In Which We Never Understood It Until Now

Return to San Francisco

by DAN CARVILLE

They landed without much effort. A man inspected the plane and called out to his co-worker, "I am so tired. The morning is an afternoon."

Max found a cab without much trouble. A blinking light on the dash bothered him to no end. The cab driver said, "Without a witness, there's not much to do. You wait for hour, but it's a happy kind of waiting, absent the pressure I thought I would feel."

A culvert trickled water. The house creaked and settled at an angle. He opened every closet to be safe. The caretaker stopped by, rapping on the door with a wrinkled knuckle. He told Max how to turn on the water, to be sure to lock the fridge. The man took a call, and quickly became heated. "Put it back wherever you got it," he screamed.

Picking up a package of hot dogs at 7-11, he spotted an old "friend" who recognized him instantly. "Max!" He could not place his friend's name, but he soon realized it was not necessary - any other synonym would suffice. Eventually he said it: it was Richard. A few of Richard's friends came back and drank all the beer in the fridge, the one he could now not remember how to close. When Dana called to tell him she was coming over, Max kicked them all out, saying, "The jetlag is always worse than you can imagine."

She did not stay long, and appeared substantially more interested in the house than anything else present. Feebly, Max heard himself offering to dogsit for her. She touched every wall with her red fingernails. Before she left he said, "There is a fascination with repeating yourself that I have never been able to understand until now."

In the morning he woke early, but not early enough to view the rising of the sun. All Max recalled of the previous night was her thighs. Could not imagine what kind of work she had done to make them look so smooth, like the crests of waves. When the mailman delivered a few circulars and a book of coupons to the house, he took off a hat with a picture of John Lennon on it and said, "The blue lagoon is closed today. Some kind of problem with shrapnel in the air." Max could only nod as he drove off.

Max walked around the city, up and down it really, quickly getting myself far more lost than he intended. A cadre of Colombians were staging a festival; children oscillated on bouncy castles for as far as Max's eyes could see. Mothers tried to decrease incrementally the velocity of their descent, shouting, "A careful churl comes to no sorrow, slow, slow, slow," in a language he could only half understand.

A crowd had gathered around a magic act on the esplanade. The magician looked young for his skill level; his moustache was obviously fabricated. At some point during his demonstration, the magician shouted as loud as he could that the painting he was about to make disappear was an American classic.

In the daylight the house resembled the burning end of a cigarette. The temperature dropped, and he had packed nothing to insulate himself against any kind of cold. He called the caretaker but the connection was indistinct. All he could hear was a woman breathing very heavily before she said, "March in single file. When we arrive you can eat it."

He thought of calling Dana, but remembered the events of the previous evening with more clarity. Her expression had only been familiar to him at first, but he had difficulty placing its meaning completely. Now, as he placed his phone inside an old drawer, he fathomed what it was: the same expression he had seen on his sister's face at their father's wake. He pulled the phone out of a drawer and called a number. He said to himself, but also to the house, "A mercurial phantom rides a long way. Come now the snow, the dithering in the artifice, to me if not to her as well. I could sit here, but I wait."

Dan Carville a writer living in Brooklyn.

Paintings by Hadas Tal.

"The Best of Friends" - Glass Towers (mp3)

"Tonight" - Glass Towers (mp3)

In Which We Are Rather Sorry She Is Weak

The Artist

by DAN CARVILLE

Here are all the things I did not say. I admit I do not want you to read them, but others may know them in time, and if not from me, from you. They probably know that you lie, but they may not realize how much.

Your hair and general dress are not all that appealing. I saw you with a friend's cat once; an unfamiliar animal. She loathed you, sensing as she did that you did not even have the curiosity to learn her name. 

photo by lise sarfati

The advantage of thinking before speaking is also a detriment. I miss those manic betrayals, when I had this mistaken idea that there was something worth preserving. I recall once standing before a massive model of a stegosaurus. When I went inside, the structure itself held nothing but stale air.

Last week I ran into someone who also knew you. Before I did. I feigned to describe another person, never referencing your name or the specifics of your personality. When I was finished, she said, "It sounds as if you are describing a child." She bought me a mango sorbet. Her long dark hair swayed back and forth like a curtain.

photo by lise sarfati

I read some of your writing today. Parts came across bracingly sentimental; other moments verged on ridiculousness so severe I assumed it was satire. Before I knew you I met a woman who could never identify satire. Do you know how many times I spoke to her after I realized this?

You mispronounced words, all the time. I can't believe you never heard them said before. I witnessed other people judging you for it, and tried to think I was not among them, but now I face the truth.

photo by lise sarfati

On the street a woman approached you with your child. I could see you had no idea how to react. It was callous in a way to put her in your art, but at least you apologized; if not to her, then to me. The sky at that time of day remained molten red. I recall writing in my diary that evening. What I wrote was, "She thought it was happening to her, but it was not."

Oh I don't know, have you ever looked at something beautiful and wanted it to be completely destroyed?

photo by lise sarfati

I know I will forget you. I never really saw us as intellectually compatible. A hill can seem like a mountain once you traverse it, but before long you see the top. Like that.

Sometimes I remember hearing you reach a conclusion (it was usually entirely at odds with reality). The words you used to detail your new knowledge reminded me of a Phosphorescent song and I do not mean that as any kind of a compliment. Whatever I gave to you or put inside you I want back.

It was a rhetorical question. I never spoke to her again.

photo by lise sarfati

As a child, single adults completely bewildered me. There existed no context for their presence, they seemed impossibly alone. The woman I'm seeing now is not like that at all.

Once you didn't see me watching but you shone.

Dan Carville is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in New York. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about what he is composed of.

Photographs by Lise Sarfati. You can find more of her work here.

"Slow It Down" - The Dream ft. Fabulous (mp3)

"High Art" - The Dream ft. Jay-Z (mp3)

In Which There Is No Telling Which Way These Things Go

Five Days Ago

by DAN CARVILLE

Certain events came to light. There is no need for me to detail these occurrences. As the perpetrator she is well within her rights to come forward, although I know she will not.

It is enough to say I remember hearing your name that first time. (I saw her moving around, gesturing at the still photo of a child. When I spoke to her then, it was like a man addressing a very proud eagle.) You acted flattered by what I said, but when I thought back to what it was, I had not considered the remarks encouraging at all.

"It's a matter of scale," said the paleontologist to the triceratops.

You will remember that as a boy that I knew the names of such creatures. Once my mother saw me puttering about the yard. "Use your words," she said. (I did not realize she meant it condescendingly until much later.)

I was only a child with poor eyesight when that took place. Should I not have told you of it until now, should I have bided my time to some future date when you could begin to understand what I am composed of?

+

There were other such places, people. Sometimes I was among them as you always seem to be. Evidence in shining eyes, a joy of your own making, not mine. It makes me envious.

Maybe you could not say these things as well as me, that is why I say them to you now. I assumed you knew, but you acted surprised. Do not tell me about them, and do not give their names, and do not transmit photos of them or of you when they are nearby.

I had a strange experience in an airport last year. I haven't told you of that either. I saved someone. You'll want to know all about this. Perhaps later.

+

When searching for the reason something is beautiful, I consider three main principles:

(1) Does it make me feel something I have never felt before?

(2) Can I hold it in my hands?

(3) Does it give a reflection in a mirror, and what kind of image is revealed?

These are all ways of touching. I myself do not like it when another is in control. (We all know that many creatures are by this definition not beautiful.) I do want to be that familiar, as though disembarking from the revelation involved in pushing the sleeve of my shirt up to the elbow.

These lifeless husks you meet could not satisfy you because they are not the girth of the world. Light flows through me alone. It is folly to consider another. When I lie - when I find myself lying - I consider it sort of an ode.

+

For the rest of time, it has been an utterance on my tongue, a splitting deep in my lower abdomen, the den of all pleasure and all pain. There is no purpose in being like this, except to the extent that it represents a form that must be inhabited before it can be discarded. That is what you wanted me to think or feel, hurt by the faith you lack. There is no difference in between those modes of thought: the indeterminacy signals only acceptance.

Making visible the hours in the arbor, holding a small object rather than a long, thin point. The sea of the formerly inconceivable. He must turn against himself, a key frame redrawn on paper. I'll show you.

Dan Carville is a writer living in New York. He last wrote in these pages here, and you can find an archive of his fiction on This Recording here.

Images by Julio Larraz, except for Heavy Dog Kiss by Dennis Oppenheim.