The next morning, that first morning, she rolled over and said, “You should know. It is the attempt at reconstruction that fails you, that causes you to be so unprepared in such a spectacular way. You may ask yourself, just what does a prison visitation room look like? You may compare it to movies, privately noting all the many examples you’ve gleaned from television, but they will be of no use when you finally find yourself in one. Hysteria, catharsis, hysteria, catharsis lather, wash, rinse, repeat. We enable violence so that we can someday repudiate it. War is a germ we carry in our flesh and souls, and it’s only in the activity that we make its anti-body. Is there no sentiment sweeter than, “Who would have thought the old man would have had so much blood in him?” What better way to express remorse? And this, this is the story of how what I discovered turned out to be much, much different. Being young, and as I now know, foolish in even my ideas of rebellion, I intended to prove her wrong. Amazement at the world, or at least that’s what she told me. Respect the giggle, because there’s a joy and wonder in it. Or better yet, yell, if only to hope for the comfort of an echo. It’s up to better read people than myself to decide.Īfter all, if one can conceivably write anything, why write? If one can say anything at all, then one well as may mutter into the void. Then again, maybe I am speaking metaphorically.

There are only so many turns around the deck you can make, adjusting slants and keeping things slightly askew.

I often gleefully did it, until one day when it wasn’t so much fun anymore. On the Titanic-or wait, was it the other ship?-it fell to me to re-arrange the deck chairs. So I diligently trained myself to absorb as much as I could, not in order to forget what I’d learned, but so that I could pervert and distort it, for I knew that these seemingly innocent missteps would mark me as one who. Having received no formal training, I determined that if I were to be an outsider, I must first create with an outsider’s eye. Until there was that one Wednesday, you know the one, when what happened was…īelieving in the invincibility of youth, I set out from the town of _ to seek my fortune among those who shared my sensibilities.Ī like-minded soul once told me, “In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.” (Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress) It started on slaveships and piece-by-piece, limb-by-limb, it just grew. Instead, here it is, the unadulterated and possibly too-detailed truth: It started on slaveships. The most logical thing would be to say that it started on a Wednesday, but that’s definitely not correct.

Silverfish by Rone Shavers