White Mythology

by WD Clarke

  —I, I’m … I’m really, I really am, he said.

  While we are usually told to look to windward for the weather, it is a fact that most often the winds on which the bulk of clouds come are not in the same direction as those at the surface. This is particularly so when the weather is on the change. Then the winds in which the cirrus clouds ride are often moving at right angles to the wind in which the cumulus clouds ride.

  He became distracted by the sun. Both by the lower-case sun, and, not supernally but supersubstantially, the capital-S Sun as well, the insuperable Sun. The sun was just past vertical, he ‘thought’, after he had fallen to ‘thinking’, after he had shielded his eyes and turned his windblown face up, to face up to it. He was, he knew, descending into ‘thought’, mere milliseconds (if that) after the act of sensation. The moment of pure, untainted experience had passed, if indeed it had ever been there, and, from the little sun g-d’s-eye-view in his ‘mind’, he saw himself begin to ‘think’ etymologically, to try to examine what he ‘thought’ he saw beyond the matrix of his own peculiar, contingent sensibility. He examined it, classified it, and, to the limit of his powers, comprehended and understood it. Verstanden, compréhension, savoir, he ‘thought’. I ‘see’.

  —I see, he said aloud to the wind. I see I really am. I see it now. T-trying. Trying to see.

  This is the classic ‘windy sky’ which has spawned all the lore about mares’ tails and in more modern times a song that speaks of ‘rows and flows of angel hair’.

  The son disappeared. The sun disappeared behind a cirrus cloud, momentarily giving the swells on the lake much more … contrast.

  —Sunflower, he ‘thought’, tournesol. Heliotrope, sun-turner, enslaved to the sun-god, to my father’s son, my son’s father. And here I am, turning tropes, imagineering, screwing it all up, ’till, ’till I’m burnt by the Sun, no not the sun, the merely metaphorical Sun. Fuck, I see it.

  This sky obeys the principle of linearity to a remarkable degree and in effect says ‘Look at me and do not ignore what I say’.

  —I see, his voice rising to a shout, heedless of the muffling action of the disdainful wind. I see that I don’t fucking see, that I don’t fucking get it, at all. (And where was this coming from? He didn’t know, or ‘thought’ he didn’t know, and that amounted to pretty much the same fucking thing, right? Whatever, but, perversely somehow, he liked it, he liked how it ‘felt’, how it still shocked him, but more: he just plain liked it, doing it, saying whatever the fuck he ‘felt’ like saying. Fuck it all. It’s all fucked, anyway, isn’t it?

  So here we are ignoring the fussy little details along the edges of the banners and concentrating on the linear form of the whole upper sky. Just occasionally, when the coming weather is likely to be of the most violent kind, the density of these jet stream cirrus banners becomes such that they can cut out the sunlight and so show some shading of their bases. But such banners are rare, thank goodness.

  He turned around, his back to the wind, gazed back at the hospital across the road. Two young people walked by on the paved path just in front of him, arm-in-arm, with eyes only, he saw, only for each other.

  —You there! he said, quite loudly but unsure of what he was calling out to them for. They did not seem to notice, however, that he was addressing them, that he was calling out to them. He turned around once more. So that was it, he ‘thought’. That’s what it was all allegedly about, is it, life, life lived with a small ‘l’?

  However, if you concentrate on a cirrus element or two and can unaided see them moving against the background of the sky, you are certainly looking at clouds carried in winds of a hundred knots or more.

  —Fuckers, he said to the wind. Brainless, mindless young fuckers. They’ll learn a thing or two, they will. After a pause, he added: it’s all fucked, anyway, really.

  The wind did not respond.

  That is when you begin searching the airwaves for a forecast.

  —And anyhow, what could it all possibly have to do with me? What in the name of Fuck am I supposed to do about it? Huh?

  Silence—of course. But it almost surprised him—almost, that there wasn’t something more. Of course, how could it be otherwise, how could his… (he hated the word, it was so effeminate, but there it was, anyway) his … yearnings be answered otherwise? Hadn’t he learned, learned not to yearn, learned a G-ddamned lifetime ago now, learned that the universe was cold, forever indifferent to frail, contingent human needs and desires? He had; it was the kind of obvious insight of which an otherwise-blind 17-year-old is capable: the kosmos was unfathomably expanding, flying apart, shredding, each moment that much closer to certain, inevitable heat death. Of course. It wasn’t exactly rocket science, now, was it? And it had thus been a no-brainer to adapt his life accordingly. The question was, though: if he’d dealt with all this in a satisfactory manner 27 years ago (and he had, he had been certain that he had), what was he doing here, now, in 1993, shouting at the wind again? Did he ‘think’ there would be any answer this time?

  Of course not. But the fact that there would be (that there could be) no answer forthcoming—this nevertheless almost surprised him, still, even now, almost gave him pause, gave him reason to wonder—almost. And (because he could, or would, never have predicted it) he wondered why this was so.

  However, there is a psychological factor in forecasts of snow. Rain goes down the drains but snow lays about for all to see. So forecasters, who are very aware of the disruption which is caused by snowfall, will tend to ‘over-forecast’ so that often threatened snow does not materialise. Or if it does, it may well have come later than forecast.

  He turned to go, finally, but something stopped him (or, more accurately, he saw himself stopping himself) momentarily. He turned back to face the wind, to face up to it, for a moment longer. He had one last thing to get off his chest, one last message to send.

  —Well, fuck you, then, he shouted. Fuck you! A movement occurred in his lower abdomen, and he let out a loud, lasting, luxurious, numinous, cumulus fart.

  Nevertheless, we can now say—and I have proved this time and time again by experience over many years and in many different situations—that the best statement of the [northern hemisphere’s] Crossed Winds Rules for the man-in-the-street are as follows:

  Crossed Winds rule for deterioration

  Stand back to the lower wind and if high clouds come from the left the weather will usually deteriorate.

  Crossed Winds rule for improvement

  Stand back to the lower wind and if high clouds come from the right the weather will usually improve.

  Crossed Winds rule for no immediate change

  If the upper and lower winds are more or less parallel then there will be no marked tendency to deteriorate or improve.

  He turned away from the shore, away from the wind, and started walking, still painfully, back towards the hospital, towards the north. Beautiful, high white cirrus clouds snaked perceptibly past, on their way east. Despite the aching hip and elbow he ‘felt’ better now; that bit of primal screaming had done him a world of good, he had to admit. He hadn’t said—he hadn’t used language like that since—well, other than earlier today, of course—since, why, since he was 17 or 18, at least.

  21

  Some Deterioration

  It is particularly when some deterioration in the weather has been forecast and you are waiting for it to arrive that the Crossed Winds Rules come into their own. We have now, I hope, convinced many would-be forecasters that here is a method of foretelling coming change which will work wherever they may be, so long as they do not stray out of the temperate latitudes.

  —The Weather Handbook

  And That's Quite Enough foul language—quite enough, Dr. Ed ‘thought’, for a lifetime. Suddenly ‘feeling’ very much himself again, very much in terribly fine fettle, Dr. Ed crossed back to the west side of the road, ‘thinking’, verily, that he was very much ready to get on with things.

  But what was there to
get on with? Ted had already phoned and cancelled all of his afternoon appointments. Well, he could always just go back in anyway, and see if someone might turn up. But that would mean sitting around, wasting precious time, and this newly minted, cleaned-and-polished-up Dr. Ed ‘felt’ like being, yes, active. He wasn’t due to have ward rounds with the residents and interns until tomorrow, so he struck that particular possibility off his mental list. Ahhhhh—he suddenly knew what he would do. He’d call the Alba team together for an impromptu meeting, to see how progress was progressing. Yessir, there was nothing like the ‘thought’ of a good meeting to get his juices flowing again. It made him ‘feel’ ready for anything, and he already ‘felt’ ready for anything. He could take on the world now, yes, and even that pesky Major Plumtree, no problemo. He’d ring the poor fellow up, straightaway.

  Dr. Ed tickety-booed his way back into the building, humming a jazzy version of ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’. The ‘voice’ he heard in his head was to his ‘mind’ Louis Prima, but in fact the singer was none other than Fred Flintstone, who had literally stumbled upon a career in Jazz while penniless-and-supposedly-on-vacation in Rock Vegas. None of this was material to our pro/ant-agonist, who himself ignored the pain in his knee and marched with a jaunty step to this jaunty little tune, nodding, smiling, saluting and sometimes even winking at all & sundry as he traversed a more traditionally kosher route back towards his department. He was a perambulating automaton of good old-fashioned bonhomie: he smiled, with just the right amount of quasi-shyness, at sexy admissions nurse Doone (remembering as he did so the interrogative graffiti in the 2nd floor men’s washroom, middle stall—‘Whose sic Done Doone (Where/When/How)?’—as well as the various, predictable, and yet intriguingly appalling responses); he bumped into and exchanged manly sweet nothings with ob/gyn man and card shark Buster Stubble, parting from him with hastily made and vague plans to ‘round up the boys’ for an evening of some serious poker; he even found himself stopping to ask the cadaverous forensic pathologist Byrna Starnes how she was ‘feeling’—apparently, not all that well—some military cadet jock hero type leaving quite the mess behind in a rollover out by Champlain Locks the night before, and she was still heavily into the secobarbital over it, albeit very much in a stiff-upper-lip kind of way. Tragic of course, but then life is for the living, and, why, here he was, himself again, popping into the F-Wing elevator & popping out again onto the 4th floor, ‘thinking’ that he first just might see if….

  —Why, it’s Dr. Blanchette, a pleasant surprise, a man said in a Sten gun staccato.

  —Hello, Major Plumtree. I, I was expecting you, please come, in.

  —I wasn’t expecting you, the Major said. Your note here says….

  —I was called out. Family emergency.

  —Ah yes, of course.

  —However, it, it resolved itself, much more quickly….

  —Yes.

  —Than I had foreseen.

  —In my experience, doctor, and I realize that our professions differ in some respects, situations, ah, emergencies, do not, ah, resolve themselves.

  —What can I do for—?

  —She’s gone missing, Doctor.

  —I see.

  —The hell you do, and that’s just the point. I’m holding you and your drug responsible for this travesty. You’ve taken her natural….

  —Natural?

  —Don’t interrupt me. Her natural mood swings and, and amplified them, beyond all recognition. She was never like this before. You’ve, you’ve created a different person, Dr. Frankenstein.

  No Problem. Dr. Ed ‘felt’ up to this. He’d been down this particular path before, more than once. He just had to be patient, and wait this fellow out.

  —Please, come sit down, Major. Let’s discuss this like the professionals that we are.

  —You can fuck right off with that bullshit, Blanchette. She could be almost anywhere right now, she could be dead for all you know or care, and I’m here to impress upon you, believe me, just how much you and your drugs have fucked her up.

  —Please, Major. I have to remind you that Alba is still very much in an experimental phase, Phase 1b, to be precise. Do you remember what that means?

  —Listen pal, I don’t give a rat’s ass’s flying fuck if, hey you know what, I’m gonna sue and screw you ’till you fuckin’ damn well plead for my forgiveness, and I’ve only got one more thing to….

  —It means, Major—and if you don’t drop your aggressive posturing this instant I’m going to have to call security—it means that treatment-resistant patients like your wife participate on a volunteer basis, and they are all made explicitly aware that the medication may indeed involve heretofore unforeseen contraindications….

  —Like I said, I’ve got just one more thing to say.

  And with that the Major landed a massive fist squarely on Dr. Ed’s delicate, if already not-quite-straight, aquiline nose. With a whhumppp Dr. Ed (whose grade 5 nickname had been—on account of said proboscis having, it was erroneously assumed, noble pedigree—‘The Eagle’) suddenly crash-landed, right-side-up, onto the carpet.

  —HOLY FUCK—

  Many a time I got a smart clout on the lug and was told to take that for a dirty little dogan.

  —P. Slater, Yellow Briar: A Story of the Irish in the Canadian Countryside (1934)

  WHEN HE CAME TO, a latex rubber glove was tugging on his nose. ‘Feeling’ no pain and yet in full possession of all of his other faculties, Dr. Ed had no trouble finding the fallacy in his earlier argument: the conclusion that he had previously reached (i.e., that his dramatic episode down by the lake had been cathartic, indeed epiphanic; and that things—supposedly numerous and yet elaborated upon with only a pathetic amount of detail—that things would be just fine, thank you, from here on in)—that conclusion was not supported by premises of—and this was shocking to be admitting to oneself—of any kind.

  No, not at all. In fact, he had succumbed—and this was embarrassing to admit to oneself—to circular reasoning: he had used his conclusion as evidence in support of (such was the shabbily deported state of his ‘mind’, lately) his premises! Yes, the conclusion was used to shore up the very premises which were themselves supposed to support his conclusion! He was begging the question, yes, he was, something he had not caught himself doing since, oh, since 1984 at least.

  And this was how he had done it: Dr. Ed realized he had been enduring a number of shall we call them ‘frustrations’, ‘frustrations’ surrounding events of, say, the past 24 hours or so. Dr. Ed realized this because he observed himself expressing ‘feelings’ concerning said ‘frustrations’, expressing them in a single, potent burst, in something one might classify as an alleged catharsis, and all because there appeared to be a certain logic at work:

  Premise 1: All moments of catharsis involve the spontaneous, sometimes violent release of pent-up ‘emotions’.

  Premise 2: All frustrations produce pent-up ‘emotions’

  Premise 3: Dr. Ed had just spontaneously released pent-up ‘emotions’

  Conclusion 1: Dr. Ed had experienced numerous frustrations

  Conclusion 2: Therefore, Dr. Ed had had a moment of catharsis

  Hmmm…. Dr. Ed was just considering this argument, wondering whether it was truly ‘Begging the Question’ or if it were actually ‘Affirming the Consequent’, and connecting that conundrum to the question of whether all moments of catharsis produce experiences of epiphany (or whether, alternatively, the pathway of causation ran in quite the other direction), when the hand that had been tugging at his anaesthetised nose stopped tugging and a female voice, which seemed to be situated somewhere behind him, said:

  —He’s coming around, Doctor.

  —Well then, what have we here? a male voice said, apparently from above. He certainly seems familiar….

  Dr. Ed then opened, with some difficulty, one of his eyes, and tried to focus, with somewhat greater difficulty, upon the current situation, but his field of vision was restricte
d to the vicinity of the E.R.’s collection of antique ceiling tiles.

  —Isn’t it Dr. Blanchette? the female voice then said. From Psychiatry?

  —Affirmative. Well then, he’s definitely slumming it today, isn’t he Nurse Turkington?

  —Yes, Doctor. It does appear so.

  —Uh, I, said Dr. Ed.

  —Excellent diagnosis, nurse; he certainly is.

  —Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, said Dr. Ed.

  —Hello there, Ed, the doctor said. It’s me, Pete the Raspberry.

  —You … said Dr. Ed.

  —And this is Nurse Turkington.

  —Hello, Dr. Blanchette, she said.

  —How are you feeling, Ed? said Dr. Pete.

  —Where, wait a, said Dr. Ed.