Tag: fiction

Embraces

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing20 Comments

I didn’t get around to performing the Friday Fictioneers prompt-100-word-story this week…having gotten sidetracked by a prompt that has haunted me all week from the writings of Lynne Tillman…finally, something worked out of me related to this… as follows:

EMBRACE

“in an embrace, something may be confirmed, avoided, or resolved”

-Lynne Tillman-

            A kind of “there was.”

Sinking into his arms, strong and coily, warm almost gruff.  The dusty smell of oil and denim.  She felt small, she felt memory.  She closed her eyes as in sleep, and allowed.  So much to confront and to question, perhaps to ignore, but now, just this now, this embrace.

He’d wounded her for years.  Secretly whittling strips from her heart with a scalpel.  Holding her mind under liquids and spells, the sky and its stars, overwhelming her with presence while silently working dissection.  His voice anesthetic, a narrative of dreams.  She was victim.

And part of her knew.  Wanted.  Would rather.  She with her own confused expectations, demands.  Her ownership.  Defiance.  Some part of her vision selected this blur.  Macroscopic.  Details out of focus, the essence of place.  Embrace.

***

She had shouted, threatened.  He had thrown.  She began her crumbled march as he grabbed her.  He corded her in arms, shackled her to his chest.  She, unable to move, to breathe.  A little dizzy.  Anger and fear.  Him holding.  Him safe.  He panicking.  It held.  The embrace.

She struggled, she sobbed.  She squirmed and struck out.  Refused.  He held.  He tightened.  As if in a last expiration, the lungs clinging life.  She stabbed and she stabbed and she stabbed.  He bled.  He held.  A braced embrace.

Eventually collapsing.  Exhaustion disabled the leaving, dismantled the stay.  Floor and furniture took them in and supported.  And held by receiving their burden.  Stasis.  Time, embraced.

***

That morning – the fog – the waves – all the greying of sands.  They’d wandered alone for solitude’s space.  To be lost.  Unbeknown.

A moist, briny chill had embraced him.  Swallowed him up.  Become him.  Immersed, he released.  Saturate, evaporate.  Began.  Unwinding like a mummy’s cloth he disrobed.  His anguish, his anger, his hope.  Dissolving out to sea in trails.  Emptied.  Cleaned with a salty sludge, he weighed.  He grew heavy.  He blended in with the mist.

Enough moisture to formulate drops, her tears joined the air.  Embracing herself through the wind off the water she shook and she stumbled, she clutched.  Unseeing, she fumbled along. Desperate.  Undone.  Like the thick cover of sky, her past and her present, her future combined and ran away down the rock.  She was hollow.  Held only by her arms, her hair keeping her head in its place.  She wept out her body until drained like a sieve.  The charcoal of sands embraced her.  Falling.

***

The hesitancy.  Two scarred bodies full of wounds, slowly exposing.  The want for another.  A crave and a care.  Some tendering need to devour.  They approach gently, allow touch, speaking perimeters.  A leg crosses over.  Eyes keep locking and unlocking with an almost audible click.  Food is had.  Hunger remains.  They move and they walk, learning hands and arms and shoulders.  They gaze.

Arriving at last at embrace.  Caressing the soreness of worlds.  They mate at their bruisings.  It becomes more.  Ravenous and fearful, they struggle.  Wrestling and huddling, they carefully voice every play.  The directions.  No pain is no gain.  And they gain.

Become more in the matching – four legs and eight limbs, doubling heartsize and brains, and they fitted.  They enter, they receive.  Exposing and sheltered.  In opening wounds they are bandaged.  They had not believed, they were doubt.  This, a healing embrace.  A beginning.

***

In death they are laid side by each.  Before long the roots will take over, a tendrilled combine.  The skin will grow lax and more fluid, the moss and the mold remedy.  Bones become ashen and dust.  Filtering one for another.  Transposed.  There will be one flesh, this earth, the conglomerate of bodies and beings with rain, moon and sunshine.  Planted there, embraced in all that will hold.

They take to the breeze like powder and spark.  Knuckles and teeth cackling the stones.  A huffed form of cloud, they merge, they seep.  Skein on the water, grain on the leaves, one and the other, the other again.  No one can tell.  Salt sugar sand shaken together and forever sifting.  Their love, their lives, its embrace.

N Filbert 2012

Places

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes2 Comments

The Essence of Place

“To record the essence of a place, so that it can be inhabited by something outside itself, is to start a story.  This means searching for a language, one that we know intuitively but cannot spell out.”

-Lukas Felzmann, Landfall–

“The time has come to talk of whatever we want”

-Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia–

“the work drives beyond promise, craving and time”

-Louis Zukofsky, Prepositions–

            Sometimes there were birds there.  They passed through in groups, in swoops.

I’ve seen people there too, but not swooping or grouping.  It just isn’t that kind of place.

 

It felt large and open yet cloistered, contained.  There were large trees all around and throughout.  Somehow it seemed level.

I don’t recall there being water, but I believe it staid nearby.  As if it were ready for when it was needed.

I’ve no memory of critters or pets, cycles or frogs.  Only birds that might swarm like the leaves filling trees as they swayed.

Oh my, but the blur!  The soft focus in apprehending!  It rocks and it waves, it flows through you while sitting, I say!

I wonder the eyelids of storms.  I leap lying down.  I silently sing out the shrieking of birds.  I love in this place.  As wild or as calm as is needed, a respondent surround.

When I’m here I try to tell you, by searching for words or the making of pictures.  That don’t capture.

Have you wandered here before?  To the essence of a place?

Please do tell me or show me what’s yours…

 

N Filbert 2012

Writing: the Characters

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Writing1 Comment

Writing: the Characters (1)

 

Not beginning from anywhere but here.

Here being where I am looking for a character, a someone, and specific, with a mind, a body, and particular knowledge and actions, whom I might observe and record.  On whom I might test out my language.  Whom I create.

Exercise in perception, then.  To see what I could see, perhaps, if I looked a certain way, at or into a certain person.  What I might hear, and how to say it.  What would be felt and its work of translation.  The smells and the tastes and the histories, for both of us.  Or perhaps even all.  No, that’s too far.

Right here, though, investigating perception, that preform vehicle, formed by our surroundings – imagination – the multiplex of learning structures allowing me to sense, to perceive.  That also, is here.

Imagination and perception – their invention we call world, and a character, a subject/object like my hand I might observe, hold aside of me while attached by nerves and cells, tissues and blood, by life, its embodiment.

Non-abstract abstracted – that conundrum – here.  The truthfulness of experiencing becoming honest lies.  The words, the print of hand, what tells (or who), and how.

Perhaps another thinks this way?  Well, not exactly, but shares concerns with idiomatic nuances?  Perhaps his education (or hers) was difficult, or pleasurably a breeze, they mastered information like a large and thirsty sponge?  Absorbed and were absorbed in such interstitial structures.  Or not.  Not at all.

An uneducated person with adaptive gifts for resonance.  A mimicking trickster riddling what is heard into naïve and complex wisdoms?  That would be fun.

Perhaps another world – country, continent, planet?  Someone observed for years suddenly inserted in a strange context, situation.  How do they behave, react, manage and survive?  I could use myself in a planet of clouds, or the tunnels of worms, what would characterize me?  How would I change?  What might I effect?  If I were made of clay or had a thousand lovers in a desert?

The only edge to possibility is what experience brings.

 

But pretending to begin right now, I see him clear.  There is a woman he is watching he finds beautiful.  When she works he sees the curve of her small breast which he desires.  He is ruddy yet refined, of middling age.  He’d like to court her but fears all pain that can’t be bandaged.  He’s afraid of words and their millions of ropes and anchors.  Reality feels like conflict, for him, a continual coming-against, and adjustment.  Adaptation he experiences as loss.  Of unrealized ideals.  And so he walks, spinning narratives in his head.

 

Here, that possible visitor handmade.  But who?  And how would I know him?  And where was he from?  How was he formed?  Who does he belive?  And so forth…

One way to be here.

One way to press your hand against the wall.

 

 

 

A Parable

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing2 Comments

A Parable

Perhaps one day you will ask for something that you want but do not need, or even need but don’t quite understand.  On a lark, let’s say, out of a “why not?” not exactly exasperation nor as fueled as curiosity, almost a simple value, who knows, but perhaps you do.

How will they respond to your free request (a spontaneity without expectation) now having burdened them with options?  You had thought it a gift, an eruption, a “no harm done,” “nothing to lose,” but of course, in the world, there is more.

So your request floats out, on the air, like a streamer, swaying and curving, rippling past the subjects to which it’s addressed.  For some it’s a slap, for others a trial, still others just dodge it and head for silent hills.

You had thought it a good, an offering of joy, a connection and possibility, not something to wind or to bind.  Never something so knotty.  A kind of safe enclosure that’s open, a meadow of sorts, where gentle counterparts might convene when they wanted or needed and whomever appeared could relate.

But in order to appear each required a turn, of attention, of glance, of an ear – to surmise and to meet, to attend.  Bodies incapable of severance.  Could they send an arm, an eye, a knee or other organ, they happily would, provided it would not be missed any elsewhere (their “here”) – and this proved impossible.

One respondent, upon lending a hand, was not able to help his young son tie his shoes.  Another offered her hair only to find herself fired from her workplace.  Each was affected by your generous request while you were left with dismembered parts in your park.

Unintentional, no doubt, you found as well that it was not spare fragments you were needing for your want.  The severed hand grew stiff and cold under your knees; the hair like strands of sand in the night on your chest.  The smells were changing.  The eyes you’d assembled were distracted, neither here nor there the parts were failing.

In an awkward flashing of a dream a teacher’s voice arrived with cliché: “be careful what you wish for.”  You’ve been waking to that for awhile.

Another Pause, Another Someday

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings2 Comments

“Words give clothing to hide our nakedness”

–Susan Howe–

“But a word is a bottomless pit”

–Lyn Hejinian–

And then it arrives, unexpectedly, another gap.  She sees a magician in bright jester’s garb, seated on a branch in a tree.  Amid the traffic.  Amid a swarm of bees, of thrumming crows and starlings.  A bat lies in labored breathing on the sidewalk.

Lightning- and Lady- bugs.

Like that, like both.

There is no goal to it in the beginning.  At first.  The seconds’ glow catches you off guard.  “What was that?” neon spot moving in the night.  Imperceptible polka-dotted red creeping carefully over your toe.  Structures pause.  Structures moment.  When realized, when you bring your own accident: awareness.

What pressures turns out to be necessity.  Of deadline, of assignment, of transactional fulfillment – relationship or vocation, even health.  Without apparent choice.  Or ever so long ago.  Why markings called parentheses are shields.  What gives pause.  And stays the pressuring.  For the moment.

An extended kiss.

A lapse in volume.

An ignored alarm.

You find yourself there : (YOU).

The rest of the world lining up, encroaching, exerting itself, themselves, your other selves, against the slender boundaries, the slick curving walls – they can’t be climbed, nor be toppled, only inverted )if you accept the pressures(, or erased as if they’d never happened.  Become brackets.  Prison versus asylum (in its native safety-seeking sense).

(YOU)?  )YOU(?  [YOU]?  ]YOU[?

            Now and then.  Another pause.  Another Sabbath.  A so-called rest.  Time is not the issue (as duration).  Time is at issue in its momentary absence.  Glancing the lightning-bug, bird-call, ladybug feeling out the stem.

“Another pause” with pressures all around.  Expectations or chores.  But no one calling, not this now.  Last week too, unexpected, unprepared, cage door left awry, or finding key in hand.  Parentheses.  And then you sleep that active way we call “rest.”  For a moment.  You make, for the joy of making, or not.  Either way is pleasure.  Or pleasant at the most.

Such as now, another pause, this day, another Someday that arrived.

Friday Fictioneers – June 8, 2012

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Photography, Writing37 Comments

caveat: thrown together quickly! (Friday Fictioneers prompt – www.madisonwoods.wordpress.com)

Against the Day

                   And what was there to do?

                   High school now behind us, Frank’s dad dead, and no promise of college, work, or love; we were lost, angry, confused.

                   We’d all of us read Pynchon, we knew very well what to expect, and it wasn’t good.

                    And lots of it.

                  So much burned inside us.

                   At the city’s River Festival we spotted the blimp.

                   And somehow we knew.

                   We just knew.

                   Now, it begins.

N Filbert 2012

www.manoftheword.com

Such Great Heights

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing9 Comments

Such Great Heights: On Loving

“I wonder at vocalism’s ability to rephrase or reenact meaning and goodness even without the wished-for love.  Can a trace become the thing it traces, secure as ever, real as ever – a chosen set of echo-fragments? … The still eye reflects a neutral ‘you’ that is me; and yet secret.  Who can hold such mirroring cheap?  It’s a vital aspect of marriage and of deep friendship.”

-Susan Howe-

            These are things she told me:

She tells me she just needs to be held.  Held and heard.  And validated.  That I understand how she feels, that I empathize.  No need to agree with her or her feelings, no need to fix anything.  Just pay attention (“be with me” she calls it), say some things back kind of like echoes so she can hear that I’m listening, knows I’ve “got” it, and nod and affirm.  Saying things like “I hear how hard that is for you,” or “I can see this makes you angry” and the like.  A safe place, a sounding board, a kind of mirroring…a world-the-size-of-arms or bodies in which it’s okay to be in process, to have your stuff, to be inaccurate, and be.

I tell her I just want to be loved for who I am, not what I do or how I perform, whether I make someone feel better or not, whether I’m useful or succeed, get stronger, am sensitive, smart or good-looking.  I’m fine with being any of those things, but they will always feel like side-effects or attributes, things taken up from time to time, situation-contextually.  I really want to be loved for who I am also, or otherwise, the self I do not know, am unaware of, except that it’s always changing.  I’m wanting value as a being, I suppose, that it’s simply good enough, and matters, that I am.  That someone would choose that.

She’d like to be appreciated for all of her efforts.  All the pains she endures, compromises she makes, limitations she accepts in order to account for me, for my “neuroses” (read “personality”).  ‘d like to hear a heartfelt “thank you” now and then for her services and sensitivities, considerations and workings toward dialogue, care and attention.  She’d like to be recognized, feel wanted, feel loved and craved and adored.

I’d like to be loved with my spaces and misgivings.  From a distance, and the distance loved too – the whole globe of me – my fears, paranoias and worries.  My anxious body.  Jealous narratives, fantastic brain.  As an entity – yes – as a system or sphere, to be chosen, sought out and let be, even celebrated as this odd, unique and difficult human, just like all the others, but different too, in exactly the same ways we all of us are.  A curious realm of unknowns and effects.  Would like that cloud of debris I refer to as “me” to trigger charges in her, of desire, of respect, of wonder and intimate knowledge.  A paradox really.  To be known as unknown, loved dissimilarly, absolutely, and so on.  Misplaced desires, but there all the same.  I ask her to love indeterminacy and confusion.

She asks to be free of her past – not its effects but its definitions.  That we encounter it together – our childhoods and children, our spouses and griefs, our risks and our failures, fulfillments and joys – not compared with the present, competitively, but engaged, encouraged, absorbed.  That not everything “not-me” be a threat, not her job and its clients, her acquaintances, family and friends, past lovers our journeys, events – that they be welcomed and included as ours now – memories, sources, realities we bring to a NOW.  Not as distractions, escapes, private holdings.  That we invite each other whole and unprocessed.  That we be a process for each.  That I be here now with, see her moving toward me, being here, not fragment and dissect her into her pasts and the world.

I tell her I’d like to be ultimate, her be-all, end-all, preference and ideal.  Chaos and all, that this mass of me be some divinity-like, awe-inspiring wonder of an incomparable glory she adore and pursue.  I want to feel special, holy, set apart, unbelievably brilliant and beautiful – in short, spectacular – in all my grungy messy remedial ways and blundering battles.  That it truly stun her how amazing I am all muddied up and crazy, insecure and inconsistent, incompatible and at serious odds with myself – that I be wonderful to her.

She told me she’d like it to be real.  To be purposive and true.  That we be brave and open, vulnerable and strong.  Flexible and protective, guarded and unafraid.  That we feel life securely and take great risks, be certain and unsure.  That we trust and be trustworthy in every metamorphoses we move through.  Tenderly powerful, gently fierce, insistent and forgiving, patiently intense.  That we strive for balance, a balance I guess like nuclear fusion – unaccountable energies in a strangely held rest.

I said it all sounds good, sounds like love to me, and impossible.  Which is fine as I’ve started as a failure, but heroic, and she’s a god arose from ashes.  Hell, she’s died and lived again.  We latch on, strap in and unwind.  We are here.  Here we go.  These terrible chasms and such great heights.

These are things I tell myself.

N Filbert 2012

(couldn’t help but think of this – click for tunes)

Sweet I.L.L (inter-library loan) Manna today!

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Traces, Writing2 Comments

“Anything you can write is already somehow immanent in the language, a baffling fact that has various ways of affecting those who discern it…For if we both of us, reader and writer, command our common language – and if not, why go on? – then we both know, potentially, whatever it can say, and shall neither of us gain anything if I raise my voice…Let us agree to pay attention, then, to some sequences of words which I shall now set down, with my usual respect (which you share)…uses of words which entail ways of being used by words”

-Hugh Kenner, from the foreword to Prepositions, and applicable to both)!

Thank you Wichita Public Library!  Thank you Inter-Library Loan!

Blurt

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, WritingLeave a comment

Blurt

 

We have to hold still.  To take care.  To look at each other.  To remember what we’ve never quite understood: the value of one another.  Which we’ve never really comprehended, nor, finally, are we quite able to.

I suggest the exercise:  Pretend-Everything-Depends-On-It, that is, on The Other, i.e. even within yourself.  See how far it goes, if it chances to keep you alive, or defends the rights of another, imaginary or not.

Luckily, the always perhaps.  Perhaps, to a point.  To the point – what is possible – tell me who might be the one deciding that?  (or the many?).  I’m listening.  This is where God lies.  The possible.  Irreducible without end, fortunately.  And how.

Go on then, practice, live, throw yourself into it – see what becomes.  At least you will.  Forget about it!  There’s always until.  What has that to do with us?  Very little, finally, it’s something we will never experience, we cannot process or reflect upon.  So get to it now, then.  That’s all I’m saying.  Pretend, provoke, prevent and process.  There’s nothing to it.

Defend the other with your life.