How to Swallow a Pig

by Robert Priest

  BEAUTIFUL MONEY

  In Xanthos they have a new kind of money. Far from becoming more and more begrimed with its passage through people’s hands, it becomes more and more saturated in their magic. Whenever a man, woman, or child handles this new money, they urge the good will of personal enchantment into whatever coins they hold. And, in being passed hand-to-hand, it will eventually contain all the good will of rich and poor alike. There are no faces on the new money. It is too soft for such a stamp and can bear as emblem only the fingerprint of whomever last touched it. The more this new money is passed amongst the people, the more beautiful it becomes, so that after much industry and much gift-giving and charity, it will be unbearably beautiful. Whenever this occurs, those who possess it are unable to resist running into the streets and throwing it up into the sunlight, shouting, as it falls and sparkles, “Look, money! Beautiful money!”

  THE ZELGS

  1

  The Zelgs speak in a language that is a cry. To hear them converse is to listen to the wailings, gargles, and gasps of those undergoing terrible tortures of the soul and body. To go amongst them, even in their merrymaking, is like walking the corridors of an actual hell. They greet each other with shrill enraged lizard screams, shouting till they cough up blood. And in instances where most people would choose to whisper — moments, for instance, of privacy and intimacy, the Zelgs will holler at their loudest volume (about 1O,OOO decibels). For them to utter some small, sweet nothing like “I love you darling!” is to bellow like Prometheus on the rock. Although the Zelgs are fine and sensitive creatures, it is obviously very hard for Earthlings to communicate with them. Listening to the simplest and most superficial discourse is heart-rending and will incite the compassion of all but the most dead and cruel creatures. Nor can they understand our small chirping and gesturing, thinking instead, that we only truly communicate when we torture each other.

  2 TRAIDS

  The Zelgs suffer from an epidemic of the deadly sexually transmitted disease known as TRAIDS which, for reasons as yet unknown, seems to attack only the monogamous. Alas, it can only be prevented by frequent, uncommitted, casual sex with strangers. Unfortunate as this already is for those betrothed in holy matrimony, it is made even more painful by Bacchic groups who use it to bolster their “vision” of a vast promiscuity amongst all peoples perpetually. These folks take delight in disseminating slogans such as: “Bareback is better!”, “Gay is the way!”, “We’re bending over frontward for immunity!”, and “Have you had indiscriminate promiscuous sex today?” And then there’s their ubiquitous mascot: Bruce the safety goose.

  3 ON FAST-FUCKING

  In their effort to maintain immunity, the Zelgs put their extreme vocal abilities to a very practical use. I am referring to that practice known as fast-fucking, wherein the object is to fuck a stranger as fast as possible. The engagees (chosen by lot), after spending a day doing something slow and tedious, will approach one another as quickly as possible across a vast distance — usually a supermarket parking lot. As the actual duration of the fast-fuck is measured from the time they physically arrive at one another, participants will attempt to execute some manner of foreplay by shouting dirty talk to one another as they run. “Oooh I’m gonna fuck you so faaaaast!” is a big favourite. Or “In and out and it’s over, baby!” Obviously the louder the voice, the more time it provides for such endearments. To augment this, on clear days, couples will also make lewd gestures and suggestive poses as they dash, ripping their clothes off in the process. When they finally meet, there is the quickest possible poke and hump, at least one brief orgasm and then it’s over. The couple vow passionately to part forever. A promise they begin to keep immediately by dashing away from one another, full tilt.

  PSANTHOSIANS

  Distinguished Psanthosian poets are awarded the “shit in the face prize.” The winners are chosen by juries and warm, freshly dropped poop on aluminum pie plates is shoved in their faces. Although the manner of delivery is usually a simple straight-arm without crust, certain special winners are sometimes given the once-around-the-world, whirling on toe tips, grand slammer that knocks them right over treatment. Dark poetic eyes, blinking through excrement, are a commonly seen magazine cover when the awards are announced in January.

  REPORT ON THE EARTH-AIR ADDICTS

  It is said that Earth-Air is at once the sweetest and the most addictive scent there is. That is why Earth has been declared offlimits to all our Fair Captains. We have lost too many of them — one scent of it and they abandon everything for the mindless comforts below.

  Those who are addicted to Earth-Air often stroll. To stroll is to travel aimlessly — for “pleasure” as they put it. It doesn’t matter to the Earth-Air addict — just a change of scenery is enough. For yes, most of the time the Earth-Air addicts just sit around staring. Just staring and breathing and sighing, examining with intense and seemingly durable curiosity such “fabulous” items as sand, stone, grass, or wave.

  To be an Earth-Air addict is to abandon the star-search. It is to willfully glut the senses — to bathe incessantly in emanations. Just to go on breathing is enough — just to go on strolling. What a waste of life it is to become just a bag, a bellows for this detestable Earth-Air. Yet whenever our Fair Captains are missing we always find them standing on mountain peaks, breathing in Earth-Air. The wind blows and they are insane. They never want to leave. They want to run down into the valleys and breathe. They want to breathe all the different scents of Earth-Air there are. The famed Captain Zenon, for instance, was finally found perched over something called a “Daffodil,” his mind gone, his nostrils flared. Captain Arbox was located in Ambergris just rolling and rolling, raving about the “aroma,” taking great gusts of it deep into his lungs and then expelling it with long “musical” sighs that were terrible to hear.

  THE ENVIRONMENTAL LEAP FORWARD

  I. I wake up and something amazing has happened to the parks. Something extraordinary has happened to those small squares and rectangles of trees and grass causing them to pop their borders and spill out, wildly exploding with green leaves, spear tips of grass, and all sorts of uncontainable flowers, wild fauna, algae, and strange medicinal herbs. After the first immediate alarm in the populace, this miraculous event is too quickly assimilated into “public” consciousness by the glib news media. Compacted into a catch-phrase and left there, immaculate and explainable, it was a strange “twinge” in the environment. “An environmental leap.” Nothing to worry about. Just as we evolve, other things evolve “suddenly” and this was nothing but one of those periods for trees, grass, dandelions — dandelions everywhere impossible to weed out, great tangles of yellow sun-seeking dande- lion heads butting at bank buildings and knocking over stop signs. The question now is how to get it all back to normal. How to begin clearing away these immense forests which have covered the canyons and prairies of everywhere everywhere and reassert the primacy of roads, ploughed fields, subdivisions, industry.

  II. We have amazing images of the twinge that rocked nature. We have on video the burst of buds, the javelin hurl of poplars up to the point of that one highest blade of green quivering in the blue wind. Yes, yes, and look at the blur of these lianas, gen- tians, and violets. They are like purple blasts of rocketry, each blossom a trail of power left by something that has departed. Wow. And here is the mango grove that toppled the space fields of Florida, tangling up astronauts and gardeners alike in sweet exacerbating blossoms. I suppose everyone everywhere will always remember just where they were the day the greenery went wild. The night when nature throbbed.

  III. Despite several years of effort in the tangled amazons of the River Don, the Toronto government has been unsuccessful in reestablishing the former Riverdale Park. Despite a massive government work plan to log the fabulous area and plant sod, efforts have been foiled again and again by the regrowth and the undergrowth of the powerful new foliage. Recently, a bold new plan has been put forth by city council to “integrate the city into the al
ready-existing environment.”

  SADNESS OF SPACEMEN

  Some of them are not sad enough to be spacemen and so look down upon the soil and plant things in it. Some are so far from sadness they aren’t even on earth but somewhere back behind memory where the two swamps are. Well, I am here to tell you that you can drop tablets in the swamps and they will well up with words. Listen to the artificial robins. The gazelles you have created. Does that sound like bird talk? No! It is the Ten Commandments. Followed by the Forty-Nine Commandments. And if out of the swamps someday should vast migrations of people come, with endless bowls in their hands asking for please just a little more, don’t be surprised into saying “Yes.” For they are continually voracious and will make of you an endless factory of jingoisms and bum-wad ads. So, finally put down your hyperventilating wallet. It will not now have to swim underwater to get to you. Instead, the ending is a joke. And if you laugh you get some seeds, but if you weep you must go out and begin to look for a rocket.

  BOOK 3 ADVENTURES OF MY HAND

  CANDLES

  You too have pulled a swindle and thereby gained those illicit eyes — that criminal vision into yourself. You, with your eye at the keyhole, you will see every jewel in the body: the heart, the many senses (more than thought), the mountainous fevers rising up from roots in your feet, the fear flung from you like a robe, and then, every night, by mistake rolled in again (just the dog of you rolling there), the vision seen then and again — later in the dream — the double-eye, the eye cluster inside, many times refracted and examined down to the last splay of light in the centre — the sphere of colour — and you too have a brush, or feet to dance, or even a pattern of blood, broad-minded, finger-painted in the whited cell — void monograms of God cast in sulphur, the unruly unholy ghost wrestling every other poltergeist to a standstill. You too can stand up on top of a mountain in yourself and be no closer to God because he is always under you. You have never needed humility to speak to him. O you with your eyes on stilts, yes, I know you see the small tender points of stars up there, but look — your toes are at the edge. Your body is waiting open-mouthed to receive you. Dive, you tall fool, from your black candlestick and be inside yourself like lights out. Each of us on stalks of pure terror keeps something inside that loves to dance in the dark.

  THE RETROACTIVE ORPHAN

  I lost my job blowing on the windmills. I was too useful — somewhere lights were going on. Unluckily, I keep showing up on everyone’s doorstep in a basket. Perhaps with puppies. Or that is what I’m told, and they draw the bulrush from the front lawn and, waving it over me, expect great migrations, a plague of frogs and flies, but I say to them, “No, I am not that orphan Jesus Christ, I am the anonymous orphan your son. See: I have the same terrible eyes as you, the same round basket of thorns at my side. Give me that bellows, that marking kiss we all run from, that line zagged across your face to the end of things. Give me that air and that light. I am here to inherit your gout and zits. When you look away from me, is it not as though from a mirror? Remember the big nose? The circular brow with its abacus of sweat and you up there — spider in your kingdom drawing in the beads like a miser. $$$lsquo;Work! Work!’ you say to the hungry as they toil past you on the eternal pointless pyramid. ‘When will it come to an end,’ you enquire, pointing to the stuffed sky, bloated with your bricks and ambition. ‘I only wanted to be eternal,’ I say. ‘Free from the clutched pocket the terrible hands of all potential stranglers and set them out to work on all the cords of God’s thick neck. Wherever it stands or holds things up. Free the labours of the blood from its ceaseless treadmill.’ I am that all-canceling zero. The big nothing at the end of the gauge. I am the powerful entrance to the pyramid. The point it will never reach. I am that instantaneous orphan of water. Just add me to your family and see how childless you are.”

  THE ANCESTRY

  I made myself a smooth oil for my parents so they could move better together. Many times they would not have touched if I hadn’t come between them. It’s true only the ugliest, the birds most bloated on refuse, came and stared in at our windows, and the neighbours thought my mother’s singing was one perpetual scream. They had not seen the pencil marks, the stab wounds in my brother’s arms. It was I who was singing — crazy as a loon in the basement, each one of my hands a web that kept me struggling over the past. For there was everywhere suction then — in and out. One day I would be blood red and four years old, another day just a sliver of myself waiting to pierce someone — anyone. Just like my mother who was always hacking at herself with the scissors, turning up face down in the bathroom sink, every drop of water threatening to turn red with her blood in my hand. And every time I see my father’s face that fell down from the quarry, half of it carried off by the world for temples and the other half so lean with that one mad eye staring out like a Greek statue, I cry. There was no shadow I could lie down in that wasn’t his. A statue, a tree, a mountain — each one of them owed something of their darkness to his nature. I fell to brooding. I plotted escapes. Perhaps there was a stone I could run into and be cool and silent forever. Or perhaps I could take on immensities behind the moon and suddenly emerge far bigger than he. But how my stem-mouth shrieked when he walked by me. I became excessively obedient. I bent even when there was no wind. Then, by degrees again, because it is my nature — innocent, arrogant, supersensitive — at one point, if someone as far away as a mile struck a match, a small glow would appear over my mouth and not fade for days. For a time I was almost always unbearably bright. There were fires everywhere and my father didn’t like it. He said our family had a long history of water. It had always been good enough for them to dance, to sing, and fill things. No son of his was gonna be a flame. Then he threw himself on me and there was a big hiss. Luckily, just then, my mother came running out. “No Ted!” she screamed, and for the first time I saw the tiny flickering at the base of her throat: the impossible flame blood couldn’t lead out of her but it glowed there forever with my blood and hers. Even there, where I was — somewhere the other side of burning — it reached me and my father said, “Alright then, he’s your son, he’s not mine.”

  MY HUGE VOICE

  I was born with a huge voice and I lay there with a huge voice in a new world, my voice too big for me. When I screamed I shook birds from the roof. My father called me “Big Mouth’ and went to sea. My father came back and beat my voice and my voice got harder and harder. My mother grew my huge voice in a pot. She put its feet in the cradle and gave it a story at bedtime. As the body grew, the voice grew, larger and larger, stronger and stronger. Soon I was dragging this huge voice through the public school system, sometimes hardly able to fit through doorways my voice was so huge and so stuck in my throat, and though I rarely sang, though I only whistled, though I talked at normal volume, my voice was huge and I knew it. Finally at the age of twenty I began to let my voice go. My voice that was gigantic. Which if I screamed could shake temples, topple towers, and blast leaves from entire trees. Slowly I let my voice unwind. I let it shake and shatter as it welled up, lying back, blasted open, almost broken by the voice blaring up out of me. It is hard to be a body for a voice like this — a huge voice that wants to be heard everywhere. Sometimes I try to keep quiet and end up shouting. Sometimes I try to go to sleep, all swollen up with this voice, and it is too late to sing, too dark to speak, so I must lie there till the morning utterly silent, my body, an elastic to the sun, a small halter the voice is breaking through, my mind just a trembling seed for the wonder of this voice.

  HALTERS

  I. Our family was one of those which had a halter made of leather the entire family could get into and wear. This was teamwork, my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, and me all strapped in and dragging the house through the gravel pit. Of course my little sister wasn’t much help as she was so small and my mother was always suddenly bleeding at the eyes so this made our progress harrowing, but at times my brother and father and I were excellent huskies, going on long past e
ndurance up the aisles and alleyways of Emotion City, a silver sheen of feeling caked in on the unclean streets, stuff you could slide in and be covered, a lament sinking in. Intense loneliness sinking in as you have your hour on the porch watching the strings of other houses going by, wondering why you don’t have any friends. At night my brother and I would sleep, we would wrestle and fart in our rooms while my mother and father went at it deep into the night, dragging till they fell asleep, winding up all the toy TVS, toasters, and even the clocks which would all too soon wake them up.

  II. I wanted to break out of the family halter though. It was too stuck in my heart and I was treated like an animal — a work horse. I wept into the leather of the halter. I bit at the halter always swearing to be free, to run off at last without this house in the suburbs on my back and the school books and the cups on my back, just to cut it all loose, let it slide behind me. Aaaaah the dives, the glides, the whips, the whirls I would do once I was free, cut loose in downtown rooms, lying in. But you need allies. There are always other halters waiting in the streets — industrial corsets, old educational buildings, trick flowers that will trap you and have you howling, caught on treadmills in the wind. You need allies. You need friends with sharp tongues, a book, a thought, a look that can cut like sharp hot steel. Slash open the veins of these halters, let us break out like marine animals from nets. Beware of lunging desks which will exert tendrils and capture you, pulling you screaming down to safe jobs and a home in the country. There are strange halters creeping over the meadows, startling old nuns and annoying sad professors, people caught up in suction hats, held down by heavy cloaks and gloves which manipulate. You must be very careful of the vases and counter-tops which can capture you — wild carpets and paintings on the wall. Army sergeants and teachers may come. Governments and employment schemes. Watch out for the religious texts with halters attached. Do you want to drag all the large institutes of revenge behind you? Do you want the domiciles and dormitories of murder — of insanity — the large blue wheel of education and ignorance? Break out of the halters of philosophy and standard usage, busting them up like dove-bits in the tightened air. You have to take a deep breath, fill the chest, the guts right up, and shout like a trumpet that shatters itself with the first true blast, “Fuck you, you bastards!”