In Which We Left This House Empty

You can find the archive of our Saturday fiction series here.

Proper Business

by DAN CARVILLE

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness. - John Cage

"Let go of it at the end," he said. "Now come here and sit down." David pulled his niece away from the blind.

"Is there any left over?" she said.

"There isn't," David said. "You ate it all." On the television a woman explained how to hold on a knife. He showed Bernice the particulars of operating a hula hoop and looked out the window. It was some kind of regional parade, and shriners bumped into each other.

"It's very loud," he said absently. "I wonder how long they will go on."

The television was communicating the story of an ape who was able to state a logical paradox. He put his head against a decorative pillow for a bit.

When he woke up a man was explained the future significance of the War of 1812. He changed the channel to a documentary about skateboarding. The central figure was describing how to spin so fast you could do a certain revolution at the height of your run.

"It's time to watch Diego," his niece said. He told her to go stand on a stool. In time she became occupied with a bird outside, flapping about the grass. It either couldn't fly or was taking a break. She begged him to let her go to it. While she was in the bathroom he picked up the bird by its healthy wing and dumped it into the next yard. After awhile it flew away.

His sister came back for a bit so he went to the local store to buy some things for dinner. A group of girl scouts knocked over a display revealing a new cheese cracker. One of the scouts held a very determined expression that left little to the imagination. At the supermarket he bought anything he saw which featuring a price not ending in .99.

He couldn't drive his usual route home because a tractor trailer had run into a telephone pole, so he killed thirty minutes at Dunkin' Donuts reading a book. He read, "Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?"

When he returned to the house his sister complained of his lateness. When he explained the situation to her she apologized. His niece went to sleep watching a vet repair the coccyx of a baboon. He turned out all the lights in the house but one.

You have to be at the apex of your jump.

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.

Images by Bruce Cohen.

"Not No More" - Cocaine 80s (mp3)

"The Fall" - Cocaine 80s (mp3)

In Which We Circle What It Is We Want

After Breakfast

by DAN CARVILLE

Six of them came riding up.

There was something that began that way already. He left this thought and came back to it, and the idea had been changed to Five baying wolves approached out of the darkness.

He could give no real consideration to the rewarding symbol that the digit five provided. He also found it was difficult to write about or even imagine a cold place while he was in a warm climate.

He drove the rental car from the hotel to his father's modest cottage after breakfast. (He always fasted until lunch.) In the backyard, a grey armadillo haunted the modest garden. The armadillo's behavior accomplished four discrete things.

1) The first was that his father became so bothered by this desecration he had to start taking a higher dosage of his blood pressure medication.

2) The second was that the armadillo's numerous bowel movements created strange reactions from the plants in the array.

3) There was no longer the possibility of an ant problem.

4) The fourth was that the armadillo was agitated, possibly by his father, possibly about something completely unrelated in the animal's own life.

The wolves that approached (in his story) were unexpectedly kind. The underlying message was that even the most harshly regarded unconscious thing possessed, within it, the opposite virtue as well. He explained this idea to his mother in her hospital bed. It was difficult for her to talk, but she did listen intently. After awhile she croaked, "That is a cliche."

The next day, his father had fallen over in the garden looking for the armadillo with a small shovel. His body was fine, but his pride was injured. Reclining on his couch, his father kept saying, "The devil! The devil!"

His mother's nurse was a lovely woman of about 43 named Vela. She told him a story the next day while they waited to have an x-ray of his mother's torso taken. It went like this:

A great detective arrived at a typical scene - a messy, bloody body. Three calico cats continually circled the deceased woman, spooking some of the detective's fellow officers. Animal control was on the way, and the cats did not look particularly friendly, but they did not do anything aggressive except for their pacing. He told his men to make sure the cats did not molest the body. The detective stepped outside and, using sticks he found nearby, planted three makeshift grave markers in the ground.

When animal control arrived, they would not touch those calicos.

It turned out that the dead woman, before her passing, had eaten a large breakfast. Her stomach ruptured out her undigested pancakes, eggs and sausage. The cats were going to have it if she could not. He could not really find a moral for this story, but he wondered if the detective had meant to save the cats or solve the crime. Possibly both, but also, he may have just been having a laugh.

In the ensuing week his father became increasingly agitated, and more determined to rid his yard of the offending armadillo. He asked his father if he knew for certain there was only one armadillo. His father replied, "If I kill the one I see, the rest will vanish."

More events revealed themselves. When he saw his father, he saw the grey armadillo. When he saw his mother, he saw an old woman with breast cancer. When he saw a cat he ran away.

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 running in place.

"Black Tongue" - Feist (mp3)

In Which There Is Nothing I Can Really Say

My Life As An Object

by DAN CARVILLE

It was as stupid a piece of advice as I ever received when someone told me to do what I love.

You know those old cartoons where the eyelashes of women are so carefully managed they appear to twinkle, extend and shine? That is what I felt like in the world. Seeing anyone more than once was either too often or not enough.

+

The last time I saw her she met me after a salon appointment. The fact that when her hair was viewed from the correct angle it substantially improved her countenance only added to the trauma. She looked bored. But then she said, "How's work?" and for a gripping second I thought that something more important hinged on the small talk.

After that, I knew the only reason she had come was because she did not know how to tell me no. She said, "Can you ask your mother something for me?" A moment later, she received a phone call from her friend. I never did find out what it was she wanted.

+

In Portland the shapes of the others changed, becoming more ethereal. I could stand on one corner and see something completely desirable, so much so that I felt like crossing the street, but never did. There is a politeness that restricts me from making a fool out of myself, and it constitutes a retaining wall impervious to anything except for lust and coincidence.

Waking leaves me in this same body again. So many have taken it in, pressed against it for one reason or another. Even if the number were only a few, the sensation it gives me now is inexhaustible.

Everyone that I know is thinking of another place to be other than the one they are.

+

She had moved in with me on a Friday with the thought we'd have the entire weekend to ourselves. She only took the drug when she was alone, and she did not use at all until I came home from work on Monday. She was watching Adventure Time with a glassy smile. Under the influence of the drug her features became more refined, her body assumed an enticing flow. Of course she was more detached, I had to keep telling myself. Watching her, it felt like one part bled into another.

To write of this when I had not lived before with someone in this way still strikes me as bracingly familiar.

+

I read Susan's story, and it seemed like a nightmare and heaven in equal parts. She makes a kind of sense, but only a kind, like seven slices out of a pizza. I read Tropic of Cancer and felt like a scarecrow. In these last months I have learned to accept the wandering mindset, even let it infect me for a time. But I cannot imagine, even for a moment, their fantasies.

The words which trigger the onset of understanding are all the first ones I learned, and the last.

+

I did not want to give her something to do. I knew that if she did well at anything — writing, fashion, her relationships with friends — and it went sour, it could come back on me. I might be blamed for it. When I told this to my therapist, a grim look came over his face. He said, "That is not very loving."

We argued a lot. I have heard that is not a good sign. We constantly went back and forth about sleeping arrangements. She was not comfortable at rest. She was lactose intolerant, but always drank milk in her coffee. It took her a month for her to say that she sometimes left our bed out of embarrassment. I bought her a dairy free creamer but she never used it.

+

When I talk to someone on the internet, I try not to construe them as a virtual, a computer program designed to respond to me and only me. I am shocked all I say will not be remembered.

I drove from Omaha to Austin with a wedding present in my backseat. I went from San Jose to San Diego; even up close the cars seemed like ants. Sensing the presence of another hinted at a prelude to intimacy, but in fact the reverse was true, or as true.

Do you like the poetry of Dr. Williams? Do you think that any of it is a lie?

+

The drug would put her to sleep. I will not say what it was, not out of respect for her, but for myself. Whether that is loving or not, I don't truly know.

+

+

In New York things speed up or slow down completely. Now, in the darkness, the others sit or stand. I can make nothing of strangers and to try to know them is a losing battle. I want them to know me, not the other way around. It's easier.

Whatever I did, I take it back.

When I go online, there is a reminder written in ink on my hand, twisted into a circle, but many-sided. The green icon, percolating like water on a stove. To step faster, per diem, and allow the change to render itself completely. Available.

+

Two months before she left, when things felt like they had reached some kind of pleasant equilibrium, I bought a kitten. I know that's a dumb fucking thing to do. My therapist told me that I did not do this for her at all, but for myself as a reaction to the change.

She would use in the morning and fall asleep. By the time I walked in the door she was happy to see me. She wanted nothing more than for it to be the weekend. I came home one night and she'd prepared dinner, a task she had never shown interest in before. 

+

In San Francisco, where even the wind blows mild in comparison, someone once told me that the way you could tell between a human and an automaton was the manner in which they held a book. I asked the man who said this what would happen if books disappeared and he said, "Do you have a Kindle?"

Running in place. Everybody does it. I hate that word, everybody.

+

My therapist told me that there is nothing wrong with a personality shift if it is conscious. The only unintended personality shift that is positive comes from conditioning, whether it be in a military setting or a prison.

The cat died the third week we had her. First she went blind, and then she died. 

+

My mind feels sharper and I know that I am myself more educated, due to an increase of neurons firing in the brain. On one level I find this invigorating, filling me with the thought I have changed and the process by which others notice will, at the end of any given moment, start to begin.

When I do carry a book, I struggle to figure out how I should hold it.

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 the moon.

"When A Woman Loves A Man" - Paul Kelly (mp3)

"Cold As Canada" - Paul Kelly (mp3)