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Friday, February 22, 2013

Bathroom Monologue: What Now Was Inland



They were half a generation beyond the end of oceans. Half a generation since the elders had seen one, and half a generation since the young could only imagine them. It was half a generation, down to the very day of conception, when the tides of fermented blood rolled across ancient shores, turning parched deserts to dripping beaches.

Upon this gory tide rode a ship. It flashed no bearing and collided with a sandbar that, for half a generation, had been a popular hill. It rose, and it shuddered, and they fled, and they sang warnings inland. Its hull heaved for breath, and every groan of its sundry structures contributed to the songs of the natives, until warnings turned to invitations.

There was not a soul aboard, nor a husk through which a soul might have conducted seaworthy business. Yet there were many fine armors, which the middling and young shared and donned, not for war, so much as for fashion as only new varieties can afford. Beneath decks lay exquisite weapons, spears that made the air bleed, and swords with epic poems etched along their edges, verse honed to unparalleled sharpness. These, the natives beat into ploughshares, and rapidly set about tilling and sowing before the gory tide could dry up. Already it was fleeing into the horizon, as though happy to be rid of the vessel.

They stripped, too, the skin of the ship, and fashioned it into new bodies for their elders, so that Grandpars and Grandmars could join them in the fields. They stripped the bones of the ship’s mighty underhauls, which they fashioned into the outlines of new houses. When, at last, the ship was naught but an empty indentation in a sandbar, every individual, young and middling and elder, scooped up a handful to keep in memory. They pocketed their handful of the ship as they set to work.

For this culture didn’t trust the ship had been a miracle. If it were a miracle, then there would be two more, for miracles always come in threes. One miracle is happenstance; two miracles a coincidence; three, a confirmation. More, none alive had ever witnessed, and none dead had spun songs about.

The uncertainty of miracles meant labor, raking the scabs over the desert, tilling and churning, and planting the warts and rust from the former hull, along with the thumb bones of their ancestors, which had been set aside for just such an occasion. All this planting meant making music.

So they spun songs of who built the ship, who raised its marvelous hide, who operated its great oars and gills, and every song of every sailor was at the behest of a hero. They spun many songs about this hero’s journey, about the madness that had driven him to jump overboard, or feed himself to the ship so it might still live, or his pursuit of a love that had launched a thousand such ships. None was particularly good, and none was repeated, thus disqualifying them from truly being songs. If it’s only sung once, a song might as well be an errant miracle.

They sang to work, which is the duty of song, to render long labors brief, and render brevity pleasant. They erected fine homes of the ship’s vast bones, and they patched every elder’s new body, and they marched the rows of their uncanny crops in numbers only songs had ever referenced. It could well have been the music that caused their crops to sprout.

They smelled the wrong rain coming. First a few seedling squelched, and then rows belched brine. By noon their fields showered blood upward, so many geysers as to terrify the elders. Their entire culture was sprayed, and their entire world flooded by bounty. Sandbars disappeared beneath viscous waves. The middling sang the young and elders into their new homes, with solid ceilings, and the pores of their windows fastened shut, and their rich floors rose. The riding tide lifted every home from its roots, settling them to bob like corks in global liquor. Some elders fell into the maelstrom, nerves feeble beneath their shells, yet their shells were as buoyant as the hero’s ship had once been. It was the first opportunity in half a generation that anyone had to drown, and not a soul took it.

That begat their song of the hero’s journey, not of his lust or violence, but of what they had done with the flesh and bones of his ship. They thanked him for moisture, and for the clothes, and for the homes, in choruses that echoed across the ocean that climbed until their heads stuck in the clouds. Then they sang about the clouds, and in them.

23 comments:

  1. What a marvellous, and mildly grotesque, thing. It feels like an alien world, just ever so slightly beyond what we know, and understand. And what images it conjures...

    Very much enjoyed it. =)

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    1. What a wonderful comment to wake up to! Thank you kindly, John. Helped make a crumby morning much more bearable.

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  2. To me it felt more like a tale of how a legend was brought into being. How in the singing of their songs they passed on how they had used this ship.

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    1. They definitely enshrine the events in song. How did the delivery affect your enjoyment, Helen?

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    2. I liked the way you unfolded this story, adding to it bit by bit .

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  3. Rich and visceral stuff, John. Really liked this one. From the horrific feel of it all, to the way the tribe turned the warship into something wonderful. As John Xero says, marvellous!

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    1. What elements felt horrific or Horror-like to you? Very curious for how people interpreted this one. Regardless, thank you for the kind words and retweets!

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  4. I'm with Helen, I liked the mythic feel of this in the sense of trailing back to how a myth originates and the folklore and song draws it out into the world of men's belief

    marc nash

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    1. And you were at peace with them engaging with the fantastic rather than the realistic as they mythologized?

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  5. Oh, I love this. The mythical feel, the imagery, the miracles coming in threes. And the blood. I love the blood. Lovely stuff John!

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    1. Thanks so much, Maria! Very glad the piece landed for you. And here I wondered if anyone would get anything out of it.

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  6. Your imagination is truly boundless, John.

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  7. The language in this is absolutely intoxicating. Downright heady.

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    1. Did it overpower the narrative or other elements for you?

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  8. JohnW channels Marc Nash! :-) A great piece here, the ambiguity of the characters was amazing. The ship (in part) a living being, the members of the tribe (in part) cobbled together from living flesh and patches of anything that could be used... and, in a way, the two merge toward the end. Not to mention the oceans of blood and the vast deserts.

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  9. You seem to be in a whole new groove lately, John. Wonderful, wonderful stuff! Chock full of beautifully inventive, descriptive language, "settling them to bob like corks in global liquor" is just one example. Well done!

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  10. I'm with Larry -- definitely a "Marc Nash" thing happening, although also totally a "John Wiswell" thing happening. The music/ocean/blood mix was very intoxicating. Seemed like a giant conceit for sentient microbes living on the face of an acne-ridden teenager. Very cool.

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  11. This was really unusual, really captured my attention, though not quite sure I "got" it all. Very interesting!

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  12. Oh my John what imagery! Absolutely beautiful piece, very consuming in its complexity. Each re-read offers a new visual.

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  13. Scavenging as saviour...I almost saw them like the Sand People of Tattooine, in a way, and that's no bad thing.

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  14. Hi John, I thought I left a comment here last night but now I don't see it. Anyway, great story!

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  15. I enjoyed this one, but I wasn't really sure why. (I'm guessing that's a good thing.) It got a second read, which is pretty rare for me. Maybe it was the mythical feel, or maybe it was their optimism.

    At any rate - great story!

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