Six Months Later

Standing by the kettle
In the kitchenette
At work
Jack has a flash
Of the Kid
In his air spring soles


Elaine
In free-fall

Air Spring Soles

The first time they met the Kid caught Jack looking down at his sneakers…

I know what you’re going to say, Jack. They’re not for you, Jack, but I happen to like these air spring soles. - They’re world-beaters.

The kid was always making Jack laugh, just like that…

Seen that film, Jack, with Bob de Niro? – The one where he’s a gangster.

He’s always a gangster.

I know, Jack. But this one he’s the boss.

Well, he’s always one of those, too.

The kid pulls a face. Jack laughs because it was just like Bob de Niro, but somehow different and like the Kid.


Don’t you ever stop acting? Jack says.

Maybe, says the Kid (flashing his sneakers). Maybe, when I’m flying.

Two Sugars

With the Kid it was somehow different.
With the Kid Jack never got up to make the tea; it was always the other way round.

The Kid, wise to Jack and his little tea-making ceremony, took it all in his long, loping stride.

Reckon it’s about time for our cup of tea, Jack.

As the steam rose from the kettle, he turned to Jack:

Two sugars, isn’t it, Jack?

You know how to make it, Jack said.

But the kid never put the sugars in.

Jack did not like sugar in his tea; it was just their little joke – like the sneakers.

Tea Maker

This was the point, too, of the tea. – It brought ritual, ceremony to the encounter. - Of course, clients didn’t always notice – being boxed in – stalked by round the clock shadows. But Jack made a point of it – as if his tea making could cancel out the menace – threat of the terrible Pinteresque silences. Sooner or later clients gave appreciative nods. Said he made a “good cuppa”.

A good brew

To make a good brew
First, fill kettle
With fresh water from tap;
Second, search out mug with generous rim.
When kettle boils,
Swill hot water in pot.
It’s important to throw out water
Before putting in bags.
(Three is ideal for two people.)
Wait a while, but
Don’t forget
It mustn’t stew.

Empathy in an Absurdist Piece

Jack never had cause to regret his former profession. With his special talent for the most grief-stricken, obstreperous of clients, Jack worked his magic just like he had on stage, only this time it was for real.

Although he never quite understood it, Jack knew in a vague sort of way what he was doing. – He never sought to challenge the client, or question his assumptions. The key to it was accepting their reality, no matter how weird. In this sense it was just like acting.
When they were shaking, trembling and really about to crack, it seemed he could give it to them through the giant will of performance - having learnt in his acting days how to keep still, and just let his breathing do the rest.

On stage, this had always been a Jack problem – too much awareness of the fact he was acting. Here in his current job, where perhaps he was risking more, Jack could, however - without very much effort – feel himself into an appropriate response. – He had, after all, the insight from great drama. – Even if he did not always connect, and in many cases he could not connect, he accepted it all like a free flowing absurdist piece.

Tributes

Lyrics: H. Thompson
Vocals: I. Stanton & L. Butcher
Guitars: I. Stanton & L. Butcher
Slide: I. Stanton
Harmonica: L. Butcher

The savage doctor

The savage doctor orders
The savage doctor proscribes
Something to calm him down

The savage doctor orders
The patient imbibes
Something to make him forget

The savage doctor proscribes
Something to take away the pain
And the fret

He the great placebo requires
To connect back up all his
Faulty wires (Repeat)

Figure in the Carpet

Jack in his surgery: waiting for the one he mentally calls the kid.
Jack glances at his watch.
Nearly the end of the session; the kid still has not showed.

Jack knows what that means.
Jack has seen the drawings of the figure –
figure in the carpet…

Figure this.
His own figure pace the kid’s figure
Annihilated in a rage of scribbles.

Time’s healing drag

Time’s cruel cigarette
Time’s healing drag

The months passed; Jack went back to work.
He soldiered on.
Even if all the time Drew’s photo of the falling man was on the back of his mind…

As if Drew’s photo was a daguerreotype for what happened to Elaine… coupled with the sense that he was somehow just as culpable as Elaine’s c-u-n-t of boss for not being there with Elaine…

A curious fact

Among the many curious facts regarding that violent day, the one that stuck in Jack’s throat was the one regarding Elaine’s boss at Accidental Life who was not to be found in his office but in a meeting just across the road… Although Jack did not – could not know it, the meeting, coincidentally, did not include Senator Carson, but his old friend – the dangerous Langland Springer.

Get out clause

It was a sick joke.
Someone was always being witty
In this shitty city… although it accepted responsibility for conventional catastrophes/ freaks of nature i.e.earthquakes, tidal waves - thunderbolts and lightning, Accidental Life was in no way responsible for such anomalous events as jumping out of buildings on mass.

Just Like Flying

Jack got a call from his wife Elaine. She told him smoke was coming in the room, coming through the vents.

Her breath was laboured. Jack asked her why she didn’t go down and she said it was really hot out there. Jack said, ‘Darling, it’ll be all right, you’ll get down.’ She said that she loved him and to tell the boys she loved them.” Jack said, ‘I love you too and to call me when you get down’.”

Elaine never called.

She was found on the street in front of the building across from hers.

Whether she jumped, Jack didn’t know. He hoped that she had succumbed to the smoke but it did not seem likely.

In some ways, he thought, it might just be the last element of control, that everything around you is happening and you can’t stop it, but this is something you can do. To be out of the smoke and the heat, to be out in the air . . . it must have felt like flying.

Falling Man

Fire rained, screams and soot filled the air and people on the ground began to flee, but Drew stayed to photograph the falling. Later, back in his offices, one of his shots intrigued him: a man, seemingly composed, his neat form set against an endless background of glass and steel. It has a stillness, suggesting an almost private moment that left those who saw it feeling uncomfortable and voyeuristic. How could such a quiet moment occur on such a violent day?

Dear O

The letter begins:

In my absence – this absence that has taken me far away I have failed to read the signs. – I have been blind to those little things you value. – Now I find myself thinking of you – and what our friendship meant and still means... The suggestion has never come up until now. – I wonder if you would understand this. – This new sense I have of myself in relation to you, O… How can we bring it back, the magic of those times?

All this I thought as I saw the sheets turned back on the bed.

Motel room

In the motel room the sheets had been turned back, and a lavender bag placed on the pillow. It made me think of my friend, O who likes everything to be just so…

Reception

At the reception the client spoke in a loud voice. Country club type, he enunciated very clearly, just in case they didn’t get it…

When they asked to see his credit card, the client produced cash on the nose. No questions asked. - I wanted to punch him for making it so obvious.

Neverland

Someone in the bar spoke up.
I did not hear what they said. – I suppose it must have been an admonition – a call to pipe down, shut up.

I looked round but there were only a couple of surly-faced drunks. The barman, had he been human, would have stopped polishing the glasses…

The client paid for my drink; we walked out the bar into the car port.

Dawn was edging out night, as we drove among the nylon pines.

The rich may have populated this Neverland with their villas and tennis courts – filled it with their unspoken crimes. Here, you cannot escape the eerie sense of make believe, and confection.

Laughter

I could not help it; the laughter in me was loud. – Like someone – I think Raoul for obvious reasons (those elephant ears) - had committed a terrible, social gaff, and I was not going to let them off lightly.

What’s so funny? The client kept asking, but I couldn’t – for the laughter – get it out.

Every time I did I thought of Jan… lying on top of me. I could not move; I couldn’t get the headset off. - Jan was dead to the world. – I called out to Raoul. Raoul came running. He was – we both were – almost apologetic.

New Impression

Floating on a table
Floating on a table
In a room –
The room has a vaulted ceiling
Like that of a church.
Soaked to the skin
and floating…
The clothes washed off me
but for flimsy underwear. –
I begin to shudder.

The shuddering subsides into a more subtle sensation. As if someone very expert – who knows me well (!) – has his hand on my nether regions.

Tsunami

The wall of water rises up
It advances with surprising speed
Just like the tsunami

The wall crashes over me
It pulls me down
I try to come up for air
A voice (was it that of
Mr Euginides) tells me:
Fear death by drowning.

Far away (2)

What point did it occur? – I was seized – catapulted; I found myself again

Far away –

A sensation of water receding,
As of the tide…
And then a sandy beach,
Rocks gradually revealing themselves with my bare foot,
The sea in a generous slide
Over all manner of pretty shells.

The headset

Jan had not touched the brandy or the cigarillo. Instead he had brought out the headset with baseball size mufflers from the attaché case…

When Jan put on the headset, his lips gave a little tremor. The dimples on his face became creases. – His body began to twitch and he crossed his legs as if to hide his crotch.

Looking on at his gibbering face, I began to wonder if it was merely embarrassing.

Brandy and cigarillos

See what I mean, said Raoul. You can’t tell the difference. –

Holding the glass up to the light, Jan leaned back in the chair.

Raoul let out:

Hey! Careful! That chair’s got a gamy leg!

Raoul took the brandy glass from Jan and placed it back on the table.

Oh, we mustn’t forget these! he said, grinning. The Bradford millionaires!

From a box in the middle of the table he took out three cigarillos. Here, he said, you can tell the difference.

Enter Raoul

When Raoul entered with the brandy and glasses, I resisted the temptation to laugh. - Raoul had been wearing braces over his white shirt until half way through evening, he let them hang down with his shirttails. At some point he must have gone to take a leak because the front of the shirt stuck out of his flies - like a pair of elephant’s ears.

Rant v Monologue

It was the rag end of the week; there were two empty bottles of wine on the table, and Jan was in the middle of a rant. – What was it about? – Jan’s rant? Is the Pope a Catholic! - Divorce? Single sex parents? - Police v. nanny state. – Rant v. Monologue. Beware the Ides of March, the misalliance of the zodiacs, the scream that comes from within. – Perhaps all and none of these things I forget…

Far away

Suddenly he was coming towards me, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I suppose I could have looked away but I found my eyes were drawn back to the approaching figure.

He stood in front of my table without a word. I for my part tried to meet his gaze. Without much success I fear.

You don’t recognise me, he said.

It wasn’t a question. He was right. I did not recognise him. I did not know him.

He must have said a name – or something else I did not quite catch. He asked if he could sit down.

I said yes, why not?

Or maybe I didn’t speak but rather gave a sign - a little nod of my head.

For a long time I did not say anything. - It’s not that I felt shy, but rather, just a few minutes before I had been sitting there drinking my cappuccino and reading my book, like every morning, in readiness for another day, when out of nowhere, I had been seized, catapulted. -

Attaché case

The man turned the pages of his newspaper – one after the other as if he was looking for a particular section/article (even though by this stage I was ninety nine percent sure he was looking for me). Finally, he folded the newspaper and put it back in his attaché case.

Finishing his coffee, he picked the attaché case off the counter. As he did one of the catches on the attaché case flicked back up. He stopped to press it back down. – There was I noticed a smile on his face.

Flying Umbrellas

There was I noticed a man standing by the bar. On the floor, resting against his bare knee, was a battered old attaché case. The reason I noticed this I guess – it was so old and battered - so obviously out of fashion. Just like his summer shorts. The effect it had on me was comic.

The man – in keeping with his comic role – was drinking a freshly squeezed orange juice from a straw. As he sucked up the juice, he scanned the room; our eyes met briefly.

On finishing his juice, the man turned to the barman and ordered an espresso.

When you ground the coffee, I heard, don’t ground it too much, it’s no good if it’s fine.

A few seconds passed, and I could feel his eyes on me again. Somehow I resisted the temptation to look round and see if there was someone behind me. At the back of me, after all, was only a poster on the wall – of Rene Magritte’s flying umbrellas! I knew that because I sat there at the same table almost every day. Drinking my cappuccino.

Untitled

I didn’t like the book I was reading. It had one of those plots that struggle to hold your attention. – The effort was like some body builder flexing his muscles to catch the ripples of applause.

Man With Machine Gun

He di’ not know why he di’ it. He di’ no’ want to piss the boss off. But you know it was kinda fun tinking about all dem firecrackers whizzing round and see dose fine young ladies shaking their ti’. De chandelier is dere to ‘it. You go’ do it once in your life.

Flashback

Observing all this from the lofty heights of his cockpit, Henri Claude was unnerved by a flashback of Garcia swaying at the open window with his machine gun. A girl – must’ve been Hajda – one of Carlos’s regulars dancing round the table, as fireworks lit up the night sky, and enflamed nostrils twitched over lines of white powder on the marble top. With this nasal spectre he seemed to hear the voice of his former associate. “It’s a set up, Henri C. - You always know when it’s a set up.” There was that kind of lucidity in his eyes that made it somehow all the more frightening and real when he remembered how it all ended: Garcia grinning like a fool as he shot up the chandelier. -

Dulce Et Decorum Est

In the ensuing panic gas masks were issued from supermarkets. When stocks began to run down, it was feared people would charge the ministry. The Government rising to the challenge issued a self-help booklet showing you how to make a mask with the aid of Japanese origami… For the on-line service they managed to get hold of a Shakespearean thesp, though it was decided, after much dragging of feet to cut the line about an ecstasy of fumbling … no one wanted to upset teenage sensibilities.

Motel Room in the des(s)ert

VOICE 1: Personally, I had been led to believe they were more appropriate techniques for extracting information.

VOICE 2: Clearly you have been misinformed.

VOICE 1: How do you mean?

VOICE 2: It is like an extremely cunning master of Chinese torture. Eventually you blame yourself for the drip of water that falls on your head.

VOICE 1: (Laughter) To think we used to rely so heavily on electricity!

VOICE 2: (Indecipherable)… fucking Grail of electricity!

(More laughter)

VOICE 1: So tell me what do you make of the letter and its cryptic message?

VOICE 2: Like everyone else, I guess… The thread comes from beyond. It banks on the fear of defamation.

Langland Springer

Was an anxious man
Triple bypass to his name

Langland Springer
Was a man anxious
To nail his imperial claims

Langland Springer
Was a dangerous man
Triple bypass to his name

Get well soon,
Said Senator Carson
All the same

On the menu

Was of course
The famous inky black chowder
And a Sicilian white wine
That tickled the Senator’s
Fancy,
Though not that of
His abstemious wife.

Unexpectedly,
the Senator found
he was enjoying himself
though not his wife

When in the middle of
Dessert - a
Lemon sorbet
Scooped in passion fruit
The call came
From his old friend,
Langland
Springer

Black powder

A few hours later, the Senator’s young secretary was rushed to hospital with a critical respiratory condition. Wracked with guilt at the thought of her death at the hands of the black powder found on the adhesive of the said brown envelope, Senator Carson decided to treat himself and his wife to dinner at the chic-est eatery in town.

Blank Page

In this moment of global crisis a nondescript brown envelope was posted to Senator Carson’s office. The Senator’s young secretary failing to locate the letter knife opened the said envelope – fatally by hand - onto a blank page. Pondering aloud the meaning of this surreal tease, the Senator’s young secretary did not recall Mallarme, but rather her own pretty perplexity in the gilt mirror over the Senator’s desk; which the Senator – out of the habits of a lifetime could neither confirm nor deny.

Turning point (passive voice)

So, it began not as she had projected it – but as he feared. With world opinion severely shaken; governments who wished to act and start a war held hostage by the loose cannon of international law; all flights – in compensation - were cancelled, and squadrons of fighter planes were sent out to patrol the skies. Armies were stationed at airports where all good citizens were subjected to full body search and perusal of their criminal records. Briefly, for a few weeks, it seemed to those with a taste for dark metaphysics that a turning point in history – as represented by the critical mass of the winding gyre - had been reached. -

Three Days later

She was swiping messages on the answer phone when she heard his voice – not from the plane funnily enough – but the top of the tower where he was describing the view.

You should see it, darling. From here you can see the whole shitty city!

His voice came and went; he was drunk she knew. - No doubt it was the combination of circumstances – the fact that she had been cleaning his study – and found the Cuban cigar stubbed out in the ashtray that caused her to burst into tears.

Man sitting over wing

The man sitting over the wing, was not a boring man even if he had been talking to his neighbour about the paucity of in-flight entertainment. The man sitting over the wing was not a boring man even if he was strangely affected by the strident voice of the actor. If Mulder dies, we all die, he heard.

The man sitting over the wing was not a boring man but he was rapidly losing consciousness… Some few seconds before the end, he thought of his mobile switched off in the overhead locker.

Sci Fi Buff Answer

In the spirit of geekery
The Wrath of Khan

Zen Reader Question

Question
in the spirit of jouissance
what did the tiger see?

Black Hole

Several thousand miles away, in a sky full of crackling thunderbolts and cinematic rage a plane dipped and fell a thousand feet through an air pocket that seemed for a second to have slipped into a black hole. When the plane righted itself, the Captain turned to the co-pilot to wipe the sweat from his face. Wow! Tiger what about that! But Tiger did not look back for he was still staring into the black hole.

Night Plane

Flying lowish over the ocean, Henri Claude got the shock of his life when something – what exactly he could not tell – but for a pair of bulbous black eyes in a fish bowl - flew at him out the moonlit clouds. Holy shit! He cried as the oversize butterfly wings fluttered above the cockpit. What’s going on!

The weird creature did not seem hostile, however – just kept staring at him out of those bulbous black eyes and kind of gurgling inside the fish bowl. The Frenchman - refusing to give in to this apparition – nor daring to think of it as the omen, presage of things to come turned up the volume on Burning Ring of Fire and closed his eyes. When Henri Claude blinked again, the weird creature had disappeared to leave him staring down those other chimeras of the dark skies - the coastguard.