Chapter 1 of 'Fred the Brown'
Fred the Brown was a photojournalist who had become lost in a desert in Sudan. No-one knew for sure why he was called Fred the Brown, but some thought it was a Franglais version of his real name, which by declension must have been Fred Brown.
Fred the Brown surveyed the shimmering desert horizon through one of the lenses of his large SLR camera: the horizon remained the same, ephemeral as always, shining, shifting like the edges of his dreams. He let the lens fall to his chest, upon which a viewer might have seen the reflection of the horizon, perpetually moving upwards, like a weeping scar, warped by the great convex lens and casting edges of light over his crossed forearms like a wine-glass placed in the sun.
Fred the Brown looked around him dispassionately: he was sick of the place, sick to the core of it, sick from the tip of his sunburnt nose to the back of his grizzled head. He was beyond lost in Sudan - that is to say, lost beyond the point where it could be found, past the point where there was still something he could identify with whatever it was that had misplaced him.
Fred the Brown was sick of moving from oasis to oasis, trying to avoid the death he had been sent out to photograph. Fred the Brown was a sick man in a very haven of sick men, Fred the Brown was blind in a world without light.
Chapter 1.4
Fred the Brown was an unaspiring poet, uneducated though he was, and without grasp of language or meter he stood footless, weightless against the tides of unshackled passions washing against his ribs, knocking his spine and thrashing his heart, bearing his breath like grace notes. Words were his hailstorm, through which he rained without logic, nor reference to the classics, and as rolls of film unpeeled themselves in the white sand and the dead roots of the desert and each image was divined and destroyed by the strands of its creator, Fred the Brown's thoughts filled the cracked desert with whirling snow. No-one knew for sure why he was called Fred the Brown, but some thought it was because of that stretch of skin along his back tanned to leather, jutted along the bones of his back like dirty sheets spread over broken furniture. This was derived from his common hunched position, head between legs, the snares of his body clenched within the tight mouth of the desert caught in the trap of whatever had once lain beyond it, at some time he could not remember.
Pressing the tip of a torn tripod leg between the cracks of the hard earth, Fred the Brown began to carve into the ground with a slow and painstaking motion. This is what he wrote:
I LOOK OUT UPON A FORREST SCENE FROM THE HOLE IN MY CHEST. LOOKING THROUGH MY OWN CHEST AT THE TREES AND THE FRONDS THAT HANG FROM THE BOWING BRANCHES xjhwd [here his instrument stumbled over a twisted root] I AM AWARE OF IT THROUGH ALL MY ORGANS, UPON WHICH THE SCENE IS CARVED IN CRUDE GRAIN THAT FLOATS GENTLY IN SHADOWY SYMBELS BEFORE MY EYES - OR IS THE SCENE WHICH IS CARVED IN FRONT OF MY EYES AND SOMETHING ELSE BEYOND IT? I CANOT TELL. BUT I AM AWARE OF SOME PRESENCE, AND I BUT AN EFFECT OF ITS PANTHEISM: IN THIS STATE SOMETIMES I BECOME AWARE OF A PERECING HEAT AND LIGHT AND THINK SUDDENLY THAT I AM NOT IN A FORREST AT ALL AND THAT THE HOLE IS NOT IN MY CHEST BUT IN MY HEA
What Fred the Brown was going to say next we shall never know, for he was at that moment attacked by a host of angry lemurs, a great grievance of his and a subject which we will perhaps return to at some point in time.
Fred the Brown surveyed the shimmering desert horizon through one of the lenses of his large SLR camera: the horizon remained the same, ephemeral as always, shining, shifting like the edges of his dreams. He let the lens fall to his chest, upon which a viewer might have seen the reflection of the horizon, perpetually moving upwards, like a weeping scar, warped by the great convex lens and casting edges of light over his crossed forearms like a wine-glass placed in the sun.
Fred the Brown looked around him dispassionately: he was sick of the place, sick to the core of it, sick from the tip of his sunburnt nose to the back of his grizzled head. He was beyond lost in Sudan - that is to say, lost beyond the point where it could be found, past the point where there was still something he could identify with whatever it was that had misplaced him.
Fred the Brown was sick of moving from oasis to oasis, trying to avoid the death he had been sent out to photograph. Fred the Brown was a sick man in a very haven of sick men, Fred the Brown was blind in a world without light.
Chapter 1.4
Fred the Brown was an unaspiring poet, uneducated though he was, and without grasp of language or meter he stood footless, weightless against the tides of unshackled passions washing against his ribs, knocking his spine and thrashing his heart, bearing his breath like grace notes. Words were his hailstorm, through which he rained without logic, nor reference to the classics, and as rolls of film unpeeled themselves in the white sand and the dead roots of the desert and each image was divined and destroyed by the strands of its creator, Fred the Brown's thoughts filled the cracked desert with whirling snow. No-one knew for sure why he was called Fred the Brown, but some thought it was because of that stretch of skin along his back tanned to leather, jutted along the bones of his back like dirty sheets spread over broken furniture. This was derived from his common hunched position, head between legs, the snares of his body clenched within the tight mouth of the desert caught in the trap of whatever had once lain beyond it, at some time he could not remember.
Pressing the tip of a torn tripod leg between the cracks of the hard earth, Fred the Brown began to carve into the ground with a slow and painstaking motion. This is what he wrote:
I LOOK OUT UPON A FORREST SCENE FROM THE HOLE IN MY CHEST. LOOKING THROUGH MY OWN CHEST AT THE TREES AND THE FRONDS THAT HANG FROM THE BOWING BRANCHES xjhwd [here his instrument stumbled over a twisted root] I AM AWARE OF IT THROUGH ALL MY ORGANS, UPON WHICH THE SCENE IS CARVED IN CRUDE GRAIN THAT FLOATS GENTLY IN SHADOWY SYMBELS BEFORE MY EYES - OR IS THE SCENE WHICH IS CARVED IN FRONT OF MY EYES AND SOMETHING ELSE BEYOND IT? I CANOT TELL. BUT I AM AWARE OF SOME PRESENCE, AND I BUT AN EFFECT OF ITS PANTHEISM: IN THIS STATE SOMETIMES I BECOME AWARE OF A PERECING HEAT AND LIGHT AND THINK SUDDENLY THAT I AM NOT IN A FORREST AT ALL AND THAT THE HOLE IS NOT IN MY CHEST BUT IN MY HEA
What Fred the Brown was going to say next we shall never know, for he was at that moment attacked by a host of angry lemurs, a great grievance of his and a subject which we will perhaps return to at some point in time.