Wilson Read online

  It could have happened that way. Who’s to say?

  Let Us Cast Our Attention, Then, to “Upheavals of the Great”

  In which the reader is exposed to another acrostic

  … the death of Bennigsen, the suicide of Kennedy, the lone anguish of Edith Wilson, caught in a loveless marriage, and unable to communicate save by notes scribbled both in invisible ink and code,1 and thrown to the mercy of chance and an uninterested public, falling past the Museum on their way to the floor of the Factory.

  Which of us has not been moved at the thought, and, yes, at the sight of the lone surviving note, writ upon the back of a packing slip in her own urine, which when viewed under ultraviolet light reveals: The letters so mellifluous, so suggestive; the code, of course, never broken, and, when discovered, employed as a justification for her further imprisonment.

  R A S S

  D F J J

  D A S S

  Is it not ironic that we today know less of the state of her mind at that time than of the percentage of albumen and undissolved solids in her urine?2

  “D F J J,” indeed.

  And how the history of that time might have been altered could her heroic, nay, Stakhanovite efforts to communicate have met with success?

  How fickle a public, how harsh a time – to change from the adulation, nay, the ecstasy of the pickerpape parade on her return, to the moral, mental and physical oubliette of the barred powder room of the Museum Lobby –

  … that scene, treated so often in song and fable, in film, mural, and – the highest endorsement of its consonance to our contemporary lot – in pastiche. This scene:

  The blind, deaf widow in the powder room – charged with the captaincy of this great nation, and reduced to writing on the packing slip of what contemporary research must identify as a window frame, reduced to scribbling nonsense in piss and throwing it out of the window – this hero, this saint …

  Et cetera.

  The Papers on the Shelf

  In which the investigation subtly shifts to a perusal of the Capsule1

  The Settlement of Michigan

  Birnam Wood

  The Strikeplate

  The Amulet (disputed)

  The Settlement of Michigan

  The Settlement of Michigan

  Bruce “Wild Man” Muskie, New England Journal of Medicine, Fall 20491

  Survival of Indian Voyageur Symbiology2 in the Myth of the Grande-Pacquards

  The fragment begins: “… and a tattoo which read, ‘My other car is a Rolls-Royce.’”

  His eyes bulged with what may have been fear or a wry surprise at the finality of it all – as if it were a drama or a novel whose sad ending is known, but whose narrative is so enchanting that one approaches it with, none the less, that hope that somehow, this time …

  … his eyes, I say, bulged with what we may call surprise. Perhaps we could call it “welcome.”

  Was it not fitting, would it not be fitting to call it so, as he himself had written,

  Anger, in business dealings, is a veil between you and the customer – yes, you may be wroth, you may have been deluded, cheated, mistreated in every possible way, and yet, is it still upon you to close the sale.

  If not, move on to your next appointment. If so, know it’s your anger which prohibits you from doing so. Not the customer, no, for it is not his “job” to buy from you. It is your job to sell, and, as we saw in Step 6, recognition of responsibility is the key to the top half of the pyramid.

  What are our tools, for Step 6 upward? Let’s review:

  Birnam Wood Do Come to Dunsinane

  or: Cheezit, the Copse

  Alarmism and Millenniumism in Late Twentieth-Century America

  One cannot invest too much effort, it would seem, given the spate of theses, tracts, broadsheets – but I will not bore (with the blessing) with yet another catalogue, falling the victim, thus, of that grave error of the climber, perched upon the highest crag, moved by the urge to fly, who flings himself down, attempting to still by surrender, that tropism he found, if the truth were known, and the question could be put to him as he falls, in the end, less irksome than the prospect of that death, so imminent, on the rocks of whatever the chance composition of the base of that protuberance below.

  Unlike, then, that man, rendered unhappy by the search for happiness, I will not (once again, deo volonte) in submission to that urge for closure, commit that irremediable error of undoing, of gainsaying, of betraying the essence of my quest.

  (In the mountaineer or climber, height, in these peregrinations, clarity.)

  “Wolf, wolf!” the boy cried. And there was no wolf.

  Later, the tale informs us, there was a wolf. And the boy continued to cry. But, we are told, “his cries went unheeded.” And the wolf devoured him.

  Might one not say (certainly not in extremis, vis-à-vis that wild beast, but, here, in safety and repose, understanding the tale as a parable, which, for good or ill, we must allow it to be), might one not, then, say, that the good which the boy pursued (and he must have, must he not, have deemed it good indeed, as he knew that the ability to command his listeners’ attention/concern diminished) might and must one not say that it was their attention which he craved. And that the potential to command their protection using the same formula (“Wolf”) is but coincidental – that the boy had had all the good he could derive from his operations, that the unwillingness of the villagers to run to him at the time of his actual attack by a wolf is notable only within the parable – that in the less specialized operations of real life, it was and would have been the villagers’ responsibility to run to the boy each time he cried “wolf,” ad infinitum, to ensure his amendment, to move away, or to have him killed?

  Similarly, the boy: had he had it in his view not to “round out the story,” but to save his own life, would he not have been better put to’ve shouted something different? (“Fire,” for example, or “Rape,” or “Look, I have found gold!”)

  I think some short reflection must compel agreement.

  The Strikeplatel

  As feast, famine, so must form perennially pursue function. “Male and Female created them (s)he.” And, as the female to the male, so to the bolt itself the strikeplate; and, so, then, its necessary form.

  AN IDEOGRAPHY OF THE RECEPTIVE, op. cit.

  It needs no apologia, nor will I embark upon one here (what could one gain?). That era of the phrase so unaccountably unremarkable to the mind of the times – Architectural (or “Structural”): Reconstructionism.

  It has been (re-)established, licensed, ever, until – we would say “the end of time,” but reasonable historical wisdom might say better “until superseded by folly or fashion.” The Reconstructionists held as the single indubitable fact of life this: Form must (should) follow function.2

  We say of any thing, “It was better when it was and, yet, we burn to make it large.

  But the strikeplate must lie in proportion to the bolt. And elaboration of the form outside the confines of the jamb must lead to at least the possibility of purchase by the malefactor, such elaboration falling into and under the taint not only, thus, of supererogation, but of out-right defeat of the prime (stated) purpose (of the object)

  [corrupt]

  The Amulet [disputed]

  The Amulet

  Found on the remnant of flyleaf of The Dust Jacket – its heading (reconstructed): “For a sample of a similar work we think you’d enjoy, read on!”

  “I once worked in a smoked salmon factory,” he said.

  She understood him to mean that he was, therefore, about to order something other than the fish.

  But he went on.

  “At that time I met a most interesting man.”

  Now, Ginger’s only interest at this time and place was food. But she lowered the menu politely and prepared to be bored out of her cotton bloomers.

  “Oh, the lengths they go to,” she thought. “If they’d only say, ‘Hey, Miss …’ or ‘Babe,’ or ‘Bi
tch,’ or ‘Ma’am,’ or, ‘’Scuse me, how about a round or so of “you know”?’” But, no …

  “This is the Woman’s curse,” she thought, “and, if there was Original Sin and it had something to do with eating the apple, then the punishment is not childbirth, it is not menstruation, it is having to listen to some jerk trying to get laid.”

  “… the good cholesterol,” the man was saying. She nodded.

  “… and he said he’d come from Mars.” Her ears perked up.

  “The planet?” she said.

  He nodded. “Yup.”

  “Huh,” she said.

  “… but you don’t want to hear this.” Ginger shrugged.

  “How lonely it is to be lonely and to have no one to be lonely with,” she thought.

  “Or, to have no one with whom to be lonely.”

  “Those days,” she thought, “those long-gone days on the farm. Those long-ago days. Those days of …”

  When she looked up from the table the place was closed, the lights doused, the chairs put up on the tables, her coffee long gone cold, and her companion dead.

  She searched for the check, and found there was none.

  “Well, that’s thoughtful,” she thought. “But what a crock. ‘Fish factory.’ ’F it had been true, wouldn’t he have said a ‘smokery’, or a ‘fish’ry?’ I think he was only trine to get over on me, ’ndit would have been so much the simpler to’ve said so.”

  She reached down to pat her companion on the head, and spied around his neck the chain, and, at the end of the chain, hung down, resting on the table, the Amulet.

  “Aha. That’s where you are, you little sucker,” she thought. “Wonders never cease.”

  We do not, of course, see the Amulet again until “The Trial of Dick and Jane”1 and it is this lacuna to which this monograph must now direct its efforts.

  What, in short, happened to the Amulet?

  We are not the first to ask this question, but we are the first to utter it as the purely rhetorical prolegomenon you, dear Reader, happy Reader, are about to discover it to be. The Amulet was there all the time.

  It is not, it will not be found, I assure you, remiss or supererogatory to, as it were, “back and fill” – to give those unacquainted with the Canon the, I promise you, few (and, those, painlessly acquired) tools necessary to construct that theoretical underpinning, or Grundisse without which the, if I may, convoluted beauty of the proposition cannot be appreciated.

  The essence of the form, of course, is that of The Search. It has been revealed elsewhere that the significance of Mars, both in ipso and as a symbol – as a symbol both plastic and verbal2 – and, then, by extension, of the Amulet resided in this: it was red.

  Now, what might that other “red thing” be, that thing which the first might be taken to symbolize, if not this: the Grail, the Holy Grail?3

  And why was the Grail red? What, finally, was that shallow red cup, that cup full of (holy) blood, for which the troubadours, their instruments aloft, searched?

  It was there all the time.

  It was as close as the object of the salmon salesman’s desire, it was right across the table, it was in the skies, it hung around his neck and it could be seen (or inferred) on any street corner in the world.

  […]4

  Now, on to the “symbol.”

  It has long been an article of faith that the faint outline pressed (or etched or extruded) into the Sphere was either random – a (to beg the question) naturally occurring blot, or “foxing,” the result of age or perhaps of imperfection in the “manufacture process” – or was an abstracted, which is to say, “simplified” or inexpert attempt to render the outline of Malathusa County, California.

  A third choice exists. It has always been understood that Greind of course meant to indicate that it was possible to take it for a representation of a dog.

  And we can but wish for the eventual evolution or return of humanity to a state possessed of sufficient calm and reason never to give rise to such loathsome, such obscene and godless rubbish as the libel that “he said it was a dog,” and the like – the foolish and always arrogant, nay, invariably fascist attempts of the deranged to leach all meaning from words, and reduce all human intercourse to struggles with the blunt and the sharp.

  It has become de rigueur to remind, at this point, that it has never been established that “The Papers on the Shelf” were actually on the shelf, or, for that matter, “in the Bookcase.”

  That they were discovered in the Capsule is, of course, a matter of “common knowledge,” and, thus, subject to the doubt only of the philosopher, historian, or hobbyist.

  Section Two

  The Sample Paragraph

  from Tales of the Joke Code1

  He was a dog. But he was a happy dog. There was no other word to describe it. At least not to Billy’s mind!

  For it was the grin on Chipper’s face that began Billy’s day – the wet, sloppy kisses, the excited wagging of the tail, the expression which said, better than words, “Let’s go!” – this was the “break fast” that Billy loved best.

  Connect the pronouns in the paragraph above to reveal a secret sign, letter, or numeral. Your next clue will be found in next month’s issue. Arrange the clues to form a sentence or instruction.2

  If this, then that

  A recurrence to the Epitaph, and, thus, to the Mall

  And, if this, then that. Or, if this,

  why not, then, that?

  The above stands, perhaps, as the single, as the singular, instance of a bon mot, recorded at death,* wherein the accuracy of the phrase is absolutely certain, but its utterer’s identity completely problematic. For we know, do we not, of the “din in the Lazarette”; and, yes, we know of the “distraction of the Nurse,”

  For, when she turned around, she could not say

  “for sure” which of the three had uttered it – and now,

  she saw, too clearly, “all of them are dead.”

  As was (and is) the redactor. And do we not, then, “aping Gibbon,”† declare: “Then was the time of the compilers, of the editors, and of the anthology.” Yes. We do, but what choice have we, who dwell in this cosmic shitstorm of sensoria, of information, of both “truth and blather intermixed?”1 Yes.

  Yes, wherein the central question must send the observant/meditative nature, if not “round the bend,” at least to that point sufficient to let him o’erlook it.

  Pad your room, then, furtive creatures all, wherein it will not avail to side with the warders, for, as they said in the Riots, “they have voted with their feet.”

  We do not know who screamed the Epitaph – which of the “Three who Died.” We do not know who graved it on the Plinth upon the Mall, we take on faith the chamber’s occupant, and we call that faith “reason.” No, not reason, which would suggest (whatever its defensibility) an element of election, which is to say, at the least, an operation of the processes of doubt; no, but knowledge, which is to say blind and immutable acceptance.

  “Pad your rooms and eat the buttons off the wall” – so wrote the Mystic,2 he who devoted his life to establishment of the Authorship of the Poem, and he who rose to wealth and fame “smoothing out the wrinkles in the silver foil.” What is it but error?

  The first Commentators died for their intractability, and went to the Plinth “a-smilin’.”

  How it must enervate, how it depresses one to feel that their self-satisfaction, that their repletion, that their sense of purpose would in no wise have been diminished had they lived to discover, beyond any doubt, that their information was flawed, their precepts, so derived, therefore absurd, that they, in short, had lived and died in error.

  On the other hand, what the hell – it kept them out of trouble.

  Time

  Time

  An obiter dictum upon that which “is passing.”

  Get dressed, you married gentlemen; or, “If Your Wife is Frigid, Freeze her Till she Burns to Thaw.”

  From: 400 PI
ECES OF A SCARY RIDE

  The Bible – no, we will not say “bible,” for would we then imply we mean to have the term accepted as meaning Koran, Torah, whatever-the-hell, Joke Code, Panishads and Sutras, and so on and so on? Or would it mean we mean to exclude them? How can we determine which?

  And would that determination, or its attempt, not consume that which is least replaceable: time?

  It has been argued that life itself is less replaceable than time. But this, I feel, simply begs the question. The question in this case being, “What is Time without life?”

  Thus we perceive Time has no meaning without life.

  A-ha, you say, do you mean to state that the eons and ages between the slime-mold or the too-long-left hunk of cheese, or whatever it was which gave rise to that first mold, or spore which grew (how slowly!) into what we come to know as ourselves – do you mean to say that that period has no meaning, as it was empty of intellectual life, of life sufficiently sentient to note the passage of Time?

  Or might you say (if I’ve correctly gauged your mood) that the disprobative period you propose predates even that, that you mean to indicate that time, say, from the start of the whole thing – whatever that means to you – that time of nothingness, or before-being – that time, in short, so far removed from our own in every particular that you are powerless to conceive of it and must employ a primitive, a mythologic construct to do so, i.e., “that time before everything was,” “that time when dogs could speak,” etc.