Conjunctions 64: Natural Causes

by Natural Causes- The Nature Issue (retail) (epub)

  “There haven’t,” I said.

  “Then how do people know they’re like us?” Peter said.

  “Like how?” I said.

  “Anthropomorphic. Humanoid. Merfolk,” Peter said.

  “Are they?” I said.

  Peter ran his fingertips across his cheeks, squinting, as if he had just discovered that stubble was growing there. His brogues were crusted with mud and soil, which for him wasn’t usual, to have less than shiny shoes. A murky dim light was filtering through the lattice window. On my mattress, my sheets lay tangled together in a coiled shape, the inscrutable conclusion of my movements through out the night, a pattern somehow representing my dreams. The spider that lives above the cupboards was asleep on a shut cupboard door. I don’t own this house. Grandpa Uyaquq owns this house. He lives at the pioneer home now, where he shares a room with a stroke victim. Peter asked me to live here, to watch the house while our grandfather is “away.” Peter is in denial. Grandpa Uyaquq has dementia. Grandpa Uyaquq isn’t coming back. Peter asked me to live in the attic, for Grandpa Uyaquq, so that when he “returns” the house will be “exactly” how he “remembers.” It is illogical. I don’t mind. For somebody like me, the attic is ample. The attic has a sink, a stove, a toilet, a bathtub even, but I rarely bathe, ∵ bathing wastes water. I wear only cast-off clothing, ∵ that clothing already exists. I salvage food from dumpsters, ∵ otherwise that food would go to waste. In any town, meeting somebody like me would be difficult. In this town, meeting somebody like me would be impossible. I am the only person here who salvages food from dumpsters. Sometimes I feel like a lone member of a rare species, cut off from the rest of its species by geological formations. (A species whose diet, understandably, revolts all other species.)

  Peter had tilted the chair backward, with only its back legs touching the floorboards, was poking the loaf of (somewhat moldy, yes) pumpernickel on the counter.

  “That does not look right,” Peter murmured, frowning.

  He turned toward me. His trench coat had swung open, exposing the inner silk lining. The chair was still teetering, just balanced.

  “You want to grab a beer tonight?” Peter said.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Even if I buy?” Peter said.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Please?” Peter said, grinning.

  I made some gesture that was supposed to be an apology.

  Peter pouted, and tipped the chair forward, its front legs clacking down onto the floorboards. The pout was exaggerated, but beneath lay some genuine hurt feeling. He slapped his knees, then rose from the chair.

  “Had to try,” Peter said.

  Before leaving, Peter fixed the sink in the attic (a drip) and fixed the steps on the porch (a creak). He jogged to his truck (shouting he was late), bent to check something under the cab, then drove away. Peter works for a bank, which is a good cover for an ecoterrorist. His degree is in economics. My degree is in philosophy. I work for the city, planting flowers and shoveling snow. I don’t pay rent, and I don’t buy food, so my only expenses are the monthly payments on my gigantic loans.

  1. To pursue something pointless is illogical.

  2. The point of earning a degree is to become qualified for a job.

  3. Earning a degree in philosophy does not qualify one for anything.

  4. (2, 3) ⇒ Earning a degree in philosophy is pointless.

  5. (1, 4) ⇒ It is illogical to earn a degree in philosophy.

  ∴ It is illogical to earn a degree in philosophy.

  Consequently,

  6. One is a philosopher ⇔ one has a degree in philosophy.

  7. (5, 6) ⇒ Philosophers are illogical.

  ∴ Philosophers are illogical.

  That’s a proof I’ve been working through for some time now. Still, there is a noticeable difference between carrying an idea around in my head and putting an idea down onto blank paper. A feeling of relief—just having somebody to talk to, to vent to—even if that somebody is a glittery notebook with rainbow unicorns on the cover, salvaged from a garbage can. (Sorry—I don’t mean to insult you—that’s just what you are.)

  I am still sitting on the table, overlooking, beyond the window, the gravel driveway, the swaying pine branches, the ocean-blue shingles of the terraced houses on the hillside, the distant beach below. (Through camouflage binoculars with chipped lenses—also salvaged—I’m surveying everything magnified.) Just now, a walrus washed ashore. Bent whiskers, a snapped tusk, strips of skin hanging from the carcass. A blubbery gouge torn into its belly. Its body dwarfs the dead seals.

  Usually, walruses don’t begin washing ashore until midsummer.

  May 13th

  Yesterday was heinously boring, so let’s just skip ahead to today. (Are you rainbow unicorns bored easily?) (Yes, yes, you are.) (Don’t worry then, ∵ today was a disaster.)

  Work was grueling. I came home with pine sap crusted in my beard, burst blisters on each thumb. I felt too drained to climb up to the attic, so sat in the backyard a few hours, on a rusty foldout chair, sipping from the hose. I had nearly exhausted my food supply. I wasn’t ready to think about that. I dug through my backpack (also salvaged, with bright neon straps, the pouch velcros!), ate my last apple, tossed the core into the woods for the squirrels. The bird feeder was empty. I wasn’t ready to think about that. I velcroed my backpack, read some more of the book.

  Each chapter opens with a brief quotation from an imaginary novel. This latest chapter opens, “The planet itself was alive! —Mohiam Yueh, The Sharif’s Orrery.” After the accidental destruction of the undersea city, the novel has relocated (again) to a mythical city in the skies above the Arabian Desert, constructed from gigantic goldenballoons by despotic sultans with oppressed kapi kullari. The debtor soldier is slated to be beheaded at dawn, for a combination of mistakes, miscalculations, and misunderstandings, including the inadvertent deflowering of the vizier’s daughter.

  At nightfall I tramped down through town to the local grocery store to harvest some groceries. I have a rule, which is that whenever I see litter I have to stop and pick it up and then properly dispose of it (compost or recycle, if possible, otherwise garbage), so getting around can take me a while. Fortunately, the first thing I passed tonight was an empty plastic bag (fluttering against a guardrail), which I could use to gather all the litter that came after (plastic soda bottles, plastic water bottles, a wet rag, a plank of wood, a tattered gardening magazine, a cigarette carton, cigarette butts, an empty condom wrapper). Otherwise I would have had to use my backpack, and I try not to mix my food with litter.

  The grocery was closing soon, the parking lot nearly empty. A runaway cart had gotten almost as far as the street before having its breakout thwarted by a speed bump. I set my bag of litter on the pavement, climbed into the dumpster, and sifted through today’s garbage. Bruised apples, withered carrots, hardly stale oats. Bent cans of chickpeas. Inexplicably, an entire box of raw almonds. As I stocked my backpack, a pimpled employee in a dirt-red apron emerged from the grocery lugging knotted garbage bags. He nodded. I waved. He flung the bags into the dumpster. I found overripe bananas there, added a few bunches to my backpack.

  Hiking back to the house, I felt dizzy suddenly, probably from thirst or hunger. I stopped, sat on a guardrail, ate mushy bananas, my bag of litter between my boots. Across the street, the windowfront of a closed shop glowed with stacked televisions, the televisions all flickering with the same image, electricity pouring into unwatched screens. On-screen, a presidential candidate was faking emotions for an audience, appearing to hold back tears. He had been coached by his consultants to exhibit these emotions, had rehearsed and now performed a scripted scene. Politicians were people once. Animals, with cravings, feelings, idiosyncrasies. Now politicians are products, manufactured by teams of consultants. The candidate wore a necktie that was not the candidate’s, but wa
s rather the necktie that had tested best during marketing research. The candidate wore a wristwatch that was not the candidate’s, but was rather the wristwatch that had tested best during marketing research. The candidate professed beliefs, asserted convictions, claimed intentions that were not the candidate’s. Like the design of the label on a plastic container of dog food. Whatever consumers will buy. I do not vote. Consumption of this politician, like any nondegradable product, would be wasteful. His legacy will never decay. His policies will pollute this country forever.

  The bananas tasted great. Afterward, the dizziness vanished. Just then, I saw a girl with gray hair and monstrous gauges was staring at me from the windowfront with the televisions.

  “Are you homeless?” she shouted.

  I stared at her.

  “A bum? A hobo? A tramp?” the girl shouted.

  A couple pushing a stroller passed. They glared at me, as if I were the one shouting at the girl, rather than vice versa. I tried to clear my name.

  “No,” I shouted.

  I had assumed that would end things. Instead, the girl hopped over the curb, then crossed the street (without checking for oncoming traffic), tugging at her sweatshirt as if trying to stretch the collar. Her sweatshirt looked preowned, but her jeans looked expensive. She tripped somehow on the pavement, caught herself. She stood under the street lamp, at the guardrail, the circle of light.

  “From over there you looked too cute to be homeless, but from over here you look too homeless to be cute,” she said.

  She laughed, like something that had only ever observed laughter trying to imitate the sound. Her mascara was smeared. Her hair was damp. Her gauges were the size of mussels.

  “Let’s eat something,” she said.

  “How old are you?” I said.

  “Twenty-two,” she said.

  I stared at her.

  “Twenty-one,” she said.

  I stared at her.

  “Eighteen, but that’s the truth, so stop giving me that look,” she said.

  “I only eat raw food,” I said.

  “Raw?” she said.

  “Uncooked,” I said.

  “I like raw fish,” she said.

  “I don’t eat meat,” I said.

  “I live for meat,” she said.

  “I don’t eat at restaurants,” I said.

  “Why?” she said.

  I don’t know why but having to say it out loud was incredibly embarrassing.

  “I try to avoid consuming resources unnecessarily,” I said.

  “That’s annoying!” she said.

  She yanked me standing by the straps of my backpack.

  “Whoa,” she said. “You’re a giant.” She did that laugh again. She patted the straps of my backpack, as if brushing off invisible dust. She nodded. “All right, giant, you’re coming with me.”

  She began walking. To get home, I had to go that way too—so, well, I did. We both walked toward town (not together, but together), past the roundabout, a hotel with vacancies, silhouettes of humans leashed to silhouettes of dogs. She had an unplaceable accent. Like a lisp, but not?

  “I hate chitchat, so before you ask, I don’t go to school, I don’t have a job, and my parents are dead,” she said.

  She tripped somehow on the sidewalk.

  “I’m a cryptid fanatic. I’m here for the bloodsuckers. I’m going to catch one, to bring the world proof that the monsters exist, which will vault me like automatically into the cryptozoology hall of fame,” she said.

  She glanced at me, guiltily.

  “There isn’t actually a hall of fame,” she said.

  (Yes, yes, I was in love by now.)

  “Oh and my name is Ash,” she said.

  As we passed the café, the smoky taverns, the overpriced steakhouse patronized exclusively by tourists from cruise ships, I argued with myself (silently) about the girl, counterpoint after counterpoint after counterpoint. Despite my (admittedly) disheveled appearance, and my (fine) sour odor, this girl was actually talking to me. However. Maybe that was actually more concerning than comforting. (What was wrong with her?) (Didn’t something have to be wrong with her?) However. I was really curious about her, suddenly. However. She was very young, and would be easy to hurt, accidentally. However, however, however, however.

  “This place looks amazing!” she said.

  She had stopped at a diner (pleather booths, checkered linoleum, chrome stools along the counter), pressing her hands to the glass, her face lit from light within. She stepped to the door, tried pushing it open, failed, tried pushing it open, failed, tried pushing it open, failed, squinted, frowned, scowled, tried pulling. The door swung open with a whoosh of heat and music. She did that laugh again, triumphantly, standing in the doorway.

  “Hey, giant, aren’t you coming?” she said.

  I felt that familiar plunging sensation (like being hurled off some cliff) (the ritual sacrifice) I get whenever confronted with something I want to do that I know would hurt the planet. I stared into the diner. People laughing, chewing hamburgers, tearing apart napkins absentmindedly, shoving aside plates dolloped with unused ketchup, sipping cola through plastic straws that never would get used again. Electric lights shimmering, electric heater whirring, electric stereo blaring country songs. The cook dumping a tub of wilted lettuce into the garbage. There was so much waste in that diner I could hardly breathe.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I left the girl there, standing in the doorway, looking heartbroken, fragrant heat and twanging music billowing out around her.

  Why does the wrong thing always feel like the right thing? Why does the right thing always feel like the wrong thing? Do there need to be so many feelings?

  I was much happier before I knew that girl existed. Now I can’t stop thinking about how at this exact moment she exists and is doing something somewhere and how I could be there but I’m not. I want to split some fries with her and listen to her talk. I want to split a pitcher of beer with my stepbrother and listen to him talk. I want to drink coffee and eavesdrop on strangers. The worst thing about trying to live an ethical life is how it isolates you from other people. I am going to die alone.

  (I didn’t capture the proper moments, didn’t capture the moments properly, but if you had been there, unicorns, you would have loved her too.)

  At the harbor, moonlight shone gleaming on the propellers of seaplanes. Waves crashed against the beach. Among the flayed seals, the shredded walruses, the sand was littered now with the carcasses of porpoises. Their fins battered. Their mouths yawning, frozen in terror, ringed with nubbed teeth. For me, nothing is ever as hard to see as the porpoises.

  Back home, I filled the bird feeder with pinched morsels of banana, a shake of oats. Some bulky animal was lumbering through the underbrush just beyond the backyard, in the darkness, huffing. (Oh, be sure to tell Peter: The gutter above the porch got knocked off, blown loose, something?) I haven’t sorted through the litter yet, will have to tomorrow.

  May 15th

  Another grueling workday yesterday!

  I do not work alone. There are a few other workers. We shovel together during snowstorms, plant together in the rain. Their impression of me seems to be: quiet, pleasant, young. They are not aware of my lifestyle. When they ask about my life, I murmur something vague, smiling, then change the subject. The thoughts in my brain would only upset them. I usually avoid talking about anything except the weather.

  But I cannot just keep the thoughts in my brain. The thoughts are volatile. My brain would explode. So instead the thoughts end up here—the worst thoughts, the worst ideas, the worst notions, all the theorems I would never speak aloud.

  But I have other thoughts too. I have best thoughts. Thoughts about how coral and krill and clams can glow bright neon colors. Thoughts about how mouthbrooders like jawfish hatch eggs in the
ir mouths. Thoughts about how tuataras have third eyes on their foreheads, as if enlightened, coated with opaque scales. Thoughts about lavender thunderheads swelling above an otherwise empty sea, headwaters swirling through leafless deadfall, amber beetles coated with gritty pollen, rainbowed minnows frozen underwater, dewy toadstools sprouting from honeycomb cliffs, macaques soaking together in thermal springs, owls on gnarled branches grooming downy chicks, galloping reindeer trampling alphabetic patterns into the chalky rims of crater lakes, frosted grasses on otherwise lifeless prairies, icicles dripping in grottoes, creeks white with muddy silt, deserts of flaky cracked earth, vast briny salt flats flooded with glassy water, frothy waterfalls shooting from a gap in the side of a ridge and plummeting dizzyingly past crags past nests past weeds and misting the snowy rocks below, and there is lava, and there are forests, and there are islands, certain flowers grow only on the slopes of certain mountains, moose grow antlers, geese lay eggs, snakes shed skin, bees make honey, all of the clichés actually are true. I love this planet. When I think about things like “Our planet has a moon,” I feel awed.

  (Honestly, unicorns, using words like “awed” embarrasses me. Having emotions is archaic, outdated, as unfashionable as wearing periwigs. Sentimentalism is a practice society has rejected altogether. But I’m my own society. A rogue country. Here I will offer refuge to that hoary exile sentimentalism. Here I will exile what others won’t. I exile apathy. I exile cynicism. I exile the emperor itself, sarcasm, that frightened tyrannical prick, ungrateful grandchild of sentimentalism, ruling on a stolen throne. It’s everything sentimentalism is. The same face, the same blood, the same feelings. Only younger. And false. Hiding itself behind a sneering mask.)

  Today I had the day off. Even after dawn, the sky stayed dark. Winds shook the attic. The clouds poured rain. A moth had gotten inside, which I caught and then set free on the balcony. I ate a few handfuls of oats, a couple apples. I brushed my teeth (salvaged baking soda), trimmed my fingernails, snipped my toenails. Then I zipped myself into my raincoat (halfway) to go visit Grandpa Uyaquq. (The zipper is broken, is why the raincoat only zips halfway.) Thunder crackled above the ocean. My umbrella shuddered under the force of the rain. As I passed the diner, the wind blew out my umbrella, snapping its frame through its fabric like bones through skin. From there I ran to the pioneer home, leaping puddles with the broken umbrella, rain battering my hood.