absalom, absalom!

Then the Cushite came; and the Cushite said, "Good tidings for my lord the king! For the LORD has vindicated you this day, delivering you from the power of all who rose up against you." The king said to the Cushite, "Is it well with the young man Absalom?" The Cushite answered, "May the enemies of my lord the king, and all who rise up to do you harm, be like that young man."The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!"
2 Samuel 18:31-33

the mad queen

John Singer Sargent, 1889

LADY MACBETH
Yet here’s a spot…Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why then ‘tis time to do’ it. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear? Who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?...The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that. You mar all with this starting…Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O…Wash your hands, put on your night-gown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on ‘s grave…To bed, to bed; there’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand; what’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed. Exit.

Macbeth, 5.1.27, 30-34, 36-38, 42-43, 52-54, 56-58

bill houston (3)

The warden stopped reading. "Is something wrong?"

Wrong? He stood next to Brian facing the warden, the doctor, the two guards. Every one of them was terrified. They were all scared to death of what was happening. The warden's voice trembled. "Do you have anything to say at this time" he asked Bill Houston.

Bill Houston was floored by the question. "Is there something I'm supposed to say now?"

Everyone was confused.

Brian said suddenly, "I want you to know I don't think you deserve to die. I think you been healed."

Nobody knew how to react. They all looked around. It was obvious even the warden didn't know if Brian had just broken a rule. "I really feel that way," Brian said defiantly.

"Thank you," Bill Houston said.

They all stood there in a long silence. What was going on now?

"What's going on?" Bill Houston asked.

The warden looked green and ill. "We still have a couple of minutes," he said. "I think we should wait, don't you?" He glanced around helplessly.

Bill Houston whispered to Brian, "I don't think I can stand up any more."

Taking him by the elbow, Brian helped Bill Houston into the gas chamber.

A truth filled up the chamber: there was nothing left for him now. The door had shut on his life. It said DEATH IS THE MOTHER OF BEAUTY. He couldn't hear a thing. He wondered if they'd put cotton in his ears.

And then there was a faint rattling in the pipe to his right, and the sound of boiling liquid beneath him. He looked down at the length of surgical tubing that ran from his chest to the door. There it goes. Up that tube. That's all that's ever really been important. A visible vapor was curling up over his knees.

He held his breath. Every rivet of metal was a jewel to him. He felt he could hold his breath forever--no problem. Boom, boom. Even as his heart accelerated, it seemed to him inexplicably that his heart was slowing down. You can get right in between each beat, and let the next one wash over you like the best and biggest warm ocean there ever was. His eyes were on fire. He hated to shut them, but they hurt. He wanted to see. Boom! Was there anything as pretty as that one? Another coming...boom! Beautiful! They just don't come any better than that.

He was in the middle of taking the last breath of his life before he realized he was taking it. But it was all right. Boom! Unbelievable! And another coming? How many of these things do you mean to give away? He got right in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn't going to come. That's it. That's the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.

Denis Johnson, Angels

bill houston (2)

Each time he swallowed, he gulped down half a speech. Things to be said roiled in his belly, washed by acid, but he was silenced by his own confusion as it compared to the stately transactions of the casual street, He understood that he would be executed and deceased, that everything he saw would outlast him. Solitary now for weeks, he'd taken to speaking directly to the heart of the moment, fearing everything, repetitively and increasingly convinced that he would soon break apart and be revealed, be destroyed, be born. He recognized it as an old feeling that came and went, but now it came and stayed. He lived alone and thought alone. The nature of murder made him alone inside himself; he'd never been so alone.

I did it, he said to the gas station outside. I'm ready, let's go. I can handle the pain, but I can't hack the fear.

He watched Twenty-Fourth Street all night, all the doings there, the repair and refueling of cheap cars, the going and staying of prostitutes and citizens and strangers, a trickle of types up from Van Buren, people, if he could only have seen them, with motels in their eyes and a willingness to take any kind of comfort out of the dark heat. And while he paid no attention to what he feared, it happened. Slowly the time had been transformed, in the usual way that the passing of an evening transforms a street corner and a place of simple commerce there, like this gas station. And then abruptly but very gently something happened, and it was Now. The moment broke apart and he saw its face.

It was the Unmade. It was the Father. It was This Moment.

Then it ended, but it couldn't end. Now there was a world in which a man got into his blue Volkswagen, thanking the attendant as he did so, and closed its door solidly. It was a world in which one fluorescent lamp arched out over the service station, and another lay flat on the pool of water and lubricant beneath it. It was a world he might be lifted out of by a wind, but never by anything evil or thoughtless or without meaning. It was a world he could go to the gas chamber in, and die forever and never die.

There was some daylight now. He looked through wire mesh, intended to withstand the heat of a blowtorch, at a world awash in a violet peace. He felt as if his feet found the shore. This is your eternal life. This is for always. This happens once.

Denis Johnson, Angels

with You

2
And you, who with your soft but searching voice
drew me out of the sleep where I was lost,
who held me near your heart that I might rest
confiding in the darkness of your choice:
possessed by you I chose to have no choice,
fulfilled in you I sought no further quest.
You keep me, now, in dread that quenches trust,
in desolation where my sins rejoice.
As I am passionate so you with pain
turn my desire; as you seem passionless
so I recoil from all that I would gain,
wounding myself upon forgetfulness,
false ecstasies, which you in truth sustain
as you sustain each item of your cross.

Geoffrey Hill, "Tenebrae"

words

petrichor
n. - a pleasant, distinctive smell frequently accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions.

1964 I. J. Bear & R. G. Thomas in Nature 7 Mar. 993/2 The diverse nature of the host materials has led us to propose the name ‘petrichor’ for this apparently unique odour which can be regarded as an ‘ichor’ or ‘tenuous essence’ derived from rock or stone. This name, unlike the general term ‘argillaceous odour’, avoids the unwarranted implication that the phenomenon is restricted to clays or argillaceous materials; it does not imply that petrichor is necessarily a fixed chemical entity but rather it denotes an integral odour.

oblivion

Darknesse and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest stroaks of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetfull of evils past, is a mercifull provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil dayes, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of Antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls. A good way to continue their memories, while having the advantage of plurall successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the publick soul of all things, which was no more than to return to their unknown and divine Originall again.

Thomas Browne, Urne Buriall

bill houston (1)

The wind was coming down from the North Pole, travelling across the flat of Canada for a thousand miles to slap him in the face as if he were a child. Wilson Street was also covered with innumerable pieces of trash that picked up and set down in flocks like paper birds feeding alongside the buildings. Bill Houston went, "Oooooooh!"--meaning to launch into a song, like a drunken sailor, but he faded off, forgetting what to sing. He wasn't a sailor any more anyway. He was an ex-sailor, and an ex-offender--though he couldn't, for the life of him, say who it was he had offended--and he was an ex-husband--three ex-husbands actually--and he'd been parted from his money and from Jamie in Pittsburgh, spending like the sailor he no longer was, slapping Jamie's little darling Miranda--who would almost certainly grow up to become a cheap sleaze--and spending fifty percent of their time together in an alcoholic blackout. Where had Chicago come from? It frightened him in his mind to wake up in unexpected towns with great holes in his recollection, particularly to understand that he'd been doing things, maybe committing things: his body mobilizing itself, perhaps changing his life all around, making raw deals he would someday have to pay the ticket for.

He rested his back flat against a building, and had the sensation of lying down when he was standing up. The streets swung back and forth like a bell. No doubt about it, it was a dizzy life. Something was missing here. When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all--cash, booze, and a wife--he couldn't be distracted from the great emptiness that was always falling through him and never hit the ground. He should have gotten a damn job in Pittsburgh! He began to cry, each sob coming up slowly like something with a hook on it. Tears on his cheeks burned in the cold wind. Rolling his head from side to side against the bricks he hollered, "I wanna meet my responsibilities!" But in the commotion of city traffic, it sounded like the tiniest thing he'd ever said, and he got going down the street.

Bill Houston was trying to draw near behind two women in overcoats carrying purses. His feet were a couple of burdens he yanked along because there was no discarding them. He wasn't ready for this move, actually, but the energy would come to him when he was near enough: reach and get a fist around each purse-strap, hold tight and burst between the two of them like a couple of swinging doors, leaving them spinning on the sidewalk while he disappeared with their purses from their lives. He trawled along behind while the rush of fear dried his mouth and straightened his head. His legs and feet were coming to life.

He stood up straight, walking like a man again, taking in all the sights along Wilson. The street was all yellow in the artificial light. People were walking up and down it like a lot of fools. It was around nine-thirty, there was a chill in the air, the wind was gentle now, and he was moving inside it like the light of love, ringing without sound, giving himself up to every vibration, totally alive inside of a crime. The women turned down Clark and the song of the thief grew slow and mellow, beating like a bass viol now because the time and pace were suddenly all wrong for a purse-snatch, and the real crime was not yet revealed.

He slowed with the rhythm of it all. The two women drifted farther ahead of him. He was relaxed, letting the whole thing happen, floating into a little hardware place crammed with everything necessary for the good life, including shelves of lumber. One man behind the counter--a young gentleman wearing an orange apron--dealing with one male purchaser and the purchaser's two children, a boy and a girl who yanked on his arms and blew large pink bubbles out of their mouths. Bill Houston drifted along each of five aisles in turn. Gleaming pastel commode seats hung from the back wall. Plumbing accessories, assorted tools, screws, and nails, metal shelves, everything burned with an inner flame. From the back of one aisle he examined the clerk, messing him over with his eyes. Young. Disgusted. Pocket full of pens in his orange apron, sideburns, heavy-framed spectacles bespeaking sincerity. Hundreds of times, almost daily, he had lived this robbery in his mind, making all the right moves, playing the hero, beating the thief senseless and struggling it all off as the police slammed the doors of the van. Bill Houston knew him like he knew himself. In this state of things Bill Houston claimed all the power.

The people left. Nobody else in the place. Everything was as solid as a diamond.

"Whatta you need tonight?" the kid called down the aisle.

"How much is this here?" Bill Houston held up a plumber's helper.

The kid was disgusted. "I got ten thousand a dese items in here," he said. "You think I got every price memorized?" He came around the counter and walked down the aisle.

Bill Houston moved to meet him halfway, his finger jammed up his coat pocket. The kid looked surprised, a second, and Bill Houston grabbed him by the throat with his free hand, sticking the shelves. "You motherfucker!" Bill told him. "You piss-ant kike! You're a dead motherfucker! You've lived the slimiest fucking life you could live and and now it's over!" He could feel each hair and pore of himself as he spoke. Every tiny thing in the place cried out with the fire of God.

The clerk had no words on this occasion. He was going limp, so Bill Houston drew out his bandaged and swollen gun-hand and slapped him a couple of times. He turned the clerk around and kicked his butt down the aisle to the cash register. "Get the fuck around there you dead motherfucker! I want every dollar you can get your hands on and I want it now! Not later. You understand, dead man?"

The kid whipped open the cash register and started laying out the contents rapidly. He was all white, and his lips were turning purple. "Go! Go! Go! I'm clocking your ass!" Bill Houston watched him move. Time to shift gears. "You're doing fine," Houston told him softly. "You're gonna live through this. You're doing just like I tell you, you're saving your life, we're gonna get you through this alive. One pile for the bills, that's right, now a bag for the change. Double-bag it. Good strong bag. Good boy, good boy, good boy."

The clerk was doing all right, but he dropped he bags trying to get one inside the other, and had to stoop down to pick one up. Bill grabbed him by the hair and yanked him to his feet. "Move! Do like I tell you! You're dying!" The kid got a grip and did correctly with the two bags. He poured the change into them and as if in a trance picked up his stapler, folded the bags, and fastened them shut with two staples: snap, snap. Bill Houston loved it. He put the bills in his pocket, grabbed the kid's apron front, and threw him onto the floor. "I want you to pray," he said softly. "Pray for your life. Pray for a long time. Pray I don't come back." On the floor, beside the counter, the kid looked a little confused. "Pray." The kid took his glasses off, and looked at them. "Put your hands together and pray," Bill told them. The kid put his hands together, holding his glasses between them. "Pray loud, so I can hear you."

"Our Father, Who art in Heaven," the kid whispered.

"Louder," Bill Houston said, stepping out the door.

He could hear the clerk saying, "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, oh, Jesus Christ, oh, Jesus Christ," as he headed rapidly up Clark.

Ten PM, and the town of Chicago was shining. He moved up Wilson and into the El station, paid his fare and was up on the platform at the best possible moment, ducking into the train one second before the doors shut.

The lives of strangers lashed out at him through his windows as the train sailed down to the Loop. He witnessed their checkered tablecloths and the backs of their heads and the images moving on their television screens like things trapped under ice. The train was warm, the light was right.

He realized that he was the greatest thief of all time.

The knowledge seemed to rise unendurably and then break inside of him, and he sat by the train's window inhabiting a calm open space in the night. He sat still while his heart slowed down, moving where the train moved, listening to it talk to the tracks, feeling all right, letting the love pour through him over the world.

Denis Johnson, Angels

all manners of shit

In this drying cabinet, shit happens,
and then, over time, it alters its nature,
its little busy toxins die,
it turns to arable waste—waste
no longer, waste not want not. As in
a blood bank, but dirtier,
soilier, the effluvium of the offspring
of the earth mingles: fertilizer of
New Hampshire, Kenya, New York, Boston—
Yankees shit, Red Sox shit,
in excremental harmony;
vegan shit, kosher shit,
slow food, fast, vegetarian,
fruititarian, even the sorrowful
wisps of anorexic shit,
and Calvinist shit, and Kabbala shit,
Halliburton employee shit,
Orthodox shit, Puritan shit,
lesbian shit, nympho virgin
poet chick shit.

Sharon Olds, "Ode to a Composting Toilet"

words

commination
n. - Liturg. A recital of Divine threatenings against sinners; in the Anglican Liturgy, forming part of an office appointed to be read after the Litany on Ash-Wednesday and at other times. Also applied to the whole office.

the honey lion

At that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel. Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When he came to the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion roared at him. The spirit of the LORD rushed on him, and he tore the lion apart barehanded as one might tear apart a kid. But he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done. Then he went down and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson. After a while he returned to marry her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. He scraped it out into his hands, and went on, eating as he went. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them, and they ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the carcass of the lion.
Judges 14:4-9

the idiot king

'Ran', dir. Akira Kurosawa