A large medical factory where I once stayed and am in fact staying again

On a bed in a large medical factory I lie awake. A man approaches me and suggests I not touch the sheets. I ask him why. Well, they’re covered in things, he says. I ask him what sorts of things, and he tells me. I throw the sheets off.

I have been here for some time. I of course do not know how long. Another man approaches me. He is surrounded by people, but so long as he is there they will not say anything to me. As soon as he leaves I know they will begin to taunt me. It is one of the things you become accustomed to here. Their taunts. The man tells me that there is a problem. He cannot seem to find my file. My file? I ask, not realizing that, of course, I have a file. Yes, he says. Your file. He does not tell me what a man without a file is to do, so I leave.

Once outside I feel strangely excited. A man without a file ought to be able to do all sorts of things. I, however, can think of nothing to do, so return to the large medical factory. I note that the sheets on my bed have been replaced, and am careful to remove them before I lie down again.

Her nose curled upwards. It was an enticement. When she was a child she would set her cat on her face. She thought this might make her nose curl upwards one day. It had worked. Her nose now curled upwards and people were, generally, enticed by it.

In a far corner of a house

In a far corner of a house, wedged in between a bathroom and a closet, sits a small room without windows. In this small room sits a small, lumpish man. He is seated in the room’s one and only seat, and he is talking to himself. The subject of his talk is unfixed, shifting arbitrarily from one thing to another. He nods frequently, exclaims often, and is constantly interrupting himself with prolonged sighs. He is a confused man, and upset.

People, he says at one point, cannot seem to stand a bit of sense. This is interrupted by a sharp screech, followed by another declarative statement: I cannot fathom that man with the teeth over there. And, perhaps, he couldn’t fathom the man with the teeth, and perhaps people cannot stand a bit of sense, but none of this is of any importance, that is, none of the things he said or exclaimed or sighed are ever of any importance. The only thing of any importance is that there is a room for this man – tucked away, naturally, but nonetheless there; a room in which this confused man, this upset man, can find some sanctuary from everyone else – all those people who seem so certain about things, those people who do not seem to be upset at all. That is, it is important for a confused, mildly upset man to have a corner somewhere, even if that corner does not have windows, and even if it only has a single chair.

The French Pear

He had left a French pear on the table for her. When she saw it she was surprised. A pear? she thought to herself. And he, squatting beneath the table, could tell by her face what she had thought. It’s not a pear! He screamed from the floor. It’s not a pear!

She hated how he could always tell just exactly what she was thinking. I know that, she said. Of course it’s not a pear.

She hurried from the room, and he remained squatting under the table.

Yipin the Cat

Outside of the bedroom sits a small, sounding creature. It bothers him. He looks down at the packets and thinks of words. The only words he can think of he reads. He has to read for thoughts now. And the animal won’t stop sounding. It sounds interminably. It is going to leap, he fears, leap up or out and onto some unwilling frightened part of himself. That is what creatures that sound do. It is muttering and sounding interminably. It sounds like a man now, sad and sharp and deep. It is hurt. He cannot think of anything but packages, each one nearly full, or full mostly, and each one with words. He cannot remember certain things. Names or names for things. He cannot remember her at all, or at least not through the creature’s constant soundings. Not much can be thought of or recalled in the presence of a creature sounding. It bleats interminably, always, just outside of the bedroom. It bleats on and on.

Then from off of the table a small sheet emerges. On it are faces drawn in black ink and bodies that strain and curl off the page. People cannot sound on pages. We cannot have people sounding for nothing. Or rather we cannot have anything sounding for nothing. And by this I of course mean that a thing on a page curling and straining cannot be allowed to sound, simply and for no reason at all, but that is of course what simply means: no reason at all.

I cannot hear the soundings at all now. I can still see the packages. They still have words. White words against an inky surface. The letters more dry than the surface. The creature has at last stopped sounding. For now. As is the case with all things interminable. When it resumes I will not have this to write on any longer, for I have already written on it now. I have filled up this small and crumpled thing. I will have to endure the small sounding creature with nothing at all now. But for these packages, I suppose. And the words that they have printed on them. And their inky insides.

James H. W. James Academy for Children

An important trait to look for in a child: having at least two middle initials. This is the motto of James H. W. James Academy for Children.

Pupils: 6
Avg. Weight: 74 lbs.
Favorite Color: Varies
Knowledge Attained: Some
Tuition: Varies
Courses Offered: Varies
Mascot: Mallard

James is the only teacher at James H. W. James Academy for Children. He is, however, constantly in search of new faculty to relieve him from what he calls “the great burden of pedagogy.” James is willing to admit that it is a noble enough profession, but after doing it for as long as he has been doing it (nobody is certain how long a time this really is – James H. W. James Academy for Children opened its doors 8 months ago), one simply needs a rest.

The above list is a reproduction of an ad James put in the local paper in order to solicit help. Nobody responded, and thus in my nearly boundless generosity, I felt that I would try to help out this dear, dear man. I write this, then, in the hopes of finding some member of my no doubt immense audience who would be willing to assist James in his pedagogical pursuit. If interested, please send your resume and a cover letter to James H.W. James Academy.

There is a series of small mounds. As he walks across and over them, he cannot help but frown. He hears something that sounds like a bug in the distance. He hates bugs, and thus hears them everywhere. For lunch he will have a leg of chicken. He does not yet know how he is going to attain such a thing. My my my, he thinks to himself. Then he pats the top of his head. He does this in order to check for hair. He is certain one day he will pat the top of his head and nothing will be there. For supper he will have another leg of chicken. He has not forgotten anything that the old woman said to him. But there are times when he does not keep what she said to him in mind. This, to some, amounts to the same thing as forgetting. Mindful always of others, the man wears shoes publicly. He also speaks in high, cheerful tones. Before bed he dips his face into a small bowl of olive oil. This, he says, is for good measure. And then he goes to sleep.

Tun's Bothered

Horrible things are always happening to Tun. He tries not to let them bother him, but anyone can tell that they do. Some people are just like that, I guess.

Betty Kerchif

Elizabeth Kerchif is not allowed to yawn or blush. She is allowed to do certain other things. They would not be of any interest to the common reader, though, so I will not bother to list any of them for you.

Miss Kerchif lives in a smallish room in a largish house. She knows the others she lives with, but not, as she often remarks, intimately. Instead, her relationship with the others in the house is a subservient one. They tell her what to do, and she does it. This arrangement is suitable to both Elizabeth and the others.

One evening Elizabeth Kerchif will hiccup in front of several of the others. At first they will not know how to react, for none of them have ever heard Elizabeth Kerchif hiccup before. After some time passes, however, someone will inform Miss Kerchif that she is no longer allowed to hiccup. She will nod her head in understanding, and never hiccup again.

Sharing a Drink

Having split two thirds of my drink with the man sitting next to me, I notice no change in his expression. He is not unpleasant to look at, this man with whom I shared my drink, but he smells dreadful. That is fine. I do not condemn him for this.

I have of late begun reading books again. None of them are very good, naturally, but all of them are full of other people. I have begun to reacquaint myself with my fellow man, I suppose, through these books. I am actually somewhat overwhelmed by them all, but that is ok. You see, I have a horrific memory, so I am able to forget most of them almost immediately.

I do not want to forget the man sitting next to me, though. He is not unpleasant to look at, as I have mentioned, and he has shared a drink with me. Not many people are willing to share a drink with me anymore. There was a time, surely, when I could share a drink with nearly anyone, but that time, I’m afraid, has passed. In any case, I have written this down, like all those others who have written all those books down, to try to preserve some faint memory of the man who is at present by my side, but who will not likely remain there much longer.

The man’s body wilts over a crutch. He looks stuck. People walk by and snigger. People are always sniggering at something.

Gypsum Weed

Gypsum weed is a nasty little devil. People’s toes have been lost to the stuff. Certain creatures’ toes too. People seem to forget this, though, and are always bringing gypsum weed around. Whenever I see anyone with a stalk of the stuff, I declare aloud I won’t have it. People typically clear the area of gypsum weed when they hear this declaration, but some simply carry on as if I hadn’t said anything at all. I always find this quite upsetting.

Lop or Sided

He had a patch of hair towards the center of his head, and that was all in terms of top hair. It was of a thin, flaxen variety, and people tended to shudder when they saw it. His name was Lop.

When Lop was in grade school, the cleverest boy in his class began calling him Sided. The other children did not know why this particular name was so funny, but they all took a great deal of pleasure in calling Lop Sided.

Upon reaching a suitable age, Lop moved very far from home. He felt a great sense of relief at no longer being known as Sided, and instead simply as Lop. Then one day a terrible thing happened. A boy from his hometown showed up in his new town and, in a very public manner, addressed Lop as Sided. Everyone around found this devastatingly funny, and soon Lop was once again known to all as Sided.

It is not clear why Lop found the name Sided so objectionable, but a person’s reasons for finding anything any way are rarely very clear. Suffice it to say that Lop did find the name Sided objectionable, and that the return of this name made his life in his newly adopted home just as unpleasant as the one he had tried so very hard to flee.

The Sort of Person I Would Like to Meet

A woman sets up a small lamp near her bed. This, she thinks, is adorable. Other adorable things in this woman’s bedroom: her rug, her chair, her bookshelf, and her small stack of postcards. Whenever she has anyone over to her house she says Oh you absolutely must come see what I’ve done with my bedroom. People typically oblige her, following her back to her room and feigning interest for a moment or two. It would be interesting, though, to meet a person who refused to oblige her. That would be the sort of person that I would like to meet, anyway.

Hair and Sand

Her curled hair pulled mightily towards the floor. Sand pieces, little cubes and shoots of sand, hummed coyly up to it. They snickered and spat and were, as the hair would later remark, horrible. We, however, will simply call it indecorous sand.

I being the type of person who knows many other types of people once knew the type of person who, when asked, would say that the whole world boiled down to two simple sorts of things: sand and hair. When she would tell me this I would nod, but I cannot say that I ever fully believed her.

Then one day I was in my bathroom and I noticed something on the floor. Kneeling down I looked at this something but couldn’t determine what it was. I took the thing to a scientist friend of mine – a short man with square teeth and too many wise things to say – and asked him what on earth I had found on my bathroom floor. He placed it under some sort of device and peered at it for a good deal of time. When he finally turned away from the device he looked at me and winked. I slapped him, not being the sort of man that lets other men wink at him. He took this rebuke well, and then told me what he had discovered: It is sand and hair, just as plain as day…sand and hair. I was certain at first that he was joking, then remembered that this was not the sort of man to make a joke. I nodded at him and left, contemplating as I did so the strange implications of what this man had told me. As with most things I contemplate, my contemplation of this was brief and cursory, and I really have not thought about it again until now. I just thought I would mention it to you here so that you, perhaps, could contemplate it at greater length and in more depth. Or not. It is not, after all, a very interesting thing to think over for very long.

,,Opop’’ sang a dill bird to a mother tart.

For now, though, a man needs introducing: Dill, meet Burt. Two men in tow then. And each an introduction.

How very good it is to meet you. Oh heavens yes! They both snicker sibilantly at this. ESSESSSESSSESSSESSS. It is a gross, harsh sound. We are repulsed. I am, anyway.

Next day: twins entering a room.

The boys, neither of whom you or I have ever seen, come waddling up. They have cross expressions on their faces, as if a maggot were nibbling importunately on the insides of their cheeks. One of them coughs into a rag he pulls from his pocket, then replaces it once the cough is through. The other does not seem to notice.

A lifetime ago, or so it seems…That is how her stories always begin. She will sit talking to you for hours. Each person, though not enthralled, is at least willing to listen. A lifetime ago I met a man who I couldn’t for the life of me…

As things go on so too do stories. They seem sometimes to persist forever. Interminable things, I often find myself remarking. Not here, though. This will not be one of those stories.

A Story with Two Blinks

His arm is intact. He had thought for a moment that it might not be. But it is. He blinks.

On the plate in front of him is a sandwich. He never eats sandwiches. In fact, he hates sandwiches. Why he has one on his plate, then, is the source of some consternation. Did I put it there? he asks himself. And the question, as he puts it to himself, sounds like a rebuke.

He glances down at the floor. He thinks a tile looks out of place. He makes a circle with his forefinger and his thumb, and then peeks through it. His massive eyeball, framed by his fingers, blinks. The tile has not been moved. It is not out of place at all. He lets his hand fall to his thigh.

If someone walked in now and scratched the man on the cheek, he would not blink. He will not blink again for the rest of this story. Twice is enough. Instead, were someone to walk in and scratch his cheek, this man would sit still and impassive. You see, he tries not to let people know that he knows they are there. This has become harder to do of late, though. But he cannot say why this is.

A Portrait

Her small, square face juts out in relief against a garish orange. Like a rug under a door, perhaps. In the orange, though, barely perceptible globules form, dripping almost, and they make my eyes blink. She has not swum now for twenty years.

We knew each other once. Her face then was not so square and not nearly so small. She was a great woman then, a proud woman. In any case people used to think of her like that, though I am not sure she ever really was either of those things. Probably not great, and surely not proud. People, though, often get confused about things.

I knew her for a brief time only, but I am certain she would agree with me that that time was more than enough time. People do not know each other for a time and then one day simply stop. It is deliberate. There is some sort of reason. Or else there is real loss. And real loss is too terrible a thing to discuss in histories. So trust that this was not a real loss but instead a parting: deliberate, abrupt, absolute. Until now.

Her face in relief against the orange strikes me as a bit overdone. It is too much. It should not be there. She has no right to have her face like that. But then I have no right, I suppose, to say what are and are not her rights. Or her face’s rights anyway.

In another part of another country I have sat for nearly a decade. People have visited me, and I have received them graciously. We have, for the most part, tolerated one another. Why people visit, though, I have never been able to understand. Until now.

I am here now and I am greeted, dolefully, with a small, square face in relief. It cannot speak, but it is there. It glowers. Its eyes have no reality, none of the horror of the old eyes, but they are there. Globules glowering. And then the background, those too, nearly glowering but not eyes, just globules. There are globules that are shapes and globules that are matter. Her eyes are matter.

She has been set, permanently, there. Her painted visage a sort of rebuke. Garish as the orange, she seems to sneer at me. It is comic, almost. And so I smile. Her face – square and small – remains rigid, jutting out in relief against the orange. And I sit staring up at it, smiling, but also very much afraid.

Feeling Things about Being in a Tunnel

Having been in a tunnel now for something over an hour, Bilp felt it was time to go somewhere else. Then he felt other things. He felt uncertain, for instance, about having felt it was time to go somewhere other than the tunnel he was presently in. He also felt a momentary pang of compunction for something he thought he might have done just before having come into the tunnel. Then he thought other things as well. He thought that there were certain moments when the collapse of something was not necessarily a tragedy. Then he thought that it was not right to think that simply because something collapsed it should therefore constitute a tragedy. Then he tried to think of how he could have ever associated the two – collapse and tragedy. He began associating other things. He associated a long, thin stick of celery with a molar, and this made him laugh. Other things too made him laugh. He laughed at the thought that inside of a tunnel he could still hear himself. He laughed at the fact that there was not a single other person in the tunnel, and how if someone walked in they might think that it was his tunnel. Then he thought about other people thinking. He thought that they might think he was foolish for being there. And then he felt foolish. He felt foolish for being in the tunnel all by himself, and then he remembered. He remembered that he had perhaps felt he ought to leave the tunnel because it would seem foolish if someone were to see him in the tunnel all alone. He felt this for a moment, and then he felt all sorts of other things.

A Most Unfortunate Accident

Ipo has a lisp. She split her tongue by accident as a child, and as a result has a lisp. Tongues split when cut, and that is precisely what happened to Ipo’s tongue. She had been eating a sandwich when, for some not entirely certain reason, she tired of eating sandwiches. What else is there to eat? Ipo then asked herself. She glanced around the kitchen and noticed a wood block with black handles sticking out. Tasty, she thought to herself, and walked over to pluck and consume one of the black handles from their wooden holster. It is not difficult to imagine what happened next, so I will not go into all of the details. Suffice it to say that as a result of having cut her tongue, Ipo now has a lisp. And it is to this most unfortunate accident that the title alludes.

A bird chirps in its cage.

1. To him it was precious. Or pretty. He always got those two confused. Maybe it was both. He had only just learned the former. Precious. Things were always precious to him now. Like his little feathered bird. It certainly had all sorts of feathers. And a tongue too. He knew it had a tongue because he could hear it sometimes clucking. Making sounds and acting just like a friend of his. He had never seen it spit, though, and this made him slightly distrustful of the creature.

2. Weeks had passed since she had noticed it. She had not even glanced at it in weeks. But there it was, still, persisting as always in its quiet, unobtrusive way. A chamber is how she thought of it, a bird chamber. Birds, like people, must have chambers. She did not know a single person who did not have some sort of chamber. So why shouldn’t a bird have one too? This, anyway, was her thinking on the matter.

3. There are feathers, variegated, strewn across a sheet of yellow newspaper. He blinked at them, heavily. Then, in an ear of his, the sound of people’s voices. Those voices are not coming from the cage, he thought. The bird can be heard in the cage, faintly. Nothing sounds like the voices of people. They are so rough and unpleasant. So loud. People should really not be allowed to say so very much. Quiet, he thought, would be better than this.

4. There is a daughter too. She has seen the thing but does not know it yet. She sees the bird as she sees all other things. Which is to say she just sees them, actually, before she says them. Once you start saying things then you are no longer really seeing anything at all. She was, the little daughter, still seeing things, but she did not really know it yet. That is, she did not say it yet.

An Anniversary

The two people that this story is about met underneath a squat tree. They shook hands, smiling, and then walked out from under the tree. Neither knew the other’s name at the time, but both were glad to have met the other.

Things persisted like this for some time. People began to see these two together and say things like What a lovely couple or I simply adore those two. Kind things, then, were said about these two, and generally things were thought to be quite fine between them.

Today though, on the anniversary of the day they met under that squat tree, neither one is smiling. Grimacing would perhaps be the better word to describe the contorted faces of each, but surely not smiling. They are no longer holding hands, and nobody is commenting on the loveliness of either. People pass by and look at them, but instead of adoration for the felicitous pair, they feel an ineffable sadness.

This pair, though, is not yet aware that their smiles have turned to grimaces. They think that things must probably be fine, and that what they are feeling is probably not quite right. Thus, as happens in so many couplings, the two will celebrate many more anniversaries before, at last, they no longer have to suffer each other any longer.

The Impolitic Man

In a journal of some slight renown a man published an article titled The Impolitic Man. People, being averse to all things impolitic, neglected the article. For decades it went unread. Then one day the author died. This was noted in another journal of equally slight renown. More people read this, though, than had read The Impolitic Man. It is not certain how the author would have reacted to this fact.

Thurle and Trill

The movie had been for the most part a bricolage of human gestures, or so said the review Thurle had read of it in a magazine in which he was wont to read about such things. Thurle saw the movie and thought the reviewer was absolutely right – it had been, for the most part, a bricolage of human gestures. When asked later by a woman Thurle was involved with – Trill – what he thought of the film, he had responded It was, more or less, a bricolage of human gestures. Ah, she had responded. Yes. Ok. I see. She did not, however, actually see what Thurle was talking about. Trill rarely did see what it was Thurle was talking about, and it was precisely this that made him so appealing to her: he was inscrutable, mysterious, etc., or so she thought.

As we know, however, Thurle read somewhere that the movie had been, for the most part, a bricolage of human gestures. Thus when he told Trill – much to Trill’s delight – that the film had been, for the most part, a bricolage of human gestures, he had been borrowing another man’s words. Trill, then, very much impressed by the seeming profundity of her lover’s words, had in fact been listening to the words of another man. Who, then, does Trill really love, and for how much longer can it possibly last?

Thurle, for his part, will continue reading various magazines and books in search of inscrutable things to say to Trill, and Trill, for her part, well I cannot say for certain what she will do. Perhaps someday Trill will come across one of these comments written down in a magazine or book she happens to pick up and will then think to herself Wait, wait. Didn’t Thurle say just exactly that only the other day? Wait. Wait! Perhaps, then, she will discover for herself the source of her man’s inscrutability. But likely not. Inscrutability is one of the most tiresome traits in a lover, and it is likely that, in the end, Trill will simply tire of Thurle, with all his insight and wisdom and inscrutability.

Gip

Gip was a sort of drooping figure. His back sagged. His cheeks and eyes sagged. Even his words seemed to sag. Everything about Gip, in short, seemed to be sagging and drooping in some way.

To survive, Gip, like most, made money. He did this in a variety of ways. One day he would be skulking along a street, for instance, and he would chance upon something that at one point must have resembled a desk. It now resembled something else entirely, and thus Gip would set his sagging frame down next to it and ask people walking by if they would perhaps like to buy a paddle or broom or mound or shelf or whatever it was he thought that person looked as if they might enjoy purchasing. Gip had found that all a thing needed in order to sell was a man nearby selling it, and he nearly always found customers for his found goods.

Gip did other things to make money too, like carrying things for someone in need of their things being carried or speaking about something in an informed manner to whomever needed something informing said to them or simply submitting his body to be poked and prodded by someone in need of a body to poke and prod. Gip, then, like most, made money.

He did all sorts of other things too, of course. He showed up at various places and then subsequently would leave. He would eat supper amongst groups of other people, or sometimes just by himself. He made plans and concerned himself with current events and even sometimes formed romantic attachments. All of these things, as well as a good many other things, were things that Gip did.

The story of Gip, then, is really like the story of anyone else. He was a man who sagged and drooped, yes, but he was also a man that made money and ate things and occasionally formed romantic attachments. He liked certain things, as we all do, just as he disliked certain things. To mention that he was a sagging, drooping figure was a mistake, I fear, for it may have, for a moment anyway, indicated that he was in some way unique. Gip is not at all unique, and I apologize if for even an instant he made that impression.