What Comes After

One on a finger, feeling lowly, writing like I mean it: I wrote the word beauty. The U was missing. Tensely spinning from the inner lane, and coughing, some of all of the labels failed to take interest, or feigned not having any, not sure which of which is worse. By beauty I meant this:—When, in the course of entering the room, he turned his head, and mine, I noticed the pocks about his face, and how they lent the whole something. Strange--hadn't thought much previously about it. But then it all seemed very deliberately sculpted, not yer usual scattershot craters. The moment went on forever, though it didn't actually (I had to escape it to write this up). It zigged and zagged and danced like a ball of electricity.

Something red, then green, then red woke me, some hours after. I pegged the lace blind. Outside it was [weather event]. and therefore unsettling. Alone but for the other people in the room, I picked myself up — I had been carelessly strewn about the room the night before — and made myself go to the kitchen, where I ended up, having succeeded. The near-definition of beauty, outlined above, and befitting both spellings, further solidified in my estimation as I watched its incarnation drape banana peels, imprecisely erotic, across its face, and dog down a fat American breakfast. I wasn't yet able to observe noiselessly, and the ensuing sound was embarrassing for all concerned. Feeling wholly holy, basted by sunlight, lips crackling with scabs, stretching partially, some of all of me made it away from temptation.

It was, to a small and slight extent, a revelation of colour. Once a monochrome rainbow drooped mechanistically from the clouds; now contrast. My eyes peeled back, as they don't usually do, and it took several hours for me to be persuaded, by the undiminished spectacle, that I had not been drugged, or had something comparable done to me, or that I was not simply in the midst of a fever dream. It turned out neither was true but the last. The heat and doona had done a number on me, or a number of numbers across the night. Everything was as was; outside was mute; the walls were the colour of dolour.

Eerie the Practice

It's taken time, much of it, but I've finally woken up to my awfulness. Part of me, whatever accounts for my depth, is glad to have arrived at this point, the rest of me, abdomen and otherwise, preferred ignorance. Fitting it should happen in a hotel, with sun (streaming) and radio (blaring). When the call was patched through I was escaping through all parts of my dressing gown and not yet upright.

"It's happened," said someone in my voice.
"Hm?" replied.
"You know when you get to that point of your life when you get to that point in your life?"
He stared, maybe blinked.
"It hasn't happened to you?"
"No, I'm fat with contentment," he said, maybe shrugging.
"Well, it's happened to me." I looked down and waited.
"I feel I should offer to do something."
"Thank you."
And barely anything else was said. (For the record, there was an exchange of Goodbyes and something about it being nice to catch up.)

So I went home with it, no danger of its escaping. There, from an absence of onion, the thinner half of a carrot, two tomatoes, one large unwashed potato, two eggs, spices and cheese I fashioned a not completely inedible success.

Fellows' Bounce

In greater designs the foundation upon which all else and otherwise pivots is never so inextricable as in designs of a peculiarly organic nature, that is designs whose executions are gradual to the point of near-impercitability, and whose final appearances seem willfully to obscure their origins. In such cases as these, (of which there is an easy abundance), the question of design is only arrived at after inspired deliberation, and only unravelled after longer periods of picking-apart — hence requiring extremes of eloquence to move beyond the originating, uniquely thinking vessel. The expansive needs, therefore, of this theory where scarcely, if at all, met, and it has taken only the slow dawning of generations to facilitate its arrival as something broadly palatable to the collective intellect.

Never ones for populism, the stepping-stone individuals, insulated by peers, resisted any expansion, passing their papers in hushes and glances. But no matter how careful or secretive they were, rumours bred and circled, and soon it was decided that a coming-out-with-it would be less damaging. At first, this was in the form of succeeding hints, then, finally, a four-hour breakdown with a rapidly traded mic and an overwhelmed moderator. They began and ended on a note of deflation, that rose above the crowd as if caught and sunk again lengthwise. The reaction was surprise. Quills danced and the intake was deafening. Six hundred people would be dead before the year was out, all from unrelated conditions.

One of its legacies has never fully resolved itself. Before of which moments prior were tied to some loose philosophy of doubt, even a triumphed one, now selections had been drawn and cast just barely over without any of the and spilling that once had been understood to be in line with a feeling about which much which had that was previously before neither of the beliefs were tying over the not included feelings, feelings that were it nearly in time to believe that each had a feeling of that once before neither had included, some general overdrawn of thought pomposted wildly, and ruggedly in the middle distance.

Today More Than Ever

I know: not a sole representative of twelve trying months and months of trying. It is tempting to concede the shame has brought me here. But truth being what it is— This will no longer be a home for housekeeping. Theref., as you can plainly, the above is the final on the matter, more not to follow, not even where prefaced by anticipatory I knows. I shan’t even mention, even here, my no-longer contemporaries but one, as I have been no-longer, too, for long enough. That being said — if that counts as being said —, I would like to say, briefly, and with full knowledge of the resultant failures of every of its predecessors, that this sentence marks a henceforth of effort, if not (probably) profusion. And with that last of the keeping done, I’ll commence.

Firstly, no secondly, to the business of the day, of what happened within it. I was startled awake for the fifth consecutive time by birds in my loft. My only measure of defense against the recent heat wave had been to keep my windows up overnight. And now they were perched around the bowl that housed my breakfast, and bathing gaily in my coffee. It proved an appetite-sapping sensation of feathers, bird blobs and mysterious gluten-substitute, and I ditched at least half of it in favour of a dozen singles and a hastily whisked nog. My day looked up from there, at a sky with gouacher colours than I was used to.

I had walked over three kilometres, nearly five, to an ailing sibling, the dual victim of weather and parental conspiracy. It was nearing dark when I saw the gate. The company upon arrival was agreeably ingenuous, allowing me sufficient space to tend to the bedside. I thanked them each and together. Over the next four hours I wrote twenty-six letters on borrowed stationery. Completing the last one (Z), I folded up my piece of paper and failed to contain my pride.

Four Score and Seven Somethings

Quiet but for the steps up, austerely wooden and creaking their age, then the door itself, which scraped and squealed open. There was a film of dust on everything, including the man in the doorway. He looked as if he had been torn away from a life’s work, as if preparing to smash four impertinent kneecaps, but something inside him clicked and we were shown in. Silently we made our way past ancient assortments of study and long-since-inspiring busts, my companion unable to keep his eyebrows a respectable distance from his hairline. Then a small back-office, where we were beckoned faintly to sit. Which we did.

"It's, ahem, nice to see you," said the proprietor, pronouncing the throat-clear rather than bothering to affect it.
"I suppose it must be," said Ben.
"You too," I said.
He shifted slightly.
"My daughters have told me all about you."
"Lies!" said Ben, attempting to perfect the moment with a friendly punch on the arm but connecting instead with a none-too-pleased left breast.
"Quite," was (looking down) all he could manage, Ben sheepishly withdrawing as he did so.
"You too," I said.

...

"So what is it you do?"
"Well," began Ben, "there's absolutely everything to be said for not working."
The man failed to conceal his wince.
"We've attended several promising interviews," I added.
“You’re—” he started, the rest of the sentence catching in his throat. He composed himself. “You’re— not employed?”
“Unemployed, in fact,” said Ben, enjoying himself.
I smiled weakly. “Between engagements.”
“I see.” The man took four slow, seething breaths. “And you expect me to give you my blessing, to give over my daughters to— the unemployed?”
“It’s the bride’s parents who foot the bill, is it not?”
It was always difficult being tactful with Ben about.
“Excuse me?”
“Traditionally, at least,” said Ben. “And my friend and I are nothing if not traditional.”
“And what about after that?”
“Hm?”
“How will you support them after the wedding?”
“By then we’ll have finished our novels,” said Ben.
“Novels?”
“I’ve already deleted eighty pages. Can’t be far off now.”
By this time he had his chair turned completely away from us, staring down the wall for want of a window.
“Plot?” he asked, though the question mark was barely audible.
“Man wakes up one morning and suddenly realises life is cold and empty.”
“That’s a premise," he snapped. "What else happens?”
“Well, he walks about a bit, meets a few chaps, has a scrape or two. But he ends up not having changed his mind about it.”
“Good God.”
“Yours was about spies or something, wasn’t it, Hugh?”
“No. I’m not quite up to the part where you come up with a plot yet.”
“No? Which part, then?"
“Violent self-doubt.”

He shut down at that point. We were both experts at provocation but it was as if he had willed his heart to cease. Nothing would awaken inside him again.

We went home and had sex with our girlfriends.