“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” I said back.
“It’s a good day,” he said.
“Very clear day,” I said.
“Well then,” he said.
“Well then,” I said, “it’s a good day.”
“Yes,” he said, and stepped aside to leave.
And then I stepped aside. In the opposite direction. And we both did what we had to do: leave. I thought for a moment, that was the wrong mailman. Not the wrong mailman, just not the right one, or the usual one. I turned around to look at him again, but he was already in the postal truck, pulling out into the street, and all I could see was the back of his postal truck, square as a nun. Maybe he is sick, I thought, the usual mailman. Or on leave. Or I hadn’t studied his facial features enough. I should have asked for his name. I walked down the sidewalk, through the row of plants, then right past them into my house. Inside, I looked up at the skylight. I thought, it’s as dull as it was before, flat and dull as before, the skylight, even if it’s a new day.
There are certain surfaces from which nothing gets removed, nothing more accumulates. A steady humdrum of nothingness. And if anything accumulates it does so at an infinitesimal rate, so the next person to notice is a few lineages down, or not at all, I thought, because you’ll never know if that person will stop to look up at the same surface, and if he does there would be no guarantee that he would have the same thought. But then thoughts get passed around from brain to brain, so that our thoughts are only ever a repetition of someone else’s thoughts. A thought that came before us and planted itself in our brain as though it belonged to us, inextricable from our being. And that is exactly what the skylight is, I thought: inextricable. I thought of Fra Keeler polishing it, dusting it off, and then going to stand beneath it to see if the light shined through. Meanwhile the old lady in the dark with her candlestick, her package, and her near-death. Thoughts, you walk through them, they exist before you, I told myself, picking the thought up again, and by some trick of the mind you think it was your thought, and you drag it out, a thread as long as your DNA, and you push at it with your finger and you say, “Ah, yes: This is my thought,” and it breathes back against your finger, and you are very satisfied, you and the thought together, you thinking the thought is yours and the thought thinking back at you, right up against your finger. What an idiotic thing to think about, I thought, as I slammed the door shut. I imagined the thought getting stuck in the doorway along with the finger I had imagined pressing against the thought. I walked into the kitchen and took a drink of water by the sink. Death unto both of them, I thought, the finger and the thought, and swirled the water in the glass a few times because I was trying to pause the thoughts or redirect them, the finger along with everything else slammed out of the house by the door slamming shut.
I looked out the window. It was begging to rain. A drizzle, a light rain through the sky. Then a bit harsher, more temperamental. I saw the trees, their leaves ruffled in the wind. A thousand ants, I thought, and swirled the water in my glass some more. I could see the wind through the window, egging the clouds along in masses as though they were sheep, the clouds, in masses, dimming everything below. I took a drink of water. Someone has amputated the rays of the sun, I thought, cut them right off, because the light got sucked out of the window. Suddenly I was looking at myself, because with the light sucked out of the window, the window was less of a window. I swirled the water in my mouth. Some things are worth looking at double, I thought, and placed the glass on the counter so I could see it reflected in the window. I grinned, then went back over to the papers to leaf through them with my finger. With my finger, I thought, I will leaf through them one by one. And when I thought one by one I remembered the light coming through the window, illuminating the Netherlands, low lands, those under-lands, point of a needle. Fra Keeler, Time and Place of Death, I thought, and the sky clammed up. I could see through the window now. All the clouds had accumulated in one spot. Dirty avalanche, all those clouds rolled into one, and then the clouds released all their humid weight; the rain was torrential. I wanted to give out a laugh. To laugh at the water, the water I had swirled in my mouth near the window, the water falling from the sky in wide, cascading sheets. Yes, I thought: Yes! I could laugh at the light too! The dream, I thought. I wanted to laugh. I began to give out a light chuckle. I took a step toward the papers, and I wanted to take another, a hundred more, the needles, I thought, the Netherlands, but I couldn’t get the other leg through, one leg and the other wouldn’t follow, everything, I thought—the ground wobbled, and I had the distinct feeling of walking on the slant of a wave or a sand dune—and then I felt the blood rush out of my brain.
How many steps had it taken me to get to the neighbor’s door, to the yurt, etc.? I should have counted them, I thought. The room spun around me. How would my house, I thought, which was Fra Keeler’s house … the skylight, I thought, dirty … after it was clean … position itself in relation to the yurt … the neighbor’s home … the old lady in the dark? Now it was a cold, fast rain. I felt wet, drained to the bone even though I wasn’t outside. A triangle, I thought, the neighbor’s home, the yurt, Fra Keeler’s home, and then the phone rang. I ran out into the garden and counted the trees. A triangle, a triangle of trees, I thought, I should go through them, through the trees. I thought: the dream: the old lady in the dark down the street—and the two things began to revolve around each other: the old lady holding the candle and my mother with her face burnt off, saying “You did this.” And it was spinning, the room, and I thought, it’s a good thing it’s raining, there are some fires to be put out. Her face grew more and more burnt until it was paper-thin. I could see her sockets, her cheekbones, high as a horse’s, I thought, and then her face revolved faster and faster until it was a charcoal grin. Then, it was as though I had my eyes closed or blinders on, because all I could see were the slim trunks of the trees. I was wet to the bone. I heard a door creaking, the wind whistling, sharpening itself on the hinges. The yurt, I thought, and it flashed before me like lightning, silver and radiant in the rain. I took a step, one leg then the other, and walked into the yurt. I leaned over, the bottom of this, I thought, I will get to it, but then I heard a banging. I thought, I can’t handle this, a banging in addition to everything else, the distant echo of the phone, the wind sharpening, the phone ringing inside the house, but I couldn’t get up, I was lying down, flat inside the canoe with my arm out, reaching for the oar, and I thought it’s raining, it’s raining, like the end of the world, and then I felt the canoe lift up to the surface of the water and drift away.
3. What madness is this, I thought, when I awoke in the midst of the woods. Not the woods per se, but the trees at the far end of the garden. Everything seems larger when you are looking at it from the bottom up, I thought, and since first looking to the side I could see the trunks, and then looking up how they branched out into trees, it was as though I awoke in the woods, when really it was in the garden that I awoke, at the far end beneath the trees. I thought, why am I lying here, hadn’t it rained? And then I said to myself, “It has something to do with quantity,” as though I were reading out loud from a page. I looked at the roots on the trees. They were mostly underground. But then again, I thought, the roots are not entirely underground. Only that they are more underground than overground, I concluded. My eyes were still adjusting. Because at first I couldn’t open them, let alone see the trees.
Open your eyes, I thought, and I thought I had opened them, but I couldn’t see. Because a certain part of my brain was numb, the part that had to do with my eyes, and I knew it was numb because all around I could feel more than a normal amount of feeling. I thought, I am blind, or not exactly blind, but I couldn’t open my eyes to see. And when I tried to pry them open with my fingers they would not open or they would open but it was only darkness around me so, I thought, I must be going blind, or I am already blind. I fell asleep and woke up blind, I thought. And then I tried to pry my eyes open.
This time I saw my feet, but only vaguely, and more out of one eye than the other, and it was like I was seeing my feet at the bottom of a well, through the center of a ring of ripples on the surface of the water. I thought, I am blind, how can I be blind? Because when I fell asleep I certainly wasn’t blind. And then I thought, perhaps I am not awake yet, and I let the question go, blind versus not blind, and surely half an hour later I was awake, because I opened my eyes and I could see the trees: first the trunks and then following the trunks upward I could see the leaves.
And this is when I came to the question, Why am I lying here, hadn’t it rained? which is the question I had asked myself when I opened my eyes and saw the leaves, but could not answer, so that instead of answering the question, Why am I lying here, hadn’t it rained? the sentence, It has something to do with quantity kept reappearing in my head as though I were reciting it from a page. And to what, I wondered, is the sentence referring? Because certainly it wasn’t clear to me. Then a wind passed through, and the leaves ruffled a bit overhead. Quantity, I thought. I thought, quality. That the two are inextricable from each other. And that you have to have enough of something in order to determine its exact quality. And then I thought, it must have rained yesterday, or some hours ago, some time before this point in time when I find myself lying here under the trees.
Then the wind picked up again, and the leaves rustled even more loudly on the trees. It could have been only minutes ago, I thought, that it had rained. There is no way of knowing. But on the other hand, if a long time had passed since it had rained—days perhaps, or months—then there would positively be a way of knowing. Because a long time is more easily felt, I thought. Which is to say that I would know if a long time had passed between the two events: between me lying here under the trees as though in the woods, and the rain which has now passed, I thought. But what does all this have to do with blindness? With having gone to sleep one way and woken up another? Which is to say not blind and then blind, with no event in between except for sleep.
But then again, I thought, I didn’t wake up blind, I only thought I was blind in my sleep. And then it occurred to me that waking up inside a dream is the same thing as waking up in a place of nowhere, and that I only thought I was blind because in that space, in a place of nowhere, there is nothing to be seen.
Just then I propped myself up on one elbow, and saw a puddle a few feet away. It had certainly rained. The fact that it had rained, and that I had suspected as much, gave me courage. I should get up, I thought, and then I thought the light from the sun is amber, even though when I was lying down it was more see-through gold, but now, propped up on my elbow, I thought to myself, I can see that it is amber, thick and dense as honeyed milk.
But I couldn’t get up, despite the light and all its tricks of color, because the realization that I could go to sleep not blind and wake up blind stirred in me a severe distrust. Because when something happens once, I thought to myself, there is no telling that it will not happen again. Because that something has carved a pathway for itself in the world, regardless of consequence or prior event. As in, an event can happen without any prerequisites, which is to say that one can go to sleep not blind and wake up blind. Which is to say there is such a thing as an event without predecessors, a phantom event, an event out of nowhere, I thought, and sealed my lips.
I wanted to pick myself up off the ground completely, but then I began to think again. I thought, it cannot be: there is no such thing as a phantom event. There is always a sequence. One just has to come to be aware. All events happen in relation to other events. And if they don’t happen in relation to other events, as in, if in the first instance of germinating an event doesn’t happen apropos other events, it doesn’t even matter. Because eventually every event will take its position in relation to other events. So that there is no such thing as an event out of nowhere. Surely, I thought, my going blind has to do with something that came before it. Only something very subtle, negligible, minuscule, hardly present. But in fact not at all negligible, only seemingly negligible at first. It isn’t until you look back, I thought, picking myself up, that you see how each thing layers itself over the thing that came before it. In a few days even the event of my blindness will establish its relationship to the things that came before it. Not my permanent blindness, I corrected as I strained to get up, but my momentary blindness. Because it was only blindness in the midst of sleep, so at first I experienced the event of my blindness and later realized that what I had taken for blindness was in reality the nothingness I witnessed.
In every situation, I thought, standing up now to feel my legs, there is a way to take advantage. A way to control how one situation lines up against another situation, how one event layers itself upon another. One event stands in relation to another in the same way that it is also in relation to a third event. And a fourth and fifth as well. So that your whole life is a string of events taking form in a backward manner.
So what a lie it is, the present, because it doesn’t even exist. There is only the moving forward of events and the moving backward of one’s understanding over those events. To say there is a present, I thought, is to say there is a platform where events accumulate and then stop happening so one can evaluate their effect. It is what people do, I thought, feed themselves lies. Everything is a lie in the first instance. Then the lie is purified, smoothed out, turned into a truth, because the present is always cycling into the past, or transforming into a future moment. The notion of the present is a purified lie, because in the time it takes to say the word present the moment has already passed and you are just a fool running out of breath trying to pin down the moment to evaluate. What misery, I thought to myself, rocking back and forth on my legs. A whole system of lies, a whole system of belief.
Even the trees are duplicitous, I thought, with their bark and their under-wood, and began to walk away from them. And if I think about it, I thought, both my blindness, and my walking away from the trees with no memory of having walked toward them, are marked by phantom events, events out of nowhere in between: my walk toward the trees, my walk away from the trees, the event in between. Just as I had two elongated moments of not being blind on either side of my being blind, which was in between. Then I thought, the hell with it. It is pure misery, the tracking of things. Because some things are willfully intractable, I thought, some things go against the grain. One moment, and then the next, I thought, with no event in between.
I left the trees behind. Now I could see the kitchen window across the garden just a few yards away. It had grown opaque under the glimmering light of the sun and I could see myself on its glossy surface: I was just standing there, fresh out from under the trees. How odd, I thought, the window darkened from the intensity of the light, rather than brightened, and I took a step closer. I stumbled on something. I caught my reflection in the window as I collapsed to my feet. There was a weighty stick on the ground, and I thought, who would have planted this here, a stout stick? Or, thicker than a stout stick, because certainly it was less a stout stick than a club. I picked it up and walked closer to the window. I wanted to know if I could see through it, to the other side, to the kitchen sink.
I pressed my face against the window. But it was only a vague outline that I could see: the kitchen sink immaterial, a sketch just beyond the glass and the light. I dropped the club and placed both hands like blinders against my face, and with both my hands blocking out the light I could see clearly through the window: the papers stacked on the counter across from the kitchen sink. For a moment, the papers did a wild dance, because the light was heavier one second than the next, and I thought, everything is this way, there is no escaping it, even the papers, one minute illuminated, twirling in the light, the next having died a sudden death.
When I pushed away from the glass I could see my reflection in the window. I was holding the club. I thought, it isn’t me holding the club, it is only my reflection in the window. Just as I was only blind in the space of my sleep, I am
only holding the club in the space of the window. Clearly, I thought, the window is more alive than anything else, because one moment it is a flat surface full of reflections and the next it is as transparent as a translucent sheet of skin. As opposed to the skylight, I thought, the window. A flock of birds flew overhead and I thought, more alive than the flock of birds and the skylight, the window, and swung the club overhead, because I wanted to see if I could catch my reflection swinging the club toward the window. But the clouds were still there, sucking all the light out of the window, so I didn’t see myself, and I thought, really the skylight is dead compared to the window. Because the window is always capturing the light and stirring it about in different directions, versus the skylight which is just there, unchanging and inextricable. Nothing should be inextricable, I thought, and grabbed the ladder, which was on the side of the house, to get up onto the roof. “Why not?” I asked. A moment later I found myself standing on the roof, staring down at the skylight with the club in my hand.
Surely the skylight is dead, I thought, because it is the same as it was before; nothing removed, nothing more accumulated. I raised the club over the skylight just as I had raised it over my head near the window. I thought, everything is a lie; things evaporate, they should be made to show how easily they can evaporate. It is a lie when everything that is always about to evaporate gives the impression that it is doing the opposite, not evaporating at all. And the skylight is the epitome of all lies, I thought, because it goes on and on as though nothing were deteriorating, nothing were evaporating, as though things could be permanent. One minute you’re blind, the next minute you’re not. The duplicity of things is unbearable, I thought, and with the club gently tapped the skylight. Goat-skin, a sheer, light skin, I thought, and tapped the club a second time against the glass. Then I raised the club over my shoulder. I wanted to gather force in my swing, to come down onto the skylight. Everything accumulates strength just before it goes down, I thought, and tightened my grip on the club. Then I thought, what madness is this, because suddenly I remembered the old lady in the dark. And I thought, what was she doing there all alone in the dark? Surely she was up to something. I tightened my grip on the club. I am not going to let the skylight get away, I thought. Only the next moment someone was standing in the middle of the driveway, waving an arm up at me, saying, in the form of a question, “Hello, sir?” and not once, but over and over again so that I had to respond.
Fra Keeler Page 3
