Or to Begin Again

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Or to Begin Again Page 4

by Ann Lauterbach


  and wondered

  why two ways of saying the same thing

  were needed.

  If only, she began, and fell

  asleep.

  It is soiled, possibly bloody, the dark.

  At night there are cries

  of the suddenly dying: a rabbit, a hen.

  The fox went out on a chilly night.

  He prayed for the moon to give him light.

  The tune leaked into the air like ink

  into paper. In her dream, Alice

  is falling downstairs

  into a tub of words.

  The thing is pushed

  forward. It is cold, nonsymbolic.

  So, nameless as, say, animals are.

  Unless.

  These stray unlessnesses

  avert attention. They

  give solace to it.

  But it remains, a nameless thing

  cordoned into consciousness

  as if

  being could withstand it.

  The nomenclature of the

  not living is

  an it. It, said the soldier, torturing his captive,

  it it it.

  So let us have the White Rabbit.

  Let us have this hurrying near.

  Let us, among the

  constancy

  of living

  and its

  images

  begin.

  I am broke! says the White Rabbit, hurrying to the

  bank.

  The White Rabbit, in the red,

  has no redress.

  Naked as a jaybird, the White Rabbit lamented, soon to be a jailbird.

  But what is the color of chaos? Alice suddenly asked.

  Gray, the White Rabbit replied, looking up at the sky,

  like a sock.

  But there are always two socks, and only one chaos, Alice said.

  Colors and numbers are not of the same kind, answered the Rabbit

  somewhat impatiently, almost knowingly.

  How did you find a gray sock in the sky? Alice continued.

  The cloud’s contour, don’t you see?

  No, Alice replied. I see only a gray cloud, I do not see a sock.

  But then, she added, perhaps I live in a gray sock, perhaps this hole is a

  sock into which I have fallen.

  The White Rabbit disappeared as Alice was considering this possibility,

  so she was left without a rejoinder, in the solitude of conjecture.

  Alice thinks something about eliminating the desire for revenge.

  Alice was caught in the radiance of the not yet knowable.

  This, she thinks, drifting, must be

  the feeling of being young.

  She could not say

  in the radiance of the not yet knowable

  which seemed, now, a reason for youthful sorrow.

  Why do shadows get longer? Alice asked no one in particular. It must

  have to do with the angle of light, she answered herself, but this answer

  did not make her feel confident. The question lingered anyway and

  was added to by another. Does everyone know how to tell the difference

  between a shadow and a thing? The thin trunks of the trees had bent and

  crossed over the path.

  Could one climb a shadow? she wondered.

  Some can, came the answer out of the evening.

  Who are you?

  Who or what? came the answer.

  Don’t answer a question with another question, Alice said crossly.

  Why not?

  It isn’t right, she said, not knowing why not.

  A right angle, commented the Voice.

  A right angel? Alice couldn’t quite hear.

  Yes, a right angel is something that can climb a shadow.

  At that moment the shadows of the trees disappeared.

  Alice continued down the path. She said the word path aloud.

  She then wondered if a path was related to pathetic.

  Pathos, she heard in the distance, somewhere above.

  What is that? she asked.

  A bear.

  A what?

  A bear, an emotional bear.

  On that hill? That dark shape?

  No, that is a shadow.

  And that?

  A bird.

  What sort of bird?

  An eagle.

  I don’t think so, said Alice. I think it is

  a bunch of brown leaves skimmed by light.

  The leaves flew away, their wings clutching the failing day.

  Alice had spent most of that day reading.

  It had been raining, more or less.

  The book she was reading was absorbing.

  It absorbed her, so she did not think about the rain

  but let it fall on and around and beyond and outside of her.

  The pages of the book became wetter and darker until she could hardly turn them

  without tearing off a soggy slice.

  When she finished the book, she felt lonely.

  Why can’t we see time, she wondered,

  the way we can see space?

  The book had carved another time into time.

  That isn’t true, she thought inwardly,

  one cannot carve time.

  No, but

  perhaps, came the insolent, instructing Voice, one can crave it.

  Crave rhymes with grave, Alice said after some moments.

  I know, the Voice answered.

  Alice continued down the path; she did not think the Voice friendly,

  partly because of what it said, and partly because

  it was attached to invisibility.

  Are you a ghost? she asked suddenly.

  Maybe.

  If you are, then whose?

  No one you knew.

  How did you die?

  I don’t remember.

  Alice was silent for a long time.

  Are you in Heaven?

  For response, a great rushing sound, and the tops of the trees

  began to thresh back and forth as if violently weeping and there seemed

  to be water pounding over itself like a huge crowd trying to escape

  through a narrow hall.

  Alice decided this demonstration was cheaply

  cinematic and that she would not pay any

  further attention, but would take refuge in

  another book. She sat down under a tree and read:

  April is the cruellest month . . .

  She stopped and considered what an odd observation this was. Alice had thought a

  lot about the idea that

  some things happen because someone intended them to happen, while

  other things happen seemingly free from anyone’s volition at all.

  She continued to read, hoping to find out why April is cruel.

  You don’t get it, the Voice said in a loud whisper into her left ear.

  You are rude and abrupt, Alice snapped.

  It isn’t intent, it is a comparison.

  What is?

  April’s cruelty.

  A comparison to what?

  To the other eleven months. It is like the unkindest cut.

  You aren’t making sense.

  For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel:

  Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!

  This was the most unkindest cut of all;

  For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,

  Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,

  Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty heart;

  And, in his mantle muffling up his face,

  Even at the base of Pompey’s statue,

  Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.

  This speech sounded like a recording.

  One cut out of many, one month out of many. The month, April,

  is most cruel; the cut, Brutus of Caesar, the unkindest. Get it?

 
Alice picked up her book and continued to read. An orange

  butterfly flew across the page, and Alice thought it resembled

  an autumn leaf falling gently through the air’s currents.

  That’s sentimental, commented the Voice, adding,

  and sentiment is a failure of feeling, or pathos, as we were

  speaking about earlier.

  Alice decided to ignore this remark altogether.

  The butterfly continued to skim the surface of the air. It seemed

  a kind of breathing machine that made

  silence visible. She read

  . . . Breeding

  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

  Memory and desire, stirring

  Dull roots with spring rain.

  Alice found this depressing and inaccurate. She loved lilacs,

  especially when she walked to the corner and saw them first at

  the local Korean market. Well, she didn’t so much see them as

  smell them, and that changed the aspect of everything.

  The land, she continued to herself, is never

  “dead” but resting.

  If you insist on this kind of truth logic, you will never be able to

  read poems.

  Alice shut the book. She found it distressing that the Voice could read her mind.

  So the invisible gets to speak directly to the invisible; they are audible to each

  other, and so the Voice is listening in, she thought, to my thoughts. She had

  learned that it isn’t

  nice to listen in on other people’s private conversations, and so the fact that the

  Voice could

  hear her talking to herself made her mad.

  Don’t be so prissy and pious, said the Voice, it bodes unwell for your future.

  You need to be flexible about rules. They change. Cell phones have changed the

  nature of what it means to listen in. Now it is a mere commonplace.

  Yes, but you hear only one half of the conversation, said Alice.

  Picky picky, the Voice responded in a high singsong.

  Alice decided to change the subject.

  Can you hear everyone’s mind, or just mine?

  I tune in and out, depending.

  On what?

  On whether or not I am amused. Of course, there is often severe interference,

  and your thoughts get mingled with others.

  Really! This idea frightened Alice, although she could not have said why

  exactly. How many others?

  Dozens, hundreds, thousands, the Voice said with a weary sigh.

  What does that sound like?

  The noise of history.

  Do you mean you can hear voices from the past?

  All the chitchat of the world.

  In every language?

  All. Plus the animals.

  But you can’t understand anything with that kind of racket, Alice said

  sympathetically.

  I try to tune out, but it isn’t possible. It’s surround sound.

  You need a remote.

  Indeed. I ordered one, but it never came. They sent it to the wrong

  address, I think to Mars.

  Mars? The planet?

  No, the God of War. He always gets my stuff.

  How annoying. Do you have a similar address?

  Just then a siren went off, climbing slowly up and then slowly back down.

  I can’t hear you, Alice called. I’ve lost you.

  Alice began to read again, but the words came out

  confused and intermittent. Her mind interfered.

  with dried

  without pictures or conversations take the laundry in

  over the Starnbergersee

  what is that?

  shower of rain for the hot day the pleasure of making

  water the roses

  in the colonnade in sunlight I have never seen a colonnade

  of getting up with pink

  I hate pink

  into the Hofgarten.

  in that, in that

  for an hour Hofgarten? Looking into the distance.

  out of the way

  on a sled

  in the mountains

  of the night

  in the winter.

  Roots, branches, rubbish.

  At this time it all seems

  unnatural

  kiu

  kiu

  la la

  Alice gazed down at the ground, covered in wet multicolored leaves.

  It had been raining leaves all day.

  You probably should fill out a form.

  Why?

  Because by responding you will be disclosing to the merchant that you meet these

  criteria.

  What criteria?

  For understanding that which makes no sense for you.

  What are they?

  They are, for example, what crosses the path at the

  place of form.

  Alice found this inscrutable. You mean if I walk along the path and come to another

  path that crosses it, that is where form is?

  Sort of.

  Alice walked on some way until she came to a path that crossed the one she was on.

  I do not see any form, she said.

  You are too empirical.

  But I have no empire, Alice replied truthfully.

  That may be, but do you have permanent interests?

  Alice had lost the argument; it seemed to progress without clear incentive, like

  lightning.

  What the thunder said, the Voice roared and then again roared from a farther place.

  Wait, Alice protested, you are getting away from me. Can we back up?

  Nothing can go in reverse, unless you are a machine, shouted the Voice.

  I can retrace my steps, Alice said.

  That is not the same as going back in time, which is nostalgia.

  Nostalgia sounds like something for which you take a drug.

  Nostalgia is a drug.

  Jug jug jug jug, came a sound from the pond.

  You need to study the difference between things as

  they are and things as they might be.

  But no one can predict the future.

  Pick a card, any card.

  Before her, the landscape changed into a huge deck of cards swaying and floating,

  in radiant black, red, and gold.

  Alice reached for a card and turned it over. It was the Ace of Spades.

  As she did this, the other cards spun away, and she found herself standing with a

  spade in her hand, like a farmer.

  Just then a Cat came out of the brush.

  Alice of Spades, it said, and smiled broadly.

  Now you are the most powerful card in the deck.

  NOT! Came a roar. I am! I am!

  The Cat turned slowly toward the chorus; Alice nearly dropped her spade.

  Suddenly, a procession of Ings and Eens and Acks came forward, marching.

  The All spoke at once.

  I All-Powerful! I Anointed! I the Decider!

  Put down your arm or I

  will arrest you!

  Pay no attention, said the Cat, it is only an army of benighted believers who think if

  it plays its cards right, it will win.

  Off with your head! shouted the All.

  Fine, said the Cat, I have many lives to spare, and disappeared.

  Off with her head! shouted the All.

  Alice started digging furiously with

  her spade and jumped into the hole just as the

  All charged at

  her, calling: Ready or Not! Ready or Not! Here All comes!

  But Alice was far out of reach.

  One day, Alice is reading about another Alice.

  What haunted her in this wasteland vision may have had to do with a sense of

  deprivation, of there not being enough love in her own family to go aroun
d.

  Does love have a quantity, like acres and dollars? How peculiar.

  She imagined

  a household with love moving outward

  and not reaching the far corners.

  This other Alice lay in the unloved space

  like a discarded doll.

  Why, she wondered, do people lose interest in some things and not in others?

  They die, said the Voice dryly.

  You again.

  Have you lost interest in me?

  I think so.

  You think so? You think enough to know or not to know so.

  Thinking and knowing are not the same, Alice said.

  In fact, she added bravely, thinking is almost the opposite of knowing.

  Don’t be pretentious.

  I am not pretending, I am thinking aloud, and that is the way I come to know.

  Then thinking, in your view, is a prelude to knowledge?

  Prelude is a lovely word, Alice commented.

  Is it?

  Yes, it has a feeling to it, as if in the uncertainty of things there were a

  mysterious beauty, as if only one instrument were playing, only one bird singing.

  Dawn?

  Yes, the dawn’s early light.

  No comment. Do you play with dolls?

  Yes, I have many of them, and I make them do things and say things.

  Did they always agree to this doing and saying?

  Of course. They have no choice in the matter, since I am the one who is playing.

  Do you play with soldiers too?

  Girls don’t play with soldiers.

  Why not?

  A doll was on the floor, facedown.

  There was a rip in her arm and another on her ankle.

  Alice had wrapped blue bandages around both these wounds.

  Because soldiers take orders to kill.

  Just then a huge limb of a tree fell to the ground, making a terrible thud.

  The Voice, now far off, called

  And sport no more seen

  On the darkening green.

  What, Alice wondered, is the difference between

  adventure and dementia? They

 

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