*
Important to specify the crime -- not one of hands -- the crime was not (just) of hands fumbling with a child's belt. What the men did was worse. The meaning was inside, a hot expanse of pavement in one's inside, boiling, hot enough to fry an egg on - that was the soul, burning scaps of itself - here was the crime scene, but no it still has not been said, the whole thing has not been sufficiently said.
The cracked pavement under a bum in a worn out town. Infrastructure bombed and damaged. What are you trying to say?
The crime lay in the response, that it was a response without freedom now. A child internalizes what happens to it. That is the definition of a child, that porosity. The creature that lets abuse just run off its side into the gutter, that is the adult, the very definition of an adult. Hardened. Horrible, you're already practically in the grave, to be like that. Hardened.
The crime came after the hand and lay in the response. It was the little curled up horrible thing in the midst of abuse that said: there is something enjoyable in that, after all. There is something of me in what happened. As though that was what had been supposed to be.
It was a string on a bass that was not supposed to be plucked, at least not plucked in that cavalier manner. The men plucked it, they broke it, and childhood was over in a hurry -- all in one afternoon. And that was the crime at the root of the crime.
*
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Jorge - The Garden of Orthodoxy - Part 3
*
The problem was the way children felt among adults -- so small, so limited, so vulnerable. So much the worm on the ground, to be either stepped on or saved -- or held in suspense, for years and years. It was like the way of the family dog, sitting in the living room. The dog may in some sense think he's human but never imagines he's on the same level as the other humans. The humans have mysterious powers for bad and for good. They can open things, do things. They open the cans of food and shut them again. They have great powers to caress and to hurt.
One needs them and yet wishes they were gone.
The sinister Max would follow the boy around. And he wouldn't go away. He stayed day after day, for a reason. Not even Estelle seemed to know what it was.
On the back porch, there he sat, every part of him far away except his eyes. Those eyes were always placed upon you. They were wet and moist and yet tight as a clamp. And it was not he who went away but Una, one's soulmate. A week away at a distant Y camp.
So make the horrible part go quickly. Tell it at a distance if you can.
The boy went into the garden by himself. The absence of his sister stood by his side. The flowers all seemed dusty and hairy. there was a rotting smell by the pond. Not just the smell of decay but of new growth too. But he didn't want either one.
He looked behind him and the back porch was empty.
Now he went past the edge of the garden, beyond where he and his sister had ever gone. And there was a cabin there or the shell of one.
The three legged dog stood in front of it and barked. A robust deep sound. Go away! Go away!
The protected space had shrunk to a square, a rectangle. At one edge the dog, at one edge the battered and maimed trees. The nymphs fled from the trees like birds, perhaps they were birds.
Behind was his home. In front of him the cabin. A hermit lived there, a young man with a beard, oh crazy one, perhaps the caretaker's son, brain-damaged, squatting on the campus grounds, I guard the creek from terrorists. We used to see him across the field, always smiling. Everything is all right now, everything is good. He stood in the fog wearing nothing. When Jorge turned around to face home he saw his uncle standing in his path blocking it.
No, I am not going to go on. You have to write with a purpose, a purpose that serves, that offers service to someone but who is served? Cast your memory back like a fishing rod but the fish in this creek are dead now. Move on, move on. Something has happened to you, something bad, Estelle said. Why won't you tell me? And Una sat next to you at night in the TV room, with the TV off, she was so careful not to look at you, she waited for you to speak. And waited. And waited. Auntie's health so bad and the fear the fear of -- no not of being orphaned but worse. Someone else as your guardian. Do not say the name, do not even breathe it.
And Jorge lay on his stomach on the bed, fingering the little Canterbury cross that Estelle had given him. It was a cross without a person on it but the locus of a person. If you spoke to it in a sense it spoke back. And Jorge would ask, over and over:
Why didn't you protect me? Why didn't you protect me better?
*
The problem was the way children felt among adults -- so small, so limited, so vulnerable. So much the worm on the ground, to be either stepped on or saved -- or held in suspense, for years and years. It was like the way of the family dog, sitting in the living room. The dog may in some sense think he's human but never imagines he's on the same level as the other humans. The humans have mysterious powers for bad and for good. They can open things, do things. They open the cans of food and shut them again. They have great powers to caress and to hurt.
One needs them and yet wishes they were gone.
The sinister Max would follow the boy around. And he wouldn't go away. He stayed day after day, for a reason. Not even Estelle seemed to know what it was.
On the back porch, there he sat, every part of him far away except his eyes. Those eyes were always placed upon you. They were wet and moist and yet tight as a clamp. And it was not he who went away but Una, one's soulmate. A week away at a distant Y camp.
So make the horrible part go quickly. Tell it at a distance if you can.
The boy went into the garden by himself. The absence of his sister stood by his side. The flowers all seemed dusty and hairy. there was a rotting smell by the pond. Not just the smell of decay but of new growth too. But he didn't want either one.
He looked behind him and the back porch was empty.
Now he went past the edge of the garden, beyond where he and his sister had ever gone. And there was a cabin there or the shell of one.
The three legged dog stood in front of it and barked. A robust deep sound. Go away! Go away!
The protected space had shrunk to a square, a rectangle. At one edge the dog, at one edge the battered and maimed trees. The nymphs fled from the trees like birds, perhaps they were birds.
Behind was his home. In front of him the cabin. A hermit lived there, a young man with a beard, oh crazy one, perhaps the caretaker's son, brain-damaged, squatting on the campus grounds, I guard the creek from terrorists. We used to see him across the field, always smiling. Everything is all right now, everything is good. He stood in the fog wearing nothing. When Jorge turned around to face home he saw his uncle standing in his path blocking it.
No, I am not going to go on. You have to write with a purpose, a purpose that serves, that offers service to someone but who is served? Cast your memory back like a fishing rod but the fish in this creek are dead now. Move on, move on. Something has happened to you, something bad, Estelle said. Why won't you tell me? And Una sat next to you at night in the TV room, with the TV off, she was so careful not to look at you, she waited for you to speak. And waited. And waited. Auntie's health so bad and the fear the fear of -- no not of being orphaned but worse. Someone else as your guardian. Do not say the name, do not even breathe it.
And Jorge lay on his stomach on the bed, fingering the little Canterbury cross that Estelle had given him. It was a cross without a person on it but the locus of a person. If you spoke to it in a sense it spoke back. And Jorge would ask, over and over:
Why didn't you protect me? Why didn't you protect me better?
*
Jorge - The Garden of Orthodoxy - Part 2
*
The caretaker professed to be an atheist, which was a sort of lie or evasion -- no one in the remote land called America was fully able to disbelieve in God, the belief was so to speak in the blood -- not via thinking, it was not a bypath of mentation, rather lay in the sheer act or ambience of whatever harbored thinking, it was impregnated, as all things in that country were and as any Martian would have instantly seen, with the abiding sense of intention underlying everything. Everything possible had first been made possible. There was God (named or sometimes better not) and God underlay everything. So the caretaker was in this sense a bit of a poseur but in any case he called himself an atheist. Enough of that. He was one of those people who would not answer the door. Did not answer the phone. So care was not taken, the garden had no caretaker, and it needed none. It was beautiful without any human touch. But enough of that. The garden thrived on its own.
Jorge remembered the exact day that the Garden of Orthodoxy shut its gate on him -- like a blossom snapping shut at the tap of dusk -- leaving the insects without access or escape and all the happier stories replaced by more somber ones.
Aunt Estelle was in the kitchen rubbing her hands. Una would stare at her and look away. Uncle Max is coming back from his travels, isn't he?
I supose we need to tell the caretaker to get the place ready, Estelle said. But the caretaker wouldn't answer his door.
One day the caretaker's son went off to war. It was either Korea or Vietnam or Iraq, there were so many wars, there was pretty much always a war rustling that far off kingdom. The caretaker received notice by mistake that his son was dead. The authorities had confused 2 recruits. When the caretaker received the news, all of the blood quite visiblly drained from his face and it never returned. You saw a sort of death before your eyes. No God would have done this to me, he said. Then he closed his door. Functions continued but the main thing had been blocked.
Meanwhile the son, the real son, recovered from his injuries, which were sizable, and knit the heart back together. The college paper proclaimed his return. The son came back and knocked on his father's door but the caretaker wouldn't open.
My son is dead, the man cried. I don't know who you are.
Go away!
*
Meanwhile Estelle tried to keep the children out of the way of these adult happenings but she was very distracted because Max had returned. Her husband had a wandering kind of job and a wandering spirit. He was not there when he was there. Una and Jorge hardly knew him, perhaps only had learned from him the strange lesson that male adults were remote, always preoccupied and "far", as though a species not related to -- what? To the heart's affection as it was understood. As though he was not really family. His handsomeness and darkness suggested another way of being. Adulthood for men was something you would grow up into against your will. It was a path out of here.
At the dinner table, in the living room, his eyes followed the boy everywhere and wouldn't let go. How big and strong you have suddenly become.
Now where do you go in that big garden? What do you do all day?
It's just a big place, Jorge said. We just hang out. Nothing interesting.
But I like things that aren't interesting, Uncle said.
Well, when it's hot we submerge ourselves in the trees.
I would like to do that with you, Uncle said. I would enjoy that so.
Away from adult worries.
One feels so free inside nature. Away from society's eyes. One can do whatever one wants. It's nobody's business, just your own assunto. So you can just be yourself, you know?
Then Estelle came in with her hot pad and cloudy casserole, wondering why everyone was so quiet.
Always his eyes followed you. They were like something clinging to your legs and arms, something you tried to brush away but couldn't. One's hair thickened with fear. Responses became complex, and what wasn't painful turned painful simply because it wasn't. This congested state of being was your future. The heart wished to look away, the heart muscle twisted. The loins lingered and looked back. Then the heart really began to beat strangely, so completely off the beat. Why oh why did this man have to be here?
END OF PART 2
*
The caretaker professed to be an atheist, which was a sort of lie or evasion -- no one in the remote land called America was fully able to disbelieve in God, the belief was so to speak in the blood -- not via thinking, it was not a bypath of mentation, rather lay in the sheer act or ambience of whatever harbored thinking, it was impregnated, as all things in that country were and as any Martian would have instantly seen, with the abiding sense of intention underlying everything. Everything possible had first been made possible. There was God (named or sometimes better not) and God underlay everything. So the caretaker was in this sense a bit of a poseur but in any case he called himself an atheist. Enough of that. He was one of those people who would not answer the door. Did not answer the phone. So care was not taken, the garden had no caretaker, and it needed none. It was beautiful without any human touch. But enough of that. The garden thrived on its own.
Jorge remembered the exact day that the Garden of Orthodoxy shut its gate on him -- like a blossom snapping shut at the tap of dusk -- leaving the insects without access or escape and all the happier stories replaced by more somber ones.
Aunt Estelle was in the kitchen rubbing her hands. Una would stare at her and look away. Uncle Max is coming back from his travels, isn't he?
I supose we need to tell the caretaker to get the place ready, Estelle said. But the caretaker wouldn't answer his door.
One day the caretaker's son went off to war. It was either Korea or Vietnam or Iraq, there were so many wars, there was pretty much always a war rustling that far off kingdom. The caretaker received notice by mistake that his son was dead. The authorities had confused 2 recruits. When the caretaker received the news, all of the blood quite visiblly drained from his face and it never returned. You saw a sort of death before your eyes. No God would have done this to me, he said. Then he closed his door. Functions continued but the main thing had been blocked.
Meanwhile the son, the real son, recovered from his injuries, which were sizable, and knit the heart back together. The college paper proclaimed his return. The son came back and knocked on his father's door but the caretaker wouldn't open.
My son is dead, the man cried. I don't know who you are.
Go away!
*
Meanwhile Estelle tried to keep the children out of the way of these adult happenings but she was very distracted because Max had returned. Her husband had a wandering kind of job and a wandering spirit. He was not there when he was there. Una and Jorge hardly knew him, perhaps only had learned from him the strange lesson that male adults were remote, always preoccupied and "far", as though a species not related to -- what? To the heart's affection as it was understood. As though he was not really family. His handsomeness and darkness suggested another way of being. Adulthood for men was something you would grow up into against your will. It was a path out of here.
At the dinner table, in the living room, his eyes followed the boy everywhere and wouldn't let go. How big and strong you have suddenly become.
Now where do you go in that big garden? What do you do all day?
It's just a big place, Jorge said. We just hang out. Nothing interesting.
But I like things that aren't interesting, Uncle said.
Well, when it's hot we submerge ourselves in the trees.
I would like to do that with you, Uncle said. I would enjoy that so.
Away from adult worries.
One feels so free inside nature. Away from society's eyes. One can do whatever one wants. It's nobody's business, just your own assunto. So you can just be yourself, you know?
Then Estelle came in with her hot pad and cloudy casserole, wondering why everyone was so quiet.
Always his eyes followed you. They were like something clinging to your legs and arms, something you tried to brush away but couldn't. One's hair thickened with fear. Responses became complex, and what wasn't painful turned painful simply because it wasn't. This congested state of being was your future. The heart wished to look away, the heart muscle twisted. The loins lingered and looked back. Then the heart really began to beat strangely, so completely off the beat. Why oh why did this man have to be here?
END OF PART 2
*
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