissed. One hundred and one difficult questions. Do you remember when you fell asleep? The individual when entering into the sub-culture is made to feel that he is entering an entirely different universe, made to look upon the latter as a giant sitting on top of them. Self imposed exile. The language, identity and store of knowledge carefully shielded from the larger group of people. Theory of resistance. The giant is afflicted with a nervous tick. Soldiers transporting their girl friends in military vehicles. Hospital patients using the official message center as a bookie joint. May obliquely jump out playing the tragic hero, positively expelled though may not need end up in a negativistic swamp. He would only eat bread and water, play mournfully with a wooden horse and seemed to prefer darkness. Grown up amongst the wolf cubs, curled in her vanished spot, many investigators examined the abandoned termite mound. Local residents whispered. I have always remembered.

    An impression of the world revealing a rare suppleness, following instincts, the whole forest is true to the atlas, the light house has now been dark for eleven days. He had a brilliant future when he stepped onto that train, wealthy people devoted to the sport had pushed her as much as possible when there was nobody there. He wished to return after his death and was one day fatally knocked down. Subsequently the house was visited by explosions, unexplained knockings and arguing voices coming from empty rooms. He was astonished to find someone he did not recognise in the mirror. Silently climbing oil skin phantoms took up position. When the hurricane struck his handwriting matched the writing on the warning note exactly. Escaping to belie her early, taking in the air on deck, working on the roof of a house. An airship hovered directly above them. The animal if questioned on the matter of instincts might say,

“We possibly may not be able to find the means to act socially through science alone.”

    A different means, through a storm, nightmare, like the dazzle of a heliograph emitting red and blue light. Hundreds of witnesses could not breathe, lights on the Moon, about nine o’clock it ceased altogether. By this time there were many things known about them that anyone could tell you. Hard to destroy shingles and straw. The one-two-three tendency of the beat continues to burn, still. They renewed their search for the planet, heated air alone, if you were of noble birth you would not be able to live this way, the whole deal, sinister entertainment. The entrance was perhaps too small, glancing down at his arm, buzzing with blue, the ideal holiday spot for poor people.      

   An alogram, X-ray and blood typing equipment, electroencephalograph, microscope, tape recorder. An ophthalmologist, a nuclear physicist a psychiatrist, a cardiologist. Cooked fiber is perfectly suitable, discouraged as artificial. I, in fact, have said nothing until the present moment. He ate a few vegetables sparingly at infrequent intervals. Displayed her to strangers while she was in a state of trance seen to alter in the light. A choir in the dining room. He was wrong to think there was help coming to clear the mess up. We saw your signal last night, we had decided to get away tonight for the very same reason. A curious reflection on the men who had spawned them. Modeled from a different vantage point of rapid movement. Drained the liquid.

    Listen to me and do not worry, it was inevitable, he had never done anything but get up, into the sea, it was apathetic, it had been his great vice, his family. You must write to say what has happened. In the distance a bell began ringing.

“I started that.” she said.

She didn’t budge. She had understood. I stood there waiting. Twenty men lined up quickly at a distance of about twenty meters. It was a uniquely terrifying experience. Time, it burns regret. All that was left of him was an empty glass on the counter in the turpentine sanatorium. He failed to appear at the ranch house. The tissue was gone, the carcass devoid of blood, fifty bison and ten American elk. Without warning the ponies bolted and the carriage was over turned. We will have to wait another two to three hundred years to find out. Word messenger bent on discovering justice. Only a sketch found in the rubble.

   Backward from a three dimensional body. The cross section is a two dimensional cube revealing a one dimensional plane. The cross section of that plane is a dimensionless point.

His real talent, in his brief life, made his name known in high society drawing rooms, advising the president.

With these thoughts we have come to the very limits of what it is possible to say within a socio-economic frame of reference. Virtually uncontrolled population growth.

Reviews

[alanwgraham]

Wow - you have presented the reader with a real challenge. There are sentences, sometimes
paragraphs more often punctuation marks on occasion words relate in some beautiful ways sometimes meanings are well hidden or may/ not exist I guess there is purpose/meaning but i can't pretend i can decipher it the mood you have created is very strong basically I think few readers will get this but it is a very brave experiment (or maybe I've been talking nonsense !)
your last line sums it up 'With these thoughts we have come to the very limits of what it is possible to say'
A final comment - It was bloody hard work but so was Ulysses!
Cheers
Alan

[Brett Hernan]

Alan, thanks for your extremely encouraging and perceptive analysis of my work. It's gratifying to see that you've correctly picked up what I'm trying to do, even though sometimes when writing I'm not actually exactly lucid in regard to what that purpose is.
It's tricky trying to genre this work, since there isn't a traditional plot structure or explicit beginning or end point, or even a story, as such. In some cases though there are many stories. As far as punctuation and grammatical correctness is concerned, I pretty much added the paragraphical structure immediately prior to posting it here, because the slab of unbroken text would do nothing more than add to its sense of impenetrability.
I don't think anyone would be able to 'understand' some of the contextual comparisons of terms within the body of these texts, and this was deliberate. It forces wonder. Thanks again, I greatly appreciate that you are obviously one of the few people who do get it and also that it has created those emotions and images in your heart and mind. I am very happy to have been told so. Many thanks.