Hungry Mouths

• She rises early to check on her children. She remembers those days in the laboratory, conducting experiments, collecting data, staying up until the sun was up, red-eyed, finishing after a long night's work. But she has grown old since then, and now her life is changed. Here she has her hallway and the now dark room full of little sleepers; her bathroom with the ugly ceiling light. Lately, she has been thinking that she should return to academia. Perhaps, now that the children are born, she should take up her old position, or an even higher one, and probe again reality’s tiny, fundamental truths. She switches off the light in her bathroom and returns to bed. There she covers herself up to the neck with her still warm, down comforter. Lying in bed, she is unable to sleep, and finally decides to begin breakfast. Getting up again, she walks gingerly, careful not to make a sound. As she descends the stairs, she is confronted with a memory of descending into that much feared basement lab in Macky, the campus building where she used to work. Transported, she can hear again that silence that seemed only to be concealing the noise of ghosts and lurking things; she can almost see the painted yellow stripe on the floor beneath the last step. What smells there were there! Thickly perfumed walls soaking in the chemicals of thousands of experiments, decaying carpet, the smell of mold and dust. Why had she come here again? She was looking for a meeting, to make a scheduled appointment, she was going to re-enlist—what joy it would be! But it was so dark here? "I can’t seem to find the room," he thought, feeling the edge of panic. No. She stops. "It’s just my lonely old kitchen." Her eyes adjust to the details. The kitchen is vast, reaching far and low across the long floor, narrow in comparison to its length, with a counter more suited perhaps for a bar. She makes a slow trek to the refrigerator. Nothing but leftovers and milk. She takes out the over-sized jug of milk and searches in the dark for the handle to the dry goods cupboard. Opening it, she takes out a giant cereal box. She opens an adjacent cupboard and removes nine bowls, each decorated with the same twisting-vines-and-flowers design (one, the top one, chipped ever so slightly on the pink-bordered rim in the shape of an upside-down triangle, or maybe a sinking sailboat. "this one’s for Mike," she thinks). In a dark the eyes will never adjust to, she finds the transparent, metric measuring cup, and a tan pitcher. Lifting the extremely heavy milk jug, she fills the pitcher all the way, and then carefully measures out a third of a liter for each of the bowls—the pitcher empties quickly and she must refill it several times. Then she adds to each bow of milk a thick layer of corn flakes. Finished, she replaces the milk and the cereal box. All is ready for the hungry mouths. She removes nine forks from a drawer, and heads up the stairs towards the children’s room. But in the hall she notices that the sun isn’t even up yet. With a start she looks at her watch. Quarter to five! The kids don’t have to be up for another two and a half hours! She puts her hand to her forehead, exhausted. What should she do? "If I don’t wake them," she thinks, "the cereal will surely get soggy. And the stuff’s so goddamn expensive these days! "In a panic she flies down the stairs. Taking the cereal box down again, she reaches into the first bowl (which just happens to be the one with the chip), grabs a wet handful, and stops herself just in time to prevent her hand's dripping re-entry into the box. What am I doing? She places the cereal box on the counter, tosses the handful back into the bowl, runs back to the staircase, picks up a spoon, returns to the bowls, digs in, and in no time she has finished the first. Setting it down she takes up the second, but she cannot finish it. It’s too big. These bowls are at least twice her size, and she is no small woman. Defeated, she puts the bowl down, returns to the refrigerator, takes out the big jug of milk, fills the measuring cup a tenth a liter, pours it into the second bowl, then refills the first to its optimal, and covers both with another layer of flakes. Then, having put everything away again, she heads up the stairs. She’ll just wake those little bastards up! She’s almost in a fury. Throwing open the door, she screams: “Wake up and eat you fucks!” Silence. Then the sound of leather rubbing against leather as nine tiny, frantic bodies, none taller than a foot, each apparently smudged in some sort of shiny black gloss, fly from their beds, their grinning mouths and sharp teeth swarming and bright in the darkness, rush out of the room, down the stairs, and in seconds are yelping for more cereal. She follows after them, sickness rising in her. "I can’t go back to the lab," she thinks, "I have to feed all those hungry mouths after all, and what appetites!"

Murder and Society

From the very beginning Carl was just an ordinary man, he was preoccupied with ordinary preoccupations, and entertained himself mostly after the usual fashion. It was the unhappy world which demanded of Carl something spectacular, or at least so he believed as he set out one evening to take his place among those obdurate figures of classic and modern tragedy. He brought with him only a few objects that seemed symbolically important: a flashlight, a gun with ammunition, a backpack with some changes of clothes, and a copy of Mendelssohn's Jerusalem by which to remember the follies of man. He stood motionless at his doorway for a very long time, one hand on the knob, the other in his pocket. He held the flashlight under one arm and shone it into the darkness of the familiar, its light reflected off a mirror opposite and blinded him, but he didn't mind because there was really nothing worth seeing anyway. Carl searched himself for the appropriate emotion, but found only confusion and various distracted fragments of irrelevant thought, like: "For six months already of constant struggle..." or "For weeks and weeks...", so he gave it up and took his departure as all men do.

Carl did not bother to bring his passport, which he had lost a long time ago, and so he had to keep to himself and not arouse suspicion; if he was caught without a passport he would be incarcerated. With a smile he reminded himself that even if he had his passport it would do him no good, and that he would really be arrested all the more quickly, since the authorities were, without a doubt, searching for him. Not three weeks ago he had shot dead a lone, drunk soldier who had accosted him on his way home from work demanding proof of identity. At the time he was, God be thanked, clear sighted enough to realize the mistake he would have made had he submitted to the man's authority, and so he acted decisively. It bothered him, of course, that he had to become a murderer there. But, he told himself, he always was a murderer, and now he could recognize himself and move on. "In fact", he thought aloud, "it is just this sort of character that will inspire others to follow me".

From Notebooks

An indescribable blast, of something from which life must first have emerged; resembling cheese. Here stood the door, that inescapable passage into authority: manhood. And yet the other side is the same; all his life experiences coalesce and he finally loses his fear of his own sexuality, and the door heads back, always back, and so he will speak of his defeat. "it was at the very beginning that mankind was slain," he heard these words. "If that's the way it is, then it is inescapable," he thinks," and the only possible difference is: I know it." Yes, but what have you forgotten?

Traveling Dialogues

Some thoughts: I wish I could write an allegory allegorizing the act of writing the allegory. Maybe eventually. A clever reader could probably read every text as such a process, but to what end? Anyway, I'm in Berlin, and it is quite a city. An element of schizophrenia, walking through the holocaust memorial and playing hide and seek between those huge concrete blocks, all towering right angles in contrast with a heaving ground; like the social mind of national socialism, or any collective tyranny, perhaps capitalism too. We ought erect a monument to capitalism's forgotten victims, except we don't really acknowledge their existence outside of an aberration. Oh sure, we're all well aware, but helpless, being also the victims ourselves; some sort of well fed and happy sacrifice, trained in right angles, to contrast with the twisted and suffering sacrifice upon which we are built. But I'm going to far, the sickness demands I remain indifferent, unsure, and again cliche, who I am anyway.

The Wrong Direction

One day Carl stepped into a hole that he didn't see coming. Instinctively, he braced himself for the inevitable impact, but, when no impact came, he gradually relaxed and began to take account of his situation. Looking up he could see the tiny, slowly receding oval of light that must be the hole he'd fallen through. "I'm falling," he thought. It was dark so he stretched out his hands and discovered that he was surrounded by stone, just beyond his fingertips, in all directions, except of course down. "A well?" he thought. Once his eyes had adjusted somewhat to the ever dimmer darkness, he noticed that there was a window, about a foot wide and running parallel to him, just to his left. "Must be a very tall window," he said. A face appeared in the window.

"Hello," said the face.

"Hello," replied Carl.

"How do you do?" asked the face.

"About as well as can be expected, thank you very much," answered Carl. A long, awkward silence followed this exchange, during which Carl tried to peek over at the face without drawing too much attention to himself--he wasn't sure if he liked this new development. The face was by all appearances disembodied and Carl could see it only very indistinctly through the obscuring window panes. Its cheeks especially seemed rather purple or perhaps teal, and it glowed ever so slightly.

"I wonder what I look like to him?" thought Carl.

"So," asked Carl, "are you falling too?"

"Me?" replied the face, "oh, no; I'm on my way to Dallas."

"Dallas?" asked Carl, "That's where I'm from."

"Really!?" screeched the face, "How do you like it there? Is it wonderful?"

"Oh, yeah, it's OK, I mean, I like it there and all, but--"

"Gosh! I can't wait to see it, we should probably be there soon!" interrupted the face, now very excited.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," said Carl, "I'm afraid that we're going the wrong direction."

"The wrong direction?" asked the face.

"Yeah, you see I was just in Dallas when I accidentally stepped into this hole and I've been falling ever since. So we must be going away from Dallas."

"I see," said the face, "then I guess I'll just change directions, no big problem."

Carl took a moment to examine the face more closely; he was less nervous now, since he seemed a pretty nice fellow. He could make out hair, a neck, and even the outline of shoulders. A stiff collar gave away that he was wearing some sort of suit, perhaps even one similar to Carl’s. Everything was still strangely colored the same purple and teal, and the face’s eye sockets looked empty.

"Well?" asked Carl eventually.

"Well what?" asked the face.

"Are you going to switch directions?"

"Oh, I already did."

"But we're still falling," said Carl.

"Still falling?"

"Yeah, so that means we're still going away from Dallas." said Carl, growing a little annoyed.

"But I've just switched directions," asserted the face.

"I don't know what to tell you," said Carl.

It had become totally dark; looking up Carl could not see even a trace of the hole. He peered down at his feet, they were absolutely obscured in darkness. But he noticed that he could make out the feet of the face very clearly. He let his gaze fix upon them, marveled by something unexpectedly familiar. Perhaps these were the shoes of his father? Or even a pair he’d seen recently and been interested in buying. What ever it was, it seemed that he just couldn’t pin it down.

The face finally said, "It must be your fault then."

"My fault!?" asked Carl, now becoming angry."Yes, your fault."

"How could that possibly be?" demanded Carl.

"Well, until I met you I was going toward Dallas, now I cannot go toward Dallas, no matter which direction I go. All that's changed since then is you, so it must be your fault."

Carl made a fist. "I can't believe you're blaming me for this!" he said, "anyway, you never switched directions. In fact, you didn't do anything."

"Maybe that's what you say," returned the face. Carl could now make out tiny pinpriks of light within the hollow sockets. "Those must be his eyes," he thought.

"No, it's the damn truth! We're falling and it's not my fault!" yelled Carl.

"You're impossible, I don't even know why I tried," said the face.

"Me? You're impossible! Maybe we could have been friends, but you've been nothing but obstinate and--"

"Still, it stands to reason that it's your fault, you must at least see that," interrupted the face.

"Listen, I've had enough," said Carl with a sigh, by now totally exhausted, "how long do you suppose this tunnel goes on for any--". With a dull thud and the snapping of breaking bones Carl died instantly.

The Appropriator

He is an artist whose medium is refuse; he searches through the trash trying to find the lost word of God--the word that would, once found, redeem all art except his; his art needs no redemption while the word remains lost.

European Reflections

I have returned. Must call Ed, send emails to Europeans. I almost feel as though I had not gone at all, except that I am furnished with new memories (which I guess is the best you can ask for), traced across that unconscious stuff—impossible to define—of which I am made, like a trail of slug-slime. But what perhaps, under all this slime, have I already forgotten? Also impossible to say. Perhaps nothing, but once lost must be revived by some stimulus, spontaneous or intentional, and then comes bubbling up from some deep sunken repository. The free taxi ride in Regensberg, the cabbie was quiet, even shy, but was happy to know that I study German. Perhaps he had misunderstood the directions. He sat there—when we had arrived—and I couldn’t understand that he didn’t want money (I’d even been prepared to tip a good deal). But finally I did not pay. Later, I met a girl who helped me find the Regensberger Uni, that was probably one of my earliest conversations in German, even though I could probably count all the others on two hands and a foot (or just two hands, if I’m more discerning). These memories, however, lie but merely on the surface; the true depths might never see a ray of stimulus.

The brute acquisition of facts is the brute force mobilizing the civil graces; a man in the know, knows how to make conversation. But to speak not is to retain much, and therefore it is better to know but very few facts. Alas, with an eye toward tail, the quiet man has no luck; and appropriately so: he has nothing to say. He shrugs his shoulders, casts an eye toward the floor, and awaits another opportunity to inject. I’ve, however, retained nothing; it’s all so easily forgot, and so rely only on those flashes of insight, unaccounted for, afforded by the unexplored mass of my mind. With beer, I’ve found, they are more forthcoming (if, however, ultimately less coherent).

Maybe I should’ve dropped a bill or two for sex?