juleshorne

I Think at First

The 1,000-year-old man furrowed his brow. The furrow – of course – could not be seen among the  many already in place. Such a slight frown could scarce begin to shift the weight of all that practised flesh.

He licked his lip with a slow tortoise tongue. It was bad, this dying business. No one to feed him. No one even to hydrate him. They used to bring occasional sponges – square cubes that soaked up no more than half a teaspoon of water. His daughter used to press them to him. He lapped them like the finest whisky. They made him just as delirious.

Then she died. He was told, though he couldn't hear the words. He knew she was frail. They looked so alike, the two of them. More and more alike, the older they got. Both entirely bald, with the same softened eyes and thinness. Sometimes the nurses pretended they couldn't tell them apart. Thirty years made little difference after a thousand of living.

She simply stopped being there. He was too weak to wheel in to see her. Perhaps they thought it might finish him off? And if they were right?

He'd wanted to die a long time now. He'd stopped accepting the sponges, though he dreamed of them, sometimes. They tried his arms for a vein, but the needle fell out.

Now he waited to desiccate. His heart was horribly strong.

13/3/2008

Faustine

Emma Tennant, 1992

p 55

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4003063.stm

Le Grand Mystere

'The author is unknown'. So says the gloss in the preface.

So there's no information about the sad sack schufter. The groaning bad-backed misanthrope that chopped out this book. The aching creaking lump of pale flesh that wobbled gelatinously as its thin fingers pianolaed across the keyboard, or etched across the paper, tentatively, crossly, desperately. The frown-furrowed bum-scratcher, the hunchbacked kidney-stretcher, the coaster-rolling ditherer, the pen-counter, the pencil-sharpener, the rubber-rubber, the chin-picker.

Unknown.

Oje!

Don't let on.

Don't tell that crotch-howker, that nose-bohrer. Don't tell that miner of thoughts, that sayer of sayings, that harvester of the gold and the glum. That spinner and späher, that watch-and-listener. That typist. That pianist of the letter-chord.

G minor. G major. G scale, tonic, dominant, tonic, cadence, and almost-cadence.

That alphabet-tease. That word-maker. That anecdoter.

Oje!

Unknown?

Perhaps that's best.

Perhaps that's best.

For all concerned.

4/3/2008

Chateaubriand

Atala, René, 1964

p 111

http://www.lekti-ecriture.com/editeurs/Le-grand-mystere.html

Salix Caprea

They've become a liability. In just two years, they've grown ten-twelve feet. A whole plantation's worth, sucking the ground dry.

She planted bayonets – little six-inch plugs. Didn't know you could do that so easily. Just hammer a stick and the ground and watch a tree grow.

And grow they did. Almost palpably. You turned your back and they were up there, pushing, rising. Thin wands that bent in the wind.

She was going to crop them. They were as prolific as grasses. Willows for baskets. She'd sheaf them up and lay them in water to soften. They'd be bent into rounds, pods, coffins.

And when she died, they just kept growing, quick and on.

She meant to die. She knew.

And now they're ten-twelve feet and a liability. They bud in March, these down-plugs that feel so warm on your lip. Wands in a vase, wands bending in the wind.

We cut them down and they keep on coming.

22/2/2008

George Peterken

Woodland Conservation and Management, 1981

p 163

http://www.british-trees.com/guide/goatwillow.htm

Fortgereiset

'Fortgereiset,' said the sign. Its extra 'e' gave it away as an antiquity. 'Gonne Away', it might have said, in a mediaeval sort of way.

Olesch had gone. There was no mistake. He'd left nothing behind but that sad, tattered sign. The rooms were completely bare, save for dust and flies on the windowsills. Oblongs of dirt marked the places where pictures hung. The walls were yellowed with rising intensity from the forgotten smoke of years. Spiders had hung in the cornices and chandeliers, covering them in filthy lace.

But there was still a smell. Part tobacco, part rosin. It hung there, impregnated. It was the nearest thing to a ghost. A fiddler ghost, his pipe clamped in his teeth, up and down the scales, biting in furious frustration.

And there was still a note in the room. It heard the door click and sang out. Sympathetic resonance. Straight and pure as an open string.

27/2/2008

Heinrich Heine

Atta Troll, 1846

p 143

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/7wint10.txt

Fremden Menschen

They were strangers. He'd never before been among so many strangers – tall and bent and wide and old and shuffling about the harbour, waiting, running. Most of them were carrying cases. If they weren't carrying cases, they were sitting on boxes strapped with leather. They were wearing too many clothes for the weather, he noticed. Keeping their belongings about them. No doubt they had money sewn into their hems, like him. It thickened the bottoms of his trousers. They swung, heavily, and scoured his ankles. It hadn't been a good idea.

He'd always lived among people he knew. It was a village. He didn’t know if it was big or small. It was just home. But now he was here, by the mighty ships and the crowds of faces and the shouts and clanks and calls, he understood he'd never really lived. Everything he'd known was a prelude. Everyone was the smallest of families.

And now he was among strangers, and felt excitement knot his belly like a sickness.

Birdcatcher. That was her name. He lifted his suitcase and zigzagged his way along the wharf.

8/2/2008

Botho Strauss

Kalldewey, 1990

p 61

http://www.versalia.de/Rezension.Gorki_Maxim.117.html

The Report on Television

The report on television showed a bluesman. He had bad teeth and a beard down to his navel. He had a three-string guitar and a resonator from a tin of sweetcorn. The presenter winked at the camera and pouted at the guitar, which was stuck with duct tape and looked like a health and safety case.

And then he played. Just three notes on the three strings, just enough out of kilter to sting on the ear. He played them with his big horny thumbnail, thick as a coin, four aching-slow beats with a couple a extra ones in between. He played till all was quiet and the presenter had retired herself out of shot, just him and his three-stringed guitar and the lights and the song.

The song was about a woman. A pretty woman on the wrong road to nowhere, dolled and pouting and blank-eyed as a piece of road kill.

The presenter had her headphones on. She was taking a call. He played and sang a song that came to him right in that moment, from godknows where, like they always did.

9/2/2008

Raja Shehadeh

When The Bulbul Stopped Singing, 2003

p 51

http://www.bnn.ca/

Said Siobhan Clarke

   

Particle fictions have reached 100, and this is the first time I've landed on a personal Bebo page. Siobhan Clarke is Ian Rankin's fictional detective, and a girl in Aberdeenshire. Hope she doesn't mind me stopping by.

sleep think wonder watch love lust sing

eat sleep dream wake rise bath sing

eat drink dance drink fall hurt sing

sleep groan sleep groan rise bath creak

croak eat croak moan eat sit croak

read watch read watch sit watch croak

sip eat sip watch sit groan rise

move wash think sip eat shit walk

walk move see watch blink watch sing

blink watch see walk smile watch sing

see walk smile watch wonder think sing

see think wish watch wonder dream sing

27/1/2008

Ian Rankin
The Black Book, 1993       

p 93

http://s.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=6953368

Arabic, Chinese!

This is a particle fiction. The title phrase came from a Sylvia Plath poem in a 'birthday'-themed anthology.Once again (and this is happening increasingly often), it led to a deadly site. The joy and discovery of books leads to the pushing mundanity of web. It's an advertising-led medium. It's usually trying to sell something - a product, a policy, a person. I'm heading for 100 particle fictions and thinking about a new rule. Maybe something to do with inverted commas. Meanwhile, the stories keep coming.

Arabic, Chinese!

This process guarantees accurate translation. Completely, 100% accurate. That's no idle boast. We're not talking dictionary-led, one-to-one fumbling, or computer-supported bollocks (mind the French). We're not even talking native speakers, mother-tongue targeting, or stylistic polishing by copyeditors who know the weight of a word.

We're talking 100%. Literally. Your customers will have exactly the same experience in the translated text as everyone has in the original. They will understand the same concepts, feel the same emotions, soak up the same messages as anyone else reading the text on the other side of the world. They'll enjoy the same puns, the same flavours. Their neural networks will fire exactly the same - every word, every sentence.

How does it work? Well, such accuracy doesn't come cheap.

We're talking mind transplants.

That's right. We pipe that other mindset direct to your customers' brains. Like a juice-feed. It's like putting on a new head. At once, they can feel every nuance felt by a native speaker in their chosen target language. Even nuances they didn't necessarily notice in the original. That's because the minds we transplant are first-class. They'll be awakened to a whole new experience of language, concept, culture, poetry.

And advertising. Of course. We don't want to get too abstract here.

You'll find us a little pricier than our competitors, to be sure.

It might hurt a little.

But it's a whole new concept in translation.

8/1/2008
René Graziani, ed.

The Naked Astronaut, 1983

p 89

http://www.proz.com/arabic-to-chinese-translation-services

Goes To Pour

Another emerging theme: elusive things.

Goes to Pour

He opens the carafe and goes to pour. First, he takes a deep sniff. The scent fills his nose and tickles the back of his throat.

It's a scent of primrose and mint, with a slight scoring of tar. There's a note of absinthe uncorked and a acciacatura of lemon zest. He inhales down past his epiglottis and finds a touch of albatross – a week-old chick, still fluffed and flightless. It dances particles with a tip of brine. Yes, the sea is on there, the salt and tang and the plastic bobbing bottles, perhaps with a sea-diluted drop of fizzy water from a southern French source. He can't name the village. It's on the edge of his tongue, his tissue, his memory.

And it's evaporating fast, mellowing into badger pelt and sunrise, string quartet and brocaded curtain.

It's losing him. The scent has wandered into the room and risen to the cornices.

He sighs and pours and drinks.

© 2007 Jules Horne
2/1/2008
David Greig
Damascus, 2007
p 57
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A12303

Sense Alive?

Heading towards 90 particle fictions, and lines have been creeping in. Poetry? Or just very short prose paragraphs? What's the weight of a carriage return? And the music? Discuss.

Sense Alive?

A note from the universe:

This is it, folks. Sorry to break it to you, but there ain't no afterlife.

You kind of know that already, but best make it official.

Otherwise, you could squander what you have.

Which is quite a lot, when you look at it.

You've got a reasonably long straw in the scheme of things.

Not that there's a scheme.

You've got food and clothes and shelter and a reasonable vehicle to carry your soul around in.

Not that there's a soul.

Sorry – didn't mean to break that quite so bluntly.

Your reasonable vehicle is all you have.

It's quite a feat of engineering.

Not that there's an engineer.

It's all chanced together quite beautifully, yet you don't half waste it.

So when you ask 'in what sense alive?', I'm nonplussed.

What you feel is all you get.

Try to feel something more constructive.

3/1/2008
David Mercer

Plays: One, 1990

p 111

http://sensesalive.com/