/yesod

Tag: books

  • a fall

    When I get home after work, my youngest daughter meets me at the door. I’m late and phoned ahead to say they should start dinner without me.

    A plate of half-eaten food waits at my wife’s place at the same able. But she is nowhere to be seen.

    “Mama went upstairs,” our daughter tells me.

    After a few minutes, my wife comes downstairs. She takes me aside.

    “Just before you came home, there was this huge crash from upstairs. But it wasn’t like the knocking from before. It was like someone just dumped an armful of books onto the floor right overhead. And it was fucking loud. ”

    She is rattled, just a bit. I wait for her to go on.

    “I went up and Vincent” — that’s one of our cats — “Was sitting on our bed, frozen. His eyes were fucking huge.”

    She couldn’t find anything out of place in our room, nothing to explain the noise.

    I go up to check and, yeah, there’s nothing.

    Later, she notices that a framed photo on a high shelf behind our bed is laying flat on its face.

    It’s a photo of the two of us.

  • a moment of moore

    Alan MooreOn my way through the park, I see a familiar figure heading in the opposite direction. He shambles, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. His hair and beard are wild and ragged as the hem of his overcoat.

    I change my course somewhat to interest his. He looks up as I approach, a patient mix of puzzlement and annoyance creasing his brow.

    “Mr. Moore? I am sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say thank you. Your work has meant a great deal to me.”

    He nods politely and offers his hand, still walking.

    As I shake it, he gives me a quick look. “Have we met before?”

    I shake my head. “No sir, but I sent you one of my books a number of months ago. My photo is on the back.”

    “Did you?” He frowns, studying me. Then he shakes his head.

    “It was called Assam & Darjeeling, ” I offer.

    His shrug is eloquent and he turns to continue on. “Nice meeting you.”

    “It had a pomegranate on the cover,” I call after him, realizing that I have gone — in his eyes — from Polite Reader to Insane Fanboy Stalker in about ten seconds.

    He waves a hand over his shoulder, picking up his pace.

    I watch him go.

  • neighborhood watch

    …and when the neighbors show up at our front door, they demand entrance and will not leave. Too small to be a mob, but there are enough of them to force their way in.

    In the entryway, they shout that we are heathens and devil worshippers — they begin opening doors and ransacking the rooms. Books are thrown to the floor, pictures and knick knacks smashed, curtains pulled down.

    The ringleader is a middle aged blonde woman with the sinewy frame of someone burning away the calories with their fierce zealotry.

    She discovers “Lost Girls” on one of our shelves and shrieks her horror at “this filth and pornography” (which, admittedly, it is) corrupting the neighborhood.

    It goes downhill from there. I manage to trick them into not finding my office by use of a clever hinged double door — when it opens, it covers the office entrance completely…

    …I wake up, the sound of angry voices and slamming doors following me to the waking world.

  • the recursive old woman

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated December 6th, 1996]

    …I’m standing in front of a shelf full of journals and books in the dead man’s rooms. I take one down, finding [ILLEGIBLE] and poetry, handwritten recollections between the pages — it dawns on me that these are the rooms of my great uncle, the missionary to Burma, and that only I know he is dead.

    The guard eyes me through the front windows and I move on to the inner rooms, marveling at the collection of antiques, souvenirs, and artifacts [ILLEGIBLE] the grimy gray walls, the peeling paint, and the dusty windowpanes.

    Within the inner rooms, I come upon a woman — elderly and wholly lovely. She embraces me and slowly we back to an old bare mattress with a brass frame and headboard tarnished and lovely.

    …and then the guard is knocking at the window and shouting and I am still standing at the bookshelf, a book open before me with a picture of an alluring elderly woman open on the page.

    And I know I am dreaming, but still I set the book back upon the shelf and move once again into the inner rooms, coming to the place of the woman yet again, embracing and being embraced yet again, awakening once more at the shelf of books with the guard behind me, knocking on the window of the dead man’s rooms.

    And again, I turn to pass back into the inner chamber again,

    And again.

    Again.

    Until I wake in the dark morning.