Markers. Ants. Tectonics. X. & Pain. & Illness.

Uncle Stephen had been up and about for a few days.

“I’m still green around the gills,” he said, “but if gill green is it then gill green it is.”
But he was bored. And I knew he was frightened that waiting to get well might mean never getting well, and only waiting, and then all of his ideas would be betrayed.

“My ideas,” Uncle Stephen had said, “are gifts. But they are voiced gifts, they speak of attention, of needing to be. Seen. Heard. Felt.”

The fact of the idea itself, he suggested, wasn’t important.

He was hunched over his work table, clutching a soldering iron, using one hand to steady the hand holding the iron. Small snakes of smoke rose above the iron as he pecked at his idea, a drop of silver at a time, the rosin smoking the air sweet.

The idea was born of a simple enough hate: Uncle Stephen couldn’t stand the ring of the phone. Ever since the operation, each noise had to earn its right to be in his life, and though he tolerated the sound of the phone, he was on the lookout for a way to replace it.

The best lead he had had so far was the phone systems that rang his phone by blinking his lights. It was built for deaf people. Uncle Stephen loved it, but he took afternoon naps, and the light wasn’t bright enough to wake him.

*

“Think your grandmother will miss them?” Uncle Stephen asked.

I had taken two masks, one she wore to bed to block the early morning light, and the other mask she put in the fridge to cool her forehead and ease her occasional headaches.

He had glued them together, to make one mask to operate on, to add lights to. The tiny current from his land line he had wired to a series of low voltage l.e.d.’s and glued them to the sides of the mask.

“The gel spreads the light around, and the other mask is hollow, it only needs holes,” Uncle Stephen said.

He held up the contraption, one wire dragging from an edge.

“Call me,” Uncle Stephen said.

“You know I don’t have a cell phone.”

“Here,” Uncle Stephen tossed one toward me, and it landed next to me on the couch.

“Where did you get that?”

Uncle Stephen’s face was pale, and the skin around his eyes was dark. The tips of his eyelashes caught the light from his worktable lamp.

I called him.

The main house phone flickered, but the mask didn’t do anything and Uncle Stephen said, “Fuck.”

He turned back to the table and picked up the soldering iron, watching it waiver until he brought his other hand up to steady it.

“If you pop that gel, grandmother is going to kill you.” I said. I was thinking of how I was going to have to stop by the drug store tomorrow, after school, before catching the bus, to buy new masks.

“We’re in bigger trouble than that,” Uncle Stephen said, “she’s had this one mask for years, worn it in like a hat band, but for the face.”

I sank into the couch cushions. Uncle Stephen’s ideas dragged me along. I was worried, too.

Was that idea the last? Was that?

I watched the soldering hover over the masks and how thin his wrist looked, as if he were to touch it with the iron it would melt straight through, like the soldiers Uncle Stephen had shown me how to melt with a lighter, until grandmother had caught him at it. And at the memory, the tang of the plastic death’s of those green men filled my head. Their guns folding up and their knees buckling. Uncle Stephen would heat them with the lighter and then mold them with his fingers, his eyes reflecting both the lighter and the green of the soldier’s bodies.

But when I tried to mold them, the plastic burned my fingertips.

“You get used to it,” Uncle Stephen had said.

*

“Call me,” Uncle Stephen said. He turned the mask so its interior faced me. I pressed the buttons for his number, and again the other phone flickered with light. I was about to say something when the mask lit up.

Tiny dots flickered inside each socket. As current ran into the lights, sometimes one would grow brighter. A lighthouse. A supernova.

“Oh,” Uncle Stephen said, “I had to use another one of your kits. I’ll get you a new one.”

Uncle Stephen was always buying me the kits from Radio Shack, hoping I would learn something about electronics. I wanted to, and I could follow the instructions and make the Randomizer, and the Buzzer. But how they worked, I couldn’t fathom.

Uncle Stephen cannibalized each one and then bought me another.

“Shit.” Uncle Stephen said, and there was a new smell. He had tipped the soldering iron and it had landed on his forearm.

He smiled at me, with the tips of his teeth biting his lip.

“Remember,” Uncle Stephen said, “it’s always when you’re cleaning up that you make the mistake. You get careless when you think you’re done.” He set the soldering iron down in its cradle and picked up the mask and went into the bedroom.

The phone cord trailed across the floor. Uncle Stephen hated cell phones. I looked at the one in my hand. It was grandmother’s.

“I’m going to lie down,” Uncle Stephen said, “Call me in an hour or so.”

I heard the rattle of the pill bottles and the scrape of the bottom of the plastic bucket on the wooden floor. He would be in position, his arm over his head, the bucket within easy reach in case his stomach rebelled, the blanket over his head with a new wire trailing out, as the tubes had when had been in the hospital.

So many tubes vanishing beneath blankets.

The fan he had turned on kicked into life.

I had a book to read, one of the anthologies of ghost stories that Uncle Stephen collected.

On the cover of the book, there was darkness, and Death in his hooded robe, skeletal face, towering over a ruined town.

But even that town had its sky, and even that sky had its stars. The pin pricks between this life and the next. And I waited to make the call, hoping the masks and lights would work, that he would wake-up.

From “World Wide Words” an excellent source for information about words by Michael Quinion, the exact quote in the title of his site, “international English from a British viewpoint.”

So the following information about the phrase ‘well-heeled’ comes from a British viewpoint. Jacob and I both guessed, and his guess did not include cock-fighting, but did finally end up being about money, so he gets the stick of gum. I won’t embarrass him by saying what his other suggestion was.

Well-Heeled, according Michael Quinion:

“Well-heeled never had anything to do with people being well shod (so it has no link with down at heel). The original expression came from cock-fighting, and meant to provide one’s bird with good, sharp spurs (considered, it would seem, as a kind of artificial heel) that would inflict the most damage. It was taken over into American usage in frontier days to mean that one was likewise carrying a weapon, but in the more modern sense of a gun (the first recorded use is from a story of Mark Twain’s dated 1866). Only later did it transfer its meaning to being armed with a more powerful weapon still: money.”

Quoted directly from this page at World Wide Words.

Here’s another quick Reason 4.0 composition.

I was playing around on the piano and came up with the repeated piano part, and then added the rest to make a morning snippet.

It’s not really for A.W.P., but we’re leaving on Wednesday, and the trip’s weighing on my universe. So I figure anything I do is probably being influenced by the thought of the plane ride, cab ride, pony show, etc.

The snippet’s about a minute and a half.

Click Here For The Sunday Morning Musical AWP Snippet.

I’m honored that Raphael asked me to create an image for the front cover of his book.

We have our first drafts of our first sound assignments due today.

We being everyone in the sound class at Virginia Commonwealth University, not the rest of you.

I wanted to post it to the blog as well, so all could share in its marvelous draftness.

Be aware, that it is a wee bit long, at 3.0 minutes, but I wanted to see if I could make something interesting for 3.0 minutes using some basic building blocks.

But, now that I think about it, my blocks weren’t so simple.

I suppose the better the composer the less sound needed to keep the listener occupied, if you ascribe to that whole less is more thing, and heck, let’s throw Haiku in there as well, and shoot, might as well see if I can get at the rattle of my pea sized soul.

Um.

I think I’ve been working on this for too long.

Click here for Patrick Vickers’s Organized Sound Piece: Bounces and Feeds.

And thanks to Kwoya whose voice I’ve stolen again, after she generously let me record her as part of the Audio Yearbook at The University of Alabama. I’ve also used her poetry in a live performance with Justin Peake, who I was lucky enough to perform with in Tuscaloosa Alabama.

A sort of organized sound show, and a blast it was. Kwoya’s voice was there too, though she was not.

Justin Peake’s web site.

Cool.

Uncle Stephen’s asleep.

The rotating fan struggles at the top of its pole, old, greasy.

The fan’s wire-guard flaps dust. I keep meaning to clean it, and I keep forgetting.

Uncle Stephen has been without a couple of medications for a few weeks.

I’m not sure how long. What medications.

It’s all very complicated, and when he feels well enough to talk about it, he doesn’t want to, because it’s depressing, and when he’s sick, well, he doesn’t want to talk about it because he feels sick.

Sickness, I think, is a handy excuse.

Not that I don’t believe in it. There’s the orange bucket beside the bed. The one Uncle Stephen keeps double bagged with plastic bags in case the first bag leaks.

I brought a book to read. Grandmother’s still at school.

When I was younger, Uncle Stephen was my babysitter, and now, after the school bus drops me off, grandmother has me walk to his house to check on him. I watch him.

Sickness, I think, is a handy way of keeping people occupied. Busy. Focused. Centered.

Since the medication ran out, I’ve been emptying the bucket, when I can, when I get home from school. Mostly Uncle Stephen does for himself. As they say.

But now, the medication, magical, healing, stupefying, and Uncle Stephen sleeps without waking to vomit.

Before he went to sleep, Uncle Stephen talked to me from under the blanket, his voice issuing from a small shadow he keeps open for air.

It’s winter. And cold. The cold lessens the nausea. The fan keeps the air moving. And also masks any of my slight noises: the creak of my chair, the slide of my fingers across the pages of my book. My breathing.

All of which Uncle Stephen hears, he says, amplified, with the result being the urge to barf.

He was already under the blanket when I walked in and sat down. On the floor was the bag from the pharmacy, that grandmother must’ve dropped off on her lunch break.

Years ago, back when all of this started, I had asked Uncle Stephen what it was like, what it felt like, his headaches, and he’s been describing them to me ever since. Even though I have long since decided that I won’t ever understand, and sometimes the descriptions are harrowing.

But it seems to help him to talk about it, sometimes. And sometimes asking is the only way to find out he’s even hurting, somewhere inside his skull.

Today, though, he was talking as I sat down. The room looked like it had the day before, the fan, the dust, but the bucket was empty, the only smell the plastic of the bags themselves.

Having Uncle Stephen dissect the smells and sounds of the room enough times has led me to believe I can smell and hear what he does, albeit muted.

“A giant spider,” Uncle Stephen said, “inside, at the base of my skull. Black.”

There was an open can of soda on the floor. The bottles of pills. The empty bottles of pills. The full bottles of pills.

“With a web throughout,” Uncle Stephen said, “its spun lines like the dust on the fan.”

I promise myself I’ll clean the fan.

“The important part,” Uncle Stephen paused.

I know he’s been waiting for this medicine. But it will be days before it takes full effect.

Days when he sleeps. Wakes. Takes medications, and then sleeps again. It’s my job to try and sneak some food or water in during the moments of wakefulness.

“This spider, this spider doesn’t have to move,” Uncle Stephen said, “because it’s the web, and the web is it.”

In biology we learned of parasites. Of bacterias. But the books are thin about the effects. The books leave out what each suffering feels like.

Is our suffering that unique?

“Each strand sucks up nutrients for the spider, this pain,” Uncle Stephen said.

I had offered to make him a sandwich. Some crackers to go with the soda.

“Why feed the spider?” Uncle Stephen had said.

I’m learning to use Reason 4.0

Here’s a small snippet in the key of F.

Oh, and happy birthday to me.