I'm not getting married, but
Started this almost half a year ago and never finished.
Off the stage, the ventriloquist did not speak if he could help it: he saved up his voice so that he could make it do the work of two people in the glittering evening performances, and he tried to protect it from air and light that might have damaged it, leaving it at home, in a small box he had had made for it specially, when he went out. But of course unless you carry something with you always there is no way to ensure it will not vanish while you are looking away, and so it should not have surprised the ventriloquist as much as it did that one day he came home from a walk in the park, his tired face numb from the cold, mud clinging to his boots, and found the box in which he’d left his voice lying empty and open on his bedside table.
The ventriloquist did not panic. He searched the little flat he’d rented for the last five years; there were three rooms, the parlor and the kitchen and the bedroom, cluttered with old props but underfurnished, and he took each to pieces, lifting chairs and opening drawers and dropping spoons on the tiled floor. And as he went about it, desperation accumulating sourly in his mouth, he became horribly conscious of how many unaccounted-for spaces there are in a house. There is the thickness of plaster that make the insides of buildings smaller than the outsides, and the distance from the wall to the back of the little stove. There are the shadows, locked into every corner, lurking at the end of a string of prepositions, which fool the eye into thinking that the geometry of this private world is sensible and soundly fitted together, without seams.
So when he had finished the ventriloquist was no wiser as to where his voice had gone: he had found only a tremendous amount of empty space. He went down to his knees among the ruins of his bedroom and ran his hands through his hair. He had begun around noon: now the insubstantial shafts of light that fanned out from the single window slanted at a low angle, and pulled at his own shadow, coaxed it to greater length and inaccuracy, like someone slowly, slowly dragging their pen across the page. Letting the ink seep through the papery fibers of the floorboards.
The first things the ventriloquist missed were his cursewords.
His fingers dug into his scalp. He breathed in dust and listened to the soft sounds of his home settling back down. Without his voice he had no work. Without his work, it occurred to him, this was not his home, or would not be in a month’s time, anyway.
He stood up, and tried to brush the grayish dust off the knees of his trousers. It didn’t work, but he felt a little better.
He let his hands fall to his sides. He began to make plans.
Finding a voice is no easy task, especially if one is doing it for the second time; voices are capricious, willful things, although they have no mind proper, and if they leave the home of their master they do not wish to be found. As voices go, his had hitherto caused remarkably little trouble: his mother had taught him how to care for it and he had, as these things go, treated it quite well. He did not waste much time trying to recall some change in his behavior or its that might have induced or at least suggested a reason for its flight; the ventriloquist was a practical man, without much imagination outside of the limited confines of the stage and its stale dialogues.
Started this two days ago, and-- well, we'll see.
When I turned sixteen my father gave me a ring and a new rule. “You can't go to the beach anymore,” he said. He had a newspaper spread out on the table, and the window at his back: the shade he made on the words was like water, so I couldn't see what he was reading.
I asked him why. I was playing with the ring and liking the way it felt in my palm. It was very cold because he had kept it in the fridge, which was not a place I would've thought to look for my present, I have to admit.
He did not answer for a while. “There have been selkie sightings,” he said, finally. "A few miles from here."
“Oh,” I said, putting my hands together over the ring. “Okay.”
By then I had tested the ring on each of my fingers and found that it was too big for all of them. But it was exactly the right size for the well on the inside of my palm. When I put my hands together, there was always a place in the middle where I could not feel anything, because of how palms are shaped: fat and with a hollow at the center of each. With the ring trapped in between, though, that pocket of air was circled all around by the sharpness of cold silver, like a perfect round hole that went all the way through both hands.
“This is important,” he said. He rapped his knuckles on the paper. When I looked up again he was looking back.
“I promise I won't go to the beach,” I said. I didn't go much as it was. All my life I had lived near a beach, and I knew about beaches. They are very exposed, and when you go into the water, it feels great, sure, but you have to come out, afterward, and then the sand will dry in a shell on the soles of your feet
“Good,” said my father. “It says here that selkies are almost as dangerous as box jellyfish and much more dangerous than sharks.”
“What kind of shark?” I said.
“The kind that eats teenaged girls for dinner,” he said.
“Selkies don't eat humans,” I said.
“That's why they're more dangerous than the sharks,” he replied.
Which made sense.
*
But at school the next day no one seemed very afraid, although everyone had heard about the selkies. The boys said that selkies made the best girlfriends, because as long as you kept their skins locked safely away, they would never leave you: human girls might be willing to undertake the walk of shame to escape their clumsy caresses, but not selkies. The girls said that boys who couldn't keep a girl without stealing her underwear weren't worth the trouble. In the locker room, their laughter rode the mingled sound of their voices like foam.
Failed attempts at fiction aside...
I was rereading Peter Pan, and reading the line, "Second to the right, and straight on till morning," and I remembered that I have always been curious about that second. The second what, exactly? I believe the word 'star' was there in the play, and there everywhere after, but it's missing from that famous sentence, in the book. The second--
The second.
And, of course, because what would I be without my naturalistic observations--
Okay, let me start again. A blue thing.
This sky.
Summer is slinking in months late, its body blue, its expression distinctly abashed, as, well, usual.
Thursday evening I went out and the moon was perfect in the pale sky. It was like morning if morning were denuded of the light that gets everywhere during the day. The moon was like a sun with the light shaved off of the bone and the sky was as shadowless as at high noon but nothing like so hot, with just the color and the flatness and the whiff of embarrassment around the violet-touched horizon.
Off the stage, the ventriloquist did not speak if he could help it: he saved up his voice so that he could make it do the work of two people in the glittering evening performances, and he tried to protect it from air and light that might have damaged it, leaving it at home, in a small box he had had made for it specially, when he went out. But of course unless you carry something with you always there is no way to ensure it will not vanish while you are looking away, and so it should not have surprised the ventriloquist as much as it did that one day he came home from a walk in the park, his tired face numb from the cold, mud clinging to his boots, and found the box in which he’d left his voice lying empty and open on his bedside table.
The ventriloquist did not panic. He searched the little flat he’d rented for the last five years; there were three rooms, the parlor and the kitchen and the bedroom, cluttered with old props but underfurnished, and he took each to pieces, lifting chairs and opening drawers and dropping spoons on the tiled floor. And as he went about it, desperation accumulating sourly in his mouth, he became horribly conscious of how many unaccounted-for spaces there are in a house. There is the thickness of plaster that make the insides of buildings smaller than the outsides, and the distance from the wall to the back of the little stove. There are the shadows, locked into every corner, lurking at the end of a string of prepositions, which fool the eye into thinking that the geometry of this private world is sensible and soundly fitted together, without seams.
So when he had finished the ventriloquist was no wiser as to where his voice had gone: he had found only a tremendous amount of empty space. He went down to his knees among the ruins of his bedroom and ran his hands through his hair. He had begun around noon: now the insubstantial shafts of light that fanned out from the single window slanted at a low angle, and pulled at his own shadow, coaxed it to greater length and inaccuracy, like someone slowly, slowly dragging their pen across the page. Letting the ink seep through the papery fibers of the floorboards.
The first things the ventriloquist missed were his cursewords.
His fingers dug into his scalp. He breathed in dust and listened to the soft sounds of his home settling back down. Without his voice he had no work. Without his work, it occurred to him, this was not his home, or would not be in a month’s time, anyway.
He stood up, and tried to brush the grayish dust off the knees of his trousers. It didn’t work, but he felt a little better.
He let his hands fall to his sides. He began to make plans.
Finding a voice is no easy task, especially if one is doing it for the second time; voices are capricious, willful things, although they have no mind proper, and if they leave the home of their master they do not wish to be found. As voices go, his had hitherto caused remarkably little trouble: his mother had taught him how to care for it and he had, as these things go, treated it quite well. He did not waste much time trying to recall some change in his behavior or its that might have induced or at least suggested a reason for its flight; the ventriloquist was a practical man, without much imagination outside of the limited confines of the stage and its stale dialogues.
Started this two days ago, and-- well, we'll see.
When I turned sixteen my father gave me a ring and a new rule. “You can't go to the beach anymore,” he said. He had a newspaper spread out on the table, and the window at his back: the shade he made on the words was like water, so I couldn't see what he was reading.
I asked him why. I was playing with the ring and liking the way it felt in my palm. It was very cold because he had kept it in the fridge, which was not a place I would've thought to look for my present, I have to admit.
He did not answer for a while. “There have been selkie sightings,” he said, finally. "A few miles from here."
“Oh,” I said, putting my hands together over the ring. “Okay.”
By then I had tested the ring on each of my fingers and found that it was too big for all of them. But it was exactly the right size for the well on the inside of my palm. When I put my hands together, there was always a place in the middle where I could not feel anything, because of how palms are shaped: fat and with a hollow at the center of each. With the ring trapped in between, though, that pocket of air was circled all around by the sharpness of cold silver, like a perfect round hole that went all the way through both hands.
“This is important,” he said. He rapped his knuckles on the paper. When I looked up again he was looking back.
“I promise I won't go to the beach,” I said. I didn't go much as it was. All my life I had lived near a beach, and I knew about beaches. They are very exposed, and when you go into the water, it feels great, sure, but you have to come out, afterward, and then the sand will dry in a shell on the soles of your feet
“Good,” said my father. “It says here that selkies are almost as dangerous as box jellyfish and much more dangerous than sharks.”
“What kind of shark?” I said.
“The kind that eats teenaged girls for dinner,” he said.
“Selkies don't eat humans,” I said.
“That's why they're more dangerous than the sharks,” he replied.
Which made sense.
*
But at school the next day no one seemed very afraid, although everyone had heard about the selkies. The boys said that selkies made the best girlfriends, because as long as you kept their skins locked safely away, they would never leave you: human girls might be willing to undertake the walk of shame to escape their clumsy caresses, but not selkies. The girls said that boys who couldn't keep a girl without stealing her underwear weren't worth the trouble. In the locker room, their laughter rode the mingled sound of their voices like foam.
Failed attempts at fiction aside...
I was rereading Peter Pan, and reading the line, "Second to the right, and straight on till morning," and I remembered that I have always been curious about that second. The second what, exactly? I believe the word 'star' was there in the play, and there everywhere after, but it's missing from that famous sentence, in the book. The second--
The second.
And, of course, because what would I be without my naturalistic observations--
Okay, let me start again. A blue thing.
This sky.
Summer is slinking in months late, its body blue, its expression distinctly abashed, as, well, usual.
Thursday evening I went out and the moon was perfect in the pale sky. It was like morning if morning were denuded of the light that gets everywhere during the day. The moon was like a sun with the light shaved off of the bone and the sky was as shadowless as at high noon but nothing like so hot, with just the color and the flatness and the whiff of embarrassment around the violet-touched horizon.