I want to not want it. Watching my littlest playing with the trickling water in the outdoor foot-shower filling her pink watering can and walking with it to the garden and not making it there choosing to water the grass instead and she repeats it again and again. Woodpecker pecking. Birds singing. Quiet spring evening sun setting. I’m home. I think yes this is wonderful this is peaceful this is everything and I think that I won’t go into that place of chefdom where I will be gone gone gone early in the morning into late night why would I choose anything that was not this quiet place this trickling moment… chickens are settling down and roosting on the high bars and Mama fills their watering can and it is so quiet this country evening. And my littlest toddles over to the table to me and I spoon-feed her the last of my ice cream more more she babbles but it’s all gone and she sips water from my cup with her tiny lips. And I rub her tiny back and hold her like this on my lap we are together like this for a while until bath time.
So I think of course the answer is obvious not to leave all morning and all night and not to leave my babies and my wife. But there’s an abyss now cut by the sharp and heavy axe of this maniacal idea splitting the horizon across the sun shimmering bay it wasn’t there before but it’s here now and to take it away… yes there is an abyss that divides me. I am divided. And I think before the maniacal idea I had my country nights and my fire-burning mornings to keep the writing shed warm under the wolf moon and I said yes something will happen an award or bit of money something to keep this pen alive a five-thousand-dollar advance a small first printing just write the novel as you are and you will see that it will be seen. Keep writing. And I felt the Joycean words. And I felt the Thoreauvian pulse. And I saw the Great horned owl on the branch its head swiveling to follow me as I drove by. It all combining deep within a swirling well and I lowered my wooden bucket down down down into myself and I pulled up the tonic and bathed myself and I opened my mouth and the water ran in and lighting struck above me in a horizontal line I saw it there electricity above me bright and white and beaming into the infinite distance into infinity the bright white electric light beamed above me. I did not weep because I cannot weep but I am always weeping. And I try to use words to describe COOKING but there is no sense to be drawn it is entirely of the heavens entirely cosmological entirely mysterious entirely of another realm the same realm as the words written without readers. Food cooked without eaters. I could hire a sous chef and a waitstaff and a sommelier and we would serve empty tables. We would talk to empty chairs describing where the corn grows and when it is ground. And before the next course we’d clear the food into bins destined to feed the chickens. And after ten courses are served and the kitchen is scrubbed and tables wiped clean and reset we’d congratulate ourselves on another profound evening and turn off the lights and rest for tomorrow when we will return to serve the absence. And that is it. We are performing a play of extinction. Extinct ideas. Extinct place. And, therefore, one cannot eat or drink from the palm of extinction. This is a play of hunger and thirst for the destroyed. Yes. Yes above all. Yes I wish to cook food people cannot eat. So they long. So they yearn. For what they destroyed. A Dantean performance. A Biblical idea. Extinct proportions. Corn and Soy and Wheat and Poison Water. Everyone else is playing God: I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven*. Tractors like fallen angels in the fields. Food without nourishment. Land without soil. So why can’t I also play this game? Why can I also not play GOD?
My daughters are splashing in the cold water on the bay shore. The first hot day. And from down the beach I drop my fishing pole and yell like a wild animal running toward them and throw off my shirt and they watch wide-eyed and I run past them into the water and I dive. Electricity pulses down my limbs. Silence. I open my eyes the water a murky yellow-green. I push up with strength in legs and burst forth into the warming sun. And my children shout in joy and Mama says Wow, Papa! And my oldest says Do it again! Do it again! and I think maybe there is something in this extinction. I am the dealer I could give these extinct ideas back there could be a rebirth. Do it again! Do it again!
Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again.
His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?
Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.
But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him…**
…And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.***
I came to this place to look for the light. I never considered what I’d do if I found it. There are decisions to make now.
*KJV Luke 10:18
**KJV John 11:7-11 (resurrecting Lazarus)
***KJV John 11:44 (resurrecting Lazarus)
Good to hear your voice, Paul. Well done. Do we know how Lazarus felt being called back from the dead?
Love it. You have a fantastic timbre on the spoken side. I have a voice for print a face for radio and should only write in invisible ink. Cheers Paul.