exponentiation ezine: issue [1.0: literature]
"Bone Dry"
I fear the coming heavy sound of
Crashing Bones falling down as I
Tiptoe around with this
Clowns frown that
Only grows for mocking laughter.
And as I dance on tightrope air
I stare below and shout aloud in
Slow and small pathetic words that
Even though I fear and fend
This Clown of Bones will fall.
- Jordan
"An Oddity"
Over the course of many hundreds of years, I have never witnessed a spectacle such as the growth of the Northern peoples. As many now as there are fish in the ocean, their nature is a strange one, to be sure. I have watched them silently from afar while they embrace each other so lovingly, with a tenderness I have not seen in many cultures, all the while fighting terrible struggles which yield nothing save horrific ends for their land and folk; they tear down the forest around them to build unnatural structures for their ever-growing numbers, whilst giving devotion and prayer to the gods that made the natural world they so carelessly rape and pillage. A curious creature, humanity. Still...
There is something about them that draws me back to them night after night. In spite of what She has taught me about the dangers of their kind, that their love can never be our love, that they can never rival the love She has in Her heart for me, I see something within them that tells me differently. A potential... a possibility that love could blossom between someone such as myself, and someone of their kind. I had previously been far too afraid of them to ever approach one; I loathe the thought of rejection with a fearful shudder ñ but I cannot believe that there is nothing of which She is not certain! My own eyes tell me differently! - I had to know. It was with this heretical thought that I dared all... I attempted to prove to myself that these thoughts were not those of the mad.
Under cover of moon-absent darkness, I had stolen towards those structural abominations they name "halls" to seek one of their number. I had seen some of them who had made passing advances to some of my kin; a sight totally at odds with what She has instilled in me. These encounters I had witnessed emboldened my resolve to seek out someone of their kind in order to discover whether or not my reason and emotions had not led me astray.
Theirs is a beautiful people; their features were fine to the eye, their language was almost musical to my ears (many a time had I been serenaded to a blissful slumber listening to them converse), there was precious little about them, excluding what I have already noted concerning their self-conflicted nature, that did not appeal to me. I have often wondered if one of their souls was not by luckless mistake trapped within my breast.
My first attempts were largely unsatisfying... I felt not a trickle of the emotion that seemed to play across their faces when I would watch them engage in the compassion and warmth of their coupling. I had begun to wonder if She was not in fact right after all, and that I should rethink my foolhardy course ñ but my feelings were too strong to be swayed by these initial failures. I knew there was someone of their people who could return the strength of my emotions, the power of the love in my heart. It felt eternal, something that I alone was unable to cherish fully; I needed what I saw in humanity to appease the longing within me as though it were my first and last breath. It would complete me, I felt.
Tonight, I think - tonight I will feel what love truly is. I will not rest until this torrent in my breast is finally undammed and allowed to burst forth in ecstasy. As I make my way to their "hall," I find I cannot quell the bounce in my step, nor the trembling in my hands. My heart is torn between dashing towards the enchanting promise of their embrace, and running away blindly to Her side, to sob my forgiveness upon Her feet. My curiousity will not be so easily subdued however. I have to know.
I enter softly, not wishing to wake them. For some reason, I feel the experience would be ...profaned... by their awareness. I know not what they might have been taught about me and mine, and prejudices, bearing the breadth and depth of my own in mind (and what it took to overcome them), run deep. Love should not consummate itself by allowing physical appearance to be the sole judge of its worth. The first human I reach out to leaves me with the same dissatisfaction I had felt previously, but I am not dismayed. It seems they felt nothing, either. Maybe I am seeking the wrong individuals. Maybe my love is something that transcends the majority of theirs, and I must find an equal among them. Yes, that is it! I have been too thoughtless in my approach, I really should.....
My breath catches in my throat. A human, much larger than the rest that occupy the "hall," and infinitely more beautiful, seizes my attention on the far side of the enclosure. My heart feels as though it will leap from my chest, but my limbs are paralyzed with awe. Shaking, I make my way to the human's side, looking at it fondly in its slumber. This truly is an equal, I think. It would surely return the emotions I have boiling within me. I lean close, tears running from my eyes in joy as I breathe softly across its ear and lay my hand on its arm...
...Words cannot express what passed between us. It was glorious. Yet, it was too much for me. The emotions unleashed from our embrace I could not contain. To finally physically touch love was magical, but it is not within me to contain the power that we shared by our mutual contact. I ran from that place, clutching myself tightly to quiet the surging maelstrom of emotion that poured from the depths of my soul towards the skies in an effort to find release; the feelings were beyond anything I had expected. I knew it would be many moons until I gathered the will to attempt such a thing again. What I have taken from the experience is more than I can fathom at this moment, but what it took from me is far greater than anything I imagined possible.
But to know that it is out there, that these emotions I have roiling inside of me have a way in which to see themselves illuminated by the light of reality, and not fantasy... It gives me ...hope.... I wish She could feel this...
* * *
The next morning, the King of the Danes awoke, expecting fresh carnage to be visited upon his hall and kinsmen. He went straightaway to the place where his men slept, and was not comforted by the grisly sight which awaited him in the bed of one of those who had journeyed from across the sea.
The largest of the Geats, the battle-hardened son of Edgetheow, proclaimed to the shaken king, "Fear no more, my Lord Hrothgar. See you that cursed, man-hating limb I have affixed to the ceiling? I assure you that by that trophy, Grendel shall paint the halls of Heorot with your kinsmen's blood no more." - blaphbee
"Life"
sun burning death dare i disgrace life with lie?
seek be sought death dare i disguise fear with life?
when i walk, it follows raining when i fall, it is always laughing
life felt like an age fallen, angel i perish in my filth
death when the mind is clear the bottom line beyond the bottom line - what is faith - there is the future and the darkness, cold, void, instantiate: expansion of what is life into what is death
honorable, cold: graced by pines and in wintertime silent - steve renke
"Agni"
Flames lept up into his face. Then darkness. When the light came back Jacques was staring at my face.
"The inevitable," I began.
Another handful of paper, cardboard and twigs went onto the fire. I was grateful for the interruption of windy central Texas night. The orange, lit from within, gradually crept over each piece of paper or corrugated cardboard, until the material made the transition from mass to excited plasma, waves of gas sweeping over the collapsing structure in what we animal beings know only as fire. Far enough behind the old drilling equipment plant, which had been rusting in bankruptcy for two decades, no one would have cared even if we were using nuclear fusion.
"No," he said. "The fulfillment." And thus begins our story.
Apathos was one of those well-intentioned projects that started with a case of Budweiser that came to us because Ron's mom, in her everlasting goodness, gave him a gas card with which one could also charge important fuels like corn chips and alcohol. The guy who worked at the corner store on the far side of town was new to the country, pale skin and a whispering accent from someplace east, and he didn't even blink when we'd come in and sign the chit in her name.
Bill Haley lives north of town, and he became our bassist, because his parents had gone off one day and come home on the front grille of a tanker truck, so insurance checks flowed in and the neighbors had long ago learned to disregard the loud noise and marijuana stench of his garage. I guess we made a pretty half-ass effort of putting up discount carpet, in clashing shades of orange and green and violet, across the old walls rotted by moisture, not the least of which came from Bill when he was drunk enough not to care where his piss went. Jon Mattews was our drummer, because Jon was the only drummer anyone knew in town, so he had for some years showed up at every band practice he could, knowing from experience that most end after a few weeks at the hands of an irreconciliable argument.
We called it Apathos after Kurt Cobain's old band, and there's no denying that Nirvana was a big influence, but so was everything else that had been big on radio since 1969, when Jim's older brother Nick started listening to rock music and buying records that Jim would turn on to after the divorce, when Nick was only a name on postcards from some big city called Sacramento. The Doors, SRV, Led Zeppelin, even the candy-ass radio hits, it all went into the pot and out came a stew colored by dense guitars. That was Jim for you - he went into his room one day with all the equipment he could borrow, and came out with this guitar sound you couldn't beat. Most distortion is bass, and some crazy people use all highs, but his was mostly mids with a good low crunch, and it seemed the noise that sprinkled over it like confectioner's sugar on donuts was high-pitched static that harmonized at the whim of some undiscovered gods.
I was vocalist for six weeks, but Ron only lasted a week as second guitar. It got us past the first irreconciliable argument, which was the name, and the next five too, so by the time I was replaced, we had our sound down and had decided we were going for the big time. We were going to write hits that conquered radio like Attilla the Hun. Jim had shed the shop tshirts and was wearing open-neck leather shirts, and even Jon was telling people he was "full-time in Apathos now, oh you haven't heard?" It was roaring great. When it happened, I was finishing my own take on that wail that Cobain used to do, trailing out into the chaos like a truck passing on the freeway at midnight.
"Mark," said Bill. Then I noticed Jim standing behind him, and Jon sitting off to the side. Our tech, Indian Joe, who's from India and ended up in this little town by sheer bad luck, was playing the drums and we had the tape going, so the whole thing got recorded. Here's how it goes.
First voice on tape is Bill, saying my name. Then he stops and makes a little noise like a half-hiccup; you can't hear it, but Jim stepped forward at that point and said, "Well. You're doing great, but, um, me and the boys have been thinking, you know, if we're going to make it on radio, we need someone with some flair, something that can really propel us to the top--"
You can hear me on tape at this point, sounding chalky like I swallowed my tongue. I hate the way it sounds, but listen anyway. "Yeah, good point there, maybe I can hit the higher ranges more--"
"That's not what we mean" - Bill again. "We're looking for somebody who can really work a crowd, you know, can do the press shots and all, hook in some girls..."
He could've straight out said I was ugly. I don't think I am, and one ex-girlfriend agrees with me, but I'm not Jim Morrison, if you take my drift. I look like the guy who might fix your car, rewire your basement electricity, or take the virus off your computer. Girls don't stop eating their ice cream when I go by, but I do OK, normally.
"Uh, okay, Bill," I didn't sound as stiff at this point. A little glum, sure. Wouldn't you? And then they brought in Jacques. You could tell because all the little coughs and stuff drop out. I don't know if they thought I would've fought him, because even I know my odds would be slim. Jacques is big, like six plus feet, and has long dark hair and the most testosterone of any guy from the east end of town. The wannabe gangbangers who smoke weed in little cigars behind the old drugstore don't even make eye contact. I could see right away why they picked him.
"Mark." I said, and there's a little pause while we shook hands, and then I handed him the mike. I don't need to tell you that I felt like TV dinner leftovers at that moment, but I kept my head up enough to go to the back and turn over the bucket we kept by the door and sit on it. Some cigarette butts and roaches fell out - oh well. I remember being lightheaded like you are when you step up to a fistfight.
Jacques lived up to his foreign-film name. He didn't walk to the mike, but he strode up to it and whisked it up in a single motion. He sang just like Kurt, too, but he was deeper, and when he changed intervals more than a fifth, his voice started to vibrate inside like loose equipment on a northbound train, and it gave it this full, rich sound. I was still pretty bummed, but I wasn't going to argue with this. He was watching me part of the time too, but I didn't really say much of anything. My own plan was forming already in my mind, and it was really simple, namely to go out to my brother's place and finally buy that old Les Paul he kept around in the rec room from him. I knew the chords.
Jon and I burned a cigarette after practice. "Dude, they were just telling me it was the right thing to do, so I went along," he said, through blue smoke.
"Looks right to me," I said, and he looked surprised. "Guy's a great vocalist."
His eyes got narrow, but there wasn't meanness in it. I thought he guessed my plan, but I wasn't going to help him feel out the details. Instead, I said, "If these songs keep coming along, we'll need a studio soon."
"Isn't a problem. My uncle George has one out in Austin, and we can get time there."
I showed up next practice with that chip-flecked sunburst Les Paul, which Jim told me very solemnly was actually a fake, and he hoped I hadn't paid more than a hundred for it. Truth of the story was I showed up and my brother was dead drunk, and started talking numbers and fell asleep, so then Marsha - she's his girlfriend, because he's still married to Laura but she's in LA - just handed it to me and told me it was better he stopped screwing around with those pipe dreams anyhow. Dennis at the guitar shop hooked me up with a tune-up after I bought some strings, and I was set. Only thing hard was not getting the strings to buzz when I changed, since it was all power chords anyway.
We went through the first four without a problem, and then Jacques said that maybe one note in that bassline was out, and Bill told him he didn't think so, and Jim said it didn't matter and Jon asked me what I thought, and I said the bassline was too busy and then Jim said we were taking a break.
I was out of cigarettes, and turned to go to the store, when this arm stopped me. Jacques handed me one of his and gestured a hand to behind the house. "So you think this is going to go anywhere?" he said.
Almost coughing, I said, "It could. We've gotta fix some things."
He smoked, then turned his mouth aside, and said, Yes.
"They'll listen to you."
When we were back in the smog of the garage, cigarettes and sweat and piss around like a landscape, Jacques told Bill what to do with his bassline. Two notes - all that is needed. Bill looked at Jim, and then looked back and said OK. The song ripped after that. By the end of the week, two more practices, we had five songs. The first two were pretty weak, so the next practice Jacques and Jon worked out a new rhythm, and then bent one of the riffs backward so it flowed into the good riff from the other song, and Jacques did these drowning vocals that sounded really killer. When we left that night, we were sure that was it.
It's amazing how much energy is stored in a sheet of paper. Once the claw of flame gets up inside it, it just crumbles around the orange ball, and throws off this block of heat that will just seize you for a minute thinking, That was one (1) sheet of paper? But then you think back, all the years of sunshine and rain and dirt that went into the tree, and all the diesel smoke and sweat and pastrami sandwiches for the loggers, and you can see how the paper is just all that wound up, waiting for something to let it. When the heat is at the same frequency of whatever makes up paper, then it harmonizes, and the thing just about explodes. I love fire.
"Gets hot in Texas," said Jim when we were fixing that damn amp for the fifth time. It overheats, and a small short starts, which creates this siren-song of distortion over the guitar and it gets louder until you can't hear the chord changes. All the heat inside has nowhere to go, so the circuitry gets nice and warm and it smells ozoney, and we have to quit. So we light cigarettes in unison and go out to car so Bill can puff his pipe in peace. Then Jacques has to do a warm-up vocal test, again, and so we all wait, and then it's near dark anyway so we rush through the six songs and call it a night.
But here we were, still there. "It's enough for a demo," said Jon. "Let's get it out and get an agent."
"Not so fast," said Jim. "We've only got six, and we don't even know how to do the credits for them."
"Screw the credits," said Jon. "It's our band. This is our shot."
"I dunno, guys," said Bill slowly. "Grunge really isn't as big at it was. All that funky loud stuff is big now. If you want, I can put one in like this" -- he was slapping strings, a burpy stabbing -- "and then we might get a really big shot. Cause it seems to me best grunge can get now is regional."
"Now you are silly," said Jacques. "If the music is good? They buy. And see, I have put in new lyrics, it is more like Alice in Chains now, maybe Stone Temple Pilots."
"You don't want to faggot it up too much there, Jacques," said Jim. Eagle brows rose to a ridge and he stopped. "I mean, unless we need to."
Jon went back to his kit. "It's a demo," he said.
"He's right," said Bill. "Just the first step."
"Well screw that," said Jim. "It's our one shot."
Jacques muttered something near me that I couldn't hear, so I tuned strings.
"Cut out that noise," said Bill. "We're having a discussion here."
Jim looked right at him. "About what? Fixing what don't need fixing?"
We did right the next week at the Mucky Duck. Some band from Arizona was going to come in and play Zydeco, but their van broke down in New Mexico and they called from some pay phone five hours before sound check. The soundguy flipped out, but the Old Man was a steady hand and he came over to where I was with some girls I knew, just drinking his discount pitchers of last night's beer. "You guys ready?" he said, and it took me a moment before I knew what he was talking about, and I said, yeah. We really came together for that, and I don't just mean the show. Jacques and Jon went off to the copy shop and came back with some cool looking posters, with some guy who looked like Jacques on fire in front of a nuclear missile. Bill combed his hair, and Jim had on the leather shirt. We played all six and then since no one kicked us out, played them again. I got a peck on the cheek from Suz, and the local rag wrote us up the week later, but they got it wrong and said we were a Zydeco band.
Practice was like coming back to reality. I put the guitar up and went over to the drum rack. Bill and Jim were talking, and Jacques went to get some water. I went out, and when I came back, Jim was saying, "Yeah, some blues leads, and a little funk, that's more what's on radio now."
"All okay?" said Jacques, taking the microphone and looking at us in sequence, and that's how I remember him. There wasn't much on his face. He was all inside.
"Let's do 'String Thing' from the top," said Jon, and poised.
"No, we're doing 'Catch This,' cause we gotta try out a new bassline," said Jim. "And I need you to double the middle break, since I got a lead."
We were halfway through when Jacques signalled cut. "I don't think this is working," he said. It did sound like cats fighting in a garbage can, to me, since there was nothing wrong with the song. In fact it was a fine song.
"As it is, it's better than anything anyone in town has," I said.
"Yeah, let's get it down, and record it, we can work out the details later," said Jon.
"Details?" said Bill. "This is our song. Our shot at big radio. You sweat the details."
"Don't think just cause you got that gig you got cause to tell us what's better than anyone," said Jim, to me. "Don't want to be better in this town. Because this town -- sucks."
"Are you sure we need a second guitar?" said Bill, and then Jon turned away and everyone mumbled a bit.
I put my guitar up and left. Outside Jacques was finishing a cigarette, and where it would normally go into the can piled with grey, he pitched it instead in a flat arc toward the house. "Practice is over," he said.
We finally got that one done the next week, and then that weekend, we were going to record. Jon had got on the phone and talked to George out in Austin and he said, OK, come on down, so we did. Ron's mom let us take her van, and he came along to keep us in line, he said.
"How long?" Jacques was reading over his sheets, mouthing each word carefully and re-reading.
"Like I said last time, not much longer," said Bill. "You better not need those sheets when we're there."
"Jesus, forget it, they have music stands," said Jim. "It's a full studio."
From then on out it was the hum of the van and sirens that passed us, heading north to bust the kids who loaded U-Hauls full of furniture and dope and tried to turn a three timer profit up in Chicago.
I was on my third cigarette outside the studio when Bill came up to me with Jon. "Hey. We were thinking, uh, you know those middle two tunes, well, we want to take them higher sort of, add some jazz drums and a bassline, and I wanna know, are you with us?"
"No," I said. "For the last time, we can't fiddle with them now." But it was no use. We got back inside and Jacques had finished his vocals; he did them in one take, with a couple overdubs that George said weren't really necessary. Jon had cut the basic drums the night before, but wasn't satisfied, so George said if we bought the beer we could have overtime. Guitars were next, after bass, but then Jim and Bill got in a fight over the change-up in the middle. Jacques looked at me and so I went over to George and said I wanted to do my guitars, and he nodded, and we went off. I got them done in two takes, only because I flubbed one part of the middle section on one song we'd been arguing about back at that rent-by-week motel. It was Sunday and while I didn't miss church, I could use some peace and quiet. "You did good," George said. "Most guys take a few more." It sounded like the nicest words ever, because no one else in that band thought I could play guitar worth a nickel.
The chaos came in when we put it all together. Jim added his middle break, and Bill had put two new basslines on each song, it seemed. Nothing matched up. George futzed with it on the computer, but then he told Bill they needed to drop a bassline because it didn't fit the new song for guitar, and he told me I had to go back and redo the middle part of that track. I took up my guitar and cut it out as said, except for the last bit, where I couldn't get my pinky finger to move right on the changeup.
"Just drop him out of the mix," said Jim. "We don't have time."
"If he's gone, why don't you just redo yours?" said Bill. "It'll fit that bass."
I could find Jon, and Jacques was packing up his paper. "Over," he said. "Practice."
Finally George cleared his throat a third time. "Guys," he said. "It's midnight. In the morning I've got a guy who did slide guitar with Willie Nelson coming in, and he's paying."
Bill was muttering about money. Jim said shut up. Bill told him to shut up. George threw us all out, and we went back to town with the mix as it was. Jon said it sucked, and we never saw him at practice again, and Bill and Jim argued over who had the rights to the songs, so they gave me the tape. Jacques was totally silent, except when Jim almost threw his papers out the window. "Those," he said. "Are mine." No one was going to tell him otherwise.
It was about a week later me and Jacques were drinking some wine his mother had from the old country. I knew it was special to him, so I didn't just gulp it. Then we got some wood and made a fire. It was a good party, the two of us, since that Saturday night it was chilly and nothing was going on in town. The Mucky Duck had gone bankrupt, and the new bar had linoleum floors that no one liked to dance on, so they'd all gone to the river to fish and drink. Jim had met this girl from Phoenix and was spending the night at her parents' place, where apparently, they read the Bible a lot.
Fires live just like we do. They start, and while there's something to burn, they're there, throwing light and heat back in our faces. When there's no more wood, they turn to embers that glow from the inside out, and after that, they go straight black, and tick down until they're as cold as the night. Jacques and I were watching the flames slow their dance, the height decreasing, when he said, "It is done," and began pitching the papers in, one by one. I watched, and thought about how much heat is stored in a sheet of paper, then got out the newspaper article the local rag did on us when we won the local radio contest. It went quickly.
"That was good," said Jacques, a little silly with the wine. He threw in a poster, then more sheets, and a guitar pick. I didn't have anything else but one of the dollar bills the Old Man gave us and so I held it up, and Jacques nodded. It went in, and then he found an old dusty box that had been lying around in the weeds and rain, and threw it in. As the blaze crept up before the fall, I dug out the tape. Jacques nodded. I pitched that in too, and we left before the burnt plastic smoke could make us sick with cancer. - Hieronymous Botch
"City Dawn"
city dawn sky is burning streets are poured with liquid flesh stretching white in the loss of light. sun spills swelling warmth over the hills, into the town. catching the broken glass. on the beach the flesh burns, sunk into the sand and rancid, trailing large clouds of thick smoke into the morning, splitting the sun leaving its light dusty and old, like tired eyes as parties end. sunlight rancid over the flesh lines the courtyards and streets and rots in the cracks of the roads and the walls and the floors it burns long after the wood after the burning of the machines aging the sky, making decay of the morning it burns too fast for souls to escape incinerated inside flesh and screams are the smoke darkening the minds of the hearers, eroding from their minds: the promise of a new day. - steve renke
