7/9/1996 g.g.Ashbrook
We had chartered a pass cart, from the finest office in the land. Only it was to our dismay, the condition of the device, when it finally did arrive. No golden paneling, no white lace hanging down like a table’s frills of lace. No reverent and stoical driver. In fact no driver at all. The despicably squat little atrocity took off on foot the moment he had currency in hand, heading back the long way- no doubt for another disappointing delivery. Makes one think; what will happen in the next world to he who spends his time in full occupation of disappointing everyone? Well, perhaps the cart will ride smoothly. No sense in arriving all jostled and half sick before the rightful beginning of things.
Noon yesterday, everywhere, was the smell of early morning. It smelled like promise in a misty quiet package. Everything was like a painting. The people still and not once turning there attention toward prattle. Little Tib under the tree paging through last months picture book. Appli sipping lemonade from an absurdly tall glass and laying right out in the middle of Saint Crumbo’s field. A patch of trees here and there, standing as though they were slowly roaming about sucking all the light up from the ground. I went back inside knowing how the air gets heavier the closer one comes to night and laid down for a nap. I hope we will be leaving some time soon.
Well, I guess one must be careful of what they wish for. No more gazing out on picturesque fields and orchards for me. This morning was the first to confirm there is nothing so special in the way the cart rides -- nor anything but morning itself as quiet as my fellow travelers. There are roads I have looked at all my life from the tops of hills and the small mountains I could climb. They seemed more part of a painting then anything that could be traveled, but as I now see they are roads leading hopefully somewhere.
The cart is large, though that is possibly all that can be said for it. Everyone taking their turn behind the reigns as the rest of the cart floats on its billowing cushion of air. It is odd to think the next family of actors will be moving into our house. Some little tyke sleeping in my bed, possibly wetting it. Well we have pretended nobility for long enough. Today we have passed four other families in their own carts (smaller and less dignified carts as might be duely noted) going to fill the rolls and play the parts needed wherever they are going. I found a book under my blanket the other day. With my name written on the cover --though spelled wrong-- and journal entries inside that I never wrote. But I put the book back. It is no place for us to lay a hand in what we do not understand. What do people know of the earth turning and such. Or the weather. These are not rolls that we can play.
And the road is trickling on. No one says anything for they have no rolls to fill. We can all be old or young the one thing that is still not in our power is the ability to choose on our own. Once running through a valley this road is now a bridge over a sea of circuitry and wires. At night it looks the way a city does from the height of an airplane --all the lights. And multitudes of vacuum tubs, vast engineering feats of pipe arrangements -- and all for what purpose we can only guess. I look around the cart and where I might see fearful faces -- fear of all this electronic horror so different from our last home -- I see only faces apathetic, and well content with nothing. So I close my eyes and pretend emotions for them. My little sister is terrified and huddles with concerned grandparents who affectionately brush their hands over her head in maternal repetition. They whisper to her that everything will be all right. At the front of the cart my brave parents are skillfully working the horses -- hands on the reigns -- shouting out calls that only pass between man and his horse. But I can not escape what is real forever, so here I am opening my eyes to only the people of no particular age or sex. My god are they only alive when told to be? If I could not see their breath, as the night air has become most brisk, I should surely think all of them somehow poisoned and passed on. Tonight I will sleep and try to forget what is a dream and what is real.
Well well. The storm passes. Everyone in the cart is still basically dead. But now to either side of us there are great towering trees such that I have never imagined possible. I have tried to show them to my "family," but I might as well try to converse with the horses (through I am sure that they have noticed). By chance, here and there, I see a wild beast among the trunks of the great trees. Sometimes a deer, or an antelope, or a moose. A fox, a wolf, or a great lazy bear. I wander who built this road. It seems so very long that it would have been most difficult to fashion.
Who ever invented people, probably also invented sleep -- because they knew that people would spend a lot of their time waiting.
The new house is so grand that as our cart was just pulling up, when we were first arriving, a bit of color flushed its way into the faces of my cartly companions! Youth started showing difference from age right from the start, and now we are fully installed. Supper at half past six. Dinner at noon -- as all proper people must live. Father is wearing a bonnet and all of our shoes are far too large. But tomorrow we will be banqueting with other families who have been here for a time at least (hopefully longer then us). And there are dogs! Oh I do have hope that this will prove a happy home!
So out we went earlier, the columns like giant men standing to either side as we strolled out and to the cart. And right there waiting was a more suitable cart. Gold paneling, and the rest a red lacquered wood. We all climbed in, the drivers (there were two of them) -- dressed in full body armor -- led us off across vast round lumps of rolling green -- where there were no roads at all. All the land then became wooded with rotting old conifers. First they were all small trees, and littering the ground in scatters; then almost immediately we were moving down winding trails between the trunks of great black hemlocks, deep purple spruces, and a few bulkoid deciduous trees that bore child size fruits that were prawny looking and black, filthy and most awful smelling. But with the black fruit trees left behind and quickly forgotten- the surroundings quickly turned to small but mature looking apple trees with tinny very green leaves -- I was all but convinced by the sight of them that were once hundreds of feet tall and now shrunken to scarcely five. And the apples were so red that they shone a red glow into the path. The Armored drivers had hinged gloved about there hands, with fingers as long and agile as snakes. There backs were crudely bend down but there heads bent up--as if at the ends of long flexible necks. The air was filled with sweet aromas. The path we were heading down seemed made of gently crushed gingerbread cookies, and scattered by hand. The soil was dark and rich and chocolaty. The plants all sending emotionally overpowering signals to come and play with them...
At long last we arrived at the house. It was not so much a house, as a living Copper Beach with a trunk at least the width of any respectable mansion. And throughout the whole of the trunk and the limbs and branches (which were more then large enough to live inside) were squares of light crisscrossed with the wooden bars of windows. The whole tree was hollowed into rooms. Most of the yellow light blocks that poke'adotted the palace showed due signs of life and activity behind. Everyone in the cart, even reserved mother, was pointing and giggling -simply bubbling over with delight -- and almost falling over the side of the cart with eagerness.
The door, when we finally came to it, was a massive mouth of stone and metal fashioned right into the foot of the tree. Marble pillars. Wrought iron sculptures of angelic forms (animal, beast, man, and plant-like forms) all around the entrance way. Before I went in I stopped and looked up. I felt like a mite looking up at a leafed sea anenimy, with wild arms waving -- frozen in time.
Inside; the other guests were meandering about, prattling and prating, but none seeming the least bit impressed with the structure all about them. They were not the most ordinary house guests. Some of them had on layers of clothing so oversized they brought along house help to carry the excess cloth from the sleeves and pant legs. Some families went around together, by this I mean they were all under the same hat, usually a bonnet, and so they had no choice but to stay together. Then there was the occasional small house guest, who would stand -inches tell- on the top of a little platform at the end of a staff or pole; and they were all continually being escorted by chaperones -courtesy of the host- squeeking out in their high pitched voices. The floor was some kind of glass, and underneath it unmanned chess games were being executed. My whole family -- right from the get-go -- was told by father that we could wander about at leisure and explore!
The first room I went into had, as a centerpiece, a samovar the size of a small cabin and a good twenty feet in height. People were walking in and out of the thing -- getting tea and deserts each time.
As it was each room lead to about tree or four new rooms, so I took it upon myself to get as hopelessly lost as I could as quickly as possible. Some rooms I ran through with my eyes closed so I would need rely on luck getting back at all. This one time I opened my eyes and I was at the edge of a round room lit by glowing lemons impaled on the tips of many a sea god’s trident. What first struck me was that the room was almost entirely silent. Only the sounds of faint scratching... rubbing, and quiet grinding. There were no chairs but instead circles of easels -all around something in the middle of the room which I could not see at first. I worked my way closer, careful not to knock anything over... and as I got closer I found myself home to a growing impulse to draw whatever was in the middle of this maze of art stations. Many of the easels were vacant, people seemed to come and go, sketch a bit or whatever and then move on to other rooms. But then there were also the people who looked like they’d spent a great deal of time in there. Finally I sat down at an easel, and looked into the middle to where the model must be. I had to look for a minute to know what I was seeing. And at long last I can only come to describe it as a strangely hermaphroditic vegetable child. This angular creature was all curled up in a pose that stuck me --to my great surprise-- as somewhat arousing. Its flesh soft and cold like the inside of a pepper. Its head a home to fin-like protrusions of stems and foliage. Its face was soft - it was the face of a child -- and though not at all grotesque it was, as well, unmistakably vegetable.
I picked up a piece of charcoal in one hand, and a fine tipped glass pen in the other. I dipped the pen and at once, and with both hands, I began to draw. It was a mess and obviously the work of nobody gifted. Just a pile of thin lines and wide smudges that in the fancy of my imagination somehow resembled the lovely vegetable child all curled up as it was. I did one more drawling, which possibly bore a bit more resemblance, and then left the room eager to find out what the next one had to offer.
The next room had walls of constantly changing news print. People who looked to be stock brokers, executives, and bank clerks were all lined up staring reverently at the never stable swarm of incomprehensible letters and shapes that flickered on and off the walls in an almost three-dimensional extravaganza of black and white clay.
The next room was a kind of bakery. There were wheel barrows of raw dough lying about and the guests of this fantastic home were in lines waiting -- their sleeves rolled up and grins on their faces be they old or young. So I got in line and put an idiot grin on my face just like everybody else. When it came my turn I knew what to do as I had watched the others before me -- I twisted and wrenched and dough, and all the while the very wall in front of me was joining in the dance of movements. I then tossed my sculpture up, and--just as had happened so many times before--the wall opened up a wide quivering mouth, and with a gulp of heat it swallowed up my creation. Moments later the wall opened up again in a satisfied grin and spat back my twisted loaf. As I walked towards the ‘out’ of the room, and to the ‘in’ of next, I chewed my bread and for a moment stopped to watch that miraculous wall; quietly, respectfully -- and I found that as it opened and shut its boneless jaws I could see the fire of the ovens back inside. Soon enough though- I stepped down a long corridor, leaving the speechless oven mouths behind me.
I was taking different doors all this time, trying to work my way around in no particular direction. Somehow at this point though- I had found my way into a kitchen! I thought about going back out, I even tried, but the door would only open the way I had come through. Up ahead I saw a line of servers taking up full trays of this and that; champagnes and horsdavourse. So I got in line. When my turn came I grabbed onto a silver tray topped with full wine glasses and followed the man in front of me. It was not a long walk. I traveled passed a cluster of servants diligently preparing salads; a pare of chefs who were shouting in French and violently hurling a chicken back and forth between them; a giant glass cow which was filled with beer -and being milked by a musty farmer; and a long row of sausage links that all contained words and were being spun though this device that looked like a Ticker Tape Machine. Then these two doors burst open and I walked right into the lobby I’d first walked into.
The whole family was there. Mother was eating a generic looking loaf of bread with dainty and reserved little bites. Father had somehow gotten ribbon tied all over him and was struggling to get it all off. Grandparents were dancing around in a proud waltz -- I am not sure if they ever left the lobby or were the whole time dancing just as they were then. Younger sisters were standing side my side- the two of them. Trying to look like they hadn’t done anything wrong and that there was no need for suspicion. Looking always on the edge of spouting out alibis.
The ride home was pleasant. I slept the whole way. I scarcely even remember stumbling out of the cart and into our new "place". I remembered where the room was. My new name. Every ones new name. I used to have a brother and a sister and now it’s a family of three daughters. The subtle changes are the ones easiest to adjust to. The strange changes are the ones you only hear about. Like relocations where someone spends eight years pretending he’s a goat, or a sheep. My god I don’t think my back would hold out for that.
The people mother and father are playing here are nice. Such a waist to play bitter people. To have to argue all the time. No one really wants it. But there is no arguing here. Just last night as I was nipping off to bed, I could hear the sounds of my parents rehearsing lines to say over breakfast.