Year: 2012

The Island

The island is not discovered, but built; a small parcel of land reclaimed from the barren ocean, a tenuous strip of fertile ground pulled from the unfriendly waters. Its beauty cannot last. The sea will have its own; the waters must rush in again and drown the land. They know this, they who build their castles out of sand.

Society apart. A utopia flawed, not in vision, but in scope — utopia is always at war with society until all society is utopia. Shakers dancing in separate lines, lesbians in Appalachia, pirates in the Atlantic. The island, no less than those who build it, is always radical, always radical, always questioning itself. It exists as an affront, a reproach to the myth of law, both common and natural.

A journalist asks why dada rages in the streets: why is art a curse in your mouth? dada rages because dada is. dada is furious that the world allows dada to be. dada is a sickness and a corruption and you are idiots and madmen who let dada live.

So. An impossible place, an impossible challenge; Jane takes up her forceps and her autoclave and dares to think abortion.

Gods of Olympia

Time was you could walk the whole twenty miles into town without seeing another person.

You and the wolves, whistling through the dark.

Time was you might catch a glimpse through underbrush, just a flash of tapetum, gold tease or red, and know you weren’t alone. Jingle of coin in your pocket warmth against the night, more company than company.

Time was you’d shiver your teeth loose when winter fought its hard way through the cracks in the walls, cough yourself bloody from the drip drip drip of nine months of rain. Mold on every solid surface, green fuzz and grey, bloomed up where your hand fell.

Time was.

Time was you’d be high in the hills, alone and free. Time was you could swallow your tongue in peace, hoard dreams of gold and riches, miser your way into some kind of heaven. Time was you could stalk in peace unknown feet ranging through your woods. Your woods.

Time was you called yourself real.

A View From The Top

Solon is thirty and Quiana sixteen. He is newly married and they are having an affair.

How they met
At a gas station. She was pumping gas on number 2 and he was pumping gas on number 4. He had honestly forgotten about her by that point, or thought maybe that he would never see her again.

What he thinks when he sees her
He dreams sometimes of flying, of being cold, of being hungry, of big voices and hands. Of strawberries. Of hemlock and anise and parsley.

What she thinks when she seem him
She has not forgotten him. His clean lines, his casual grace, his black and beady eyes. The first fuzz of beard. Her cheek itches in sympathy.

They drive an hour and a half in separate cars until they come to a road cut into a cliff face. They crush each other back against the wall, back into the netting holding the rocks together. It is less a kiss and more the first intimation of avalanche.

Aqueductor James

Aqueductor James crests the hill and looks down on the columned city, strikes his rod against the rock and calls forth something not water. He regards it in dismay. “The fuck is this?” he asks the air. “This ain’t water. This ain’t fit for a son of the living waters. The fuck is this, sludge? Cherry cordial?”

Stoops his lips to it, smacks them sweet. “Corn syrup,” he hisses. “High fructose corn syrup.” A mighty oath swears he, to sizzle ears and curl hairs were any there to hear, to find him who had laid this slurry upon him. “So swears Aqueductor James, and you can take that to the motherfuckin’ bank,” he growls at his long-suffering rod.

Into the north he journeys, to where the nights grow short and humid, and a six month journey it is. Aqueductor James finds him a dune of sand and settles down upon it in surly contemplation. Five years he passes thus, eyes squinted against the regular turning of the day, the rising of the sun. “Enough of this bullshit,” he husks, and shakes weeds and sand from him, descends the beach and passes down to moister lands.

And The Name of This Fear is Infinity

We had come, at last, after much trial and worry, to Borges’ Library. I took stock — tired, hungry, empty of spells and ideas, pursued by persons unknown for reasons unknown, the Library was as good a place as any to hide. You could find anything there, which made it next to impossible to find anything there.

“Where’d they go?” I asked Nadia.

She looked over the balcony’s rail. “They’re down throwing paper airplanes at some of the librarians and Don Quixote. Come see.”

“Thanks just the same,” I said, “but—”

But she wouldn’t take no. She collared my arm and hauled me next to the rail, next to the infinite well of that damnable tower. Endless heights, and endless depths; the library’s octagon approaches infinity whichever direction you travel. There are theories, which I have never put personally to the test, that claim that an object, or, say, a person, dropped into the great central well, will eventually pass some critical point, slow down and reverse course and begin falling up until another, equally critical point is passed and the process repeats.

I could just see Stephen and Marissa across the well. Throwing airplanes, as promised.

The seductive well tugged at my coattail and I sank to the ground, arms wrapped around a stanchion, and whimpered. Face be damned.

It took all three of them to pry me loose again.