A random selection from Chapters One to Five and Chapter Ten of an untitled novel in progress, which is the story of my life as it might have been, was, and will be. Now this is not as if, and not once upon a time. It's not any of that, but it is more, Lot's more. It is the telling, and it is the held back. It is the what must be known, and what must be kept hidden away, which are not separate things, but the same, in the eyes of the beholding, those who are, and those who are not, privy, so to speak, to all of the above, which is written and read, and that which is not and is not, but may follow, and may not, and might be inherent here, or explicit, or perhaps, in the reading, the beholders - ye - will make your own (you will surely!) minds up. So. If the day had been as any other day it would be as no other day, every day opening in simulation of the before, that recollected by those too slip-minded to recall that no day is alike, no day is the carbon, the copy of another, and yet, in every day, some sort of seed is shared, some sort or style of rotting fruit of the previous, hint of the future, hangs in the air, and ripped parts might be found on the ground, too, which the seed reacts to, greedily, as if corruption was a teat, and the taste incestuous but the only nutrition, the rest being foreign, barren to the task of this the new day, the next old day, the day unlike, the day reiterative. With variations. Did he rise to the day with anything like the expectation of that the day before, or perhaps hoping, if this were a muggy, head fogging dawn, the one to come, the next, or the one after? He rose risen as it were, blood thick where it most often isn't, and refusing to return to its more usual courses until, some sort of guilty pride mixed in with the apprehension that his landlady might see him dart across the corridor for the bathroom, he did, and found, somewhat bemused because there was still strain there, groin-locked, that the stilled and pooling, predicative blood, had moved on, and he was no more the monster of cheap raincoats, children's playgrounds, the very suburban Priapic nightmare of titillation and pale horror, not, at the very least, eye-boggler to landladies who, with curled lip and bulky flip of hip (Oh, God preserve me!) all too often (or was it nowhere but in his head and maybe there, the same blood preserving the memory, shifting position?) had suggested, had she, intimated, no, that he might, given the hour, given the night, given whatever it might take, that he might, given all those, might - take - it would be an act of thievery, upon himself, every ideal burgled and smashed, folded up in the fake Persian rug and bundled away into some bruised, yellow and sulphur-stink shrouded night - take - her. Where? Made it! Into the bathroom, and there, pooled, bright yellow, unflushed, because, concern for the tenant do you think (the racket of flushing too noisy in the night?), or is it some other thing, residual from the last drought, perhaps, but whatever the reason, bright yellow in the bowl, the first extravagance of his morning, that colour, flaring into his eyes, and he sits above it, because, residual of that same drought, to flush twice would be a waste, besides the cistern is noisy, and to sit with it filling behind his ears, a rush, metallic which is too strange where there is only water and ceramic, but that is the sound, and it is too much to face away from this early in this unrepeated morning. His business done, ritual and unsatisfying, under the shower, which starts slow, bursts into heat, and is just right to his taste, that is, the nerve ends of his shoulders, halfway through the unheard above the rush from the shower head refilling of the cistern, muted metallic due to the aforementioned, the first small blessing of another, if not new, if not to be noted for novelty, day, and she is out there, he knows, prowling, heavy as a sea-slug, for when he must emerge, not at all Venus, far far from even a faded Adonis, from the bathroom, narrow, steamy now, the shower's last drips clattering to the bath. Are all the noises here metallic, all water and ceramics making for mineral percussiveness? It is an acoustical phenomenon, but only a sidetrack, because, beyond, slick on the passageway floor, the marks, back and forth repeated, the layering of a manic artist, all background, all preparation, all mucousy wash, the trail of the sea slug, she, the slug she, The Mrs. She, her, self-made sentry, the Mrs. Nab, who will nab him. Nab. The Widow Nab. And she has, it is no more than three yards, but before he's half across she's on him, from a distance, warbling in cod French the greeting of the dawn, which is inexplicable to him, his own high-school studies reduced to guidebook phrases that have less meaning now than ever, and in his accent, made into, "Excuse me, where is the war?", mixing gare and guerre somewhere around the glottis, that does not stop, like she who, in black satin, descends the difference, the passageway between, and the miasma of sleep, cheap perfume, old instant coffee on her breath, freckles pale brown on her sallow flesh, which is her breasts, that do not tumble forth, they'd rather roll, not gymnastic, the felled pugilist, slack and lazy on the canvas, that's how they'd be, and he is caught, strung on bad French and stale breath, and skewered, makes the first inanities that are, flesh of the bomb victims, strewed upon the wire fencing, today's controversies, to wit, the noise of passing trucks, the moral laxity of neighbours, and the tight-fistedness of lovers who are, all suffering, required to suffer more as the morning does what it would do regardless, pass. He would step out, but he is tied to his tasks that are herebound (it is not home, just here for the moment), all of them that pile high to fashion, tottering, here and now, and he will attend to them, soon enough, now, retreating, tied to the tasks that unloosen him from all that is just beyond the door, to his right, blank, stained with newsprint fingerprints, that will not shut because of a faulty hinge, and makes no difference anyway because she'll push it open without invitation and little reason. If there were an outside that was more than the foreign country of ordinary circumstance he might visit it more often than to simply raid, exchanging currency, moment for moment, for the designated necessities that he has made his little luxuries, them, cheap and generic from the supermarkets that pride themselves on that, known for their unknowns, products brought in in an absence of national pride from somewhere else, another nation where his necessities probably actually are luxuries, and what he places in his mouth he has taken from theirs, his one mouth the mass of six of theirs, they being used to less and able to get by, a whole family a week on what one of us consumes in a day, or one and a half at most. Or so we guiltily guess, masticating. Did Rome ever give a shit about the peasants of the Po? London the rubber tappers of Malaya? Beijing the rice scrabblers of Jiangxi? DC the dirt scrapers of Ohio? Winners win, and choose to stay thin, but could never match those envy-less fashionable silhouettes, the Pakistani third daughter, the indentured Ugandan, the Filipino garbage-pile-picker-overer, all the other cadaverous ravenous, big-eyed and trusting for the cameras, which are our centurions, inquisitive and girdling, the Great Wall of Media, built to deny again the barbarians access. Watching them, as sentry towers were regularly spaced, as regular the visits of the anchor-persons who dress down in expense-account empire-wallah mufti, their uniforms of the statustical six to seven figure celebrity payouts hanging, waiting upon their return, reality-check, to the studio, unwinking eyes the watchers, the recorders, the dismissers, fed whole cut to piecemeal, live to you, out out out, who's watching anyway? And in the middle of it there's the silence of cacophony, ascended pitching to such keening it is beyond human hearing which it has brutalised past discrimination, till the din is all too much, too much all, as familiar as the crash of blood behind the ears, metallic there too, as upon the bitten tongue, swelling, not poisoned - the din that fades without diminishing volume to the unnoticed, is, by the modern definition, 'silence', silence being, all laws kow-tow to Relativity, as much sound ignored enclosed in blaring as that unheard, and is now all the above and some to follow. The synonyms of sound, the onomatopeia are unequal to the task, when noise has escaped the bounds of source, slipped the leash of recognition, and fashioned itself into the razoring mushy crush of constant tympanic thrust, no breath taken that does not next make utterance, heads bashed and tongues torn against the wall, sharp with broken brickery, slick with suppliant saliva, the blood of the former, the infections of the latter, promising stillness but no less clatter. His jaw lantern, he led with it, the glow enough to see by, and be seen, to his unfortunate result, there being sentries everywhere posted, and too often, where least expected, these folk having strange priorities upon their treasures. Nabbed, the guards closed upon him, and he was walked in that goosing fashion, to meet and be paraded before, wastrel at the rooted booted feet of his betters, they sure of that, for sure and sure of that, at the least, that, and if there is ever any doubt, the toe of the boot sunk into ribs and stomach flesh to confirm it, their status, above, the kicker not the kicked, the kickee, that last syllable, drowned in groaning blood and fled breath, around the blunt tip of the sunk boot, Atlantean to the guts of the kicked, he, that last syllable, wrenched and swallowed from his battered lungs and spleen, out the clenching throat, "Eeee!!", and the proof is made, clear as the spotty blood beyond his chin, the tongue bitten, spasm spasm spasm dull and sharp, of whom the better, whom the less. In a cell, silicon-studied from a mesh corner, he sits, dull and faking it, at least by half, for the other percentage is real and torn within, in the enclosed four walls, the parallel planes of floor and ceiling, in that cell, accused of belonging outside to another, a cell of dissidents, a fluid cell that, this not, all raw concrete and sharp corners but for the one meshed one, it's creature within, one-eyed, fish-wide, observing, he is no member of at all, but there is no telling them that, the booters, no matter how many times he might, there are always more boots than ribs, and they are worn in, while his, scraping around his lungs, are worn out, where not splintered, awaiting it. But that is all encased elsewhere, that, the above, a fantasy, that has not occured, not yet. It is a 'to be', or perhaps, a 'not to be', because there is no knowing of the day ahead that is less more and the same as this and that one past except that when they were limited to seven, at least with that much discrepancy, it was still a limiting, a recognition, that if only to seven variations, no two days could be the same, not to the minute, not to the hour, not to the 24, not to the 1,440, not to 86,400, the minutes and seconds of those hours, kept in order, but slippery as cheeky children round a corner even as the pebble or the mud or the snowball - pick your hemisphere - strikes and pricks slides splatters upon your forehead unbowed through shock but that is only momentary relief before reeling and a nausea that sweats between your toes and tightens the sphincter, then loosens, and you are, what is your nature?, the moment after, laughing, or seated upon the pavement, shaking a head that will not resolve, will not draw the strings, will not find the familiar landmarks that were there ahead and in memory before pebble mud snow shifted them, shivered them from sight and where they were before in the mind's eye now inward looking and sweat-shifting, there is a bile on the tongue, the rear of the throat raw, breath will not come, nor voice, except distant from other necks childish laughter, or if it is your nature, from your own, and all of the above unexperienced, and held in reserve till then when laughter is not your nature. So, choose your own point of suspended disbelief, and rule a line across somewhere in the above, from where before you choose to accept, and after, not. Or not, as your case may be, whatever the brief is, for whatever has come and whatever will pass there is always a point at which it was still to come to pass, and that is always ahead in precisely the same manner as it was behind, and it will not be ruled, it will not be placed, it is the slippery certain uncertainty that everything, pedestal placed, rests upon, and will not keep to. "How?" The Hollywood greeting of cigar-store Red Indians, six gun Winchester Repeating Rifle Gatling machine gun shot before they could go on to "Why?", "Where?", "When?", the entire philosophies that they would engage in, except that 'shoot first' is the safest course before all that is strange and not of our philosophy, which is, at root, tamped down the barrel to its most explosive potency, 'shoot first', "our" being all the us'es who are loving humanity, scarred upon every cheek, the ridged tissue no longer painable. Suffer till you can no longer feel, then spread it around. Could he cross the passageway unremarked, feet firm between the sluggy slippery marks upon the linoleum? Could he? "How?" Simple the answer to "Why?", bathrooms being there for alimentary reasons, "Where?" the blessing of modern plumbing - "Inside the house!? People won't stand for it." True enough, only half humanity does, and for perhaps only half of their expelatory visits. "When?" - listen, is the coast clear, the border pass of lino, the customary gauntlet, run run run Indian brave, this is a passage of testing, take the blows, the marks, what blood flows flows to an end, a proof of something the first of your ancestors knew was important for some reason, some reason, so they would run run run and watch their young men do the same, and the ones who fall affirm some thing for the old men they sensed in their withering pride, the only source and cosseting of that withered self-regard, that the stock runs thin, the seeds are shrivel-weak, so they, thin-blooded, puff with recollection that is self-deceit, young glories magnified by old hearts, the task of all ancients, is the passage clear, or is she, lead-footed as stumbling Lazarus, lurking there? The day, the day, the viscous percussive of she, Widow Nab, passing by, and again and again, regular as a drunk sentry, who would not know his lord on a foggy night upon the battlements, but who, in the witness box, swears fidelity to the moment by moment, and this is the day, this day, that will pile up upon the others and be piled upon, and hold its own, and disappear and signify as every day does, each and every the making and the made of each and every rising to it, as I and you and all have done and are yet to do this day, round the globe upon every square inch, our toes squishy in the rotten fruit, pricked by the sharp ends of seeds, and something wet, sharp and disorienting on our brows, running down into our eyes, over our cheeks, onto our tongues, is it balm or poison?, and we see what we want to and what we cannot bear to, and wait upon the next rising.