Hello, and welcome to the "non-poetry" section. There are no introductions for any of these, as there's not much more for me to say about them other than what you read. The last three were written in the summer of 1990, if memory serves me correctly (that's a rough estimate, however). The newer ones have approximate dates. Each of them began with an idea or a few lines in my head, and were simply written "as they came", with no revisions. This is my preferred method of writing, an "improvisational" style that I really exercised in the longer piece of short anecdotes, "Family Memoirs".
(all selections are copyright by me, Mark)
They stood there in silence together. One of them just stared at the dirty ground,
bare of grass and dry. The other held a
shovel in one hand. He looked up at the
clear night sky, filled with pinholes of light against the largest canvas on
earth, a dark color that he could not name.
The wind whispered lightly between them.
There were no trees in sight to be stirred by the breeze.
The empty-handed man put his hands in his pockets,
warming them from the cool air. The
backs of his hands scraped against the rough denim. The coarse sweater slid over his wrists, and
a thousand conflicting thoughts spun through his head. The man with the shovel turned towards him
and waited for his attention before speaking.
“I hope you realize that I really had no
choice,” he said softly. He spoke
in a low tone, as if the wind itself had drawn the words from his mouth.
“Jared,” the other man started, but had
to clear his throat. The words came out
more rough than he intended.
“No, don’t even start that, Adam. There was never any question in my mind, and
honestly, I would do it all over again if I had to. You have to understand that.”
Adam looked away, and Jared looked down at the
shovel in his hands. He slid his thumb
over the rough wood handle, feeling the lines of the grain like veins on the
back of a hand. When he spoke again his
voice had a harsh edge in it.
“There is still so much that you don’t
understand, Adam.” He held up the
shovel and looked at the other man.
“Look at this shovel. This
shovel is an epitome of perfection.”
“You’re right, I don’t
understand,” he replied, meeting Jared’s eyes.
“This shovel is a tool. It knows its purpose, and it fulfills that
fate with perfection. It will never
question or complain, and it will never stop until it breaks.” He ran a finger along the metal edge of the
spade. “Even then, it can still be
put to use. Metal, wood, no feelings, no
opinions, no memories. It is a
tool.”
The other man looked down at the ground again. His hair fell into his eyes as another breeze
came between them, moving slow against the tension hanging there.
A twisted laugh came out of Jared’s mouth as
he spoke again. “Even you, Adam,
are a tool. Despite what you think,”
he paused as he spat the last word out, “it is your nature. You cannot change it, just as a shovel cannot
change itself into the weeds that it kills.
Someday you will understand that fact, and when you do you will have a
much easier time of things. But all this
time you have tried to deny your place.”
He took a few steps toward Adam as their eyes met again. There was a bright flicker in Jared’s
eyes.
As he drew near he suddenly broke the handle of the
shovel over his knee. Adam flinched with
the sudden violence of this, and instantly wished that he hadn’t shown
anything. Jared smiled at the
reaction. “You have tried to break
your handle, like this shovel, and I have fixed you. Self-destructive things you do never have any
effect in the long run, because you are still a tool.” With that, he threw the spade down at
Adam’s feet, tossing the broken piece of the handle over his
shoulder. “I will get the other
tools from the car. You will
dig.” He turned and walked off to
the car, parked about a hundred yards away from where they stood, in the middle
of nowhere. Adam slowly picked up the
spade, hefting it in his hand, staring at the blank iron surface, scratched
with use. There was a rush of air and
the hairs on the back of his neck rose.
“I know what you’re thinking, and you
don’t want to try that.”
Adam jerked his head to see Jared standing less than a foot behind
him. It always unnerved him how he did
that. He felt a cold hand on his
shoulder, a flat weight like a brick.
Adam stepped forward, listening to the soft crunch of Jared’s
boots on the sand. He breathed a soft
sigh of relief at the lifted pressure from his shoulder, and bent to his task.
Jared returned, gently setting a black leather bag
on the ground. He looked down. They stood on opposite sides of a shallow
shape that Adam had dug into the dirt.
It resembled a man, but the legs were misshapen. The arms looked much bigger than they should
be for any human, and there was a vague suggestion of something coming over the
shoulders of the shape. Jared smiled
with something akin to malice hinted in his grin, and bent down to the
bag. He opened it and drew out four iron
rods, each about eight inches long. He
looked up at Adam and the smile disappeared.
“You know what to do, Adam.
We are losing time.”
Adam looked away from those eyes, reflecting the
light from distant stars long since burned out, and slowly pulled off his
sweater. A feeling of emptiness overcame
him, and he couldn’t help as a tear fell to the ground, instantly
absorbed. He finished undressing, then
lay inside the shallow-dug shape. Jared
stood over him. He had driven each of
the four iron rods into the earth at the cardinal points. The moonlight glinted off the rods sticking
out of the ground, and the long knife he held in his right hand. He drew a slow line down the length of his
finger, coaxing several beads of blood, the same dark nameless color of the
sky. He drew something on Adam’s
forehead, an ancient symbol. As he
finished the character, the blood seeped into the man’s flesh, leaving a
faint scar. He groaned in pain as the
thick black blood moved quickly through his system. His eyes briefly focused on the knife in
Jared’s hand, poised steadily over Adam’s chest. His eyes fluttered closed as he felt himself
sinking into his own mind, finally accepting his place, his purpose.
He is a tool.
Sleep comes far too easily. I envy the insomnia of those less fortunate, at the same time cursing myself for thinking so self-centered. I stare out the window at serenity. The gentle rustle of trees in a warm breeze. The faint laughter of children playing "offstage". It is these times when I feel drawn, an almost magnetic tug at my soul.
Sometimes I am overwhelmed by a feeling that it's all part of someone else's dream. Cheap props, that if looked at just the right way would reveal their flaws to me. But it never gets that far. I must force myself to merely shrug it off, but a much larger part of me is still aware that I had the feeling once. He also questions what I am really shrugging off, suggesting he knows something and wants to tell me, if only I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Yes, there are some things that even I do not want to face, especially when I realize that he is me.
Sleep comes far too easily, and too late as well.
Why is it that the extremes seem to evoke the strongest memories? Winter and summer, a very poorly matched couple. Something as basic as a smell, perhaps the clean air after a mild July shower, seems to recall moments from a past I'd rather leave entirely. Not so much "floods of memories", but rather specific and general images, feelings, sounds.
Or the omniscient silence of winter, hanging like a heavy blanket over everything, not unlike the snow it's accompanied by. There are few greater pleasures, few things that calm the mind, as that sound of silence. When coming out of work, after eight hours or so of pleading children and complaining adults, winter seems like a tangible force. Especially at night, the absence of distracting light or sound I find incredibly comforting. Ironic, the same sense of isolation that can send me into such fits of depression can comfort me so merely by being in a different context. There exists nothing else behind the protective wall of winter silence.
Waiting for the burst of creativity, sparking life. And the flare begins a much larger cycle. One of projects unfinished, fires extinguished. But, superimposed over all, still remain the coals of life's origin. And we pass through stages set by a larger force; society forces thoughts to one end. Occasionally, society is an unwitting damper, leeching our fuels, leaving us as alike as the whole. I am struggling to rekindle this long-gone ember. Alas, my coals grow too dim and cold to even warm my skin, and I slip beneath the tide of conformity.