The Oaf Who Ruptured the Peaceful Night

The night stood still; not a limb moved.  The moon, near whole, beamed across the sky and into the worlds below, tinting all things its unique shade of blue.  The winds had fled this silent night, gathered underground or over the hills.  Nowhere here showed a single sign of animation.  It was as though the earth’s inhabitants had all but died off.

But then a stirring, like the movements of primal waters before a world is born, a universe created.  Something was coming.  The night was not to be left at peace.

The Oaf stumbled from a small wooden hut, much like a cabin.  It had awoken from some deep slumber; a sleep which was always meant to be eternal.  Just something had gone wrong.  The Creator’s attention had waned; something had slipped through the divine cracks.

Stumbling sleepily from its abode, the Oaf rubbed its eyes, squinted at the breathtaking moon.  It belched, scratched its groin and then slowly, very slowly, sauntered ahead of itself, in some direction, apparently with some aim in mind.

The silent world looked on in horror, following the great, lanky thing with its omnipresent gaze, lamenting the mistake it had somehow made.

The Oaf took no notice.  It moved placidly on.

The only sound now was the sound of the creature’s movements: its feet crunching on the earth; the heavy panting of its ill-used breathing apparatus; the various scratching sounds from its vastly irritated epidermis.  The inanimate nature of the entirety of its surroundings did not seem to disconcert the Oaf, as it wandered through.  It’s face remained impassive, its eyes fixed ahead.

Dishevelled, the creature finally came to a standstill.  The stillness, the silence around it, waited.

What is it doing?  Has it found what it wanted? Will it return to its slumber now!?

A moment of bafflement…

And then, without warning, the Oaf began to urinate.

It had stopped by a tree, stopped for a brief moment in reverie, and then grasped its apparatus in readiness for micturition.  The world stood still again, for that small moment, as the creature dreamed; and then, as quickly as it had come about, it was annihilated by the sound of the creature’s watery waste, splashing noisily onto the exposed roots of a beautiful old tree.

But the tree did not groan, nor moan.  The silence waited.

And waited.

The Oaf had apparently been in lodging for some time, as the stream seemed to flow and flow.  Steam rose.

Finally, with a relieved sigh, the Oaf’s urination slowly ceased.  The rain had stopped.  The universe watched on, awaiting the strange being’s next move.

Again, scratching and dragging its feet, the Oaf sauntered back along the path it had taken.  Slowly, certainly, it made its way back to the log hut, its eyes still fixed, its movements still noisy.  But now it seemed lighter, less burdened.

It walked up the two steps to the door, went inside, closed the door—and was gone.

The world breathed a sigh of relief.

The sky still beamed moon-blue.  But now, unlike before, the sound of a small stream of urine could be heard, meandering from the tall tree down into a valley.  It could be seen, too.  No longer was the world silent; no longer was it still.

It was animate.

He Fell From a Czech Window

He fell from a window in Prague way down onto the Czech cobblestones below.

The Czech people didn’t know if he fell by accident, was pushed or jumped out of his own accord.  Regardless, his body lay dismembered all over the ground below and onlookers from the surrounding buildings gathered at their windows and watched as his many pieces were gathered by the Czech authorities.  The man had, apparently, become unusually severed upon impact.

Somehow he had not splattered, like, say, a chicken or dog might have; but rather had split into fragments.  Not like anything brittle, though; the breaks were not clean, the fragments not completely separate, for he had been pulled and yanked apart when he had hit the ground.  Some of the parts were still connected by various organic threads and lines, in some places just by patchy trails of torn skin and blood.  One could, however, still make out a man down there on the street.  Albeit a broken one.

The characters picking up the pieces did so with expressions of cold indifference, gazing occasionally at the faces in the windows as if to reproach them for some immoral curiosity.  What are you people looking at?  There’s nothing to see here.  Go back inside; this is our business now, not yours.  As they continued to impassively gather the man up.

The man who fell, however, of course felt nothing about all this, for no longer was he anything at all.  In a linguistic sense, anyhow.  In other senses he is likely many things, part of the bigger one thing.  Words begin to streak at this point.

An investigation into the fall was already underway, though it made no real difference.  The man was dead.  No one knew the details of the incident and nothing anyone knew of could bring him back.  Not much, if anything at all, could as yet be said about dying in general, either, so the whole thing was, practically speaking, infinitely mysterious.  This kind of mystery is not uncommon, but this does not unjustify the Czech peoples’ curiosity into the enigma.  It was not just their curiosity, anyhow.

The main piece of evidence, if one can deem it such, was an etching done by the man on the windowsill.  It was presumably written the night of the fall and read: ‘I’ll miss you, man.’  This was all anyone could find regarding his final sentiments, which in any case seemed unusual in the context of his life.  For those whose responsibility lay in investigating his death, this made absolutely no difference at all.  Perhaps it was something they could tell his family and friends, when they asked how their son/brother/sister/friend was before he died.  Something to provide some explanation, despite it being no explanation at all.

I’ll miss you, man.  And the world flies away.

It was three stories that he fell—though only one story came of it.  No one saw what happened, but there seemed to be no lack of witnesses who could testify to the disturbing sound of the body falling and hitting the ground.  A beer can fell first, its tinny crash attracting little attention; this was followed by a few split seconds of humming, followed then by a large, bone-crunching thud.

And that was that.

His friends could no more explain the incident than himself, for they sat sleeping that night in sodden, green haze while he stayed conscious, alone; the night had been good-natured, they’d said­—­­no one was to blame for anything.  ‘Blame’, they said defensively to their interrogators, did not apply here.

But why did he fall? the authorities consistently replied.  For what reason?

The many pieces that once comprised the entire being were transported to a Czech police station, where examinations were underway in order to determine exactly how he landed and thus the ‘cause’ of the fatality.  This is where, apparently, the latter was to be found­: that is, in determining the angle at which the body hit the cobblestones, the points most effected.  Here the notion of cause becomes like a piece of paper, folded over and over and over; when they can fold no more, the cause is found.

It became apparent to these investigators that the legs had been first, snapping and then compacting into the body.  From there, parts simply became crushed and mashed and strewn, leaving an inelegant scene for Czech walkers and their rather sedated Czech canine acquaintances. 

All on a fresh Czech morning, this occurred; the early hours, when the sky was just becoming light.  

Just as the people emerged from their caves, to begin a brand new Czech day.

The Awkward Walker

There is a type, in many cities­—­an archetypal form, if you will—whose prime existential challenge is that of walking.  This figure is an anxious, meandering thing, quite unsure of itself and even more so of the external world.  He or she tries menacingly hard to see into the future, to gather at least approximate (if not precise) insights into the movements of the world and its diverse beings.

The particular of this type is akin to all others of this type, formally speaking­­.  His being here a man is a purely literary aspect; in reality, both unfortunate men and unfortunate women play this role, or perhaps more correctly, partake in it.  Though their misfortune, it is arguable, is purely relative.

—

The Awkward Walker darts always in the wrong direction.  He shuffles to the right to make way for another, oncoming walker, but the latter has already made the move counter-wise and so leaves the former starting back to his original path, but fumbling in confusion, starting this way and then that, his concern for being in the way growing exponentially along with his general lack of orientation.  Beads of sweat appear instantaneously.

Soon the sweat begins to pour out and it is not long before the Awkward Walker looks more like a runner, patches of wet having formed around his armpits and back.  With no real choice now that he is in the thick of it, he continues his way through the crowded streets, anxiety working harder now at toying with his space-time perceptions.

The Awkward Walker cannot stop; this would only worsen his case.  He cannot stand aside, for he would not move and would starve in his relief.  He has tried, but cannot “better” his predictions; as has been stated, the more he tries, the more he fails.  This does not apply only to walking, nor only to the Awkward Walker.

He does not really look about him, at his surroundings and the generally fluid dynamics of the masses of other walkers.  Too determined is this being to be leagues ahead of the game, he more often finds himself far behind; too sure, to be sure, that the physical space he occupies at any given time does not impede on the paths of others.

But in doing so he leaves himself open.  The Awkward walker always tries to assure clear passage, and in doing so creates none.

Often he will try, the poor soul, to see many steps ahead, to read a busy street like a newspaper, blindly accepting the facts as they’re given, without considering them as part of a more important whole. He tries hard to predict the movement of traffic and the undulating throngs of pedestrians, but this confounds his cause further.  In doing so, he procures his own misjudgement, tries too hard to move correctly—whatever this might be; he concentrates on the wrong things, overlooks the city’s sharp drops and rises, so far away in his mind that he occasionally even trips and stumbles.  Other walkers scoff inwardly; some laugh.  The Awkward Walker perspires constantly; sees them seeing him; further even: sees them seeing him seeing them, like a terrible loop.  Thus he is distracted further.

Oftentimes there will be a kind of awkward stand-off between himself and a regular walker; a strange situation in which he draws an unfortunate into his miserable confusion, namely by continually stepping in the direction they choose to step.  This creates a rather absurd spectacle, whereby one aisle of pavement will be occupied by the Awkward Walker and his victim, each repeatedly stepping into one another.  And somehow onlookers know, and so too does the Walker himself, that it is his own fault and not that of the other.  He is the one who is making the wrong decision, over and over and over again.  Not the other.

This is why he mumbles apologetically the majority of his outings, does the Awkward Walker.  He must repent, despite his vast efforts to conform.  He reproaches himself constantly, unaware that his failure is relative and that this may mean something, may have a bearing on the way things are in a greater sense.  But then again, this troublesome fact may not matter, out there, in that town; the relativity of things is perhaps immaterial in a place ill-considerate of such things, where one must either walk in such a way, or be a nuisance to those who do by failing to adhere.

And so not only must this man endure his own disoriented and misled faculties, he must also accept being the clown of the streets, a subject of amusement for children and adults alike as he rough-and-tumbles his way across town, dropping papers, bumping into people, stopping too suddenly in all the wrong places and failing to keep pace with the organism-like masses of pedestrians that wobble across busy intersections, into and out of shopping centres, office buildings and the like.  This walker, being as he is, disrupts the ever-increasing flow of the larger, more organised groups, without knowing why or how his actions fall short of what is acceptable and accepted.

Reaching home for this miserable case is a most heavenly relief.  Through the building’s ground level, up several flights of stairs which, if he is lucky, are not occupied by coming or going tenants, and into the safe-box that is his apartment.  Always locked, curtains drawn, for this man does not wish the world to see him any longer.  One day at a time is more than enough to repel such a creature.

One room, one window and one man; alone.

From here he can watch the world, safely, without having to participate in it.  Here there are no others, no calculations to be made.  This is the place he continues walking for, despite the stress, despite the embarrassment and humiliation.  What makes it all worth it.

But there is always, the Awkward Walker well knows, a world of walkers waiting for him on the outside.  A city of streets which he cannot, will never be able to, navigate with ease.  A world of people which he will forever be a bother to, a joke, an amusing nuisance.  Forever waiting to be disrupted, as though foreordained.

The Awkward Walker peers across the town, trembling with fear and relief.

A Letter (un-fin)

I got a letter in the mail this morning.  It was an invitation, sealed by wax.  There were no specifications: no time, no date; not even the name of the person who sent it.  Despite omitting these seemingly essential details, it did state quite candidly that if I do not accept the invitation, I would soon die.  The only specific information detailed in the letter was the destination.  This destination was quite descriptive, however—and quite familiar.  Perhaps more interestingly, the latter was not actually a physical place.

It was a place I had dreamt about the previous night, or perhaps during this morning’s sleep.  The dream had been quite vivid and particularly memorable.  I was in Amsterdam, where I have been once before, albeit briefly.  The dreamscape was not from my memory, however; I don’t know how I even knew it was Amsterdam, but it was.  I am sure of that.

I am with a girl in the street.  Everything is picturesquely suburban in a way akin to my real memories of Amsterdam.  The girl, apparently, is going to show me where a money exchange is, as I have only currency from my home country—no Euros.  She tells me her name, which is something along the lines of Kalialeah.  I ask whether I can just call her “Kali”, to which she giggles and says yes.  She is a very enigmatic and persuasive girl, with a lot of charm.  We hurry through the streets in such a way that it doesn’t seem like a hurry.

The most significant part of the dream occurs next, to which the invitation alludes in quite more detail than I will write here.

Kali and I, after roaming through some fairly labyrinthine streets, which seem to be covered up above like leafy bowers, come to a large landing—a kind of huge balcony.  At this point, Kali trips and breaks her shoe; the sole is torn from the bottom and hangs on only just.  She looks sad and shows me the sole, flopped away from the bottom of her foot.  I feel slightly blameworthy.  At the edge of this large balcony I see, many miles below, a huge graveyard which stretches right across my field of vision, from each side of my peripheral to the other.  It is the largest graveyard I have ever seen and lays across an expanse of green field.  It is breathtaking.

Later on, I make it to an exchange.  It is in an arcade-type area, very sterile and cold.  Kali is still with me.  My recollection ends here, and so does the letter’s description.

It is now the evening of the day in which I received the letter.  The letter, it is to be noted, was not delivered by the regular postal authorities—I confirmed this not long after reading it.  The regular mail, you see, was delivered after I had retrieved the strange letter from the mailbox.  Things like this do not regularly occur.  It is a thing that only some may take note of, or even keep an eye out for; my sagacity is something I pride myself on, especially in matters such as this.

For some reason I am not baffled and plan, somehow, to make my way back to this psychical destination.  I don’t know exactly how I am going to do this, but I feel that there must be a way.  Besides, if I fail to arrive there at some point, I will die.  The authority of this letter is strong; I have no reason to believe its content, but nonetheless I do.  I must get back to the pinnacle overlooking the graveyard; it is the only way I can avoid death.

The irony here suggests that the author of the letter may have a playful sense of humour, similar to my own.  With this humour in mind, I have chosen to take the challenge; and thus, my quest begins.

(Perhaps to be continued…)

The Plight of the Mysterious Vessel (Part I: The Situation)

“Captain, sir, what trajectory shall we set for the Vessel?”

     A stocky man of medium build turns from facing what looks like a Hollywood rendition of the side of a submarine.  The walls are gadgets, controls, pieces of metal.  ‘Bells and whistles’ emit from all over.

     The man regards his questioner.

     “Rogers?  What the blast makes you think I’m the captain of this fine machine?  It has been quite clearly stated that I am second in command, you vile twat.  ‘Deputy’ is how you address me.”

     The Deputy turns back around to face the absurdly vast wall of gizmos and widgets.  He takes a puff of a larger-than-life cigar.  Something buzzes, then whizzes; the latter is followed by a prompt whistle.

     The two stare dumbfounded at the comically active wall of controls.

     Rogers’ remains composed; his face, however, betrays a sort of confused incomprehension, as though a mathematical equation he’s performed a thousand times before in his head, for some reason, will not this time provide the expected answer.

     “But ah, sir…it appears the former Captain has well—to put it plainly—lost his mind.”

     “Lost his mind!?”  The Deputy turns fiercely back to face Rogers.  “Rogers, whatever do you mean the Captain has ‘lost his mind’?  He was up there on the, uh, the deck or whatever it is, just minutes ago.  Performing his, uh, usual tasks and such.  Directing the Vessel and so forth.”

     Rogers again twitches with the difficulty of having to explain something important to the Deputy.

     “But sir, I can most definitely assure you that he has lost it.  He no longer responds to the men; he keeps turning the direction wheel arbitrarily, with no nautical proficiency; he hasn’t eaten anything in days—“

     Rogers interrupts his explanation, trails off into a demented murmur and then a shrug which informs the Deputy that the situation is rather ineffable.

     The two pause, think a while.

     “You mean to say…”, the Deputy thinks hard, “that the Captain overseeing this Vessel, its men and its course, has…drifted off with the fairies, Rogers?”

     Rogers hesitates, then nods.

     There is a long silence in which the Deputy meditates deeply, his face creased with concentration.  Rogers remains at attention, as stiff and straight as the side of a geometrically perfect but abstract triangle.  An occasional facial twitch expresses itself, however, corresponding to the visible deep thought of the Deputy.

     Finally he speaks.

     “Rogers.  Do you mean to tell me that…that I am in charge of this…thing?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “Rogers, forgive me for my naivety, but…how many men are on this here Vessel?”

     Rogers mentally calculates, his lips counting the numbers in his head.

     “Fourty-nine, sir.”

     “And I am in charge of these fourty-nine mates?”

     Beat.

     “…uh, ‘mates’, sir?”

     The Deputy nods intensely.  “Yes, Rogers, mates.  It is a ship of some kind we’re on, isn’t it, with mates aboard it.  No?”

     Rogers shuffles his feet, watching them as he does so.

     “Well-sir…to be quite honest with you, which I must now be seeing as you are the new Captain of the Vessel—I don’t really know what kind of vessel this is.  I just worked for the Capta—“

     The Deputy drew back in shock, a horrified grimace appearing on his face.

     “You don’t actually know what we are aboard, Rogers!?”

     Rogers’ face goes embarrassed-school-boy red; he shrugs, hopelessly.  The Deputy shakes his head, a fearful expression replacing the grimace.

     “By God, Rogers,” stroking his short grey beard.  “This just won’t do!”

     Some time passes in which the two men remain standing, dumbfounded, either thinking or pretending to think for a solution.

     “Sir, I think it best if you go and see the Captain for yourself.  Perhaps you can get some sense out of him.”

     The Deputy nods in agreement, but remains standing as he is.  He appears pensive.

     A horn sounds from somewhere and the two glance awkwardly about, somewhat petrified after having established that they do know much at all of what’s going on.

     The Deputy gathers himself.

     “Rogers, I fear to ask this question, but I must.  Our pride must be swept aside in these matters, for they are important to the lives of all fourty-eight men on this—“

     “Fourty-nine, sir.”

     “…Yes, all fourty-nine men on the Vessel.”

     Rogers’ expression grows apologetic; the interruption concerned a rather trivial fact, in the context of the situation at hand.

     The Deputy continues: “Anyhow, to the question at hand.  Rogers, I must ask: do you at least know where the Vessel is headed, and to what purpose?”

     Rogers’ eyes bulge and he lets out a long, thoughtful breath.  He re-sports his calculating countenance.  “Sir, with complete honesty, I must respond thus: I do not know either the direction or the purpose of the Vessel; all I know with certainty is that she is manned with fourty-nine hard-working mates, that she is a vessel, of some description, and that the captain of said vessel has misplaced his mind.  Even, sir, if we were on some course previously, the madness of the Captain has surely, by now, steered us…off course.”

     The Deputy stands strong, stoically accepting the somewhat humiliating and shattering statement.  A long, drawn-out silence ensues, in which the men exchange dire glances.

     “I will go and see the Captain, Rogers.  Perhaps, in some way, I can extract some kind of information from his dissolved mind.  Does he speak, still?”

     “Yes, sir, the Captain speaks.  But to apply reason to his raving utterances would, I imagine, be akin to translating the alien tongue of a savage.”

     Huge plumes of smoke billow from the Deputy’s pipe.

     “My God, Rogers; my God.  What mess have we gotten ourselves into?  I assume from your words that none of the mates know a thing of our situation, either, meaning that the Captain was the only one with any sound knowledge of the situation—and he is now a lunatic.”

     Rogers’ troublesome expression affirms the Deputy’s assumption.

“From what you’ve said, our situation is roughly as follows: we are on a vessel with no knowledge of our purpose, our location, our surrounding—not even of exactly what the Vessel is itself.  It is from this lacuna-plagued information that we must decide on a course of action.”

     He sighs.  The conclusion further troubles them both.

     “I will go and see the Captain, Rogers.  I have never been to the moon, no—not once; but I will try to make sense of that lunatic’s ramblings.  It is our last hope.  For if we fail, there will be nothing to work from; we will be wanderers, roaming somewhere, with no knowledge of anything much at all.  Yes, Rogers.  I will see the Captain.”

     The controls on the wall of the Vessel squeak, whistle and pop.  An engine of some kind rumbles in the background.  The men depart the control room.

Ranger Dave and the Shroomed Lunatics

We’ve fallen down and over the other side.  Rats to who sees us now.

He stumbles upon our camping ground (which is no certified, family-friendly place, but a cleared patch in a fine, untouched clearing), un-phased at first and expecting routine communications with a group of perhaps rowdy, perhaps antisocial, perhaps petty-law-breaking strangers; but what he finds is something a little bit more than all this.  Poor Dave, a sheltered, country type, innocently going about his routine duties, encounters a group of people who, to him at least, appear to be completely out of their minds—moonfolk, if you will.

He is immediately intimidated, acutely perplexed.

Hiding behind some waist length shrub, he removes his cliché rangers’ hat and peers over into the strangers’ hearth, and observes.

What they say seems incoherent, barely consistent (mostly inconsistent) and often completely disjointed; they shuffle about like confused cavemen, muttering and performing actions which seem to have no reason at all; they scream and yell and make strange jokes, jokes which Dave would not even recognise as jokes if it weren’t for the group’s ecstatic laughter following whatever was just said—a veritable bush circus, composed of alien beings from the watery orb in the sky, disoriented and out of control…

How does Dave even begin to address this? What reaction could possibly counter this savage display?

He flees.  Figuratively and literally.

These creatures are effeminate, degenerate; they’re acting out of etiquette.

The words chorus from some collective pit in his mind, more like a chant than his own words; but he knows them to be true, there is vehemence behind them and a thoughtless passion—faith, perhaps.  Considerations even enter Dave’s mind, to alert some sort of psychological authority; to have the pack rounded up and put into the back of a van like stray dogs, sent away to be cured of their myriad manic maladies, or at least to be placed out of sight if said illnesses prove incurable.

Which emergency number to ring for lunatics?  NASA?

It is all too much for Dave, too unfathomable and too strange; there is no order here, no sense, no logical sequence of occurrences.  And so he dawdles home in a strange delirium, dumbfounded by this group of cackling neo-savages, whose mental states seem to have taken a willing waltz into the endless sky.  He goes home to his wife and as he gets into bed, unintentionally waking her, tells her a yarn, “Honey, I’ve just seen the darndest thing…”—because by telling it as a story it becomes detached, loosened as dirt away from the solid earth on which it occurred.  Mrs Ranger Dave opens her drowsy eyes and listens intently to her husband’s yarn, takes in the story and agrees whole-heartedly with Ranger Dave’s vague sentiments regarding the strange group.  The two think a few minutes about these, the strangest strangers, before lulling off into a dreamless sleep, the account falling away into vagueness.

The world is normal again; everything is fine; the sun always rises, will always rise—tomorrow is another day.

Back at the crater (camp) it is common knowledge that tomorrow never comes.  Tomorrow never does come.  All that exists is the dynamic, thunderbolt flow of chaotic interaction, the mirroring of the external and the internal, an omni-pervasive pull into what is there and then and always going, incessantly arising and inter-arising and reflecting and engaging.  Moments of emphatic purity as trees sing and chant primal rhythms to the moods of the humans, minions of nature, nature itself, jumping about in a newfound freedom of detachment and green uniformity—all this, just as waves lap.

Had Ranger Dave interrupted the ritual, two worlds might have violently clashed, but (perhaps) only one would reign over the other.  Which would be the victor is most interesting to speculate upon but, ironically, it was the authoritarian figure of Ranger Dave who fled from the freedom-mongers (hypothetically, anyway), unable to place them in good conscience into his rigid, fixed, occluded worldview—and not the other way around.  Only one party doubled back, baffled, saw sin.  And it wasn’t the happy campers.

Only one party was/is unaware that there are not two parties, but one—perhaps that’s why they didn’t notice Dave, who stood, explicit in the moonlight, a few metres away from the burning glow, the centre.  The light did reach him, but his attention was elsewhere.

These were degenerates, right here; people of the moon with lunar tics creeping and crawling from head to toe, unable to see the ways of propriety, good manners, decent behaviour—creatures rather than Men.  And so here, the night ran on, the streams of the great Stream rippling and splashing and dancing in the moon and fire-light, nothing else existing but they and their surroundings—and the network of Everything which extends from this.

Dave sleeps dreamlessly, while the travelers dance.