As of Yet Untitled
Once, there wasn’t. This wasn’t wanted more than anything to be. Or it would have wanted if it had been, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t nothing. Nothing is something. It wasn’t something. It was not anything.
This not anything dwelt-or did not dwell-in no place. It did not dwell nowhere, which would have been somewhere. It dwelt-or did not dwell-in no place at all.
One day-although there were not days where no place existed-one day this particular wasn’t found something. This wasn’t was not remarkable. He could neither be remarkable, nor could he be unremarkable-not being at all. Yet one day, for this particular wasn’t, something happened. It could be that he happened upon some place. It could be that some thing reached into his no place and pulled him out. He could never quite say how his great unwished wish fulfilled, for he kept no records of that event. He did not know then the importance of records.
Nor could he ever quite recall when he became aware of the sights and the noises around him. He could not say when it was he first reached out to feel the earth beneath him, or the prickly grass on his feet, or the tingly sunshine, or the rough roots of the trees twisting in the shade of the groves around. An imprecision would not let him remember those first walks through the green and brown land he would come to know as home. It would not let him remember his first drink of cold, shiny water. It would not let him remember the days when his tongue did not yet know the taste of the fruits in the trees.
These experiences kept him busy for what he came later to know as days. Never did he wonder at the future. Never did he fancy the past that had not been. He began to note changes in the land he began to call home. Flowers bloomed. Animals moved. He left trails where there had been none and ate fruits that had formed on the trees. Some days rain fell from the sky. Puddles dried. He found new animals. He found new places, with new streams and new plants. He grew familiar with his home, and his daily discoveries slowed. No matter how many hills he climbed, there seemed always more valleys. No matter how much he learned about the creatures of the land, there were always hiding in some log or slinking in some gorge or flying in some tree new creatures. Ground grew new plants; plants grew new plants; even the sea grew new plants. Every day he found things he had never found. He knew later no happiness quite so easy.
One day, climbing down into a strongly fragrant valley, he thought he might have been there before. Then again, it seemed unfamiliar. He panicked. How could he not know his own past? Another day, he forgot how to find an old bird nest. He forgot where his first trails were. He forgot which trees he had not eaten from. He tried to remember. He starred at the fruit trees, straining. A long time he starred, knowing that he had taken from some, but unable to know from which. When the memory would not come, he mourned, and from that time, he marked the trees from which he had eaten. Now he would not have to remember.
Soon he began to mark other things. He marked his trails with broken branches. He tried to mark the animals and the plants, but he could not, so he made marks for the animals and the plants on tablets. He drew maps. He noted what he ate. He tried to note his thoughts and his senses. He realized, though, that such writings would not record the memories. He drew pictures of what he saw. He cursed the inaccuracies of his hand. Frustration scaled his confidence then, and he knew he must find new ways to record his days, or lose them to a tide of uncertain consequence-days mounting days of lost records and faded memories, until the past was as the past that did not exist, and the future stretched out into the past.
To such, he would not submit. So he recorded into his growing archives with new fervor. Every day he submitted increasing entries. These entries he filled with notes-a family of squirrels moved; the grapes discovered in a certain vale bit with a bitter twang and shone a moist and cavernous purple against the mild sunlight at midday; the average daily rainfall increased every twenty days. With renewed enthusiasm also he attacked his limits, and before long he began incorporating sound and photographs into his collection. Now he would not forget the look of the land before a storm, or the call of the owls in the night.
He did not stop there. He continued to develop new methods of recording, new methods of knowing the world. He captured lively video of creatures on the hunt, animals asleep, flowers in bloom. He looked into the deepest cells with microscopes. He recorded temperatures, viscosities, mass, chemical makeup, electrical fields, magnetic fields, olfactory landscapes, anything he could imagine. He collected samples and he continued to add every day to his archive, and every night to rest and wonder at his discoveries.
One such night, he heard a calling. He awoke. Their cries rang fanatical, vigorous against his dreams. He knew the calls. They were his brothers and his sisters-those who had dwelt with him before, in his past that had not been, in the no place from which he came. Some of them called for him jealously. Some called sadly. Still others, with a curiosity steeped in no sort of experience. He could hear them on the quietest nights, calling as compulsively as sun shone from sky. They could not understand.
Still, his archive grew. Soon he could not hold all that he wanted there to hold. He expanded the archive. It grew again too big, and again he expanded it. Several times the process repeated, until he could not always remember where he had put every record. Yet the archive grew, until he could not always remember what even to look for. He lost track several times of records. Finally, he tried to expand the archive again, and realized that he had only shuffled the sections. He grieved then. Yet the archive grew, for how could he stop? He became frustrated, then reorganized, grieved, and set out to collect more records. All the while his brothers and sisters did not stop calling. He realized they could not stop. He grieved again.
He began in this time to long. He did not at first understand his new desire. He was getting tired. He was not quite a part of this world of hunger and image-this world that knew no end and no beginning; the sharp summer grass always grew over, covering the dead or the lost in the same green. He could not, having seen from afar these exotic rights join in their simplicity. He could only intrude. He could only ever intrude. He craved something his own. The tiredness that had begun in him compelled a new restlessness.
From this, he began to experiment. He picked flowers. He gathered wood, stones, insects, whatever he could find. Sometimes he put the objects together to see what would happen. Sometimes he pulled them apart. He discovered more from these endeavors than observation had told. He saw connections also between his new information and the data in his archives. Fascination rapt him at the possibilities. His mind conceived new, compulsive designs.
So he began. Things simplified then, clear. No need to wonder. No need to know. His hands did the wondering, his will the knowing. Each day now had command. Make something. And he did. Strained through an overture of chance, he brought forth his first answer. A bead. A string. A necklace. He held and turned this marvel, this necklace wrung from his own intent. All was in the crafting. The crafting was all. When he held his answer, he wondered at the question and felt lost.
He made more necklaces, then plates, then clothes and decorations besides. His work made him happy. His time fell gently away. He became unfamiliar with his memories, walled away from them. With each new object, he grew, though he could not predict where. And the cries of his brothers and sisters beat as dim pangs on his busy days and his restful nights.
Then they stopped. He was alone again. He returned to his work-crafting, combining, dissecting, recording, and examining. His archives grew again. His collection also grew. Each day now begat new direction-new curiosities. He was entirely himself.
Then, they came. As suddenly as they weren’t, they were. They had come for him at last-a few of them together. They came for different reasons, but they all came to take him back where there was not anything. They did not have to tell him. They stood, facing him, breaking the anxiety of his world. He clutched his tools. He feared them, his brothers and sisters at last.
But he did not fear for long. Some of them seemed to notice the grass or the trees as much as they noticed him. Perhaps they felt the warm breeze that day. They broke off, wandering in all directions, enraptured with the world as he must have been that first day. He worked a bit, but fell soon into his own wanderings, curious to see what only they could see.
He did not find them often or long. The world was large, and they few. He could not pass one of his brothers or his sisters, though, without helping that brother or that sister to understand the things he did not remember learning. Before long they came every day to where he worked. He tried to answer them all as they came, but his time shortened, and he pointed them to his archives. He finally lost his fear when he saw how the archives absorbed them. They would not want to take him back now. They would not want to leave.
One of his sisters continued nevertheless to visit. She watched him work, admiring each new object as it emerged from his diligence. After many such visits, she could predict once begun the plan behind each object. He grew used to her watching, and forgot for a time his records and his archive. The days rolled tighter. When he at last understood the depths of her questions and her silent curiosity, he gave her his necklace.
They had barely mentioned it to each other, but the calls had returned. More brothers and sisters sought them in the night, calling for a presence they could not know they missed. The days beat forward and again the calls faded away. Then they arrived, again-new brothers and new sisters to reclaim them. Again they stayed, captives to the mystery of the land.
He worked on. She visited less often. His ambitions slowed and again the days glided along. He remembered his neglected archive and pondered a different time. When he visited the archive he discovered many of his brothers and his sisters busy there, researching, reorganizing, and even augmenting. They had begun to add their own careful observations to his. The study engaged them as once it had him. The archive concerned them all now.
The necklace drew interest. Many of the brothers and sisters wanted their own. He could not take time from his new works, so he gave away what necklaces he had already made. Soon, all of the brothers and sisters had necklaces, and when his favorite sister came to visit one day he discovered that she had been copying the necklace-making her own. He admired her work and she copied many more of his designs. Every day again she visited. Every day she showed him her work. He noticed also that other brothers and sisters came to her and copied her work. Several of them now spent time copying his designs.
And he made many things, numerous objects. Each object his brothers and sisters admired, lovely or brutal. Each object they copied for all the brothers and sisters. So it happened. Days and more drained down on top of the past. Years, he discovered; for he could feel them dragging him on, leaving pieces of himself, pieces of his brothers and sisters, pieces of his objects and various words and thoughts untouched, unexamined-until he could no longer count the number unaccomplished but to say “many.” Every year more brothers and sisters came for the others, came to bring them back to no place. Every year they all stayed.
They grew so numerous that it became difficult to record them all. It became confusing. Many days, he would see a brother or a sister that he did not think he had ever seen. He wondered if he would even remember. Always, he checked the archives. Always, there he found recorded that brother or sister’s arrival, as well as his own previous encounters with that brother or sister.
He continued to make fresh objects. His brothers and sisters continued to copy his each new object. New brothers and sisters continued to arrive. He could no longer spare the time to acknowledge each of them. He was surprised many times to see only unfamiliarity or disinterest from his brothers. He wondered if he looked the same to them. He could no longer be sure they all knew him.
One day-the only sort of day that stood out for him now against the many similar and minorly eventful days deepening the chasm between him and the not anyplace from which he came-one day he heard a sound. Soft, rising, higher. The sound swelled around him, in him, in his brothers and his sisters until it rang their thoughts all together, all impossible. The sound resonated through the gathering crowd minutes, hours. It increased, cascaded, fell in upon itself and led them all forward on its perfect waves. It came from one of his brothers, moaning with a voice uncanny, apart and pursuing them all. He cried to think he might have lived years and missed such beauty. His other brothers and sisters cried at the music too. They all wanted to hear it the next day. So the brother who had made the music sang a new song. So music happened to them all. He returned to making his objects, and again knew no trouble. Every year still, more brothers and sisters came.
Another day, one of the sisters stood and told a story. She filled her story with places no one knew, and events that all the brothers and sisters knew to be false, but they did not seem to mind. She had never said it was true. So they grew accustomed to such tales.
Another day one of the brothers-or perhaps one of the sisters-produced a mixture of varied texture and smell for all the brothers and sisters to eat. Before long, every day were brothers and sisters preparing dishes, or growing food, or dancing, or climbing, or painting, or making stories, or playing music, or fixing broken objects, or even making new objects-ones he had never conceived.
He noticed one day one of his own designs-a table-though it looked different somehow. It had more ornate decoration and a more graceful temperament. In the top somehow had been carved plant designs. When he asked about it, one of his brothers said that he had made the table himself. From then he noticed new designs wherever he might wander. Variations had been added to some. Others he could never have imagined. Some of the new objects had sturdier construction. Others had been painted with heartbreaking detail. Some, the storytellers made to aid their tales. Others, the musicians made to achieve new sounds.
It became difficult even to track all the objects and all the events and all of the brothers and the sisters in the archives-to know what had been done where on what day. Every year came new brothers and sisters, until he grew certain that some did not even appear in the archive. Some did not bother to look at the archives, or to keep records of their own. He did not understand why they would want to forget. Instead, the newest brothers and sisters ate, drank, made stories, made music, and made their own objects-all unrecorded, all unaccounted.
He resented the chaos. He resented his own part of it. His memory no longer told him anything the archives did not about his first days. He longed to reach back, just to touch a moment here or there unrealized. He could not. He spent more of his days in thought. Until he no longer cared to make things. Until he no longer cared to observe or to record his days in the sun. At last he no longer cared whether he went to no place, or did not have his thoughts. At last he no longer cared. And one day-one day that he would not ever remember-he left and returned to the no place from which he had come. And he wasn’t. It wasn’t that he no longer existed. He simply wasn’t. He had never been. There weren’t days. There weren’t objects. There weren’t brothers and there weren’t sisters. There wasn’t music. There weren’t thoughts and there weren’t memories. He wasn’t. Not ever.
I would appreciate comments, good, bad, general, specific. I'm open. Chomp it down. Cut it up. I can no longer see it. Help me out. Be my editors. Thanks.
This not anything dwelt-or did not dwell-in no place. It did not dwell nowhere, which would have been somewhere. It dwelt-or did not dwell-in no place at all.
One day-although there were not days where no place existed-one day this particular wasn’t found something. This wasn’t was not remarkable. He could neither be remarkable, nor could he be unremarkable-not being at all. Yet one day, for this particular wasn’t, something happened. It could be that he happened upon some place. It could be that some thing reached into his no place and pulled him out. He could never quite say how his great unwished wish fulfilled, for he kept no records of that event. He did not know then the importance of records.
Nor could he ever quite recall when he became aware of the sights and the noises around him. He could not say when it was he first reached out to feel the earth beneath him, or the prickly grass on his feet, or the tingly sunshine, or the rough roots of the trees twisting in the shade of the groves around. An imprecision would not let him remember those first walks through the green and brown land he would come to know as home. It would not let him remember his first drink of cold, shiny water. It would not let him remember the days when his tongue did not yet know the taste of the fruits in the trees.
These experiences kept him busy for what he came later to know as days. Never did he wonder at the future. Never did he fancy the past that had not been. He began to note changes in the land he began to call home. Flowers bloomed. Animals moved. He left trails where there had been none and ate fruits that had formed on the trees. Some days rain fell from the sky. Puddles dried. He found new animals. He found new places, with new streams and new plants. He grew familiar with his home, and his daily discoveries slowed. No matter how many hills he climbed, there seemed always more valleys. No matter how much he learned about the creatures of the land, there were always hiding in some log or slinking in some gorge or flying in some tree new creatures. Ground grew new plants; plants grew new plants; even the sea grew new plants. Every day he found things he had never found. He knew later no happiness quite so easy.
One day, climbing down into a strongly fragrant valley, he thought he might have been there before. Then again, it seemed unfamiliar. He panicked. How could he not know his own past? Another day, he forgot how to find an old bird nest. He forgot where his first trails were. He forgot which trees he had not eaten from. He tried to remember. He starred at the fruit trees, straining. A long time he starred, knowing that he had taken from some, but unable to know from which. When the memory would not come, he mourned, and from that time, he marked the trees from which he had eaten. Now he would not have to remember.
Soon he began to mark other things. He marked his trails with broken branches. He tried to mark the animals and the plants, but he could not, so he made marks for the animals and the plants on tablets. He drew maps. He noted what he ate. He tried to note his thoughts and his senses. He realized, though, that such writings would not record the memories. He drew pictures of what he saw. He cursed the inaccuracies of his hand. Frustration scaled his confidence then, and he knew he must find new ways to record his days, or lose them to a tide of uncertain consequence-days mounting days of lost records and faded memories, until the past was as the past that did not exist, and the future stretched out into the past.
To such, he would not submit. So he recorded into his growing archives with new fervor. Every day he submitted increasing entries. These entries he filled with notes-a family of squirrels moved; the grapes discovered in a certain vale bit with a bitter twang and shone a moist and cavernous purple against the mild sunlight at midday; the average daily rainfall increased every twenty days. With renewed enthusiasm also he attacked his limits, and before long he began incorporating sound and photographs into his collection. Now he would not forget the look of the land before a storm, or the call of the owls in the night.
He did not stop there. He continued to develop new methods of recording, new methods of knowing the world. He captured lively video of creatures on the hunt, animals asleep, flowers in bloom. He looked into the deepest cells with microscopes. He recorded temperatures, viscosities, mass, chemical makeup, electrical fields, magnetic fields, olfactory landscapes, anything he could imagine. He collected samples and he continued to add every day to his archive, and every night to rest and wonder at his discoveries.
One such night, he heard a calling. He awoke. Their cries rang fanatical, vigorous against his dreams. He knew the calls. They were his brothers and his sisters-those who had dwelt with him before, in his past that had not been, in the no place from which he came. Some of them called for him jealously. Some called sadly. Still others, with a curiosity steeped in no sort of experience. He could hear them on the quietest nights, calling as compulsively as sun shone from sky. They could not understand.
Still, his archive grew. Soon he could not hold all that he wanted there to hold. He expanded the archive. It grew again too big, and again he expanded it. Several times the process repeated, until he could not always remember where he had put every record. Yet the archive grew, until he could not always remember what even to look for. He lost track several times of records. Finally, he tried to expand the archive again, and realized that he had only shuffled the sections. He grieved then. Yet the archive grew, for how could he stop? He became frustrated, then reorganized, grieved, and set out to collect more records. All the while his brothers and sisters did not stop calling. He realized they could not stop. He grieved again.
He began in this time to long. He did not at first understand his new desire. He was getting tired. He was not quite a part of this world of hunger and image-this world that knew no end and no beginning; the sharp summer grass always grew over, covering the dead or the lost in the same green. He could not, having seen from afar these exotic rights join in their simplicity. He could only intrude. He could only ever intrude. He craved something his own. The tiredness that had begun in him compelled a new restlessness.
From this, he began to experiment. He picked flowers. He gathered wood, stones, insects, whatever he could find. Sometimes he put the objects together to see what would happen. Sometimes he pulled them apart. He discovered more from these endeavors than observation had told. He saw connections also between his new information and the data in his archives. Fascination rapt him at the possibilities. His mind conceived new, compulsive designs.
So he began. Things simplified then, clear. No need to wonder. No need to know. His hands did the wondering, his will the knowing. Each day now had command. Make something. And he did. Strained through an overture of chance, he brought forth his first answer. A bead. A string. A necklace. He held and turned this marvel, this necklace wrung from his own intent. All was in the crafting. The crafting was all. When he held his answer, he wondered at the question and felt lost.
He made more necklaces, then plates, then clothes and decorations besides. His work made him happy. His time fell gently away. He became unfamiliar with his memories, walled away from them. With each new object, he grew, though he could not predict where. And the cries of his brothers and sisters beat as dim pangs on his busy days and his restful nights.
Then they stopped. He was alone again. He returned to his work-crafting, combining, dissecting, recording, and examining. His archives grew again. His collection also grew. Each day now begat new direction-new curiosities. He was entirely himself.
Then, they came. As suddenly as they weren’t, they were. They had come for him at last-a few of them together. They came for different reasons, but they all came to take him back where there was not anything. They did not have to tell him. They stood, facing him, breaking the anxiety of his world. He clutched his tools. He feared them, his brothers and sisters at last.
But he did not fear for long. Some of them seemed to notice the grass or the trees as much as they noticed him. Perhaps they felt the warm breeze that day. They broke off, wandering in all directions, enraptured with the world as he must have been that first day. He worked a bit, but fell soon into his own wanderings, curious to see what only they could see.
He did not find them often or long. The world was large, and they few. He could not pass one of his brothers or his sisters, though, without helping that brother or that sister to understand the things he did not remember learning. Before long they came every day to where he worked. He tried to answer them all as they came, but his time shortened, and he pointed them to his archives. He finally lost his fear when he saw how the archives absorbed them. They would not want to take him back now. They would not want to leave.
One of his sisters continued nevertheless to visit. She watched him work, admiring each new object as it emerged from his diligence. After many such visits, she could predict once begun the plan behind each object. He grew used to her watching, and forgot for a time his records and his archive. The days rolled tighter. When he at last understood the depths of her questions and her silent curiosity, he gave her his necklace.
They had barely mentioned it to each other, but the calls had returned. More brothers and sisters sought them in the night, calling for a presence they could not know they missed. The days beat forward and again the calls faded away. Then they arrived, again-new brothers and new sisters to reclaim them. Again they stayed, captives to the mystery of the land.
He worked on. She visited less often. His ambitions slowed and again the days glided along. He remembered his neglected archive and pondered a different time. When he visited the archive he discovered many of his brothers and his sisters busy there, researching, reorganizing, and even augmenting. They had begun to add their own careful observations to his. The study engaged them as once it had him. The archive concerned them all now.
The necklace drew interest. Many of the brothers and sisters wanted their own. He could not take time from his new works, so he gave away what necklaces he had already made. Soon, all of the brothers and sisters had necklaces, and when his favorite sister came to visit one day he discovered that she had been copying the necklace-making her own. He admired her work and she copied many more of his designs. Every day again she visited. Every day she showed him her work. He noticed also that other brothers and sisters came to her and copied her work. Several of them now spent time copying his designs.
And he made many things, numerous objects. Each object his brothers and sisters admired, lovely or brutal. Each object they copied for all the brothers and sisters. So it happened. Days and more drained down on top of the past. Years, he discovered; for he could feel them dragging him on, leaving pieces of himself, pieces of his brothers and sisters, pieces of his objects and various words and thoughts untouched, unexamined-until he could no longer count the number unaccomplished but to say “many.” Every year more brothers and sisters came for the others, came to bring them back to no place. Every year they all stayed.
They grew so numerous that it became difficult to record them all. It became confusing. Many days, he would see a brother or a sister that he did not think he had ever seen. He wondered if he would even remember. Always, he checked the archives. Always, there he found recorded that brother or sister’s arrival, as well as his own previous encounters with that brother or sister.
He continued to make fresh objects. His brothers and sisters continued to copy his each new object. New brothers and sisters continued to arrive. He could no longer spare the time to acknowledge each of them. He was surprised many times to see only unfamiliarity or disinterest from his brothers. He wondered if he looked the same to them. He could no longer be sure they all knew him.
One day-the only sort of day that stood out for him now against the many similar and minorly eventful days deepening the chasm between him and the not anyplace from which he came-one day he heard a sound. Soft, rising, higher. The sound swelled around him, in him, in his brothers and his sisters until it rang their thoughts all together, all impossible. The sound resonated through the gathering crowd minutes, hours. It increased, cascaded, fell in upon itself and led them all forward on its perfect waves. It came from one of his brothers, moaning with a voice uncanny, apart and pursuing them all. He cried to think he might have lived years and missed such beauty. His other brothers and sisters cried at the music too. They all wanted to hear it the next day. So the brother who had made the music sang a new song. So music happened to them all. He returned to making his objects, and again knew no trouble. Every year still, more brothers and sisters came.
Another day, one of the sisters stood and told a story. She filled her story with places no one knew, and events that all the brothers and sisters knew to be false, but they did not seem to mind. She had never said it was true. So they grew accustomed to such tales.
Another day one of the brothers-or perhaps one of the sisters-produced a mixture of varied texture and smell for all the brothers and sisters to eat. Before long, every day were brothers and sisters preparing dishes, or growing food, or dancing, or climbing, or painting, or making stories, or playing music, or fixing broken objects, or even making new objects-ones he had never conceived.
He noticed one day one of his own designs-a table-though it looked different somehow. It had more ornate decoration and a more graceful temperament. In the top somehow had been carved plant designs. When he asked about it, one of his brothers said that he had made the table himself. From then he noticed new designs wherever he might wander. Variations had been added to some. Others he could never have imagined. Some of the new objects had sturdier construction. Others had been painted with heartbreaking detail. Some, the storytellers made to aid their tales. Others, the musicians made to achieve new sounds.
It became difficult even to track all the objects and all the events and all of the brothers and the sisters in the archives-to know what had been done where on what day. Every year came new brothers and sisters, until he grew certain that some did not even appear in the archive. Some did not bother to look at the archives, or to keep records of their own. He did not understand why they would want to forget. Instead, the newest brothers and sisters ate, drank, made stories, made music, and made their own objects-all unrecorded, all unaccounted.
He resented the chaos. He resented his own part of it. His memory no longer told him anything the archives did not about his first days. He longed to reach back, just to touch a moment here or there unrealized. He could not. He spent more of his days in thought. Until he no longer cared to make things. Until he no longer cared to observe or to record his days in the sun. At last he no longer cared whether he went to no place, or did not have his thoughts. At last he no longer cared. And one day-one day that he would not ever remember-he left and returned to the no place from which he had come. And he wasn’t. It wasn’t that he no longer existed. He simply wasn’t. He had never been. There weren’t days. There weren’t objects. There weren’t brothers and there weren’t sisters. There wasn’t music. There weren’t thoughts and there weren’t memories. He wasn’t. Not ever.
I would appreciate comments, good, bad, general, specific. I'm open. Chomp it down. Cut it up. I can no longer see it. Help me out. Be my editors. Thanks.