Everything Driven By Blood
Black Book 57, January 10, 2007
The word ‘brain,’ you know, never once occurs in the ancient scriptures of the world. You will not find it in the Bible—the reins, the heart, and so forth were what men felt with then.
…Every man who thinks for himself and feels vividly finds he lives in a world of his own, apart, and believes one day he’ll come across, either in a book or in a person, the priest who shall make all clear to him.
—Algernon Blackwood, The Centaur
I’D SEE HIM come up over the crest—emerging is what he was doing—framed by the last flare of the sun setting on the long other side of the hill and already splashed across the bay to the horizon. The light went out of the day early that time of year.
He was an overweight kid, and bundled as he so often was in a snowsuit, the effect was comical. He moved slowly, had a strange, almost canine gait that was always reversing itself, weaving from side to side in the street and pausing here and there to crane his neck or bend over to investigate something, often for no apparent purpose.
By the time he emerged every day, the taunts and laughter of the other kids would already be fading away off down the hill.
He hadn’t yet been made terminally self-conscious, and it was always the same, every single day: He’d see me and throw his arms straight up into what was left of the light, toss back his head, and let out a strange sound that was both thrilling and thrilled, something close to the shriek of a gibbon. It would make me laugh every time, and is the only memory I own that can make me smile every time.
My timing was always off, though, or maybe I was just helpless. But I couldn’t save him from the merciless hyaenas that eclipsed so many childhoods in that dark, hard town.
MANNING WAS THE bartender at the Lisbon Pub. He was a dramatic character, and always had the air of a thoroughly thwarted man. His favorite saying was, “I’m not proud of myself.”
At my brother’s trial, when asked to describe the behavior of the defendant on the day in question, Manning said, “He was babbling and incoherent with rage.” Which was interesting, if not exactly funny. This was a long time ago, and I suppose things have changed, but little was made of the fact that Manning would continue to serve alcohol to a man who was babbling and incoherent with rage. A man who wasn’t, truth be told, truly a man, but a boy who had drawers full of play money and believed he was filthy rich.
I did not attend the trial. The last time I saw my brother he was jackknifed in the backseat of a squad car, his arms twisted up at a horrible angle behind his back, wrists cuffed. As the car pulled away from the curb he craned his neck and watched me over his shoulder, his eyes wide and crazy and sparking with every terrible thing his life had unleashed in that moment. It was, of course, an awful thing to see, and impressed upon me forever our brutal and inescapable kinship with animals. In precisely that instant, I can now recognize, the cold, hard truth was finally and forever after snugly shoehorned into just the way things are.
I don’t know. That really is all there is to that story. The rest is just tears.
SAME NIGHT, SAME PAGE, FROM A DIFFERENT CHANNEL IN MY SKULL:
I don’t understand the motivation or insane drive of many Olympic athletes, the focus and commitment to repetition required to devote so much of your life to, say, the triple jump. Seriously, can you imagine? One jump, you would think, would be sufficient to demonstrate one’s leaping abilities, particularly since they do, I believe, offer the one-jump option.
You’ll see a whole lot more walking down any city sidewalk with both your eyes wide open than you’re likely to see with one eye squinting into a telescope.
I’m of the opinion that the person who coined the phrase “pocket pool” was one of mankind’s unheralded geniuses.
Did I once meet or imagine a character—possibly a dissolute ex-professional wrestler—who had the phrase “BOUND FOR GLORY” and a downward-pointing arrow tattooed just north of his pubic hair?
Why in the world wouldn’t I allow myself to be carried away?
If in fact we are living in a post-progress world—and what was progress but a label some cabal of capitalists slapped on a vision of the future they wanted us to buy?—then perhaps the only thing that truly matters anymore is the ferocity of individual dreams and visions.