As the Current Pulls the Fallen Under

by Daryl Sneath

  D3: ‘No, no. That’s not it at all. The point is we’ve been conditioned to expect endings and when we don’t get what we expect we’re left wanting and waiting.’

  D2: ‘Like in Godot.’

  D3: ‘Exactly.’

  D2: ‘So narrative is a sort of agent which taps our expectations—’

  D3: ‘Sure.’

  D2: ‘—and, regardless of the content, leaves us dissatisfied unless it’s presented in a recognizable way.’

  D3: ‘Yes. There needs to be familiarity.’

  D2: ‘But the point here is that such familiarity is artificial.’

  D3: ‘Yes. Everything about a narrative is a lie.’

  D2: ‘The beginning of a story isn’t really the beginning.’

  D3: ‘The end isn’t the end.’

  D2: ‘The narrator isn’t really the voice of the story.’

  D3: ‘There’s so much more to what happens than what ­happens.’

  D2: ‘And so, really, there is no truth to be found in the way a story is told.’

  D3: ‘Right. Form is a construct and constructs are lies.’

  D2: ‘What’s the point then?’

  D3: ‘I thought we had it.’

  D2: ‘We did. I don’t know what happened. It’s gone.’

  D1: ‘Listen. What you two are saying doesn’t make any sense. A life has a beginning and an end. What happens happens and that’s it. What’s said is said. What’s done is done. Life is familiar, as you say, and there is nothing artificial about life. Certainly there is truth to be found in the way a life is lived.’

  D2: ‘Maybe. But life isn’t a story.’

  D3: ‘We’re so surrounded by stories that we confuse them for life.’

  D2: ‘And when we don’t get what we expect—’

  D3: ‘Like an ending.’

  D2: ‘—we’re left wanting.’

  D3: ‘And waiting.’

  D2: ‘Because we don’t recognize the situation.’

  D3: ‘And it leaves us feeling uneasy.’

  D2: ‘Thesis: that which we do not recognize makes us uncomfortable and so prompts us to wonder.’

  D3: ‘Antithesis: that which we recognize leaves us satisfied and so we’re less likely to question.’

  D2: ‘Synthesis: discomfort leads to discovery.’

  D2 and D3 reclined in their chairs, satisfied. D1 wasn’t smiling. He had his forearms on his knees. He shook his head and looked at Karl Knotold.

  D1: ‘Okay. But I still want to know. What happened?’

  . . .

  After the congregation of students dissipated I remained. I wasn’t sure between the two of us who had the upper hand or if such a notion carried any weight or meaning in a place like Quest. He stood and motioned for me to walk with him. I did and we headed outside. He slapped me on the back where the tattoo had been freshly needled—like he knew somehow—and I tensed a little at the discomfort.

  ‘It certainly is one of the truly beautiful places on this earth, wouldn’t you say?’

  He was standing—hands on his hips, nose in the air—like an ancient explorer in contemplation of his great discovery.

  I nodded.

  ‘There isn’t a single place I can think of I would rather be.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘I’m sure you recognized my little anecdote back there. Just so we’re clear, I’m not a minstrel. I don’t go around busking the same story to crowds of curious listeners for kicks or for money.’

  ‘I didn’t think you did.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So you’re a professor.’

  ‘Yes. Well, a tutor. Students don’t call professors Professor here. Or Doctor. Or Mr. or Mrs. They refer to them as tutors and use first names. It’s part of the pedagogical philosophy, which means—’

  ‘I know what it means.’

  He looked at me. ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘I was surprised you weren’t more surprised to see me.’

  ‘I had a look at the list of first-years when I came home last week. Yours is a name not easily missed.’

  ‘Neither is yours.’

  ‘The Knotold part is made up. But I suppose that’s ­obvious.’

  I nodded.

  ‘My real name—as I’m known here—is Karl Kent.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘The glasses are on purpose.’

  ‘Does Valerie know you have more than one identity?’

  ‘Let me tell you something, Vector, and I’m sure you’ve already figured this out for yourself. Miss Argent knows everything.’

  Students walked by in both directions. Occasionally one would nod or say hello and Tutor Karl would return the gesture.

  Karl Knotold made a show of breathing deeply in and exhaling the mountain air.

  ‘Listen, Vector, I’m not in the business of giving advice—God knows I could use some direction myself . . . you don’t happen to know anyone do you?—but I will say this: be careful.’

  Direct and clear. Again, fair warning.

  ‘When you say you don’t happen to know anyone do you mean a psychiatrist sort of anyone?’

  ‘I was joking. But you’re obviously going somewhere. So sure.’

  ‘Do you remember what I told you about my father?’

  He grinned, but not evilly. ‘Not exactly the kind of information most people classify as forgettable, Mr. Sorn.’

  ‘Well. The powers that be believed it was in my best interest in the wake of what happened to see someone professionally. At my age I couldn’t really refuse. So I spent three years sitting in a wooden office every Sunday morning from nine to ten stretched out on a couch trying to stave off sleep by giving the good doctor enough material to work with so that he might feel as though he were effecting some real psychocatharsis on my behalf.’

  ‘Like church.’

  ‘Yes. Of which he was the self-appointed saviour.’

  ‘You sound unimpressed.’

  ‘Let’s just say Dr. Carl—the psychiatrist sort of anyone I happen to know, whom I would recommend to no one—is no messiah. To put it plainly, he’s a cranium-scratching simian. At best. Not to offend our evolutionary brethren.’

  ‘Dr. Carl, you say.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Quite the coincidence.’

  ‘The original Dr. Carl would call it synchronicity.’

  ‘Yes, he would—is that something you believe in?’

  I shook my head. ‘I believe in very little.’

  Tutor Karl started away and I went with him.

  ‘I’m curious. How did you know to call me Dr. Karl?’

  ‘Valerie left me a postmodern note on Twitter the morning after the night at Shebeen.’

  ‘Of course she did.’

  ‘I checked her followers. You were the first one. @Dr_Karl.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I woke to find her gone and when I checked my phone I discovered a thirty-minute row between her and Danny Mann. Anyway, your secret identity is safe with me.’

  He grinned and knuckled his Clark Kent glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  From the Journal of Vector Sorn

  I’m leading a double life. Through the week I’m a Quest student and the number one junior metric miler in the country on the cusp of becoming the number one senior metric miler in the country, which means this: I wake up and run, I eat, I read, I go to class, I discuss what I’ve read in class, I eat, I discuss what I discussed in class while I eat, I read some more, I run again, I eat and think about what I’m going to read next, I read what I planned to read next, I work on assignments, I sleep for seven or eight hours (if I can), I wake up, and I repeat. I have no time for anything else, which I’m okay with. It’s the life I mapped out. It’s why I left Heron River. It’s why I�
��m here.

  But every single time Valerie Argent calls (every seven to ten days, depending on her flight schedule—I’ve been able to figure out no real pattern), I answer. Without hesitation. I hop in the Saab she says is mine while I’m hers and I drive the hour south to the city. The route to Terminus Building (the irony in the name is not lost on me) has become second nature. The closer I get the quicker my heart goes. Every time is like the first time, only better. As I park in the underground garage and ride the elevator to the third floor I can barely contain myself. And she knows it. The door is left open and there’s always a trail of some kind to where she is, waiting. Sometimes it’s her clothes, casually but purposefully dropped, a trail up the stairs. Sometimes it’s individually wrapped pieces of candy and when I find her she’s wearing stilettos and a witch’s hat and nothing else. ‘Trick or treat,’ she says and strokes the shaft of the broom she’s pretending to ride. Sometimes it’s a yellow brick road of sticky-notes, each with a single word making up a sentence telling me what she wants me to do. One time the notes led to the table in the kitchen where she lay like a naked Snow White in the glass case, a pillow under her head, a swirl of white icing on each nipple, one on her belly button, and the words on the notes went together like this: Wake me up, Victor. Please.

  So, there are two of me: Quest student and middle distance runner, Vector Sorn, and Silver Light sex and story man, Victor, no surname required. Again, I’m okay with this. I certainly have my hand in the creation of it. I’m not innocent. Nor am I a victim of circumstance. It should be noted, in fact, that there is no shortage of effort on my part to keep Victor alive. It does indeed take some doing. The hour-long trips between Squamish and Vancouver go by in a flash while I mine Vector’s life for the post-coital stories Victor tells. Eventually I will run out of stories, as we all do. I know this, and when it happens, Victor will cease to be. Without saying so she has made that fact clear. The sad truth of it, though, is nothing can really be without the inevitable end lingering in the untouchable but looming distance. If, like Victor, stories are the things that keep us going, it is the inevitable end—whether we’re conscious of it as a driving force or not—that compels us to unearth the very stories that sustain us.

  CLIPPINGS (19)

  (taken from “Sorn Rounds Out Deep Field in Inaugural Hayward Fall Classic,” runnerspace.com)

  “Still only eighteen (which is difficult for this writer to believe), after a month off, and training now without a coach, Vector Sorn will make his debut appearance as a senior competitor at the inaugural Hayward Fall Classic. Talk about your high-stakes low-stakes race. The O-Ducks will host the one day invitational with the mile, as always, slotted as the premier event. As it stands, the lineup is an impressive one. Of the twelve on the ticket, the slowest PB (PR) is held by Sorn himself at 3:58.80 (the exact time it took Roger Bannister to edge out John Landy in the Mile of the Century, contested some sixty years ago at the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver, the very place Vector Sorn now resides [sic]). Having run an effortless, unpushed 3:36 and change (for the metric version, it should be noted—one of six age-group world records he now holds) this past July to win the Canadian Junior National Championships for an unprecedented fifth consecutive time, the middle-distance phenom is projected to run in the low to mid 3:50s, despite his time off, which should put him in contention for the win. Look out, Eugene. Here comes Canada. Stop Vec!”

  ~

  After the Canadian Championships I always take a month off which means August is a month of doing nothing. A month of long, slow, inebriating days. Time for my body to recover from eleven months of hard pounding. I can actually feel the soreness leave my legs like a soul being freed. Like some god of good feeling pulling the hurt from me the way a fisherman pulls his net from the sea: deep, invisible, and nearly forgotten until it comes to the surface and emerges full of the bounty only patience can provide. I relish those August days and yet I abhor the inertia of them. Every day I don’t run my body aches for the return. There is no treatment for such a twisted addiction except the drug of running itself which fuels it.

  And so, when September comes I have to be careful not to overdo it. It’s what all the literature says. It’s what Baron said, even though he took it too far. He kept me on a strict, to-the-kilometre militaristic regime from the time I woke to the time I hit the sack. I had to log every minute, calculate the average per-click pace of every run, record my pre-run, during-run, and post-run heart rates to aid in his determination of my recovery rate so that he could “program accordingly”. I had to eat at precise times throughout the day and what I ate was prescribed to the calorie and designed with an exact 50-30-20 carb-to-protein-to-fat ratio in mind. I was young. I was winning. I bought in.

  I have years of notebooks full of numbers relating to how I lived according to what I ran as Baron saw fit. They’re in a box somewhere that I’ll never open. Some day I’ll burn them. When I’m done all this and I want the inebriating experience of a ritualized razing of Baron from my past.

  When I came out west I decided not to keep track of anything. For two months all I’d worry about was volume. Somewhere around ten to twelve hours a week, give or take an hour or two. I promised myself not to measure a thing for two full months. I wouldn’t even look at a track let alone run on one. I wouldn’t wear a watch or even cursorily check the time before I stepped out the door or when I came back. When I felt like pushing I’d push. When I felt like taking it easy I’d take it easy. If I came to a street that looked a hundred metres long I might imagine it were the closing hundred of the Olympic final and I’d kick the length of it with every ounce of speed I could muster. But only if I felt like it. The only criterion I would set for myself for two full months was to do what I wanted when I wanted do it.

  There are many theories on rest. In training jargon the term ‘interval’ actually means ‘rest’. It is as important as its opposite in the world of ­athletics and high performance. When and for how long. What type and why. Good programs revolve around it. The most significant variable, though, is always the body (not to mention the mind) the program is being delivered to and through. As for coaches, Bannister never had one for the longest time. Landy trained himself. Seb Coe had his father who relied on his knowledge and experience as an engineer to design his son’s regimen. Not exactly a traditional approach, but it seemed to work out okay. Pre had Bowerman but they fought like dogs and in the end, if the truth be known, Pre likely did what he wanted.

  Not to compare myself to the greats, but my plan wasn’t exactly orthodox either. I had no coach and I ran what I wanted to run. I had my years of experience with Baron to go on (socially insouciant primate asshole that he was, he did know what he was doing on the track). I had my own understanding of all the literature on running as a competitive endeavour. I’d studied all the great runners. I had my ideas and I believed they were sound. I didn’t need (or want as VA would have it) anyone. I would be fine on my own. I was sure.

  The Hayward Fall Classic was to be my crossing-the-threshold race. The first test of my coachless approach. All the Big-10 helmsmen who had offered me the world to attend their schools would be there watching from the infield. Tall, stalwart men with their arms crossed, sunglasses concealing their critical glare. I wanted to show them I didn’t need a coach to push me. I wanted to show everyone I knew what I was doing.

  How easy it is to convince ourselves that we know what we’re doing.

  To note, that ‘3:36 and change’ the runnerspace.com writer mentioned was anything but ‘unpushed.’ Easy for spectators and sports writers to describe an athlete’s effort as ‘effortless’ when all they have to do is watch.

  And just so it’s clear, I put no stock in projection.

  #305 36 WATER STREET, TERMINUS BUILDING: VANCOUVER, BC

  The sex was finished. Saying it like that makes it sound like a meal or a book or a chore of some kind. It was none of these things. The level of
pleasure was beyond my ability to comprehend. In fact I didn’t even attempt to comprehend it. It occurred to me that thought might ruin it or at least compromise it in some way. So I didn’t think. I just did, as the god of victory commands.

  My singular disappointment-slash-frustration at the time was that I couldn’t locate one single instalment of Silver Light starring Victor online. In fact, I could find no episodes at all. I spent entire nights searching different configurations of Valerie Argent’s name, of my name, of what I took as code words I’d heard her use. One night I had a eureka moment. The tattoo. The way she slid her shirt from her shoulders, turned her head in profile, and paused looking at the floor to reveal the two needled words on her perfect skin. She was posing for the title screen. I was sure of it. But when I googled ‘Silver Light’ I still found nothing. The only thing I ever found that was related in any way was her employee status at Air Canada and the scrolls and scrolls of tweets under the handle @vanval which often mentioned me (but never by name). I never came across anything resembling or remotely connected to her entrepreneurial film endeavours. There weren’t even any pictures of her online. Not anywhere. Her profile picture was an airplane. She was an internet phantom. No YouTube videos (save the Sorn vs. Mann bout, but even then her contribution was only a ten-second offscreen soundbite). No Instagram. No Pinterest. No bit torrents. No subinternet sites. Not a blessed or unblessed thing. Whatever it was she was producing and sending her ‘membership,’ as it were, was impossible to find. An -ography of ghostfilm. Wshhhh. Into thin internet air.

  Time now for the interview segment. The talking bit. The character development and revelation. I wondered when she pieced it all together if she made what I said look like a confessional. I could see that. It felt like it sometimes. Appeal to the believers among her members. Or maybe she edited the footage down into a montage of soundbites and found background sepia-filtered images (still and filmic) of some boy who was believably me so that whatever it was I happened to be talking about might take on a more genuine feel. Pictures always enhance the believability of what’s being said. The ‘news,’ as it’s charmingly (however misleadingly) still known, survives as it does as a mass-audience-feeding genre on the very true—­however old-fashioned and, in today’s context, meiotic—notion that a picture is worth a thousand words. Long ago, the pictures that accompanied the news were actually connected to the source of the event being reported on but it didn’t take long for the newsmakers to realize that almost any old picture would do. Find an obscure or forgotten-about National Geographic shot of a blizzard in the far uninhabited north to help illustrate what the meteorologists were predicting as ‘The Storm of the Century’ and the viewers would get an instant and far better sense of what it was they should be preparing for. Locate a Hollywood-produced backdrop of a post-­apocalyptic earth for the armeggedon campaigners to show just what the end of the world will look like and the campaigners are far more likely to attract a fresh flock of reborn lambic followers: ‘brothers and sisters and children of our heavenly righteous father, accept Jesus into your life before it’s too late and pray he takes you heavenward with him while the millions [sic] of pleading heathens die a slow and satan-fated death walking aimlessly over the scorched and everlasting terra firma hell that this earth shall surely, as God as my witness, become’ (see any number of the sweeping cinematographic scenes of a lifeless, ash-ridden, smoking coastal USA from the film version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road).