Of course you do; otherwise you wouldn't be here. The more I interact with people who host massive blogs, the more I appreciate my tiny one. I have no expectations of you, and you have none of me. There is no shame in my words here. Only memories of what I thought and felt then.
Anyways, trying to do 21 days of a page a day, every time a different topic, all fiction (ideally). Kind of fell off the wagon again, but trying to get caught up. Read what I wrote, if you will. Unedited, all things thrown together in an attempt to get my fix for the day.
Moses
When
you say, “worshiping a golden calf,” you make us sound crazy. It’s not nearly as sensational as you make it
sound, especially when you consider what we had been asked to buy up until
then. Sure, we melted down the gold
everybody had and cast it into a golden calf.
But think, for a moment, what that sculpture is a representation of: the
nation’s wealth, gathered in donation from individual sources, channeled into a
work of art. That calf was a
manifestation of our bitterness towards the leader who walked away from
us. It was an icon of unity amongst a
people divided by loyalty towards a man who had left us with no answers, on
promises of law from a source on high that none of us were worthy to contact. Distance.
That’s what he promised. More
abstract manifestations of an in-concrete, fluid law. Nothing was ever set in stone.
Tangible,
controllable divinity was what the calf represented to us. We all knew there was nothing supernatural or
divine about a sculpture when we devised it – or at least, that’s what we said
aloud. There was an ethos about this calf, though, a foreign appeal that declared
validity through popularity by means of the tribes around us. But looking to the statue for comfort had no
harm. When our children were hungry and cold,
and the only answers to why we remained stationary were the empty promises of a
man so cowardly and awkward that he couldn’t speak to us without his brother
translating, we could look to the artwork in the middle of the camp. We could point and say, “Look children, that
is why we stay.” And our children would
believe us, although we lied.
What
we said as comforting lies at first became reality soon enough. We told our children we stayed because of the
calf, but that’s not what we were really saying. It wasn’t Baal that kept us together – it was
our act of unity, the expression of oneness that our people demonstrated in
sacrificing the gold from their very ears, the trinkets and heirlooms
reminiscent of generations whose words had been lost, whose trials and
enslavement forgotten, that tied us to each other. We could look to Baal and know that each man,
woman, and child could speak to the calf and listen for the same silence that
we knew our prophet professed not to hear.
Pop
Pop,
like bottle of champagne. Sploosh, like
sound of a boulder in a swamp. That’s
what heads popping would sound like, I imagine.
Maybe there’s a little fizzing sound before the cranium separates into
individual bony plates, deconstructing itself like some sort of accelerated
reverse pregnancy. It’s like a pressure
that coats everything around it, dust settled on your ears and scalp, static,
waiting to discharge. And then,
pop. Brains stuck in the grout. Crusty blood underneath the linoleum, too
awkward for the sponge and too narrow for the mop.
I
mean, I know my head doesn’t actually pop – I’m not stupid. I’d be fucking dead. But I swear, when the stress settles in, my
peripheral vision turns to tunnel vision and all I can think about is the blood
pounding into my head. There isn’t that
much room up there! If you keep filling
it up, it will pop. No, mom, I haven’t
seen your cat. Yes, Sandy, I did send
you the productivity reports from last June.
No, Elise, I don’t think it’s fair to bring another man into our bedroom
because you think my penis is too small.
Sometimes
they think I’m ignoring them, but I’m really doing my best to listen. It’s difficult to try and clench your
arteries to slow the bloodflow to the brain.
Most people can’t flex their arteries, but I can – it’s just difficult
and takes concentration. You probably
wouldn’t appreciate it if I stopped focusing, either. I think Elise just likes me for my money, so
my mushy grey matter caking her foundation and eyeliner would probably make her
file for divorce. My doctor might get
sued if I exploded brains in his office.
My job would probably sue me
for the carpet damage. Lord forbid if my
cranial shrapnel get lodged in someone’s eye.
I’d feel awful if that happened, and I hate apologizing.
I’ve
had some close calls. Once, my dad made
me clean up dog shit he thought our retriever Goldie shat on a lawn at the dog
park, but no, it was that fucking chiuaua, and even though I TOLD him, he still
made me clean it up and I almost painted his idiotic beard with brain juice.
Bellkeep (my favorite so far)
The
bellkeeper ran his thumb along the aged bronze, rust scraping atop his
fingernail like caked blood. These seven
bells – some were hundreds of years old – had always struck him still with
their majesty. He had watched as a child
as the youngest was forged by the bellmaker, long dead in his casket now, each
curve lovingly released from the bronze, shapely, like the hips of a beautiful
woman, but with a resounding stoutness that spoke of character. The oldest of these had lost its youthful
sensuality, but none of its beauty, intensified by storms weathered rather than
dulled. Just another thing, thought the
bellmaker, which differs from people.
The
central bell of the tower was the largest, it’s body reaching greater than
seven feet in height and the bronze almost ten inches at its thickest. The bellmaker traced his hand across the
circumference of the mighty giant, as he had done almost daily for the past
sixty-eight years, and the rust peeled from the metal like skin from a scab,
coating his wrinkles. His hands lovingly
explored the crevices and depths of the bell, tracing deeply into the gash than
ran up the side of the metal, nearly halfway to the peak of the bell. Once, this bell had tolled indiscriminately
from the town, alerting all listening to funerals and fires, weddings and
holidays, pealing loudest at noon, declaring its voice brazenly over the bustle
of the townfolk. Now, the crack on its
side, a product of the salted breeze and an unforgiving clapper, ran too deep
for the bell to sing. With these old
bells, the man knew, it was a matter of surgical ambition to extend the bell’s
life, for the crack and all the weakened bronze would have to be removed to
preserve the continuity of the bronze.
She may sing again, but never as deep, never as full.
A
rasped breath escaped the old man’s strained throat, and he wiped a few
droplets from his face, smearing rust like paint. He felt the cold aching in the scars along
his bones where the poisoned marrow had been siphoned and replaced. The bell would be retired, he knew, within
the next few weeks, upon his own recommendation. The metal was too brittle, despite the
craftsman’s care and intent, and the hanging monstrosity posed a danger to
those below should an unfortunate peal rend the metal in two. The bellkeeper gripped the rope firmly and
pulled with determination that masked his knowledge that the clapper had been
removed days before. The bell swung
wildly and silently, creaking and shaking the tower with its mammoth might,
mute in a way that nearly negated its status as a bell.
Shaking from
effort and cold, the old man creaked his way to the edge of the tower where he
briefly surveyed the landscape before turning back to his bell. It’s silent voice stilled as the motion of
the bell slowed, and the man smiled and took a step back. He turned and spun as he fell, and on the
bricked road below, his brittle bones broke like twigs. No one was privy to witness the old man’s
fall save the choked, bronze behemoth from which he fell, whose mute voice
stirred none.
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Post more of this, if you will.
There is no more yet. But I will as there is.
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