about summary refs log tree commit diff stats
path: root/lappel-du-vide.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'lappel-du-vide.txt')
-rw-r--r--lappel-du-vide.txt67
1 files changed, 67 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/lappel-du-vide.txt b/lappel-du-vide.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..49c4da9 --- /dev/null +++ b/lappel-du-vide.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
1---
2title: L'appel du vide
3id: lappel-du-vide
4genre: prose
5
6epigraph:
7 content: Don't you know you can't go home again?
8 attrib: Ella Winter
9 link: 'http://books.google.com/books?id=yybDMC0TRIwC&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12#v=onepage&q&f=false'
10
11project:
12 title: Stark Raving
13 class: stark
14 order: 14
15 next:
16 - title: Boy on the bus
17 link: boy_bus
18 - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
19 link: i-think-its-you
20 prev:
21 - title: Ouroboros of memory
22 link: ouroboros_memory
23 - title: Love as God
24 link: love-as-god
25...
26
27I. Walter
28---------
29
30Walter [rides the bus][] into work on Wednesday morning when he realizes, with the force and surprise of a rogue current, that he is in the home-for-death phase of life.
31That era in which the next time he goes under, to the fields of seaweed waving gently, the anemones slowly filtering seawater, it will most likely be for a death in the family.
32
33He is able to idly speculate on who it might be, and this surprises him.
34Not much does surprise him after these few months above the waves, because so many things did surprise him those first few months: the plants standing still, the quickness of the fluid these creatures walk in, the lack of pressure that still makes him feel so alone and cold---as if all of his life he had been in an embrace by the ocean, and now for some reason it's pulled away from him, and it doesn't love him anymore.
35
36His speculations lead him to picture his grandmother, small and frail and forgetful.
37He always assumed she'd be next, since last year when the other one died and Gina said,
38"I wonder who'll be next."
39She said what they'd both been thinking.
40
41Soon after that he'd come up to land, to the mountains of all places, the most land-like land, and started a job with an [accounting firm][].
42While it was challenging to adjust to the change in pressure and movement, to people staring at him on the bus, in the supermarket, at the job, him with his scales and fins and breathing machine, he'd always made a point to make the best out of a situation.
43The problem was that the best wasn't good enough.
44
45[accounting firm]: telemarketer.html
46
47II. L'appel du vide {.verse}
48-------------------
49
50And I'll get in my car and drive \
51and I'll want to keep driving \
52straight into the next state \
53or even the next country \
54or even even the ocean
55
56and go down deeper \
57keep exploring forever \
58find out what's down there \
59go to the Marianas trench \
60miss the air world and \
61come back up \
62itself a kind of unknown \
63the homecoming after
64
65What happened to the home I was?
66
67[rides the bus]: sense-of-it.html