by J.W. Carey
So, why do I write?
Is it that any sense of respectability the newborn body of mine may have contained has been driven out? Starved and beaten as though it were a Leper without a lie's healing hands against its rotting flesh? Is it that this increasingly frail cage with which I am intertwined, like vines around some primitive jail, has done too much and realised too little to allow that smooth presentation of the 'self' to exist, at least in the description of me?
Is it, simply from my inadequacy to fulfil any role, and that this self-aggrandising pretension is the one which appeals to my failures the most? Part of the childish whim, that if I can but master the confines of this language, then I will be able to go to my grave with something besides regret in my mind? That my final words are not some long-winded message of my useless opinions, and instead are focused around telling the vultures to piss off?
Or is it fear? Fear of the idea that I need to work that I need to whore myself out with practicality, that I may possess a life I which could dare to think of as my own, rather than simply existing as a louse, as a parasite, on my creators’ hard work? That this 'profession' to which I would aspire is, so I believe, the last one to carry with it the promise of freedom, if not in a professional manner, at least in a personal one? That I am not tied down by the ponderous weight of a 'job' and, instead, remain chained to this place by other factors, those of Love and Hate and Family, of Friendship and memories forged in my ‘private’ history's gentle simmer?
Who can say, if not I? All I know is that I am suffering under this compulsion, under this delusion that anything I could have to say is worth someone else reading, that if I can but surrender myself to this addiction, then I might be able to look at myself in some reflective metaphor and realise that I am happy. As though acceptance, as though understanding or, dare I dream, acclaim could be enough.
But still, the sun sets in the north and rises in the south, the lies spit from the east and the bombs fly from the west. And here, in the centre of a world immeasurably different from your own and one I lack the talent to honestly express, I sit with the sounds of the street failing to break through the music spitting from these weak speakers, through the thoughts which whirl in stagnant winds in my idiocy and the clicking and clacking of my fingertips against these keys, as though if I merely keep them moving, keep them active across these white letters on black plastic, I can hold back the ravages of time, that I can keep them alive for as long as they need to be. If I keep writing, if I keep chaining these words together, am I likely to find some meaning in them? Will some otherwise hidden ideology emerge from my stead-fast refusal to acknowledge my weaknesses, and will, as though I had a legion of primates tied to typewriters at my beck and call, some masterpiece emerge from these ramblings?
Here, I will speak honestly. How do I see my writing? I see it as a pedestal, one which I have built myself from a hundred, hundred bones from as many sources. I see it rising from the floor of my seminars, pushing ill-fitting desks and uncomfortable, impractical chairs to one side as it emerges. Though the brief wonder as to how, exactly, it managed to raise itself to the first floor so easily does cross my mind, it is soon gone again as I witness my arrogance manifest itself.
Though it is hidden from my view, I see the core of the monument and I recognise the bones with which it is formed. I see the skull of Orwell, the limbs of Joyce crushed to a paste which holds it to the femur of Elliot, entwined with the spine of Danielewski and the ribcage of Varley. I see the sternum of Wells and the mandible of John Cooper Clark, the metacarpus of Beckett and tibia of Bradbury. The clavicle of Eisner rubs against the scapula of Spiegelman, mere inches from the splintered canines of Stoker and the tarsus of Huxley.
The visible sections of my rising arrogance are no quite so grand, the addition of cheap dog toys and souvenirs from anthropological museum exhibits positioned to increase the mass of my metaphor. They squeak as they move, and crack as the weight shifts around them, but the core holds them in place even after they have crumbled into dust. Seeping from the cracks and moistening the dust, marrow with the stench of whiskey adds a touch of yellow to the already off-white admixture, the addition making the pedestal breathe as it raises itself, bones slipping around each other in some sickly silent parody of a student's club night in the heart of Manchester.
They coiled around each other, alcohol in place of sweat, lubrication for the friction between the two, like the studious serpents they bear likeness to. My bones, those within my own body, were absent from the mess before me until I climbed to its apex. My hands, drunk from contact rather than a distant ingestion, slipped around them as though I were attempting to molest them, each one nervously shuffling away from my touch.
Such a good metaphor, one even I am proud of. One wasted in this addition, in this ill-written section of honesty meant to explain myself to you, in hopes that I am not misunderstood. No doubt, at some point in the future, I will find this metaphor recycled in my own writing, at such a point that I will lack awareness of its existence until I come to read this again.
In a way, I will admit that I hope someone might be able to translate this into a language I can comprehend, into one designed for my self-satisfied simplicity, one were the adjective’s crumble away like besieged cobblestone, one were my narcissism can falls upon itself, when it reconciles with my self-destruction and I can call myself a man or, at least, a mediocre example of humanity. Not just another character come narrator for you to pick apart with sharpened tongues and witty teeth, but a physical representation of this psyche I would describe as shattered, though no force has struck at its manufactured solidity.
And so the Novella, a medium which speaks of experiment in of itself, ends in an experiment of self-reflection and a parody of an essay combined to make more eventual ash atop my grave. When my stone is tilted at an odd angle, through the subsidence of the earth around me, and my limbs are breaking through the cheap, pauper’s coffin I will no doubt inhabit, at least my borrowed creation’s will hold my corpse down, they will stop me from rising again to face any judgement that something forged from fear of the unknown may deliver.
That is enough, for me.
I suppose it will have to be.
Contact
If, for whatever reason, you’d like to get in contact with me then you can reach me at [email protected], or, alternatively, you can visit my site over at jcdefixio.com to check out some other things I’ve written.
