Wilson Read online

  Do you mean to adopt, I say, then, for your benchmark, that period commencing then, and running to the appearance of this traduced and violated shithole of a planet, and say to me of it,* “Do you mean to imply there was no Time, then, as there was no life?” And to continue, “A-ha, then, there I have you! For although there was no life, there now is life, and I who am now alive exercise my right of marshaling perception into expression, if you will, to cast my gaze back and exclaim, ‘That time I speak of was a long, long time’?”

  I will address your question.

  One. The period of which you speak as encompassing “a long, long time” is incapable of measurement. You adopt, as I have above suggested, the crutch of a mythologic construct to express “a time I cannot imagine.” And do thus disqualify yourself (I think you would agree) as any do, as all do in a scientific dispute who revert to special pleading.

  You do not say “a year,” or “a decade,” etc., as you cannot. As you are lost and call, as does a helpless child, as does an egoless adult, on your very adversary to assist you.

  Two. I did not, in the first instance, saying time was nothing without life, mean to engender this notional, and, finally, bootless discussion involving metaphysics, myth, and history, no. It was my intent to convey that my time, that my time is precious to me – that it seems to me to be quite all I have, and if I do not spend it happily, involved in this or that interesting examination, study (yes, even rumination), if, in short, I am bored, I would rather be dead.

  The Bible, I say, that conjunction of ancient Semitic and somewhat less ancient Greek and Graeco-Semitic myths, laws, stories, legends, divine writ (perhaps) (which of us is to say?), parables, proverbs, and, in short, most any category of diversion and instruction mixed promiscuously in a manner and form which, if encountered in a modern work not enjoying the considerable benefit of its provenance and antiquity, would most likely be rejected instanter by all but the most curious of the unemployed, intellectual, or leisure class – the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, Sutras, Vedas, and myths of most every land (and it requires no scholarship to confirm what we feel instinctively: that each land, that each people, that each group, that each club, that each marriage must require a myth, and, having displayed it, live according to its precepts – or more likely fail to so live). (But who is to say? Perhaps there is that perfect land, that happy land, of joy – peopled by simple folk, living their pure lives of simplicity, subject to and content to subjugate themselves to a benign myth, which myth guards, instructs and comforts them? But I doubt it.)

  The Bible (by which I mean to indicate all condign myths – or theologic compedia) instructs us to Love Our Neighbor.1

  Thus let me round out my thesis, my, let me say, prolegomenon, for the bulk of my thesis must remain hid until the resolution of the appositeness, or the lack, of my first term. Or, better, let me discard it and start afresh, employing Occam’s Razor, that best, that most applicable of friends, let me employ it not as an axiom of reasoning, no, but of action. And throw that which offends me to the winds.2 And adopt in its stead a simpler, and, to use an analogy from scaffolding, a “steadier” base. I now set it aside and start anew.

  Dear Diary

  Source: The Diary1

  How insipid those words seem. How incapable of rousing the least excitement or emotion in me, sparing always a self-pity.

  How sad. And how far we have come since the Glory Days. What shall I do today? I think I shall die. I shall not write of the day-to-day, of the weather, nor of the shopping. Nor my weight, nor of those this notebook would require me to miss.

  I do not miss them.

  I wish that they were dead. The weather is overcast, as it has been, it seems to me, these years. It is not only my weight which disgusts, but my corporeal being of itself. I wish I were shut not of these last fourteen days, but of the lot of it. What must that make me? Dot dot dot dot dot. It is not, nor can it be, though it may be said, the now obvious results of the near completion of my most current round of experiments … No, it is my life, or let me say, “the short remainder,” which has turned intolerable … Where have I mislaid that syringe …?

  A Doubt

  How Funny

  Doubt being “either the beginning or the absence of wisdom.” Its investigation cannot help but conduce either to happiness or rue.

  ATTRIBUTED TO KRAUTZ: NOTES UPON JANE OF TRENT

  How funny, finally, to be oneself – a thing separate from one’s work, from one’s “life,” and, perhaps, even from one’s thoughts – do I go too far?

  The above, of course, caption of the famous cartoon, “Greind at the Museum.”1

  The cartoon requires neither description nor exegesis, and will be found on many a wall, locker door, upon the outside or inside of a notebook (perhaps one of yours), etc. – but I will draw the reader’s attention to what I suspect will be a previously undetected aspect of the piece: to the lower right-hand corner and the mound of “pebbles” (blurred or omitted in many or most of the late-generation reproductions). Magnification of a degree possible with good home-quality instruments reveals one of these pebbles to be, in fact, a pumpkin; or, to say more true, a jack-o’-lantern. Its face is carved as a historic figure, and that figure is Wilson.

  In the original we see a finesse of detail and feeling all the more surprising in contrast with the quick, even blunt tone of the cartoon toute entière – the drawn and hollow cheeks, the distrait gaze, the eyeglasses, the thinning hair, the overall impression of anxiety, of care, of illness far outstrip the most healthy imagination’s ability to encompass the notion of the possibility of true art on a pumpkin; and, on the other hand, “Why not?” We read and we denominate misguided those twentieth-century souls creating “art” out of the shredded laundry list found in the lint trap of their clothing driers. But are their operations more risible, less worthy of respect, than the Buddhist or Hindu monks fashioning this or that image of devotion out of rancid butter?2

  Granted, a painting or sculpture is of a greater potential permanence, but is not all (and, perhaps, this is the message of the butter) subject to the will of God?

  The Ancients, in their fog, fashioned a bull calf out of gold.

  Similarly misguided Italians, in another time, daubed paints upon stretched canvas, or hacked out a figure in marble or other soft stone.

  Might not the pumpkin rather than the image graven thereupon be the hidden message of the cartoon’s creator? Might it not?3

  Obsess

  For how can we comprehend the whole without an understanding of the parks?

  OLMSTEAD

  … he would obsess about Bennigsen’s reputation as having been able, with one sweep of his arm, to draw a perfect circle.

  He was, therefore, relieved beyond reason on discovering that the Earth itself was not perfectly round,* but, in effect, pear-shaped.

  Further reflection, in fact, suggested to him, however, that, this being true, space did possess – in opposition to everything he had learned and come to accept but not in opposition to his “senses” – an “up” and “down.”

  “One plugs one hole,” he wrote, “and, happy for less time than it takes the thought to form, discovers another one opening.”1

  Did this suggest to him a closed, hydraulic system?2

  And, if so, of what? Of space? Of knowledge? Of the universe?

  And might we not approach nearer to an understanding of his nature by answering this question, rather than the (seemingly more important) sequel: “How does this system operate?”

  The argument has here degenerated and it is at this point that “The Scholars of Old” traditionally stopped to sample “such viands as the hospitable were wont to place before those worthies.”*

  Bongazine

  Bongazine

  Where, refreshed, we begin again.

  Now let us recur to the use of “magazine,” as you knew that we would – O gentle Reader, full of patience, full of wit, full of forbearance,* full of grace and worth
y, finally, of emulation. For who would not wish to be as you – so replete with excellence, as if three readers were stuffed into a two-reader bag.1

  O, good, oh yummy reader, reader of my dreams, how I would love to συνουσιασθοµ until the cows come home.

  And then go out for tea.2

  I’d like to thank you, and I’d like to spank you. But I do not have the time, and, so, I must recur, as I said, to the use of “magazine.”

  Now, anyone who’s read a British novel of the Georgian Age will recall the first time he or she came acros(t) goal standing in for gaol, and hurried to the footnotes. No, it was not, you then found, a printer’s error. No, no. That was how they talked back then. And, over time, one thing became the other. Just as friendship blossoms, now and then, into love, or love decays into indifference, or, unfortunately, into loathing, or … but you get my drift.

  The phenomenon to which I here make bold, good gentle Reader, Reader kind, Reader possessed of everything, in short, which would induce a man to leave his hearth and home, Reader the thought of whom would trouble his waking hours and make sleep a dream, so that he dragged through the day, eyelids burning, and his feet like lead, unable to make a fist, your image having so undone him, and the sweet, nay, electric fantasy of taking you to some hotel where neither of you were known, locking the door, and [erotica, T.K.], to recur; that phenomenon is the transposition, finally, of “magazine” into “museum” – where, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, magazine was understood to mean a depository (as, a “powder” magazine), a warehouse, in short; and museum, a diversion, usually printed, upon which one mused (as, a periodic publication).

  How did these two terms become transposed?

  How would I know?

  I construe my duty thusly: to draw your attention to the fact.

  Now I am done. Now I may rest.

  Now I may close my eyes, and, utilizing one of several techniques of oriental relaxation I have studied, pray for that momentary solace from, dear Reader, the vision, spectre, dream, or fevered fantasy, of [see above] …

  O, Bongazine

  Source: Annals of Bongazine (formally “O, Bongazine”, c. 2031); from the song, by permission of the family of J. Pungeon and the Pungeon Estate, with special thanks to Muriel Pungeon-Kraft for the use of the captions.

  I am privileged to quote in its entirety the note from Greind’s (then) solicitor, Morris Schwartz, to Miss Pungeon (see below) and will take this opportunity to suggest that, had the note been delivered, the course of that enterprise * at the least and, most probably, of the organizations and endeavors allied to and dependent (at that time) upon it might have been altered for the better.

  Dear Miss Pungeon –

  I take the liberty to address these few lines to you, hoping that they, as has my suit, find favor in your eyes.

  I thank you for taking time from your busy schedule, and I make bold to suggest I may perhaps begin to comprehend what that time means to you. For I, myself, am that which one might call “a busy man.”

  I find, in my own life, the adage, “if you want something done, give it to a busy man,” apt. And I, once again, deign to suggest that I might expand or extend this self-observation to yourself.

  I hope this gives no offense, as it is, first and last, my desire to please. (If the expression of thanks be not, at its core, no, let us rather say, if its only allowable purpose can be avowed as other than the discharge (be it happy or coerced) of debt.) (What point, then, in the pleasure of the debtor?)

  Do I transgress the norm? So be it.

  Pleasure, I say, where I have received so much, and that from the little word “yes.” No lover, nay, no swain, mad fool, et cetera, inflamed by passion ever gained more happiness from that one syllable.

  Nay, may we not observe that that man, driven by, at least in some measure, the desire to conquer found the enjoyment of his conquest, no, not “empty,” but pale in contrast to his joy at the capitulation?

  Not me.

  Thank you thank you thank you. And, should Fate ever place me and I know myself to be in a position to return the favor, I can think of little which I would not do to do so.

  Pray, do not construe these empty words.

  Yours till the Gym Crows,

  MORRIS SCHWARTZ, ESQ.

  The sad, handwritten addendum, clipped to the page, “Esq.’ How tacky. …” has been shown to be discontemporaneous with the “note of thanks.” Many believe it to be a prank, or (harmless?) act of vandalism on the part of a (later) student, library employee, or perhaps (in a most intriguing suggestion) soldier at the time of the Museum’s (first) occupation.1

  The Death of My Kitten

  Source: excerpted, with permission, from O, Bongazine (Canon of the Society, M.P.P.), 2039.

  “Mieu, mieu, mieu,” went the cat, as the car ran over her progeny.

  She could not see it, being down below the windowsill, in her accustomed sunny quadrant of the new (peach) sitting room.

  She could not see it* – but Johnny could.1

  “The car,” he thought, “didn’t even slow down! It didn’t even slow down …”

  [Untitled]

  From Count Rumsford in Hell, #2 in the series Stories of Hearth and Home (Scholastic Publications) 1

  “Oho,” the Bimbashi said, and “Oho, Count Rumsford. How do we find you today?”

  “I have a hangover,” the reply came, “as big as King Kong’s dick.”

  The wizened scribes nodded and smiled, each to himself, as he made those few marks which would, when transcribed, expurgated, and redacted, comprise first the official, and, upon the death of the principals, the sole record of the interchange.

  “What the Sam Hill,” the Count went on, “do we have to eat?”

  “Yes,” the Bimbashi said, and clapped his hands.

  The curtains parted at the sound, revealing a huge pit, the pit filled with glowing coals.

  At the pit’s edge knelt a small elephant. At the elephant’s side, a fellow with an axe.

  The Count watched as this man began to tie a vast bandanna over the elephant’s eyes.

  This task completed, he then offered the creature a cigarette.

  “We’re having elephant,” the Bimbashi said.

  A Disquisition on the Mud Pond

  A Disquisition on the Mud Pond

  or: When Worlds Colloid

  Source: “Oh, Please”, Bongazine, 2074,

  © Goodstone Comix.

  “How can we begin:” he said, and it occurred to him as he said it, as it must have occurred to the more perceptive of his listeners – or, perhaps, say, not to the more perceptive, but to those among the more perceptive given to or appreciative of irony – that he had, of course, already begun, and employed this seemingly separate, modular, or Ciceronian construction as the beginning per se of an operation for which he was stymied to construe a beginning – not unlike the bath or shower shared by a couple whose relationship has progressed to the sexual, but who, having been separated for some time, now reunited, feel “shy.”

  “How can we begin,” he said “to approach the, I will not say ‘pond,’ I will not say the ‘pond,’ no, but ‘the phenomenon of the pond’? For to denominate the Mud Pond a ‘pond’ is as to attempt to plumb the meaning of a Christmas tree by a dissection of its needles. Nay, or of the holiday by a discussion of the tree.”

  Here he consulted his notes and died.

  It has been remarked that his life, that all our lives (in, perhaps, an unwonted manipulation of the conceit) can be likened to the colloidal – to mulch, for example, or to “junket?”

  Now, discounting the, finally, one must say, precious appositeness of the simile applied to one whose life was dedicated not to the study of mud, but to the preservation, the, it will not be seen to be hyperbole to say, beatification (if one may use the term in speaking of a place) of the Mud Pond – discounting, as I say, and why should one not, for the pleasure of argument, which pleasure or inclination to same mus
t be presumed in the readership, else why would they apply themselves to this otherwise arguably dry, scholastic tome?

  (Or is there no one there? Is no one reading this, and am I going mad? How would I know if I were? Who would there be to tell me? And whom could I believe? If I could not even credit the reports of my intellect, how could I those of the senses, whose dispatches must and can only be known as a distillate of the first-named organ?

  Is it not fitting that I, who have worshipped it, should, like the so-trusted lieutenant or general of a dictator, should be the first to fall when that whim or psychosis previously turned against the external regime or enemy is practiced, as, inevitably, it must be, upon those who assisted in its overthrow, who know the dictator’s weakness, his sadism, insecurity, instability, psychosis, screaming madness, in short – isn’t that the way? Where did I go wrong?)1

  Get Dressed, You Married Gentlemen

  or: The Balaclava Helmet, from Tales of the Burn Bag (B-zine Comix)

  … when the nurses would emerge from the ambulance and heave the wounded on to the debris – that rousing sight – the white-coated practitioners streaking up, as their vans skidded, noses dipping and then their tires screaming their displeasure to the brake, as they gave up that part of their tread destined as an offering to fashion. What a scene! The burning of the wounded by the Ambulance Corps!

  “I want to be,” said the young James, “I want to be, I will be one of them, when I grow up.”