The History of Writing: The Bad Guys
They were Austrian-Hungarian by bloodline, something else on paper. Levanarskie's face, in particular, exuded the distressed archaeology of the world before him where the little that could be invested all but predisposed the tablescraps awaiting its investors. The quiet night-morning absorbing their animosity and the sea like some happenstance/heuristical soapcake.
Said Grauerholz, "These are ours, yes?"
"Yes, these are ours."
The crates had ostensibly been dripping into the country for some years, certainly since the Great Depression and Prohibition. America was enormously keen on fortifying the land/property since the post-Civil War Western Expansion, and there was much oil, food and varied other resources from the natural vaults of the earth and with the philosophy of men like Washington and his peers set in the culture like railroad-spikes and those recently discovered dinosaur fossils, the only detail begging to be assured was that families bore children to replace those sacred functions of life.
"It's a full box, yes?"
"To the brim, Jim."
"Mind if I..." said the other.
They were Lee-Enfields. A 25 count. There'd been some issue with delivery of the items due to the manufacturer (England) facing a mild, yet nagging wave of criticism due to Parliament's mismanagement of resources & funding for those resources; then the issue becoming a rumor; then the rumor supported and absorbed into the public conscience. Finally, as the ports and those that were staffing them endured and/or tolerated the toil of daily setbacks, the structural question in want for personal answers: the shipments continued, or recontinued, if you will, and the National Guard and those that would tag on them added to their stores.
The miserable pollution of the city burping with sounds of trains, sounds of ships. The film of the sky, abstract, unmissable. They moved the crate to a boxtruck pre-loaded with clothing and home-needs for a department store near 130th in Manhattan. Levanarskie's eyes going back to the same frill-dress on its hanger as they returned with the second- and third crates. He thought of Samantha and his thinking became compulsive, like an intravenous of rumination snaking down into his hungry, vodka-soaked guts. The whore. The demimonde. She'd set some deathly lust, or the shadow/possibility of that lust into his body with little room for exception. The feeling was chains, asphyxiating links derived from metal without proper number or serial identification. And he thought about how much stronger it would make him and he thought about shooting, killing Troy Thompson.
"Look at me," he said to Grauerholz.
Grauerholz paused where he stood, Levanarskie's hand on his bicep.
He meant to speak, but Grauerholz's helplessly small black eyes delayed him. He looked through the crazy slat of his few un-distracted synapses, the last of him in there working to erase the sinful thing in its entirety. "We're gonna be free of this man," he said. "We're going to be free of all of these people."
Grauerholz had no idea what he meant, but he agreed. He indicated with his eyes. Levanarskie approvingly slapped him on the arm for him to get in the truck and start driving.
He got in the truck, started the engine.
Levanarskie watched the truck driving out of the lot into the desolate avenue, then toward the cold, near-impenetrable landscape toward 130th Street.
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History of Writing
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The year before he "fathered" Charles Anthony, Milo Gollander studied the science & practice of psychology much like it were voodoo. In the elaborate depths of perception & emotion, the bitter 26-year-old found a course towards exploitation and a menu of potential suffering promising the treasure of some everlasting kingdom. Where any of his recent predecessors searched among the predictable and the surprising developments of the individual meant to be treated for mental health, Gollander broke fast in the opposite direction, moving word by word, line by line through the theories, research, etc. looking for some cold, permanent center, or hollow, where doubt and agony could be provided an indestructible tomb of its restlessness and sorrow. He'd slept little, avoided personal interaction with others, working diligently on what he referred to as his "files."
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He was especially drawn to the trend, beginning in roughly 1955 and creeping nonchalantly into the present day of 2036, of non-fatal, quality-of-life related syndromes and maladies taking ground in the lives of the average American. The brave, war years of the past were soon becoming the stuff of some poorly photographed myth. Vietnam represented little more than some unnecessary crucifixion of the young by their venomously insecure elders who'd had little more than impressive weaponry and even less purpose of life with which to use it towards. And in the following years, the problem -- and especially the concomitant need to effectively suppress and dismiss the problem -- sunk fractionally tighter like plastic-teeth arresting skin. Drugs were a frequent issue. Men and women alike had been told, with a deep implication of understanding, that they should treat each other with courtesy and respect equally, but serious conversations about said equality were rarely had in mixed company, nor were they remembered when mixed company was within earshot the day after, or any day after that. Nestled in that awful pit/grave of what is not shame but requires shrewd observation, Gollander staggered in the awareness of his own cruelty. His plan was enormously un-actionable by any single individual, but the components demanded for its assembly only required the slightest nudge of assistance to be rendered into the bottomless/trap of forced empathy that arrogantly owns America today. The popular wars of the last century have provided, with disturbing asymmetry, the human impulse to violently defend personal property & territory while giving untenable courses of reason for why the body of such a formidable species should be dramatically overmatched in its challenges. As counter-forces like the Peace Generation and later Occupy Wall St. and Me, Too fell victim to the gravity of time and fatal laziness and the perpetual internecine distractions and criticisms of & within those groups...the highly suspicious practices of health insurance companies and the beguiling expectations of Narcotics Anonymous/Alcoholics Anonymous/Content Anonymous groups surged forward to insert their collective-hand into a viable glove of the paralyzing appetites of its clientele. Conformity and bureaucracy would settle the hindmost. Here: the New Life Centers were erected as swiftly & neatly as a boardgame empire--complete with boardgame-simple human players.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be the stuff of disquietingly implausible science-fiction if it weren't a loathsome fact of modern day America. Bad energy ruled the day and it became less and less certain when its rule would end.
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By relaying their insecurity to others, the men reconfirmed their own feebleness, their perpetual need to be "forgiven" in any absence of any actual crime. The "crime" became a kind of shared perverted fantasy. The men learned how to live as something incomplete. The promise of their situation embodied and enabled the decline of themselves. They were given to involuntary mewing and moaning, or sucking at non-existent lollipops. With eyes like trees and skin like stale clay, the men were like a queer tableau of a species intended for extinction a long, long time ago. With men like Gollander refilling their undignified troughs without worry or interruption, they only grew more accustomed to their unnecessary surrender. New etiquettes and rhythms of speech began to emerge from the unnatural myelinations. The pharmaceuticals and the treatments they received fortified what a healthy body could certainly reject with all it had in its command. Most days the welcome schedule of pills, talking, helplessness, pills, talking, helplessness gave fleeting problems the gravity to become larger ones, and in these essentially feckless matters, the consistent implication of something massive and terrifying awaited at its indefinite horizon.
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