Asghar Abbas's Blog - Posts Tagged "experience-in-the-trenches"
Slick
From way way up here, the glittering coast of North Carolina stretched forth before me. On and on it went like a promise of everything I didn’t need. Looking down, I would say the intimate view glinting back at me was the usual open space affair, but all my thoughts were elsewhere, as was my heart. I turned away from the unfolding view but there was no separation between the newly freshening vista down below and the familiarity of my drear, comfortable thoughts. And I was much too disconsolate, too far gone for any kind of relief- save for what I came here to do. Or rather undo. I hoped. I still hope when there was no reason for it, but not for long, I hoped. Resolute though I was to make this gesture, no matter how belated it was. Isn’t every meaningful thing belated anyway, almost like an afterthought? I am all set to do this one last thing, but even with the quietus act at hand (at hand truly! Haha?) I wasn’t at peace.
Something other than my conscience gnawed at me. All my thoughts were warped, in conflict for survival. I quietly found myself in the middle of a revolt. Every little bit that was me at war with parts that weren’t. I was the surrounded Gloucester alone in the woods being betrayed by my own self. Half of me pitted against the shadowed half, the pittance of my very recent decency grappling with my already dwindling self-preservation. Me against me in other words. Words simpler than this world. Words made simpler in this world. But this was my mise en scène. I had set the final stage. And muster on I must. This was the muster point after all. We were way beyond emergencies by now. I had built it all up; tear it all apart and burn it to the ground, I will.
Knees drawn up, sitting here on the terrace, I tugged my hood, wholly imagined from the whorls of my thoughts, from the purity of nothingness, pulling it further down my face. I leaned back against what I hoped was the bole of a tree. Hoping against hope that my back wasn’t pressed up against the cracked grimy small lantern room. Even when I knew better, I still harbored hope between storms. I had the luxury to rekindle my reality, still I pretended. I was pretty good at feigning stuff, even though everything was a farce, everyone dressed up in motley in the world full of jesters. But I wasn’t here like some tarried words notched and shot across a crisp white paper leaving behind only bloodstains from wrung-out fingers and crumpling the creaseless paper besides.
I was lost in a damp mossy dell, along with the other woodland creatures. I was resting on the forested floor, the ground strewn with pine needles and the faithless autumn leaves. Frail outlines of green ferns dappling me so persuasively that I wanted to drown in the sea of leaves. But. A thought. A kiss wreathed in fog of memory. A breath. A breath. A breath shuddered out of me. Once again, I was the self-exiled knight, armorless, stranded on this greedy monolith of some bygone sentimentality, a past romanticized by the claws of history.
Smoking a cigarette, Salem by default, I thought about what to do next whilst I cradled a heavy piece of metal in my other hand. Chin on knee, I glanced sideways looking over that yonder horizon where the stars were still frozen in a borrowed sky. Moon long past gone, probably off to eat something other than me. A tasty repast was due, wouldn’t grudge the bloodthirsty savage that. The splendor that was the sun wasn’t awake yet, its ruinous fingers yet to discolor my world. Though the stars looked drunk this fine morn. I wonder what they were seeing looking down at me like they were. Cupshotten as they were, the stars did clear off the morning mist that was the moon’s stale breath.
The rain was searching for me and I was content to wait for it. Worrying my cigarette, for once nibbling poison that was foreign, not something I made myself. A quiet comeuppance. A drag in and smoke out; my litany for the rains. A slim stalk of smoke curled up, tendrils of not-so-brittle smoke reaching the skies like a scythe ready to harvest the crops, to cut it open and make it spill all its rusty secrets. I pulled on my cigarette, the pall of smoke billowing out from between the webs of my fingers were the pennons of hope that drifted up to the sky that couldn’t quite decide whether it wanted to be day or night. But that crazy talk was a dream for spring in this wintersleep, and I was no martyr. The craziest part was that that hope wasn’t unattainable.
Emitting from somewhere behind me, a slice of light beamed past where I was sitting. Then the electric lamp whirred, whirled, continuing to go around, rotating more so by habit than by anything else. The splash of light moved away from me making rounds, then coming back as if it were alive, it jerked around toward me, circling, alternating between truth and falsehood. One moment it had me pinned in brightness bathing me in its fake warmth and the next moment it had me in blindness dousing me in shadows.
I drew on my cigarette as the false light made its rounds spinning crazy tales of its own. I suppose I was waiting for the right moment to paint it all black. Blackness dredged up from the deepest pits. All the blackness I do possess I’ll give it all back. I glanced up fugitively at where I reckoned Valhalla to be, blinking back. I cradled what I cradled. I smoked in the sounds and blew out the clouds made gray from my little red lungs. I looked up. If you forgive me; I’ll never forgive you.
You sent no valkyries. I ain’t no soldier. You denied me much, but, don’t deny me this much. Verily the least we could do on this last of days is forgive each other’s existence. It’s only fair.
Then all the pieces were rent apart, no longer fitting together.
I watched the unkindness of ravens moving away and the kindness of rain coming in, approaching me….. then closing in from all sides. What sky there was, was being engulfed by something even more fickle than it was.
The sky sneaked off. The clouds sneaked in. My posture matching the ceilings I didn’t paint. This was not my chapel. Yet the clouds could only threaten to drench me; I was already sinking in a deluge I caused myself. So I can’t really whine about it, can’t be up in arms about it, and demand redress. There was no refund for this play.
One final leisure drag of my very existence and I tossed the remnants of my last supper, along with pieces of a pipedream over the crumbling guardrail. I watched the cigarette stub sail over in a smug arch falling down to the hymning rocks and the green bitter waters below. I honestly didn’t know if the cigarette butt singed the sea or the sea ate it. If I listened hard, I'd imagined dragons. No, I imagined hearing a very tiny hiss of sacrifice as the sea swallowed the evidence. But as with most things in life, it was moot by then; the rain was coming and unlike the eagles, it came down really hard.
Everything then turned into a watery excuse, a blur of acceptance. Here comes the rain again. There goes the pain. It knows what I’ve done, it knows of my crimes that aren’t crimes. If it was possible for those specks of swollen globs to nod, then the rainwater was nodding, assenting to my thoughts. I’ve always suspected rain to be a little sentient, self-aware in a way that other wetness couldn’t possibly be. It sees too much. It feels too much. It knows too much. It knows me.
I rubbed my face, taking a deep breath. Through the sheet of rain, I caught the sheen of my dad’s old service forty-five, the metal warm in my cold hand. The glare of it filled my vision until it was all that I was seeing. Until that gleam became my world. I looked up at the sodden skies one more time, giving it a chance to relent but it was a no-go. Now or never. The barrel of the gun met the temple of my doom. I pushed the forty-five into my broken skull safety already off, cocking the instrument of my release. Okay, time to go down the rabbit hole again. Crank it up. The bite of the cold metal on my skin was the very song I was looking for. I closed my eyes. I didn’t know where my left temple began and where the relic of my dad’s wars ended. Soon enough I’d be aswirl in the dust of my fathers’ anyhow. I waited for the little movie to start, but no highlights from my life flashed before my eyes. Only one image fluttered in front of me before the moths carried it off with it. So I wasn’t sure whether that passing image was a thought or someone actually coming up the unsafe stairs for me. My own little ex-deus machine bursting up here to save the day. For once the girl saving the monster, my own little shining girl but shining girls don’t save anyone, they just die. And this wendigo only wished to remain lost in the woods, amidst the howling of the wolves, never to be found again.
The sole image. I took her image back from the moths and held her within my thoughts as she once held me within her, just as the rain was holding me now within it. I shook my head, all these ribbons of mementos were sopping wet too. As was my face, but I hoped some of the streaks on my face were tears. I shook away the drenched thought. Pointless. Hers was the image I wasn’t forgetting, that wasn’t pointless. But I gotta hurry for this bullet was locked and loaded. Though this wasn’t a bullet for my valentine. Just for me.
Look at yourself. A man grown. A man grown into the night. A man grown with the ink of the night, still I couldn’t cry. For what I have lost and for what I was gaining. Only the coquettish rain was providing the visuals. Maybe all my tears were dried up, gone baby gone, just like my words. And all that now I carried across this river was the shame of being a writer. Maybe I should embrace that shame. Why not? Already the gun felt more comfortable in my hand than quills and inkwells ever did. It fitted better in my palm, like once the shape of her breast did in my hand. The weight of her heart had always felt right in my grasp; my knuckles be perpetually resting on her areola, brushing her nipple my own thumb would eclipse it. Traitor. Yet I was ashamed I didn’t embrace her before doing this, no farewells of any sort from me. One person who meant the most lost in the ebb and flow of modern life, time snatching away the relevancy. One girl and all my reasons, all of my reasons garbing her made all the sense in the world. One sacred heart within the reality of her chest beating almost against her will. And that one person I rather not see right now. I had said hello coming in but couldn’t afford a goodbye. She had greeted me into her void and yet I couldn’t utter a te veo despues, can’t even give her that. Maybe because it wasn’t true since I won’t be seeing her again. On this side of the rain or the other. Maybe like maskless women, the satisfaction of a proper goodbye was a thing of fiction and a sound farewell a novelty. After all, a writer's farewell is never a goodbye.
Then I heard bare feet pounding the spiral stairs that led up to here, the stones of this tower wailing along with her quick movements. The fading cadence of her breath accompanying her like the shadows of a song no longer there.
I waited.
Just hold the ranks.
Then her voice imploded, flooding the terrace with a warmth that had been missing. Every object on this here terrace right down to my skin was suddenly limned by the glow of her voice.
“Jerry, you up here? I know you are! I’m coming up, just stay there OK? Don’t move.”
I held my breath. I won’t look at her. I won’t.
The stonewalls throbbed with her urgency as she came up. Then I heard the gallery’s trapdoor bang open. If the strength of her heart were in her hands that wooden barrier would have been ripped apart, rent asunder.
She came up in a spillage of her own, in the mists and shadows she was the only solid thing. As she climbed up onto the gallery, a murder of crows erupted overheard, croaking as they flew by, just skirting past the beam of the lantern light.
She actually flinched, ducking a little and I was ready to murder again. Something other than- ah alas, it’s really hard to replenish a butchered trust, isn’t it? Isn’t it.
Still, like every other lie I had ever sold to myself, I opened my eyes. My head jerked toward her, a split second was all I needed to behold her. A glimpse was all that I got and it was devastating enough. I had to turn away, she burned like an almost gone sun. I wanted to see more but one look was all I was getting. The rain that wasn’t there spake the truth and the grief in her sapphire eyes confirmed it. She had other intentions clearly, but I didn’t want her pardon. I rejected her forgiveness. I rescind that kind of generosity. I only wished she’d miss me when she shouldn’t. But here she was, speaking.
“I found you, there you are. Hey, I’ve got something very exciting to …..that will ….. um, change…… What are you doi-
Then she saw me what I was for the first time. Her eyes widened more so than when I had hurt her in all the ways that I had allowed myself.
“Wait, wait, wait, don’t do this. Jerry, there's no-
Here was the awakened sun trying to crawl through the palisades the clouds had put up, trying to claw and paw its way through their fleece resistance, and she wanted me to swallow sunsets. Didn’t she know they’d both burn my throat and wouldn’t go down?
But I gently lowered my hand.
She smiled, visibly shaking with relief.
I smiled in return.
Brook ravens were all that there was left smashing into the rain to dissolve within.
I moved quickly, my hand whipping around.
She recoiled, lurched, then she launched at me-
Between her outstretched hand and my outstretched need, I pulled the trigger.
Lightening smiled, forking across the empty skies like a tongue caressing a soft cheek, thunder rambled. Stuck wetly in the air only the crows in the rain bore witness to a body that fell, sliding down the enliveningly slick-slicked lighthouse.
----------------
Excerpt from my stillborn novel called Slick for some unfathomable reason.
Roughspun words originally written circa 2004. Reworked tweaked reimagined retold retortured 2015. 23. Kelowna.
Something other than my conscience gnawed at me. All my thoughts were warped, in conflict for survival. I quietly found myself in the middle of a revolt. Every little bit that was me at war with parts that weren’t. I was the surrounded Gloucester alone in the woods being betrayed by my own self. Half of me pitted against the shadowed half, the pittance of my very recent decency grappling with my already dwindling self-preservation. Me against me in other words. Words simpler than this world. Words made simpler in this world. But this was my mise en scène. I had set the final stage. And muster on I must. This was the muster point after all. We were way beyond emergencies by now. I had built it all up; tear it all apart and burn it to the ground, I will.
Knees drawn up, sitting here on the terrace, I tugged my hood, wholly imagined from the whorls of my thoughts, from the purity of nothingness, pulling it further down my face. I leaned back against what I hoped was the bole of a tree. Hoping against hope that my back wasn’t pressed up against the cracked grimy small lantern room. Even when I knew better, I still harbored hope between storms. I had the luxury to rekindle my reality, still I pretended. I was pretty good at feigning stuff, even though everything was a farce, everyone dressed up in motley in the world full of jesters. But I wasn’t here like some tarried words notched and shot across a crisp white paper leaving behind only bloodstains from wrung-out fingers and crumpling the creaseless paper besides.
I was lost in a damp mossy dell, along with the other woodland creatures. I was resting on the forested floor, the ground strewn with pine needles and the faithless autumn leaves. Frail outlines of green ferns dappling me so persuasively that I wanted to drown in the sea of leaves. But. A thought. A kiss wreathed in fog of memory. A breath. A breath. A breath shuddered out of me. Once again, I was the self-exiled knight, armorless, stranded on this greedy monolith of some bygone sentimentality, a past romanticized by the claws of history.
Smoking a cigarette, Salem by default, I thought about what to do next whilst I cradled a heavy piece of metal in my other hand. Chin on knee, I glanced sideways looking over that yonder horizon where the stars were still frozen in a borrowed sky. Moon long past gone, probably off to eat something other than me. A tasty repast was due, wouldn’t grudge the bloodthirsty savage that. The splendor that was the sun wasn’t awake yet, its ruinous fingers yet to discolor my world. Though the stars looked drunk this fine morn. I wonder what they were seeing looking down at me like they were. Cupshotten as they were, the stars did clear off the morning mist that was the moon’s stale breath.
The rain was searching for me and I was content to wait for it. Worrying my cigarette, for once nibbling poison that was foreign, not something I made myself. A quiet comeuppance. A drag in and smoke out; my litany for the rains. A slim stalk of smoke curled up, tendrils of not-so-brittle smoke reaching the skies like a scythe ready to harvest the crops, to cut it open and make it spill all its rusty secrets. I pulled on my cigarette, the pall of smoke billowing out from between the webs of my fingers were the pennons of hope that drifted up to the sky that couldn’t quite decide whether it wanted to be day or night. But that crazy talk was a dream for spring in this wintersleep, and I was no martyr. The craziest part was that that hope wasn’t unattainable.
Emitting from somewhere behind me, a slice of light beamed past where I was sitting. Then the electric lamp whirred, whirled, continuing to go around, rotating more so by habit than by anything else. The splash of light moved away from me making rounds, then coming back as if it were alive, it jerked around toward me, circling, alternating between truth and falsehood. One moment it had me pinned in brightness bathing me in its fake warmth and the next moment it had me in blindness dousing me in shadows.
I drew on my cigarette as the false light made its rounds spinning crazy tales of its own. I suppose I was waiting for the right moment to paint it all black. Blackness dredged up from the deepest pits. All the blackness I do possess I’ll give it all back. I glanced up fugitively at where I reckoned Valhalla to be, blinking back. I cradled what I cradled. I smoked in the sounds and blew out the clouds made gray from my little red lungs. I looked up. If you forgive me; I’ll never forgive you.
You sent no valkyries. I ain’t no soldier. You denied me much, but, don’t deny me this much. Verily the least we could do on this last of days is forgive each other’s existence. It’s only fair.
Then all the pieces were rent apart, no longer fitting together.
I watched the unkindness of ravens moving away and the kindness of rain coming in, approaching me….. then closing in from all sides. What sky there was, was being engulfed by something even more fickle than it was.
The sky sneaked off. The clouds sneaked in. My posture matching the ceilings I didn’t paint. This was not my chapel. Yet the clouds could only threaten to drench me; I was already sinking in a deluge I caused myself. So I can’t really whine about it, can’t be up in arms about it, and demand redress. There was no refund for this play.
One final leisure drag of my very existence and I tossed the remnants of my last supper, along with pieces of a pipedream over the crumbling guardrail. I watched the cigarette stub sail over in a smug arch falling down to the hymning rocks and the green bitter waters below. I honestly didn’t know if the cigarette butt singed the sea or the sea ate it. If I listened hard, I'd imagined dragons. No, I imagined hearing a very tiny hiss of sacrifice as the sea swallowed the evidence. But as with most things in life, it was moot by then; the rain was coming and unlike the eagles, it came down really hard.
Everything then turned into a watery excuse, a blur of acceptance. Here comes the rain again. There goes the pain. It knows what I’ve done, it knows of my crimes that aren’t crimes. If it was possible for those specks of swollen globs to nod, then the rainwater was nodding, assenting to my thoughts. I’ve always suspected rain to be a little sentient, self-aware in a way that other wetness couldn’t possibly be. It sees too much. It feels too much. It knows too much. It knows me.
I rubbed my face, taking a deep breath. Through the sheet of rain, I caught the sheen of my dad’s old service forty-five, the metal warm in my cold hand. The glare of it filled my vision until it was all that I was seeing. Until that gleam became my world. I looked up at the sodden skies one more time, giving it a chance to relent but it was a no-go. Now or never. The barrel of the gun met the temple of my doom. I pushed the forty-five into my broken skull safety already off, cocking the instrument of my release. Okay, time to go down the rabbit hole again. Crank it up. The bite of the cold metal on my skin was the very song I was looking for. I closed my eyes. I didn’t know where my left temple began and where the relic of my dad’s wars ended. Soon enough I’d be aswirl in the dust of my fathers’ anyhow. I waited for the little movie to start, but no highlights from my life flashed before my eyes. Only one image fluttered in front of me before the moths carried it off with it. So I wasn’t sure whether that passing image was a thought or someone actually coming up the unsafe stairs for me. My own little ex-deus machine bursting up here to save the day. For once the girl saving the monster, my own little shining girl but shining girls don’t save anyone, they just die. And this wendigo only wished to remain lost in the woods, amidst the howling of the wolves, never to be found again.
The sole image. I took her image back from the moths and held her within my thoughts as she once held me within her, just as the rain was holding me now within it. I shook my head, all these ribbons of mementos were sopping wet too. As was my face, but I hoped some of the streaks on my face were tears. I shook away the drenched thought. Pointless. Hers was the image I wasn’t forgetting, that wasn’t pointless. But I gotta hurry for this bullet was locked and loaded. Though this wasn’t a bullet for my valentine. Just for me.
Look at yourself. A man grown. A man grown into the night. A man grown with the ink of the night, still I couldn’t cry. For what I have lost and for what I was gaining. Only the coquettish rain was providing the visuals. Maybe all my tears were dried up, gone baby gone, just like my words. And all that now I carried across this river was the shame of being a writer. Maybe I should embrace that shame. Why not? Already the gun felt more comfortable in my hand than quills and inkwells ever did. It fitted better in my palm, like once the shape of her breast did in my hand. The weight of her heart had always felt right in my grasp; my knuckles be perpetually resting on her areola, brushing her nipple my own thumb would eclipse it. Traitor. Yet I was ashamed I didn’t embrace her before doing this, no farewells of any sort from me. One person who meant the most lost in the ebb and flow of modern life, time snatching away the relevancy. One girl and all my reasons, all of my reasons garbing her made all the sense in the world. One sacred heart within the reality of her chest beating almost against her will. And that one person I rather not see right now. I had said hello coming in but couldn’t afford a goodbye. She had greeted me into her void and yet I couldn’t utter a te veo despues, can’t even give her that. Maybe because it wasn’t true since I won’t be seeing her again. On this side of the rain or the other. Maybe like maskless women, the satisfaction of a proper goodbye was a thing of fiction and a sound farewell a novelty. After all, a writer's farewell is never a goodbye.
Then I heard bare feet pounding the spiral stairs that led up to here, the stones of this tower wailing along with her quick movements. The fading cadence of her breath accompanying her like the shadows of a song no longer there.
I waited.
Just hold the ranks.
Then her voice imploded, flooding the terrace with a warmth that had been missing. Every object on this here terrace right down to my skin was suddenly limned by the glow of her voice.
“Jerry, you up here? I know you are! I’m coming up, just stay there OK? Don’t move.”
I held my breath. I won’t look at her. I won’t.
The stonewalls throbbed with her urgency as she came up. Then I heard the gallery’s trapdoor bang open. If the strength of her heart were in her hands that wooden barrier would have been ripped apart, rent asunder.
She came up in a spillage of her own, in the mists and shadows she was the only solid thing. As she climbed up onto the gallery, a murder of crows erupted overheard, croaking as they flew by, just skirting past the beam of the lantern light.
She actually flinched, ducking a little and I was ready to murder again. Something other than- ah alas, it’s really hard to replenish a butchered trust, isn’t it? Isn’t it.
Still, like every other lie I had ever sold to myself, I opened my eyes. My head jerked toward her, a split second was all I needed to behold her. A glimpse was all that I got and it was devastating enough. I had to turn away, she burned like an almost gone sun. I wanted to see more but one look was all I was getting. The rain that wasn’t there spake the truth and the grief in her sapphire eyes confirmed it. She had other intentions clearly, but I didn’t want her pardon. I rejected her forgiveness. I rescind that kind of generosity. I only wished she’d miss me when she shouldn’t. But here she was, speaking.
“I found you, there you are. Hey, I’ve got something very exciting to …..that will ….. um, change…… What are you doi-
Then she saw me what I was for the first time. Her eyes widened more so than when I had hurt her in all the ways that I had allowed myself.
“Wait, wait, wait, don’t do this. Jerry, there's no-
Here was the awakened sun trying to crawl through the palisades the clouds had put up, trying to claw and paw its way through their fleece resistance, and she wanted me to swallow sunsets. Didn’t she know they’d both burn my throat and wouldn’t go down?
But I gently lowered my hand.
She smiled, visibly shaking with relief.
I smiled in return.
Brook ravens were all that there was left smashing into the rain to dissolve within.
I moved quickly, my hand whipping around.
She recoiled, lurched, then she launched at me-
Between her outstretched hand and my outstretched need, I pulled the trigger.
Lightening smiled, forking across the empty skies like a tongue caressing a soft cheek, thunder rambled. Stuck wetly in the air only the crows in the rain bore witness to a body that fell, sliding down the enliveningly slick-slicked lighthouse.
----------------
Excerpt from my stillborn novel called Slick for some unfathomable reason.
Roughspun words originally written circa 2004. Reworked tweaked reimagined retold retortured 2015. 23. Kelowna.
