Laird Hunt
excerpts
from Thousands
Poseidon wurde überdrüssig seiner Meere. Der Dreizack entfiel ihm. Still sass er an felsiger Küste und eine von seiner Gegenwart betäubte Möve zog schwandkende Kreise um sein Haupt.
-Franz Kafka
It wasn't the Old West. It wasn't the New West either. It wasn't the old and it wasn't the new but it sure was something and Sheriff watched them coming in through the door.
-Laird Hunt
Triton
They asked him what he liked to do and he said he liked to swim and they said swimming was no longer permitted so he said he liked to ride horses and they said that horses, while permitted, were unavailable, so they set him up with a mule and with a star and with a ten-gallon hat. You used to see the mule standing outside his cabin. That was on a ranch in New Mexico.
The Protagonist
A boy, whose father had forbidden him the shooting of any further blackbirds (we need, had said the father, no more material for pies), envisioned new pleasure in shooting not at but towards the birds, which would cause them, he correctly hypothesized, to explode, as it were, vertically. So he spread a blanket of fine rich tempting seed at the base of the white barn wall, after which (they had come) he fired bullets in rapid succession into the shadows the rising birds made, incurring, thusly, the spectacle of shot bird shadows rising, and, almost as quickly, a deep and thorough belt whipping of the boy, his father having found him after the first and only round of that experiment, staring at the as yet incomprehensible arrangements of bullet holes, in the still faintly vibrating wall.
The Philanthropist
Aurelius, no doubt surrounded by multiple sovereign examples, states in book iii of his Meditations, that it is one of the "noblest functions of reason to know whether or not it is time to walk out of the world." The anonymous author of the first substantive text in De Quincey's On Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts, invites us to interpret with him that the Emperor was referring to a knowledge of whether or not it was time for others to walk out of the world. He then goes on to suggest that murder, committed in such a context, is a form of philanthropy.
Gongola
Wonderful, yes, brilliant, yes dazzzling! she said, taking off her scarf. Perfect, just, simply perfect, she said, pulling off rings and rings and rings. Fine, fine, fine, she continued, continuing, in compliance with the latest directives, to 'remove.' I am removing now, she said, rolling her rrr and removing a red silk dress revealing a blue silk dress which gave onto green and then yellow and then turquoise and then etc. silk dresses beneath. We worked in relays. We often, because she removed so quickly, fell behind. Bravo, mes braves, she would say as we pulled off a pile of satin, or cut velvet that had been encumbering her progress. Magnifique! she said, several years now having passed, as she bent to slip off her stockings, endless stockings, they were unusually sheer and, as soon as they had left those long long fingers, were swept up by the warm air to vanish, quite cleanly erased, when the warm warm wind swept them across the sun.
XXX
A 6 June 1998 New York Times article tells of an 85 year old sugar cube containing a tiny vial of anthrax -- part of an alleged German anti-horse/anti-reindeer campaign in northern Norway during World War I. The sugar cube (one of 19), along with bottles of deadly curare and microbial cultures, was confiscated from a Swedish/German/Finnish aristocrat 'in transit' across Norway, who was subsequently expelled into Sweden. "The grinding of the sugar and its glass insert between the molar teeth of horses would probably result in a lethal infection," scientists conducting the investigation into the retrieved sugar cube wrote -- though it was not known at the time of the article whether such killing had ever been attempted, or whether, for that matter, reindeer, as a collective, eat sugar lumps. Anthrax spores and sugar can survive for centuries, the article further notes.
The Subject
There was a room for them, too. Enormous. Those of us chosen to undertake the follow-up case studies found ourselves furnished with ample occasion to acquaint ourselves with its dimensions-many of us had been lost, at least once, for many years, and chance encounters among inspectors were rare, a situation, I might add, that was in no way mitigated, especially in the early days, by the minimal, oftentimes outdated, or even erroneous guidance we received. My first assignment, for example, required me to penetrate some 100 kilometers beneath the floor only to discover that my subject, at his own request, had long since been relocated, for a host of reasons- as I learned upon my return to the surface-chief among them the presence, even in that dark shaft, of "too much air." Fortunately, this assignment, the one I propose to speak of, took me some mere kilometer or so from the room's entrance-the subject having stated, in a characteristically elegant memo, its predilection for the pleasures, no matter how relative, of society. Society, in this case-as the intermingling of subjects had been prohibited-meant the inspectors. It had become the custom among those setting out on mission to drop in at its bungalow for a glass and pleasant mot; in fact, as I entered, one of my colleagues, off on a technical observation mission of what was referred to, in the jargon of those days, as one of the wing'ed ones, exited smiling-the subject was known as a wit-and shaking her head. The bungalow was, as I had heard, magnificently furnished, and, in the domain of beaux arts, contained demonstrable evidence of an exquisite sensibility. According to my prospectus, I would find him in his garde-robes, a chamber into which only inspectors on official business were allowed to penetrate-all others communicating with the subject by means of a rudimentary, but surprisingly effective, intercom. It was into this device, as protocol for the subject required, that I announced myself, and it was out of this that I received what I find I described in my notes as a "most admirably intoned welcome." Whereupon I entered the garde-robes. Permit me, at this juncture, to quote directly from the notes.
"The subject, as of course expected, is still getting dressed. By its own count (corroborated by three of its assigned attendants) it is now wearing 16 thousand pairs of trousers, 18 thousand silk shirts, lambswool cardigans, cashmire vests, jackets, & etc.; 36 thousand pairs of socks (I saw all colors), 343 thousand cravates, 6.5 thousand top coats, 2 thousand hats (all shapes, several dozens of which Napoleon "or at the very least his generals" were said to have worn); and 2.2 million ("you have discovered my predilection!") assorted undergarments.
It was, I freely confess to you now, quite astonishing. I heard from the next inspector, not so very long before my retirement, that having "run through its tweeds" it was preparing to accessorize.
The Magnificent One
He was magnificent, truly. When he took those great, deep, quaffing breaths it felt as though the buttons would burst off of all of our coats. Before him, his opponent-though in other context of considerable stature-seemed unbearably slight, elliciting in us a collective urge to rush forward and wrap our arms around him, though in truth, no single set of our arms could have compassed him. Our arms. There stood the other, the magnificent one. And now, at last, the arbitrator, barely a speck between them, stepped forward, bowed and barked instructions to bare weapons and prepare to exchange steel. There was a hush. The smaller of them drew, quick, and the cold air crackled bluely around a fine thin blade. All eyes then moved to the other. The hush grew complete. He took a short, sharp breath, and several of us were sucked forward only to be violently repulsed when he exhaled, and, with a cry that cracked teeth in some of the older onlookers' mouths, drew. And drew. And drew and drew. For though the hilt seemed of relatively normal length, the magnificent one stood fully extended, his mighty hands held impossibly high above his head, and still the sword hadn't slipped free. And even after he had removed his belt and had taken several thundering steps away from the scarlet hilt, still the sword wasn't free, nor would it be, even after a hundred of those thundering steps, a thousand, and the magnificent one gone, madly running, and leaving behind him ever more of the gleaming steel line.
Rex
Pig! The answer is Pig! I screamed. She looked at me, dumbfounded. (The Sphinx)
The Impossibly
We had been discussing the parable of the door keeper. He had just, by some line of argument I had not , I readily admit, quite followed, explained to me the impossibility (or at the least the extreme implausibility) of the keeper ever actually closing the door, as he proposes to do in the parable's last line.
Well of course you must realize, he then said , that there are others, not just door keepers, or rather that others are implicate, for if there are door keepers there must also be door builders, door hangers, door cleaners (door cleaners! I objected.) perhaps not, he allowed, but you do realize, of course, the very clear, or at least very clearly implicate, necessity for door closers, for those persons, who, the doors having come open at last, and the door keepers having moved on or having been pushed aside (for they are not alway so powerful -- ah? I said), who I say, must come forward and attend to the not at all insignificant business of pulling or pushing or sometimes, even, entreating the doors to close, or even, in some tricky cases, entreating them once they are closed to stay closed, not to spring open, perhaps on some whim or out of some sympathy or even out of some malice, who knows? for it is not, he said, very easy to. but at that moment he trailed off. So there would be some psychological aspect to the proposed role, I offered, in hopes of relinking his thoughts. I was, of course, overstating the case he said. There is no reason to assume anything at all animate in any aspect of those doors; however, let us further examine the not at all inconsistent, though of course still hypothetical, existence of the closers of the doors.
[At this point a rather curt official entered his office and our conversation was cut off. It found its sequel some days later. I happened on that occasion to have a pad with me and was able to transcribe his remarks with much greater accuracy.]
For all those doors we fling, shove, tap, ease open, a door shutter has been at work. Picture him/her thus: shuffling slowly, bucket in hand, bucket, why?because it is a bucket, because buckets are needed [laughter]. The door comes shut, the door shutter shuffles on, or the other one, he or she who shuts doors with great alacrity, we hear, as if just behind our heads, doors being slammed shut in sharp muscular succession, and [long pause] there are others. Those, for example, who fall in love with their doors, we hear them also, it is their breathing we hear, their breathing as they hold their outstretched fingers against whatever surface. [long pause] Sometimes it is the perceived weight that they love or, at the least, at the very least, that they like more than a little, picture, say, one of those deceptively massive doors in which brittle pine is wrapped in iron and gorgeously beaten lead, they linger, they linger, then their own weight, at last, almost in spite of itself, becomes applied, and some cool, perhaps interior breeze comes towards them, calls them forward into the work, into their work, and the door comes shut.
Some doors, no matter how lovely, are shut quickly
The Queen of the Fleas
She had built, at very great expense, a flea circus, she announced. It really was this time, she more than once, before the grand opening, gave her assurance, only a flea circus. She had, in fact, had it proclaimed, much publically, that it was, that what all were sure soon to visit would be one hundred percent flea circus, involving one hundred percent genuine-performing-fleas, which fact made her happy, she said, every aspect of which fact made her quite extremely happy. Look! Just look at the one on the high wire! for example -pointing at one of us- she would howl.
The Interesting Procedure
The sign on the door said 'Here There Are Killers' and there were, we saw some. They had set up camp in the north-east corner of the room on a small plastic rise next to a stand of fake cactuses or cacti we couldn't decide. After a couple minutes night fell. They all gathered around a campfire. It looked like a campfire. Bob brought out a couple of telescopes and we watched them a while.
The Odditorium
It seemed odd to see all of our old suits hanging in rows by the door, and at first we used to gaze at them quite frequently, at first, I say.
Whenever a request was put through, he was obliged to come after us with a net, not because we wished to be elusive (we had no wishes), but because our natural state had become one of quick erratic movement, and because, our vestigal senses having almost entirely atrophied, we could never be more than but dimly aware of his coming.
He had innovated his own technique, he was in the habit of informing us, once we could hear again, for the re-insertion process, involving an unknown quantity of what he called enriched aqua fortis, a small motor, and a long glass tube.
Of course, it was much simpler to re-extricate us. Our suits, for he liked a variety in his re-extrication tools, had become quite threadbare.
It is indescribable, the shock of being clothed again, in flesh again. It is, at the first, I freely confess, quite excruciating, and in those first several moments of adjustments he is not often gentle.
He is not, as a general rule, often gentle.
I can not imagine what it is they see, or hear, when we come.
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