Dear Rachel,
Please consider the following for your Spring issue:
If I were to suggest to you “once upon a time,” it certainly follows that one of any number of contextual connotations would enter your logical faculty: an event located spatially in this temporal world we inhabit for a specific duration of time; a progression of any number of these events in a logical sequence to suspend your disbelief in a fantasy or a resultant, lightly masqueraded assertion of some moral view or theme for the benefit of children—a tale usually containing constructions of the imagination such as, but not limited to, elves, dwarves, fairies, witches, and talking animals.
What’s my point? If I say, “An autumnal spray of color tinted the shivering leafs of an old, proud tree,” you’ve illustrated a picture for yourself with your cognitive capabilities. According to your presuppositions about the world, you’ve also made assumptions and ruled out any logical fallacies for your picture. Take a look at that picture in your mind again. Is the tree in a desert? It wasn’t before, but now it is. Is it hanging upside down from the roof of a football stadium? You’ve just imagined it so. But these wouldn’t have occurred to you with the simple phrase. Why? Language is incapable of complete expression of thought, but highly influential in our thought process. Perhaps I intended to communicate that this old tree, flushed with color lies at the bottom of the sea or has been launched into space or exists only momentarily in the dream of a three year old who will never remember it, but regardless of my intentions, your mind followed the limiting suggestion of language in the confines of your own contextual experience. This is a danger. Why?
Well, let us examine another phrase. William Blake wrote, “Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.”[1] Now this evokes more than an image; it riles emotion. Disgust, perhaps. Or possibly intrigue. But this snippet also supplies a command—an instruction. Blake wants to tell the world something. Ah! Here is the crux of the issue: Blake has long been dead. He can no longer tell us whether the tree, per se, is in space, a casino, or hanging inverted in that stadium. The incapability of language to clarify intention haunts any literary venture. In speaking Blake’s words, I have given new life to them. They have been re-voiced. Resurrected, if you like. But to what end?
T.S. Eliot obsessed on this idea of re-doing voices from the past—on how to piece together bits of language to create meaning—a Dr. Frankenstein’s creature, constructed of miscellaneous part of the deceased. But what sort of meaning—what sort of life—can be expected of such an abomination? The whole reputation of language collapses. Again, you may ask, why do I bother with the breakdown of language?
I ask you to concern yourself not with the information presented by a speaker or a narrator, but with that which this teller does not supply you. The tree, remember, could only be a figment of a toddler’s imagination. The proverb is dead, buried like Lazarus, and when it is raised again, it does not speak on its own; it cannot supply meaning. The important thing is that you do not rule out all the possibilities—that you do not take long dead words and attempt to squeeze meaning out of them—they are “quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry glass.”[2]
—Arthur Heinlein
Almost-blackness clutched at a weak, parasitic desk-lamp which illuminated a spot of the peeling, yellow wallpaper plastered to the corner of the room. Piles of books—strewn, stacked, broken—withered in the inky breath of the night. The close air and the thick, choking odor of decaying pages seeped around the narrow shoulders and thin waist of a figure bent in shadow. The old, woolen sweater, dyed with rusted oranges and faded olive greens, highlighted purposeful rotations of the arms; the lightweight, white dress-shirt pouring out of the hemmed edges of the sweater, swept with the flicking dance of the wrist and pen.
The old bleached paper, crossed with now-sea-green lines, hissed at the scratch of the pen tip—absorbed the streaks of ink, but as a Kuwaiti desert drinks crude oil. The green eyes, dictating the hurried strokes of the pen, flashed from left to right—now ahead, now behind the flowing ink—with the glitter of intelligence. Hair, dark and ruffled, like a storm-blown raven, fell among equally black eyebrows. High cheekbones lifted, wrinkling a small, unobtrusive nose in alternating chagrin and pleasure at the string of slanted, sloppy letters forming at the tip of the pen. At last the figure leaned back into shadow and inspected the work.
A faint smile pulled at the lips, thin and pale in the heavy shadows. The right hand stretched again to the document and flicked a signature in deep, looping strokes. Arthur Heinlein sighed, piqued by the dense atmosphere of the room. Removing an envelope from the drawer—a cavernous, tomb-like opening—he folded the draft in thirds and sealed the envelope. With another scratch of the pen, he scribbled another name on it: Rachel S. He stood. A floorboard creaked in protest. It was late; leaning over, he pulled the sweater from the fine curve of his back and over his head. He tossed it to the still-warm chair. He unbuttoned the shirt with faultlessly automatic fingers; he found it a place on the bed-post and unbuckled his belt and slipped out of long, gray trousers. Then he reached across the envelope on the desk and switched off the light. Shadows consumed the room—made it seem closer, cozier—without the light.
The bed groaned as he rolled underneath the sheets, soft and cool against his body. He sighed again. His lower back ached, still—a determined, incessant pinch. Arthur twisted himself, torso one way, legs the other, as the therapist had taught him so long ago. No longer did something give and snap into place—smashing the dam of relief, which used to flood his spine. No, now it was different and his late evenings writing didn’t help. The pain was noise—just as his perpetual headache—muted, indefinite, but ever-present. Arthur determined to ignore both—as he always did. And within minutes he had drifted off into a dreamland, free of pain, but never of darkness.
<>
“Daddy?” echoed a voice in the hollow recesses of his submerged void of sleep. Somewhere a ray of light slanted into his consciousness. He squinted to shut it out. But the voice—such a sweet voice—reverberated again within his skull. Blinking in the sudden light of late morning, Arthur massaged his forehead. The headache was back again this morning. “Daaaaddy...” It was his daughter’s voice—tinged now with annoyance. He pried his left eye open.
“Ahh, mornin’ sweetheart.”
“Good morning,” she answered, folding her arms.
“Whadya need?” he asked, propping himself against the headboard and rubbing his right eye. She seemed to tolerate his slow-moving mental state with a tapping finger and cocked lips, but a smile held its form beneath her chagrin.
“How late did you stay up last night?” she wondered. He waved the question off with a flat palm and circling wrist and yawned deeply.
“I dunno…two, three, maybe,” he replied, running his fingers through his hair. “Is that what you woke me up for?”
“It’s ten-thirty,” she observed with a faint twitch of a smile at the corner of mouth. This brought life to his eyes—they widened, glanced left to right and back again, squinted at the clock squatting on the bookshelf. His lower lip fell away as he fixed his gaze back to his daughter; automatic fingers moved to his temples to stem the rushing tide of pain.
“Oh no. I had that lecture at ten-fifteen.” His face twisted as his heart sunk. “Why didn’t you wake me sooner, Les?” he accused with cheeks scrunched high and his mouth still hanging half-open. She raised her eyebrows and swallowed a mocking laugh.
“I had Physics III at eight and Differential Calc right after that, Dad,” she defended with wide eyes. “I just got back.” He sighed his frustration.
“I guess the students will enjoy a cancelled class, then.” His eyes drifted to the far wall, where a print of Dali’s The Last Supper hung. “And that was a
“That was my only commitment today, though—besides office hours. I guess I’ll take the whole day off,” he mused. He remembered his daughter lounging in the doorway. “What are you up to now?” he asked her.
“Reading,” she stated, and bit her lower lip. “I also have to finish the application for that program this summer.”
“The one for NASA?”
“Yeah. It’s due in two weeks.” He grunted approval. It made him proud to think of her as a future astronaut. She glanced at his bookshelf, leaning on one foot, crossing her other at the back of the ankle. “And then I have to go to town, but later. Two-thirty or so.” He nodded and narrowed his eyebrows at The Last Supper, as if her words “two-thirty” meant the basement had just flooded. She grinned cautiously and stepped backwards, as if to leave the room. Then his eyebrows shot upwards and he hummed and waved her back through the door.
“Remember your Uncle Stetson is coming over for dinner at six. So, plan accordingly,” he reminded her with widening eyes. She rolled her eyes and gazed at the streaked brass doorknob, cocking her jaw.
“Okay. Kosher, I know. I’ll put those pork chops back in the freezer,” she sighed. He laughed, but her gaze, level and dull, told him that she was not mocking her Uncle.
“You really do have to change your plan?” he asked. She ignored him.
“What do you think of Filets de Maquereaux á la Tomate?”
“Sounds fantastic, Les.” He said, reclining into his pillow. The door began to swing shut as she spun to leave. But another thought seized his consciousness.
“Oh Les! Can you mail that letter on my desk when you go?”
“Sure, Dad,” she replied with a lift of her shoulders. He thought how much she reminded him of his wife, bless her soul, when she did that; a good girl, she knew how to carry her shoulders well. But twenty-two years old and unengaged—it was beyond him how she had yet to answer romance’s call. He watched her hand fingering the dried, gray paint on the door. Suddenly epiphany dawned on his face.
“Oh, but I still have to address the envelope. So don’t take it now.”
“Okay, Dad,” she said, nodding and smiling. The sparkle in her eyes, too, he thought: that was her mother’s. She stepped lightly backwards and brushed her hair back behind her ear, signaling her intention to leave the room.
“If you could drop in and grab it before you go to town…”
“As opposed to after?” She paused while his shoulders and eyebrows drooped in annoyance. “I will, Dad.”
“Thank you, Leslie,” he sang.
“You’re welcome, Daddy,” she chirped. A short, potent silence invaded the room.
“Do I get breakfast in bed?” he ventured at last. She set her hands on her hips—just like her mother, damn it, he thought—and shook her head. The amber hair—just beyond shoulder-length—complemented her set stare: her mother’s soft blue eyes, tinted with his flashing green. A lagoon green, he fancied: as iridescent in which to gaze and as impossible to move.
“No, Dad. But it’s downstairs on the counter.” She paused again, with a half-open grin, seeming to consider leaving the room on that note. He turned his lips up and to the left—raised his thick brows. “You might want to heat it up, though,” she advised.
“Fair enough, Les,” he said, glancing at the hardwood floor.
“Bye, Dad,” she said, smiling again and slipping backwards out of the room, one hand on the door, the other on the jamb.
“Bye, Les,” he replied with a hyperbolic grin. She laughed and closed the peeling oak door behind her. It clinked as it shut and the handle wobbled in her grip. Uncle Stetson for dinner, she thought, oof. Well. First, put the chops back in the freezer. Then homework. Then application, letter, Mackerel and some fresh tomatoes from the market. We have onion and parsley already. She bounded down the creaking stairs and set about her tasks. When she drifted into the kitchen and beneath the main skylight, she tilted her head back to gaze at the sky.
Its infinite blue confounded her. Of course, it was just the atmospheric effect on the sun’s rays of light, refracting them into the azure wavelengths of the spectrum—she had known that much since she was a little girl. But it worked another effect on her now. The expanse, whenever divested of cloud-cover, excited a nerve somewhere between her stomach and her lungs—just to the left, underneath her heart—and made her gasp.
The earth certainly had a taste for blue. Atmosphere seen from land, oceans from space. And the perfect place in the world was the docks, when one could walk to the furthest plank and gaze seaward and see only blue—with just a few wrinkly waves to define the liquid mixture from the gaseous one. She lingered at the window and thought that, perhaps someday, she’d be able to watch that omnipotent blue finally fade into the starry black—without the fiery mediation of a sunset. That she would soar beyond the confines of this atmosphere and look back on blue, the cobalt puzzle-pieces of the oceans, and gasp once again.
Leslie pried herself from her daydream and the window pane. If she had any intention of going into space, the application for the astronaut training program had to be finished—and it certainly wasn’t going to fill itself in. She lobbed the frozen chunks of pork back into the freezer and poured her father’s glass of orange juice. And after hanging his hastily discarded jacket from the previous evening’s outing back in the closet and nudging his loafers off the carpet and into the entryway, she picked up her Calculus book and collapsed onto the sofa—a plush, white couch with furry pillows. With two well-executed kicks, her slippers fell among the other shoes crowding the entry. She rolled onto her stomach, clutched a pillow to her chest, and began reading.
<>
Arthur slung his legs off the side of the old spring-mattress and leaned forward. He massaged his pounding temples. Sleep was supposed to cure headaches—not frustrate them. I must be dehydrated, he decided. He hadn’t even downed a single drink last night—he had been mighty tempted to forget his pounding head in the haze of alcohol, but he refrained on account of this morning’s lecture. So much for that. He stood, wavering for a moment with the rush of pain, and made his way to the bathroom. There he found some aspirin, and plopped two on his curled tongue. With a quick gulp of water, he swallowed them and grimaced. Drinking water first thing out of bed should be forbidden. Water only intensified the grimy, bacterial-infested condition of his mouth. Orange juice was the best: something sharp and tangy. Or grapefruit juice. Anything to overpower the fermenting noxious wasteland in his mouth. Even coffee would do.
He filled his hands with the cold, clear water, splashing his face in the temporary pool. Water was at least good in this respect. Better than washing your face with coffee, he thought to himself and chuckled. As he rose to leave, he caught sight of his reflection in a speckled mirror. Is that what they call, “Professor Heinlein?” he wondered and grimaced for the second time in five minutes. He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. Oh well. He sauntered back into the bedroom and donned his bath-robe. He found his slippers under the wardrobe instead of beneath the bed—all with his head in his hands. Orange juice was sure to help.
Once downstairs, Arthur found his glass full to the brim with the nectar of the gods. He stooped and sipped at the bright liquid without lifting it from the counter. His eyes traveled down the edge of the kitchen island to his bowl of oatmeal. It wasn’t steaming in the morning light. He removed his lips from the rim of the glass and licked them. He would fix that. After a few moments in the microwave, the oatmeal seemed sufficiently revived—steaming properly, like an old-fashioned paddle ship going up the
“It’s good, Les!” he called down the hallway.
“You’re welcome,” came her distant reply. She must be reading, he thought and carried on with his breakfast, but rhythmically, meticulously. There was no rush now. If he was going to take a day off, he was going to make the most of it. But orange juice to start.
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