The View From Scranton

Scrapping

My fingers are thick as pickles, dilled, dulled. Swole, as they say. Swole to stiff. The skin dry, scabbed, cut. The joints null and unresponsive. As I type my hand must hover and aim, consciously recalling what it is to do. What I do. How I do it. Like some enfeebled bird of prey who's lost the facility of instinct. I know I must attack; I just can't unencumber the wherewithal to do so.

Worse, I'm wasting my half life slingin' about slogs, frettin' the despicables, sweatin' the all encompassing small. 'Cause this half life they've designed for me to lead, I've deigned to let 'em make me live, is but a still stall burden of small. Sisyphean by day; by night a crush. One interminable load of meaty toothpicks jabbing into my battered back.

And nary a truth to be told. Rereading Auster I see what I'm missing, I get a feel for what I've missed, and, nevertheless, I'm weakened by the strength of his seeing, feeling. The Invention of Solitude makes me dizzy with despair, thrilled somehow with the agony of my defeatism. Citing Lull and Fludd and Bruno (is it a coincidence that the three are bisected by "u"?), I remember when I too was wondered by their genius, their nobleness, their belief. All is linked, everywhere, everywhen. And I tear knowing that I've not listened their lesson, had not even thought their names, in a tangent's age.

The way the knowing rolls off Auster's tongue shames me. Jonah to Descartes, Crusoe to Lycophron, Stevens and Augustine and Holderlin and Hegel and all that is and can be known forever. Not just who they are or were, but what they stood for, how they still stand. Knowledge dropping, spewing, careening, on and through and around. Rain, geyser, ricochet. If he's a font, I'm a cipher. Tidbits of know stolen by night and stashed in the marrow of my soul, never to be heard from, learned from, again.

I sit. I stir. I devalue. What value a man who does naught? Then I strap on the boots and kick myself, take off the gloves and smack myself sillied, sully, tear the very hair from my disgrace. And I sit again. And this time I stir up trouble, old trouble, but trouble nonetheless. Deep blue sometimes trouble. I call it Penmanship: The Biography of a Murder Instrument. It's a big idea that came to me way back when, back when I believed exile could be licked. It's a big idea that's come to me all over again, and this time it'll kick an ass other than my skinny, scrawny own. Instead of scrape, I'll scrap, thank you. And those bruises, those black eyes. Those will be the marks of victory.

First though an Austerian pause: "He cannot be anywhere until he is here."

Hard time I was here.

posted by John Hood. @ 9:21 PM