Monday, August 23, 2010

Plástico y Excremento

Y plástico y excremento de apariencia anormal, the bed sheets coiled round his ankles, the head matron beside herself with disgust. ‘give him a suppository’. ‘quick before he fills the room with shat’. ‘try prying his knees apart!’ ‘widget, watch the damn widgets!’ ‘easy as it goes’. ‘slowly’. Oh but the depths of depravity. José Proaño wears women’s hats, claiming they are much better at keeping his head safe from falling skies. With equal arms the head matron stopped his scatting, his maundering dispatches driving her mad. ‘his legs. Squeeze, you foolish woman!’ Dr. Mudstone stood glowering over the bed, his manicured hands clasped in prayer. ‘stick it in his ass!’ he ordered, the matron pushing down hard on his head.

You might ask what does Oskar Hörbiger have to do with the story? Nothing. He arrives, then as quickly as he arrives departs, leaving behind a wedge in your thoughts. (You might ask but you shouldn’t! Nothing I have to say is worth listening to. You’d do better with sums; with things that can be made sense of. Move on; you’ll find nothing of interest here).

The first time he fell toppling backwards, the noose hanging itself. The second time he fell forward, the chair catapulting into the kitchen table. The third time the rope cut through his neck, the laryngeal cartilage popping through the skin. Hanging himself was the one uncensored act he had left; the adjectival having deputized the first-person-participial. Camberwell Jowett eventually hanged himself from the kitchen light, Sandefjord the orderly unhooking him from the garret-beam and wrapping him in oilcloth. Not a word was spoken that night about the hanging in the Overnight Asylum; Camberwell Jowett’s bed was reassigned and his belongings burned in the makeshift crematorium in the basement.

The day after the hanging a young girl claiming to be Camberwell Jowett’s daughter arrived in town, the director of the Overnight Asylum sending her out the front door on the toe of his boot. When word got out that another patient had hanged himself at the Overnight Asylum the rector called for an investigation, claiming that 'God’s work was being meddled with and whomever was responsible would be punished accordingly'.

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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