Australian culture has never been particularly well looked after in its home country. Decades of poor funding and even worse management has led to Australian’s creative traditions being devoured by American and European traditions. Few ordinary Australians could name an Australian painter or writer, possibly they could name a film or an actor. It’s a special kind of tradition that began almost as far back as the 1950’s and was described then as ‘the Cultural Cringe’ (Phillips).

Our uniquely Australian perspective is like a stubborn plant occasionally treated with liquid fertilizer, more often than not it’s casually sprayed with weed killer. It has not exactly thrived but managed to find a couple of patches of dirt in which its roots can grow and a few flowers can perhaps not bloom but at least reach maturity. 

Melbourne in particular, is a UNESCO City of Literature but has been let down on the state and  federal level by politicians who see the Arts as simply another financial wing of the Australian  economy: a profitable export. 

What I thought I might do is give you a list of some superb examples of Australian writing that you may be missing out on. I really do think that Australian culture is ill defined in its native country and internationally as well. If I can get you to do anything after reading this it is to read something Australian. 

Acute Misfortune, Erik Jensen (2014) 

If you can be bothered to read reviews, Acute Misfortune has been described extensively if a little  bit dismissively as being ‘novella sized’ and having a ‘gimlet eye’. As if the book was too small and  stuffed with bitter scrutiny to really be worth five stars. It is small and laser focused but it is also  capable of being a biting study of Australian identity to the attentive and sensitive reader. 

Acute Misfortune is the true story of Erik Jensen’s four-year friendship with the Australian painter  Adam Cullen set shortly before Cullen’s death in 2012. It doesn’t hold back. It uses real names and  tells the story as honestly as it can. It analyses why Cullen felt so pressured to behave the way he  did. Drugs, violence, guns and paintings. Substance abuse and shocking behaviour became crutches  holding up Cullen’s life and artistic career. 

Personally I blame former Prime Minister John Howard for all of this. I blame John Howard for a great deal actually. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Paul Keating (John Howard’s predecessor) was determined to create a modern, aspirational Australia identity. A nation more in connection to Asia than America or the UK. A thousand, unique blossoms bloom in the garden kind of thing. Howard fundamentally disagreed with this idea. He argued that Australian identity was decisively western, conservative and collective. It was Australia Day, the idea of a fair go, the British Commonwealth and a general distrust of those who  aspire to rise above their station. It was what sat in your gut ,and that your first instinct is your best one.

I see the struggle of Adam Cullen’s life through that clash in Australian ideology. Cullen’s toxic masculinity was a facade, demonstrated to him by the country he inhabited. His rejection of the multifaceted, sophisticated life and his whole-hearted embrace of petty, uncomplicated Australiana is as much the fault of John Howard as it is the artistic landscape of the time. A time of high economic growth and stifled political debate both of which benefited those establishment figures who already possessed both wealth and prestige. What Howard argued was that the ‘Lucky Country’ became instead the ‘Frightened Country’. Scared of immigrants, change and in some cases the reality of the wider world (Marr).

Acute Misfortune is a fantastic and essential read for those people willing to look beyond just the beautifully constructed words on the page. For me, the book reads as a state of the nation in the early 2010’s. Still struggling to emerge from the shadow of Little Johnny Howard and the ignorance of our own cultural output he instilled in generations following his leadership of our large island nation.

Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe (2014)  

Dark Emu, in my opinion, is probably one of the most interesting books on Australian history you could read today. The intention behind Pascoe’s work is to provide an alternative perspective to Aboriginal history and challenge preconceived ideas of first settlers as primitive and technologically backward.

I’ll be honest with you, Pascoe’s work is by no means utterly faultless; there is arguably a cherry picking of sources and a focus on non-Aboriginal sources. But you have to understand how fascinating both the intention and the effect of Dark Emu had on Melbourne and Australia as a  whole.  

Pascoe argues that in pre-contact times, Australian Aboriginal people weren’t just hunter gatherers; they were agriculturalists who changed their landscape to benefit  their communities. Examples of this include aquaculture in rivers, more permanent kinds of  settlements, and the spreading of seeds. He also contends that this evidence of pre-colonial  Aboriginal societies was often deliberately erased by early colonisers. For some in Australia, the  idea of our enormous continent being anything other than a sunburnt wasteland drove people  literally insane with rage.  

If you read most reviews of Dark Emu, the perception of it is considered mixed. Reviewers talk  about the book’s popularity or use gentle, academic phrases like ‘sparked debate’ and  ‘generated controversy’. This language does not go far enough to convey the tangible effect of the book’s release. People were sincerely upset by this book: media personalities called the whole thing a sham and a  waste of paper. The book tore open holes in the minds of many Australians. Some individuals could  find no academic way of absolutely discrediting Pascoe, so they critiqued his standing as an Aboriginal person instead.  

People who I personally thought of as uninterested in Aboriginal rights, or just non-readers on the  whole, were outraged by Dark Emu at the dinner table. For some, it confirmed their greatest fears,  that Australians had invaded and destroyed a society that already existed here long  before we rocked up and started telling ourselves this was all grass and kangaroos.  

Pascoe doesn’t fall into the quagmire of elaborate language, he writes simply for what is ostensibly an academic book. A big reason why I recommend Dark  Emu is that it is designed to be easy to read and digest.  

More so than any other piece of fiction or nonfiction published in the last decade, Dark Emu has brought a discussion of Australia’s colonial history into the mainstream, and we are all the better for it.  

This House of Grief, Helen Garner (2014)

Helen Garner’s work is the chicken parmigiana of the Australian literary landscape. Her work is fundamental much in the same way the chicken parma is to the traditional pub landscape. Just as every  pub must have a chicken parma special during the week, so too must every Melbourne bookshop  have at least a couple Garners out the back. Much like the parma, she is a reliable seat-filler.

This true crime book is a heart breaking story of a father, Robert Farquharson destroying his family, by murdering his three sons, because he is a broken man. Garner contends that perhaps all men are capable of reaching their breaking point and committing such an act. To do something totally unforgivable. I think Garner hints in this book at the idea of Australian identity being a fragmented thing. An artificial construct designed to shield most people from the harsh realities of living in Australia. More than 95% of Australians are non-indigenous, with no real understanding of why we are here and our short-lived traditions are designed to shield us from that fact rather than help us embrace and overcome it. It helps to come to this land pre-broken, with some kind of family chip on your shoulder. We fight for, purchase and build upon broken, colonised land that was never ours to begin with. It makes sense as to why people and communities who live here can end up perhaps even just a little bit broken. Garner uses the story of Robert Farquharson as a kind of warning, we can all, in different ways, be pushed to a breaking point. 

Garner’s insight and perspective is razor focused. She provides a fascinating examination of Robert Farquharson’s female relatives, and the effect of the children’s deaths on Cindy Gambino and her family. Garner  offers a unique perspective on the world around her by drawing attention to her role as author and  witness rather than trying to blend invisibly in the background. 

Her familiarity with Australian life is why she has had such tremendous success. 1 in every 100 Melburnians claims to have actually met Helen Garner. At swimming pools, super markets, university lunches, book shops and out the front of flinders street station. She is a kind of special literary ghost. I suspect 1 in every 1000 actually has met her.

I saw her speak most recently in 2025 about her most recent book The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder, to a packed house at the Melbourne Town Hall. Her words have the ability to transfix and unify, and just as everyone has their favorite pub parma, everyone has their favorite Garner work. This House of Grief is both mine and my mothers.

Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers, Ryan  O’Neill (2016) 

They are not real authors, the book is a clever work of fiction. 

Now that I’ve got the headline out of the way. My comments and thoughts. Their Brilliant Careers tells the story of 16 fictional yet highly realized Australian authors, comprising 16 individual but interconnected short stories.

O’Neill was most obviously inspired by Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño, who in  turn was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges. However O’Neill does so much more than simply mimic  Bolaño or Borges. He gives each of his chosen subjects a unique Australian flair: some cling to the  city, others flee to the regions or the suburbs. There is a restlessness about these characters that the  author captures perfectly with a clean and crisp prose. There is a stylised exactness about this  collection that makes it one of my favourites. Of the individual authors my favourites would  probably be Francis X McVeigh, Vivian Darkbloom and Helen Harkaway. There is a precision and emotion in each of these characters that touches me deeply and personally. I feel like given the right (or wrong) mix of choices I could end up just like them. 

The first time I read the book the individual stories were entertaining, but I didn’t fully appreciate the specifically Australian position of the work. It is a warm and comforting read the second time around. It’s a literary Kath and Kim. A humorous and gently affirming experience that enhances your perspective on what Australian culture can be. 

Their Brilliant Careers works so well because O’Neill is commenting on an absence. There is no  tangible literary landscape in the capital cities or the regions of this country. There are no libraries, cafes or restaurants or small towns famous for its cultural inhabitants. There are small clubs, reading circles and communities scattered like warts on a beautiful face. These blemishes are networking events rather than actual meaningful places of conversation and discussion. Culture is not something ingrained into our society. It has latched on like a parasite. The art, music, theatre, literature and creativity on our continent clings desperately to a hulking beast with Australia branded across its backside.

I enjoy Their Brilliant Careers because of the cultural absence it identified in Australia. There are no real literary cults set up around our writers or journalists in the way they are in America (see Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison or Truman Capote for more details). Their Brilliant Careers uses imaginative prose and compact storytelling to explore a kind of literary what if in Australian culture.

The Henson Case, David Marr (2008) 

This non-fiction selection is a hard find, but that, to me, is part of the experience of enjoying a really good book. It’s light and easy to read. The book explores the cultural fallout surrounding the 2008 raiding of a Sydney gallery.

The ‘case’ was a simple one. Bill Henson had been a professional, practising photographer since the mid-1970s.  He had cultivated institutional as well as social support for his work and had several major exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. Marr recounts the photographer’s exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, and the public media furore  that emerged from its invitation. The author takes a certain delight in naming and shaming those who first  brewed this storm of scandal.

The uproar around Bill Henson’s photos rose to such a level of outrage that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd,  described the photos by Henson as “absolutely revolting”. This, for Marr, was the final betrayal. A failure of leadership from a politician who had promised change, who had advocated for the arts when it was convenient, but chose to deliver populist scorn instead. This is the main thrust of Marr’s argument: if we live in the free democracy promised to us, we should have the right to express ourselves,  and to do so without being immediately strung up for crossing unspoken social taboos. Marr takes a refreshingly moderate approach in his criticism and acknowledges that his work is not for everyone. His position is that of strict anti-censorship. 

I think this book reminds its readers of modern events and foreshadows the  cultural quagmire some feel themselves sinking into. First and foremost for me, it would be the removal and reinstatement of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative at the 2026 Venice  Biennale. Sabsabi was controversially dumped only to then be quietly reinstated as Australia’s representative. His ‘crime’ was depicting Palestinian political figures in his paintings (Jefferson). The fact that Sabsabi, a professional artist has to justify his political perspective and how it relates to his work is an insult to any artist, but particularly to an Australian creative landscape who applauds the socially-aware work of Kaylene Whiskey because it appears harmlessly inoffensive (Silcox).

Interestingly, the title, The Henson Case, also hints at the resolution. Because there was no ‘Henson  Trial’ or ‘Oxley9 Trial’. No charges were ever issued against anybody for these images. Something  happened, some vein was pressed too tightly in the hearts of ordinary Australians.

If Helen Garner is to be a chicken parma, I would argue David Marr is to be a Vodka Soda with Lime. His writing is fundamental. On the surface, you imagine it to be something cheap and simple. Beneath that, you have something that kicks the back of your throat (or the mind, in Marr’s case) when you  really need it to. He is one of the few Australian authors I can think of who will argue with you as a reader and actively try to work you over to his side. He writes convincingly of how individual cases of censorship like this one can cause lasting damage to the Australian cultural landscape. 

These are all really excellent books and well worth a read. Even if you only read one you  will be doing yourself a tremendous favour. If these reviews do anything they should inspire you to support and visit Melbourne. It’s a literary landscape desperate for your attention. It’s in my opinion the greatest city in the world and beyond reproach. I would know because I have never lived anywhere else.

My hope is that, in the future, we see a recognition of Australia as a really unique and special place deserving of cultural attention. We live in what can feel like the perfect beginner’s level to life. Artists like Kaylene Whiskey, Brett Whiteley and Adam Cullen. Writers like Helen Garner, David Marr and Henry Lawson. These are established individuals who I feel have long gone unrecognized for their skill and talent because of their identity. If I want you to do anything I would encourage you to read and embrace something Australian, before it vanishes in a puff of poorly-funded air.

Citations

Jefferson, Dee. After a turbulent year, Australia’s Khaled Sabsabi will present two works at the Venice Biennale. Sydney, The Guardian, 2026. The Guardian Newspaper

Marr, David. His Master’s Voice: The Corruption of Public Debate Under Howard. Quarterly Essay 26 ed., Melbourne, Black Inc., 2007. Accessed 17/5/2026.

Phillips, A. A. The Cultural Cringe. 4th ed., Brisbane, Meanjin, 1950, https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-cultural-cringe-by-a-a-phillips/. Accessed 16/4/2026.

Silcox, Beejay. The joyful world of Kaylene Whiskey: the Indigenous artist pulling Dolly Parton and Wonder Woman into the outback. Melbourne, The Guardian Newspaper, 2025

The post 5 Aussie Reads appeared first on The New Absurdist.

“It’s because I’m a pig isn’t it? … I did not get the nomination for best actress … can you  honestly say I am not Oscar material? … In this male chauvinist, non pig world, did you ever  think I even stood a chance?”  

Miss Piggy to Johnny Carson at the 52nd Annual Academy Awards.¹ 

I should begin with honesty. A very good place to start. I am not a Muppet fanatic. I have not  always adored Miss Piggy as much as I adore her now. I was, for a long time, much more of an  establishment Disney villain queer. A devoted worshipper at the shrines of Cruella De Vil or  Ursula the Sea Witch. That said, I can happily watch a Muppet film with a glass of wine and enjoy a  pleasant giggle. 

Something about Miss Piggy struck me more deeply than the usual queer coded Disney villains. It  could be the wig. It could be the dress. It is probably the karate chops. As a queer man, I am  constitutionally inclined to admire a confident female character who can karate chop a villain with  one hand and cradle her amphibian lover in the other. 

There is something irresistibly special about Miss Piggy. 

Her position in the public eye fascinates me. How could it not. 

Miss Piggy has been a still performing celebrity since her debut in 1974 as Piggy Lee, a parody of  the singer Peggy Lee, in a Jim Henson television special. ² Since then she has done everything. She has starred in multiple feature films including The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The  Fantastic Miss Piggy Show and The Muppets Take Manhattan. She has hosted, guest starred, sung  duets, delivered monologues and stolen scenes with alarming ease. 

Through all of this, Piggy has developed a distinct comedic persona, one that draws heavily from  the work of earlier comedic and dramatic female stars. She is a vessel for those classic feminine  sensibilities, preserving them, exaggerating them and carrying them forward into the present day. In  a strange way, she functions as both archive and performance. 

Miss Piggy does not age. She is, much unlike myself, unvarnished by time. 

Because she does not age, she is spared the usual indignities that accompany celebrity longevity.  There is no physical decline to be commented on, no descent into public cognitive fragility, no late  career unraveling that forces audiences to renegotiate how they feel about her. Unlike so many real  celebrities of the past, she does not become an awful person, nor is she reframed through hindsight  as someone whose opinions now make us wince. 

Stars of her era tend to fall into familiar categories. Some become venerated icons, endlessly  rehabilitated and re-contextualised, like Jane Fonda. Others quietly disappear into the fog of  nostalgia, remembered fondly but vaguely, like your Tallulah Bankhead or Lauren Bacall. Miss  Piggy exists in both spaces at once. 

She is a figure of nostalgia and an active character in the contemporary media landscape. 

She is a kind of immortal Carol Burnett, who fittingly appeared as a guest on The Muppet Show in  1980. 

Because of this, Miss Piggy acts as a bridge to the previous century and to older, conventional ideas  about femininity. She embodies them so fully that she is able to subvert them, twisting tradition into  something that still resonates with modern audiences. Her exaggerated glamour becomes  commentary rather than costume. 

Modern pop stars even echo her influence. Chappell Roan, for example, has been rumoured to  draw inspiration from Miss Piggy’s theatrical silhouettes and unapologetic excess. ³ This makes a strange kind of sense. Piggy understood the power of costume long before the internet turned  fashion into a language of identity. 

I am always interested in who Miss Piggy appears alongside. 

On the original Muppet Show, she sang duets with John Denver, Elton John and Raquel Welch.  Piggy is endlessly adaptable. She bends just enough to fit the guest star of the week without ever  losing herself. Her personality is strong but elastic, capable of surviving any context. 

In the most recent iteration of The Muppet Show, she appears beside Sabrina Carpenter. What is  striking here is that Carpenter subtly adjusts herself to fit Miss Piggy, rather than the other way  around. That alone says a great deal about Piggy’s accumulated cultural weight. By embodying  stereotypes and gleefully undermining them, she has somehow become a modern trendsetter. 

This is not something all boundary breaking celebrities manage. 

Plenty of stars who once seemed radical now feel awkward, dated or outright troubling. Scarlett  Johansson and Diane Keaton (until her death) continue to defend Woody Allen. Nicki Minaj has called herself Trump’s number one fan . Patti Lupone being Patti Lupone . ^{5 6} 

Divas age. They change. Often the media reacts badly to those changes, often unfairly. But Miss  Piggy avoids this entire cycle. At the end of the day, she is literally put back in a box and stored  until she is needed again, perfectly preserved. 

Sabrina Carpenter is an interesting choice, but not an inspired one. The new Muppet Show is  intriguing, yet it ultimately feels like a retreat into familiar territory. If you love The Muppet Show,  you might as well just watch the original. It remains sharper, stranger and more alive than its  successors. 

Miss Piggy’s greatest appeal is her ability to function as a bridge. On the surface, she is just a pig  puppet in a wig and a dress. Beneath that surface is a personality capable of making people feel  seen, affirmed and entertained all at once. 

As an entity, Miss Piggy also works as a quiet teaching tool. For audiences still learning about  pronouns, identity and gender norms, she offers an accessible example. You can point to her and  say, notice how this character refuses to be defined by what society expects of her. That is a deeply  uplifting thing, even when it arrives wrapped in satin gloves and dramatic eyelashes. 

Diva worship is basically my religion, and Miss Piggy absolutely deserves a niche, if not a full altar. 

My favourite historical nugget is Miss Piggy’s 1979 campaign for the leading actress Oscar for her  role in The Muppet Movie. It is what I love most about her. It felt like a genuine expression of  character rather than a corporate publicity stunt. That campaign even produced a wonderfully  absurd exchange between ABC’s Hughes Rudd and Academy President Fay Kanin. 

“To see Miss Piggy is to think of Olivia De Haviland, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid  Bergman, Oscar winners all. So why shouldn’t Piggy have an Oscar?” 

“You know we all do love Miss Piggy,” Kanin replied, “but the rules of the Academy say that  we give awards and nominations to actors and actresses, not to characters, and since Miss  Piggy is a character, we just can’t, we can’t do that.” 

Miss Piggy, of course, would disagree. And she would be right in doing so.

The post The Glamorous, Immortal Nostalgia of Miss Piggy  appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Would it be so bad to admit that this grief is for the childhood dogs I grew up with? I don’t think I will ever truly stop missing them, remembering them, mistaking the scratch of a branch at the window for their smallfooted bodies waiting to come back inside. The idea of a dog being ‘just a dog’ is a foreign concept to me, despite having heard those words time and time again in my life. 

Sweet things — it was only years ago, some hot summer, the sun baking us in the metal of our boat. My family, a few cousins, and me, on a heat wave weekend. The waters were choppy and unforgiving, but T-bone and Minnie had good lake legs. They knew how to move around, how to stand, when to sit, and when to brace themselves. They had always been the best deckhands on the Cobalt, but as the years bore on in those palmetto days, I saw the change. The new slowness, the minor struggle you could only identify when really searching for it. Before the days were over, though, they would have managed to steal a few chips from my mama. If I had known what times would be the last, I would’ve given them a few more. I would’ve laid by them on the brown floor of the boat the whole ride. 

I try to fill these days with reading, much as I do any other time of the year, but in the winter with more of a desperation. I have been digging through Mary Oliver’s Devotions. Containing some of her best work across many of her different publications, there was a poem that stuck with me the most: Her Grave, which hails from her 2013 poetry collection Dog Songs. 

She would come back, dripping thick water, from the green bog. 

She would fall at my feet, she would draw the black skin 

from her gums, in a hideous and wonderful smile — 

and I would rub my hands over her pricked ears and her 

cunning elbows, 

And I would hug the barrel of her body, amazed at the unassuming 

perfect arch of her neck. 

Dog Songs details the canine companions of Oliver’s life, and expresses the profound love and joy they brought her in details that are etched in a sort of nostalgia. Each poem recalls a dog that she can only continue to love in memory or retrospect. In the language of each poem are intimate recollections of not just their habits and personalities, but their features, their bodies, and the things about each of them that brought a familiarity even in their passing. Her Grave is one of the longest and most heartbreaking of the collection, as she remembers fondly the last days of her dog, Luke. 

It took four of us to carry her into the woods. 

We did not think of music, 

but, anyway, it began to rain 

slowly.

Her wolfish, invitational, half-pounce. 

Her great and lordly satisfaction at having chased something. 

My great and lordly satisfaction at her splash 

of happiness as she barged 

through the pitch pines swiping my face with her 

wild, slightly mossy tongue. 

It is through even the smallest of descriptions that she gives us the devoted imagery of Luke, staving away from any kind of apathetic ennui. It makes sense that Oliver would hone in on furry friends when a great majority of her writing is based in the natural world. However, instead of basing us in her usual lakes, mountains, or forests, we find ourselves in the simple places we often are with our pets. Fields, kitchens, bathrooms. For Her Grave, it is in the hardest of these: those last days, and a resting place. 

Does the hummingbird think he himself invented his crimson throat? 

He is wiser than that, I think. 

A dog lives fifteen years, if you’re lucky. 

Do the cranes crying out in the high clouds 

think it is all their own music? 

A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you 

do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the 

trees, or the laws which pertain to them. 

Does the bear wandering in the autumn up the side of the hill 

think all by herself she has imagined the refuge and the refreshment 

of her long slumber? 

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the 

smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know 

almost nothing. 

It was in this section that I had to sit with what Oliver was writing. I didn’t understand why she was referencing these animals and critters, or what they meant. I understood that we did not truly own our dogs, but what did that mean here? 

What I did know is that losing a dog is a special grief. And I think that, with human life, we know it to be a fact that we are all going to be gone somehow, some way. From the first time your parents take you by the shoulders and explain that someone, for some reason, is gone forever. From biology classes, from the nightly news, from the interstate, from cemeteries, and from boating accidents. I forgot, though, that this inevitable fate also applies to dogs. As a child there was no such thing as death because I had just barely begun to live. I had always navigated this life with a good dog at my ankles, barking and squirming happily while I giggled and ran with my arms outstretched — a memory that sprawls as far as the bermuda grass that grows to the edge of the cypress trees.

What I came to understand, after pouring over this poem over and over, is that not only do we not truly own our dogs, but they themselves understand this. We can own them, sure, on paper, or even in relationships that bear strong threads that seem impossible to break, completely inseparable. But they are always going to be part of where they originally came, even as we pamper them, adore them, and hold them close. And, somehow, this realization came as a comfort. 

She roved ahead of me through the fields, yet would come back, or 

wait for me, or be somewhere. 

Now she is buried under the pines. 

Nor will I argue it, or pray for anything but modesty, and 

not to be angry. 

I held a lot of frustration when I lost the second of my two dogs. While the first passed peacefully in sleep, the second was not the same. I walked around for weeks with a pent up anger that was melded together in hot tears. While that anger has cooled and replaced itself with acceptance, this poem put me further into something closer to understanding, rather than just blind affirmation. While it did seem she had been taken from me unfairly, there is somewhere where she runs through the grass, finds no faults in her little body, and is overjoyed just to be somewhere, the two of them together. 

Through the trees there is the sound of the wind, palavering. 

The smell of the pine needles, what is it but a taste 

of the infallible energies? 

How strong was her dark body! 

How apt is her grave place. 

How beautiful is her unshakable sleep. 

Finally, 

the slick mountains of love break 

over us. 

Oliver’s love for Luke, just like my own for my dogs, is coated by the knowledge that there is nothing to be done in loss, even as you wish for a way to change things. A love so impeccable and invincible that even a mountain, tall and daunting, breaks softly at the touch of a pure love like a dog’s love. When they leave us, it is not a loss or a derision — rather, it is a thankfulness, a love that sticks around. You may spend all these years without them after, but they spent all of theirs with you. That, for them, is all they need. They are always to be found in the mountains, in the nature they loved in living, in all the corners they once kept.

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And oh it was hot. Hot like Old Testament Lot, all mad/sad that his wife wanted to watch her friends go to ash. But what the hell was I doing there, then? Same exact thing. Only I didn’t care which one of us got to see the other go, didn’t matter if it was Helen or me. One of us would be cinder and the other salt. Here there was no skin-of-his-teeth, “wasn’t my fault,” Sodomite. And, anyway, Helen and I were not married.

I had been dating this girl who looked like a living Modigliani. The stretched limbs and dead eyes that are – as static modernist art – the pulse of surface beauty. But find someone who looks like this for real and it is not nice to gaze upon. I didn’t even like her for “who she was,” for, whatever that might have entailed, Helen was a creature who infatuated me because of her untranslatable nature, her put-off presence, her lines and planes. After our third date I knew she felt the same way about me. And now we had been seeing each other for three months and we kept meeting up for dates – never breaking them, I mean. Helen needs glasses and never wears them, so in her eyes I come off like one of Francis Bacon’s guilty men: red and pink and then too white, when I laugh I become all mouth, bragging about gums and no good can come out of me. 

I gave up on the window, got out of the car and found my way to my seat in the third row.  Helen’s always late. There is no one else who looks like me. So, I was thinking: if she gets here then no problem. Her eyes will adjust over the seats and she’ll find me. Or she won’t show up and she’ll have beaten me at this. Our relationship was this tight Rock, Paper, Scissors-thing that became evermore steeped in the stress of how used to each other we were getting. It had always been clear in our silence how we would end. One of us would stand the other one up, and this crowning act of negligence – no matter how much we’d spoken to each other on the phone or written postcards, smiled to our families whenever we mentioned who we were seeing, what we did on our evenings out – would end it. And, like I said, we had never broken a date.  

Every Thursday night the In-Joke shows two short local films before the main feature.  As I waited for Helen I watched a carnival movie. Seventeen minutes in and it still looked like there would be no fun, not even that rank howl of the dark carnival time. Although, I did feel the pain of sweaty things: there was a jar of some amniotic-looking fluid sitting atop a rotten workbench, there was a lot of sawdust, and the score was a very drunken sounding harpsichord. 

If the flick didn’t keep flashing the words CARNIVAL, I would have forgotten what I was watching. I was thinking that this was my chance; this was the sheer space I needed to make my exit. Like: Well, I was getting sick just waiting for you to show, these student films are all so painful. Why do you get to be late? This is wrong. I’m out of here, babe. But the picture ended and I let go of my tension as the commercials came on. BUY A SODA, the words so red that you felt thirst; and a child of – I was guessing – eleven holding a chocolate bar to her lips and not smiling, really looking bored, like she didn’t need this chocolate, or like she was so used to eating chocolate that it did nothing for her. I was calm now, not wanting to ever drink a soda or eat a chocolate bar again. And now the second film. A horror movie, a black and white thing called Wrist. Aptly named and well paced. This guy gets off his convenience store job, and on his walk home nearly trips over something sticking out of the ground. He looks down and it is this finger bone. There is a thirty second camera swim around the porous object, and heaven music – synthetic organ and wash out-waves that warmed my neck, made me smile. Cut to the guy trying to dig it up. His fingers rubbing out the soft earth around the bone. We see his wrists working like he’s untying someone that needs clock-stop rescuing. There is no music when he does this, but the pant and gasp of our hero’s determination. Now the hand bones are exposed.  And again: thirty seconds of a camera inspection, that same alcohol soaked cotton balls, then rubbed along the spine-music. He keeps on digging and we go down the wrist bone. Four inches down – the work, so easy – the guy starts to pull at the ossified appendage; handshake grip like his wrists and dead wrist have always been buddies. And he yanks the arm out, too far but the bone won’t stop. How long can this go on? When the guy sees that the single bone has revealed itself to be as long as a short leg, he takes a breather. Then slowly starts the inevitable pull again.  He is cautious now, not panting. In the corner of the screen the sky is changing, the sun is coming up. The screen goes to black. The film is over. I’m glad I saw it, but wish I could forget every moment. 

And this was my cue to leave. If I wanted to be the guy who cut it close but in the end bailed, I had to get up right then before Helen showed. There are never any trailers before the main feature. And I was sitting in the dark. I could hear the breaks in the film, the switch of audio levels. The screen kept flicking bright empty projections of no show. My eyes adjusted to having to seize quick sight and I noticed that Helen was sitting to my left, a seat away from me, looking at the same white surface. She couldn’t have been there for much more than a few minutes. She looked at me then pulled up a large tub of popcorn from her lap to offer me some.  I didn’t want to eat unless the main feature was playing. But when was it going to start? This was uncomfortable. 

We had shown up. Helen and I had kept up our part of the deal, but the movie hadn’t.  And now: not even the courtesy of erratic flickering, just the integrity of projector light unfiltered by any film. The sharp planes of Helen’s face and the pale lip-skin that detailed her pout had never cooperated so tightly before. She opened her mouth to ask me something, but didn’t say a word, and after a moment let it close. 

The screen went to black, then white again. The audio was being messed with. There was a sizzle-hissing noise coming from the speakers that were lined along the theater walls. Helen put her hand in the bucket of popcorn while I, before she could pull it out, cupped my fingers over her knuckle. My palm was growing cold, sweaty; but I left it there, counting to twenty and staring at the white screen, all the while knowing that we were both looking up at that sheet of silence, of bye-bye surrender. I let go of her, then stood up, really thinking that I was going to the concession stand to get a bottled water. I mean totally believing that, so much so that I didn’t even tell Helen what I was getting up for.  

But moving out of the theater and into the lobby I just kept walking. Slow pace-like; zombie sauntering toward final rest or little boy looking for an expensive toy he was warned against losing. I walked out of the cinema and then over to my car. There was a guy standing on a ladder and changing the letters on the marquee. And there was a pink flyer under my windshield wiper. I opened the car door. Water had collected in the driver’s seat. It was not raining, but it had. While I was inside, it had rained. 

The post Rock, Paper, Cinema appeared first on The New Absurdist.

On the 11^th May 2024 a temporary forest sprouted in a theatre in Tartu, Estonia. The trees  were a gathering of around 50 tattooed Estonians, and the ink on their skin spoke of personal  stories of triumph and heartache, pride and resilience, celebration and change. We instructed  them to show as many of their tattoos as possible while dwelling silently in the darkened  performance space. 

I was positioned in the centre. I’d written a sequence of eight stories inspired by the same  tattoos that now surrounded me. I’d also spent time reading Estonian folktales and  mythology, I’d explored the edgelands of Tartu, and I’d visited the ancient mires and forests  of the nearby countryside. The stories attempted to respond to these various nodes while  staying rooted in the narrative traditions of folklore. The tattoos offered an obvious theme of  ‘permanence & change’ which I soon found reflected in the Estonian landscapes and their  accompanying mythologies. The resulting story sequence told new folktales of forests and  their people who contend with nebulous technologies, eternal conflicts, and fragile  interpersonal relationships. One of the stories, ‘The Artist’, is interwoven throughout this  essay, like ivy embracing a tree trunk. 

Back in the theatre, I’d fanned out the stories around me in an eight-pointed mandala.  This is a pattern often found in Estonian folk cultures and was also to be discovered inked  across the shoulders of one of our trees, somewhere in the shadows. At fifteen-minute  intervals, small groups of audience entered the space with torches. They were told to roam the forest, shining their lights on the tattoos while I read out one of the tales. At the end of the  story, that audience group would exit, and the next would enter soon after for the next  reading. 

Beneath it all looped a soundscape composed by UK electronica artist Rickerly that featured birdsong, the swish of the wind in the canopy, long-held drone tones, and sonic hints  of distant machinery. A chasing sequence of lights pulsated overhead, and a thin haze of  smoke filled the air. The tattooed trees would sway and shift, a few fell gently to the ground,  others crouched like stumps, one did a handstand as if uprooted, her roots turned upwards to  the sky. Sometimes I would roam towards particular tattoos, other times I would stay seated  in the centre and let the audience make their own connections.

We cycled this for four hours so that each story would be read twice. Two full turns of the  mandala.  

This was The Forest of Ink & Skin. 

The Artist: Part 1 

On the edge of a mighty forest lived a woman who was all alone in all the world.  No-one knew why she lived alone. Some from the town say that she was left in the forest as  a baby and raised by bears. Some say she had a husband once, but he was so cruel to her that  she killed him and burned his body in the fire she uses to heat her sauna. Some say she’s not a  woman at all, but a witch who is also a werewolf. But she kept herself to herself and was no  trouble, so the townsfolk let her be. 

But the world turned, as it does, and the times changed, as they do, and the town swelled  and became a city, bursting at the seams.  

And from that city came a man.  

He had silver hair, a golden suit, and bronze shoes, and he ate dry food from boxes instead  of the plentiful food offered by the forest. He walked with great confidence, his head high and  his arms swinging, as if pretending he were a giant taller than all the trees. He thumped a fist  on the door of the woman’s house. Against her better judgement, she let him in. 

“Why do you live here all on your own?” he asked. “No husband, no lover, no children, not  even a dog or a cat. Aren’t you lonely?” 

It took some persuasion to make the woman speak, but the man had a silver tongue and lots  of patience. Soon enough, the woman was telling the tragic tale of her life. She had not been  abandoned as a baby, she had never married nor killed a man, she was no werewolf or witch.  Her tale was much more complex, much more difficult to understand, and contained just as  much love as it did pain. Later, when the silver-haired man was questioned he could not  remember her story, for he had not really been listening. His mind was typical of the men from  the city: always busy thinking of other things. 

“There must be something that you want?” he said. “Something you desire most in all the  world?” 

She said that she had everything she needed right here in her house with her sauna, and the  forest. 

“That can’t be true,” he said. “You need a husband?” 

No.

“You need children?” 

No. 

“Then surely you must feel the need to travel beyond the forest and see the rest of the world?” 

She paused. She said no, but he heard her hesitation.  

“Aha,” he said. “You have wanderlust!” 

She had never heard this word.  

“No,” she said, more firmly. “True, I am curious about the world, but I have no desire to leave this place.” 

“Well, that’s easy,” he said, smiling a smile with no real smile inside it. From his pocket he produced a strange, glowing device and gave it to her. He showed her how to use it, and it  showed her the world.  

She was soon entranced. 

“You can keep this one,” he said. “But I want something in exchange. We’re building a harbour. Boats, ships, and docklands that look out over the sea. Our city needs to keep growing  and the ocean cannot stop us. Naturally, we need lots of wood. I will be taking the forest.” 

The woman nodded because she was not really listening. She was looking at pictures of  harbours and docklands and boats and ships, and she was looking at the sea and wondering  how far it stretched. 

“I will return for it in one year,” said the man, and strode out with his head high, his chest  up, and his arms swinging like axes. 

How it came to be: 

The core concept of The Forest of Ink & Skin had sprung from the head of my collaborator,  the Tallinn-based performance artist Henri Hütt. We had wandered Tartu together seeking  inspiration, and he’d struck upon the idea of an audience doing the same. He envisioned a  ‘rhizomatic story experience’ where an element of ‘soft participation’ might be created through  an audience actively rambling through tattoos. Perhaps, he suggested, my story might mention  an owl, and in that same moment the various torchbearers could be looking at a feather, or the mandala, or a mouse, or a skull, or the word ‘survive’, or, indeed, an owl. In this way, each  audience member makes their own symbolic associations between what is seen and what is  heard, perhaps enjoying thematic resonance or instead experiencing the disturbance of  dissonance, or something more nebulous in the hinterland between the two.

And while the tattoos had directly inspired the stories, that unity was eroded by the roaming  audience who encountered these alternative montages. A skull tattoo might portent a character  death that never happens, or a devil sparks a fear that proves misguided, or a heart suggests a  romance that is unfulfilled. In a sense we’d created a strange edgeland of narrative where  steadfast symbolic connections are put under strain and new uncanny linkages spring up in  their place. 

Of course, the audience had other alternatives. They were also free to switch off their torches  and turn away from the tattoos to focus entirely on me – and, indeed, some did exactly this. In  contrast, there were many others who roamed with determination from one inked body to  another as if this were an art exhibition (which, in a sense, it was), and seemed to completely  ignore the story being told. This too was a legitimate experience, especially for those few who  may have struggled with the language barrier (my stories were told in English). Whatever they  decided, our main intention had been to liberate the audience from their anonymous,  homogenous block of relative safety and instead let them loose to embrace a degree of chaos. 

To be rhizomatic, according to Deleuze & Guattari, is to resist the ‘arborescent’ and  hierarchical way of thinking, with branches sprouting from branches all derived from a central  trunk. Instead, we are to adopt a planar, horizontal network with no overall coherence or order,  where starting points and ending points are not so easily defined. In this sense, while our  tattooed participants became trees for the afternoon, the rhizomatic experience better evoked  the imagined mycorrhizal network beneath our feet; the ‘wood wide web’ of fungi fibres that  spread from tree roots to tree roots carrying messages and information. There was a visual  sense of this during the performance. We kept the experience on a horizontal plane, no one  person any higher or lower than anyone else, myself included. We had no riser stage to step  onto, and the audience were not in their raked seating. The traditional theatrical spatial hierarchy was eroded.  

This was partly how I was able to brush off those audience members who seemed not to be  listening to my stories. We had created a space of wandering freedoms rather than a constricted  focus, an almost neurodivergent theatrical expansion that accommodated the differing needs,  attitudes, and intentions of the non-homogenous visitors. I also came to realise that I did in fact  have a dedicated second audience in the form of the tattooed trees, many of whom reported  entering a heightened mindful state as they embodied the forests I repeatedly invoked in my  tales (especially the carved one included here in ‘The Artist’). By the second half of the four  hours, they were making links between the stories and showing me relevant tattoos that I had  not previously seen. I was most delighted to discover a hedgehog on someone’s arm given that the final story in the sequence ends with a hedgehog with ink in its spines. The rhizomatic  network was feeding messages back to me.  

I’ve deliberately invoked neurodiversity here as a rhizomatic offshoot from my previous project, where I studied the relationships between autism and fantastical narratives for a  Creative Writing PhD. I’d come across the work of radical French educator Fernand Deligny  who had, across the 1960s and 70s, fiercely resisted the institutionalisation of autistic children.  Instead, he’d developed a form of cartographic observation where young autistics are given  time and space to roam as they pleased while Deligny mapped their ‘wander lines’. These maps  were subsequently used as navigation aids during the therapeutic and socialisation activities of  his clinic. 

Deligny’s idea was to allow the world to bend around the autistic people, rather than forcing  the autistics to fight their instincts for the sake of fitting into a world constructed around  neurotypicality. Such thinking is a core tenet of the neurodiversity movement in the present  day, and this ‘neuroqueering’ of the world offers a fresh approach to the deconstruction of the  stubborn hierarchical structures of narrative and performance. I like to think we all left our  ‘wander lines’ on the floor of that theatre. Overlapping loops and circles of audience, trees, and  performer, each telling their own idiomatic tale of the desire to see and be seen. 

It would not be a wholly rhizomatic picture. Seen from above, it would be me at the core with the audience circling, and the trees drifting slowly around in the same orbit, like satellites. But I think also of the pattern of the torch beams, the ‘castlines’ perhaps, that tell a more  rhizomatic tale as they dart from tattoo to tattoo in a divergent quest for coincidence and  discordance. 

Something had been freed, I like to think, to run wild inside our forest. 

The Artist: Part 2  

Later, the woman was alone in her sauna.  

There was a great storm shaking the forest, and the branches of the nearest tree were tapping  furiously at her window. Soon enough, the strange device stopped working, so the woman had  to come back to her own mind. She remembered what the man had said, and it upset her  immensely. 

She ran from the sauna and sought out the wisest trees of the forest.  

First, she visited the eldest birch, the kindest and most understanding, and begged for its  forgiveness. A birch does not hold grudges, for it offers patches of its silver skin to write love songs and memories. The birch, in all its wisdom, could see she had been tricked by the silver haired man and his hypnotic device. 

The birch said: “You must take the device to the eldest oak and place it inside the hollow.  The oak will examine the device and it will soon know what to do.” And the birch gave her a  coat of its silver skin to protect her from the rain. 

She hurried to the oak and kneeled at the roots, begging again for forgiveness. While the  oak was grumpier than the birch, it was also the sturdiest and wisest of all the trees in the forest.  It took the device in its hollow and swallowed it. The oak began to understand new and  wonderous things. It learned about the strange age of glowing devices that had arrived so  suddenly in the last few rings of growth. It saw how they connected, and how the humans were  dragged along in an agonising cycle of high joys and deep pains. Most of all, it saw possibility.  Endless possibility. And soon it had a plan. 

The oak placed a crown of its leaves upon the woman’s head to grant her its wisdom. “I will keep hold of this device,” it said, “it is not for likes of you. Now go, to the eldest  pine, who will give you the items you will need.” 

With her cloak of silver skin, and her crown of leaves, she hurried on to meet the pine.  Again, she fell to her knees and begged for forgiveness. The pine was the most artful and  cheeriest of trees. It had long forgiven the woman even before she transgressed, knowing full  well that she would never harm a living soul. The pine knew of the oak’s plan, and happily  agreed. It bled out a barrel of its inky sap and gave her a sack full of its sharpest needles. 

“Well, well,” said the pine. “You’re going to create art, my dear. A picture, if you please,  upon every tree in the whole forest, but a different picture each time, of course. And then go  into the city and tell all the people to come see your work. It will be fabulous.” 

She was very scared, as she had never attempted to create art before, and she had not visited  the city for a long time. The pine laughed and gave her a cone to place beside her heart, because  a pinecone is a work of patience and pattern beloved by young and old.  

She spent a moment practicing on the trunk of the pine, drawing two stick figures fighting  with swords. It was crude but it was delightful, and for the first time since leaving the sauna,  the woman felt a glimmer of hope. 

What it meant: 

During my trip to Tartu in February 2024, just as the writing of the stories was starting in  earnest, I escaped the hard Estonian winter for a couple of hours and took to the cosy warmth of the Elektriteater cinema. The auditorium was packed, not a spare seat in the house, and the  Estonians were uncharacteristically fidgety and vocal. The film was Vara Küps (‘Vertical  Money’), a documentary by Martti Helde concerning the current management (most would say  mismanagement) of Estonian forests. Slick businessmen would appear on screen to justify the  excessive logging and the unhealthy cutting methods, raising incredulous laughter and barbed  comments from the auditorium. The tension in the room was palpable.  

Estonians have been known as ‘forest-people’. Around 60% of the Estonian landscape is  forest (compared to around 12% of the UK), and their histories, religions and mythologies are  deeply intertwined with woodland. For philosopher and semiotician Valdur Mikita forest covered landscapes are ‘an essential part of the sense of home for Estonians’, and he suggests  that forests have been ‘an accelerator of consciousness’ for the nation. He argues that forests  are where ‘periphery accumulates’ and spending quiet, meditative time within them ‘supply a culture with the unusual and keep it alive’ (Forestonia, Estonian Literature Centre, 2020).  

He also tells of the importance of the ‘home forest’; the area of woodland closest to your  home which is adopted as a sacred and treasured place. You’ll go there to forage for berries  and firewood, you may build your smoke sauna within those trees, you may even find yourself  a warden of an ancient and sacred pagan site. Historically, Estonia was one of the last holdouts  on Christianity, abiding for hundreds of years as a stubborn pagan pocket, and there are signs  throughout the country that these earth-beliefs never fully went away. This may have been in  large part due to these forests, where sacred spaces could stay more easily hidden and  preserved. And while Estonia is today considered one of the most atheist countries in the world,  there is a clear spiritual intensity for nature within Estonian hearts, with forests as a central  pillar of the pantheon. 

Estonian trees have persisted as protectors and providers of sanctuary. During World War  II, when Estonia and the other Baltic states were tossed between Soviet and Nazi control, the  forests became the fertile arena of resistance. The ‘Forest Brothers’ freedom fighters took  advantage of the generational knowledge of the woodlands and became a persistent thorn in  the side of the oppressors. While the Stalinist regime eventually quashed these efforts, the  legacy of this woodland brotherhood echoes down and can be felt today in the proud and  unwavering Estonian support for Ukraine. 

Today, many of the urbanised Estonians will retain a modest ‘country house’ at the edge of  a forest to decamp to during summer – locations that proved vital during the COVID pandemic.  Wood is everywhere in Tartu; most of the houses are made of wood, their tourist nick-nacks  are wooden kitchen utensils, and in the colder evenings the streets fill with the heady scent of woodsmoke. It was no small thing to choose the forest as our creative setting; the trees  intertwine with Estonian existence as if their blood were sap and their skin, bark.

And yet, despite all this, Vara Küps reveals a governmental distain for the preservation of  woodland heritage. Forest felling has accelerated in recent years, and large swathes of ancient  woodland are being aggressively cut in pursuit of profits. Wood, of course, is one of Estonia’s  key exports, and the forestry commission argue that harder winters and growing populations,  both within and outside Estonia, require more wood as a source of fuel. But activists contend  that protected forests are being shadily re-categorised and felling stats are being fudged to  accommodate aggressive expansion. Environmental concerns are also being ignored as  monoculture pseudo-forests are cultivated for the purposes of logging, resulting in unhealthy,  lifeless woodlands with little other flora or fauna. The pointed use of drone shots throughout  Vara Küps show the devastation wrought on the landscape. Bare and boggy arenas scratched  with the black track lines of the harvesting machines, the scarring wander lines of ecocide.

The story sequence of ‘The Forest of Ink & Skin’ makes regular contact with these fragilities. In one tale, a future city has carefully constructed sanitised ‘zones’ of nature,  including the most extreme version of a monoculture forest, and has embedded folkloric fears  among the people to stop them straying beyond the boundaries and into the wilds. The girl who  disobeys is reunited with animal life and transformed into a witchy figure more radical than  the city folk have been allowed to imagine. In another, a family collectively loses their memory  after one member, the youngest, is cursed for neglecting the home forest. Returning to the trees  restores a fragile form of harmony, but the ancient forces of the woodland fade into an unheard  distance, doomed to be forever out of sync with human modernities. I hope ‘The Artist’,  included here, speaks for itself. 

Like our audience, the stories meander and drift and make unexpected turns. They are  pointedly self-aware, asking questions of the narratives we construct for ourselves when we  use them to justify inharmonious actions. Obvious conclusions are resisted, questions are posed  and left unanswered, and throughout the sequence the forest abides as a ‘bewitching landscape’  (Mikita, Forestonia). It persists as often as it falls, it outlasts and outlives, sometimes shunning  our fairytale foibles, sometimes embracing them wholeheartedly. Much like our tattooed trees,  the forests in the stories are temporary, private, mysterious, and lead their own lives away from  the glare and the torch beams of visitors. 

Vara Küps unveiled to me a febrile debate that I was wholly unaware of, reminding me of  the similar debates we’re having in the UK concerning the poisoning of our bodies of water. It  also helped to reveal the cultural importance of asking a group of Estonians to embody a living forest of temporary trees and inviting another group to explore it. The rhizomatic experience  within the theatre space extended far beyond those darkened walls, reaching into the depths of  the home forests, ancient forests, and sickly forests just beyond the city limits.  

The central presence of the tattoos, I hope, emphasised a theme of defiant permanence that  helped strengthen these mycorrhizal narrative lines. Here, carved on the skin-bark of our sturdy  oak-humans were hieroglyphics of hope, icons of inspiration, and runes of resilience, the exact  details and reasons for their origins deliberately obscured. Instead, the mere existence of the  tattoos urged us forward by showing that change will happen, but our destinies are shaped by  what we choose to do. 

The Artist: Part 3 

Every day of that year from dawn to dusk, she went from tree to tree sketching and etching,  wearing her cloak of birch and her crown of oak, with the cone of pine snug beside her heart.  On the tree closest to the city, she drew an eight-pointed mandala with a butterfly at the  centre. It would tell the townsfolk that there was a transformation underway.  On the tree furthest from the city, she drew herself, her arms crossed over her chest, and her  head replaced with blooming flowers and stretching leaves, so that she could always remind  herself that there are ways out of every difficult situation. 

And on the tree at the very centre of the forest, not far from the eldest birch, she drew a great  dragon, borrowing all the colours of the forest, from the berries to the beetles, and the tree  responded by growing twice as tall so that the dragon could look out across the canopy, ready  to spring to life should any felling begin. 

It took her almost the whole year but with one day to spare, and only one needle from the  pine remaining, and just one single drop of its sap, she had etched pictures on every trunk of  every tree throughout the whole of the mighty forest.  

There was but one task remaining, and she barely had the energy to do it. But the dragon  roared from above the canopy, roses bloomed from her cheeks, and the mandala swirled  through her mind and drew her to the edge of the city. 

With the final needle and the last drop of sap, she fell upon the door of the house closest to  the forest and wrote the words: ‘Come and See’. Then she turned and walked back towards the  forest, knowing full well that this journey would be her last. 

When she reached the mandala, she just had enough energy to look behind. There was a vast  crowd of people following her and they all had the same strange device as the man who had  visited her almost a year ago. 

And the great tragedy of this tale is that our artist died on that spot thinking that she had  failed. Her final thoughts were these: that all those people had been hypnotised by the silver haired man just as she had been, and they were going to use those devices to destroy the trees  and build the wooden city to choke the distant sea. 

But the trees knew differently. She had not failed. The oak’s plan had worked perfectly. The people came with their devices, but they did not cut down the trees. They explored the  forest to every corner and every inch, and they marvelled at the work our artist had done. And  with their strange devices, they showed her work to the rest of the world and within the space  of just a few brief hours, the plans of the silver-haired man were stopped.  As for that man, he was driven out of the city and told to go elsewhere. As for her house, it  became a shrine for her mighty work.  

As for the forest, it lived on, the trees aching in the pain of bearing her art, but they stayed  standing for as long as they could manage, which was many, many years.  And by the time the last painted tree had fallen, there were already many new trees in place.

The post The Forest of Ink & Skin appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Cole left his desk and stood in the office doorway. “You doing okay, buddy?” he asked.

Imad regarded him with eyes that seemed too big for his face. “I’ve been under the weather,” he replied. “Too much reading. You know how it is.”

“I’m more of an audiobook man myself.” Cole cleared his throat. “Listen, Imad. I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t look so great. Do you want to sit down before you head out? I’ve still got some soda from the graduation party in the minifridge. You’d be doing me a favor if you took one.”

A wan smile surfaced on Imad’s face. He took a step toward the office, but his expression twisted into a grimace as his laptop bag shifted against his side. “Thanks, but I’d better get going,” he muttered.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone? Like a Lyft or something?” Cole offered, but Imad shook his head and slipped through the door to the stairs. 

Cole watched as he left. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the corridor, but he could have sworn he saw a sheen of sweat on Imad’s forehead. It was probably nothing more serious than a summer cold, but Cole wondered what Imad could have read to make his face so pale. 

As he indulged in speculation, Cole’s imagination got the better of him. Miskatonic University was famous for housing a large collection of books once deemed heretical by the large universities in Boston. Even today, books bound in human skin occupied a substantial division of the library archives. What if Imad had gotten sick from contact with one of the books in the special collections?

A story about a forbidden book would make a great podcast episode. The most downloaded episode on Cole’s feed was a story about a cursed doll he’d found on Etsy. Creepy dolls were a dime a dozen, but the pink mildew poking out of this doll’s cracked porcelain scalp was something special. The listing said the seller was local, so Cole sent her a message and requested an in-person viewing of the doll. The seller immediately replied with her address.

When Cole drove over, he found the doll perched on the edge of the rotting concrete porch of an abandoned wastewater plant. It sat in a puddle of something that wasn’t quite liquid. Cole was painfully aware that he’d walked headlong into a prank, but he didn’t touch the doll. He had no interest in mucking about with the neon fungus infesting its hair, but he was more than happy to take a photo. 

Cole invented a lurid story about the doll for his podcast. Sure enough, listeners loved it. He resented the popularity of such obvious clickbait, but it served its purpose. For a time, at least. As was so often the case with online content, interest waned quickly. He needed another hit. Cole fancied himself to be a literary horror specialist, and he used his show to discuss writers like M.R. James and Elizabeth Gaskell alongside twentieth-century film noir. An episode about a cursed book had the potential to draw an audience, and it would be a much better ambassador for the show than a fabricated story about a cursed doll.

When he introduced himself at department parties, Cole didn’t hesitate to tell new acquaintances that he hosted a podcast. He’d even printed a business card on handsome matte black cardstock with his name and website. Most people accepted the card, but very few asked him what he meant when he described his field as “dark academia.” Perhaps they assumed he was complaining about grad school. 

To be fair, Cole had tried his hand at a graduate program, but only briefly, and only at a small department at a state school in Ohio. The college’s fluorescent-lit cinderblock buildings didn’t contribute to a scholarly state of mind, and Cole dropped out after his first semester. He took the opportunity to relocate to Boston, where he found a job writing copy for the alumni magazine of a liberal arts school. 

Far from being the ancient and shadow-blighted city he’d read so much about, Boston was a textbook case of gentrification, especially the neighborhood around the university. After a year of mounting debt with nary a Gothic spire in sight, Cole found a listing for an administrative assistant at the Classics Department of Miskatonic University in Arkham. There wasn’t much charm or prestige out in the Essex County suburbs, but it was hard to deny the lure of cutting his rent in half. 

Cole was interviewed by the department chair, a harassed-looking elderly gentleman in a threadbare blazer. The chair informed Cole that there were no other applicants, and that the position was his if he wanted it. He would be working under the head administrator, a cheerful red-faced woman named Peggy who introduced herself with a wave. The chair didn’t seem overly concerned with how the department was run, and Cole suspected that Peggy had acquired the blush on her cheeks from a liquid lunch. He accepted the job on the spot.

The Classics Department was like any other office, equipped with outdated computers and furniture straight from wholesale. The industrial wall-to-wall carpeting bore the stains of years of department parties, and a neglected snake plant struggled valiantly by the lone window. Cole didn’t see much of the professors, and the grad students were an uninspiring bunch interested primarily in gossip. 

Imad was different. As far as Cole could tell, he was the only person who made use of the shared grad student office. He came in every afternoon, and he always stopped by the department office to say hello before disappearing into the small room at the end of the corridor.

Imad told Cole that he was working on his dissertation, a comparison of Near Eastern gnostic texts from the seventh and eighth centuries. He more properly belonged to the Religious Studies department, he’d explained, but it was dissolved the same semester he finished his coursework. Cole didn’t follow his breakdown of the situation, which had something to do with falling enrollments and shrinking budgets, but he understood that Imad had been taken in by the Classics Department as a courtesy. 

Cole asked about the progress of Imad’s work every afternoon, and Imad was always ready with a concise and practical explanation. It didn’t escape Cole’s notice that Imad was blessed with a mellow yet resonant voice that would sound excellent on tape.

Cole gradually developed a casual friendship with Imad over the course of the spring semester, and he came to look forward to Imad’s visits to the office. Once classes ended and the students disappeared from campus, however, Imad started to change. He lost weight, and his cheeks became so hollow that his eyes seemed to bulge from his face. The golden tan of his skin faded to a sickly olive. His beard was patchy and uneven. 

And there was another thing. Imad had begun to smell. The odor that lingered behind him wasn’t unpleasant, but it was odd. The smell reminded Cole of wet asphalt drying in the sun after the rain. Or like an antique doll sitting in a puddle of creosotic slime outside an abandoned water treatment plant in the twilight of rural Ohio. 

Cursed book or not, something was going on, and Cole figured that he owed it to himself to get to the bottom of whatever was troubling Imad. With almost no work over the summer and a boss who only rarely bothered to show up to the office, it’s not as if he had anything else to do. 

There weren’t many students on campus during the summer. Truth be told, there weren’t many students on campus during the school year. Cole was given to understand that Miskatonic’s enrollments had been falling with each successive semester. This didn’t surprise him. The campus was filled with stately old buildings, but none of them had been maintained for years. The gym had been built in the 1970s, and the dorms a decade earlier. It wasn’t the sort of place that attracted students. 

Regardless, Cole was required to be in the office until the end of working hours. He replied to emails in the morning and spent the afternoon in comfortable solitude searching for stories online. 

He’d recently started researching the Theosophical Society Lodge next to campus. The Lodge had supposedly held seances well into the twentieth century, but they apparently stopped on the eve of the Great War. The building now housed a library that served as a stage for public lectures on world religions, some of which had been recorded.  

Cole had just downloaded the most recent lecture when Imad walked into the office. He looked even worse than usual. His face had gone from olive to yellow, and the sheen of grease on his forehead was unmistakable.

Cole swallowed his shock as he greeted Imad. “Hey, so,” he began. “I was reading about modern Gnosticism. Not much to do here over the summer, right? And I was wondering. How would you pronounce, ah, Mandaeism?”

“Mandaeism? You pronounced it correctly. The Arabic is al-Mandāʾiyya, but Mandaeism is fine for general use. Why do you ask?”

“I was fishing for material for my podcast. I read that a lot of Iraqis moved to the suburbs of DC during the early 2000s. Apparently, one community brought lead amulets written in a form of Aramaic that no one at the Smithsonian can read.” 

“I wouldn’t say that no one can read them,” Imad replied. “Even if the ganzibria priests couldn’t transliterate the written text, they’d be able to recite the historiola.”

“The historiola? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that term.”

“A historiola is a short story about a ritual. The act of reading the story functions as a performance of the ritual itself, like a magic spell.”

“How does that work?” Cole asked. 

Imad shrugged. “It’s magic. Who can say how it works? Still, it’s probably for the best that no one at the Smithsonian can read the amulets. You wouldn’t want to pronounce the Aramaic with too much accuracy. If the divine creator brought this world into existence with a word, it stands to reason that another word might open the gates between worlds. That’s a metaphor for the expansiveness of spirituality, of course,” he added with a smile, “but one can never be too careful.”

“Interesting,” Cole said, and it was. The idea that the act of reading could serve as a magic ritual was intriguing. “So what are you translating this afternoon?”

“Well,” Imad started to say, but he winced as he leaned against the waist-high counter separating the office from the faculty mailboxes. It could have been a trick of the light, but something seemed to ripple under his layers of sweaters.

Imad caught the look of concern on Cole’s face. “Sorry,” he said as he turned toward the door. “I might have had too much tea with lunch. I’m going to visit the bathroom and head to my office.”

Cole nodded and returned his eyes to his computer screen, hoping that he’d staged a decent performance of polite interest. He hesitated to cross the line of professional distance with the members of his department. He couldn’t afford to move back to Boston, and he needed this job. Arkham wasn’t the most prosperous suburb, and the only other paying work he’d be likely to find here was at the fulfillment center warehouse by the highway. 

Still, he liked Imad. Professionalism be damned. 

Later that afternoon, he brewed two bags of mint tea in paper cups and carried them down the hall to the graduate student office. When Imad answered the door, Cole was struck by the wet smell that emerged from the room. It was as if something spilled on the carpet and never dried properly. 

“So I was thinking,” he said, “no one is using the department chair’s office over the summer. I was planning to air it out a bit. Care to join me?” 

The chair’s office was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and equipped with the sort of grommeted furniture that populated movies about gentlemen explorers. It smelled like fine paper and old leather, and the sunlight that filtered through the cloudy panes of glass in the mullioned windows was bright but gentle.

 “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what you’re working on?” Cole asked as he sat down. 

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it,” Imad replied. He sank back in his chair as he took a long sip of tea. “At the moment I’m working on a translation of the Kitab al-Azif. This is a gnostic text that originated somewhere in the vicinity of Yemen in the early eighth century. It was believed to have potent magical properties, and it was translated into several languages over the centuries. 

“Manuscripts of the Azif managed to travel around the world, but they’re remarkably rare. When I was doing research for my MA thesis, I’d see one translation or another cited in various papers, but I could never find the original source. It turns out that the only physical copies in the United States are held by the Miskatonic library, which is why I applied to do my PhD here. 

“I thought it might be interesting to compare the versions to understand how key phrases were translated by different cultures. When I spoke to the head of Special Collections here at our library, she was happy to share a PDF of a tenth-century Arabic manuscript held by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The file isn’t the best quality, to be honest. The manuscript is a copy of a copy of a copy, and the source is badly damaged. I’m doing the best I can with what I have available. 

“I’d like to write a grant to go see the original in person, but I’m not at that stage yet. Maybe next spring? I could use a vacation.” Imad shrugged and took another sip of tea. Cole was relieved to see the color returning to his face. 

“So this Kitab al…”

“Azif. It’s a poetic word that refers to the chirping of nocturnal insects.”

“So this Kitab al-Azif, what’s it about? If that’s the right question.”

“No, that’s a great question. The book holds that there’s a deeper truth to the universe, and the author – we don’t know his true name – tells a remarkably coherent story as he explains what this supposed truth is. He claims that our universe is like the thin film on the surface of a bubble, and he believes that there are all manner of things outside the bubble we can’t see. 

“This isn’t an original idea, but what’s interesting about the Azif is that its author provides a history of our planet long before humans lived here. Most creation myths describe humans as being brought into existence shortly after the universe itself, but the Azif speaks of genesis in terms of cycles. People that weren’t human inhabited the planet before us, and people who aren’t human will live here after us.”

“That sounds kind of Buddhist,” Cole cut in.     

“Exactly! There’s a great deal of Eastern thought incorporated into these ideas. All times exist at once, simultaneously, and in different dimensions. The borders between dimensions can be weakened by magic, supposedly. By the act of reading the Azif, the creatures occupying other dimensions can be invited into our own world.” 

“I’d love to meet them,” Cole remarked. “I wonder what they look like?”

Imad stared at his tea as he shifted the paper cup between his hands. “They’re probably not what you expect. I think we’ve gotten used to the strange creatures that appear in movies. When you finally see the monster on the other side of the door, it becomes familiar, like a type of mascot. We can see horrible things online whenever we want, from deep sea fish to the microorganisms that live inside our bodies, and we’ve learned to love them. But maybe there are things out there that are so alien that we’ll never be able to process them, either intellectually or emotionally.

“Gnosticism seems so natural in the twenty-first century, doesn’t it? Of course there’s a deeper truth to the universe. All we have to do is use science to figure it out. People publish their findings, and what they learn becomes real to us in the form of technological innovation. But the modern Western world didn’t invent science. Other cultures studied the stars and the principles of chemistry and physics long before Aristotle began giving lectures at his Lyceum. So why did gnostic ideas fall out of favor? Why did people stop thinking about the universe as a malleable series of experiential planes? I wonder if perhaps someone saw the monster on the other side of the door and decided that it would be better if the truth remained hidden.”

“Wow. I wish I could have recorded that.”

  Imad looked up from his tea. “What do you mean?”

“That would have been a fantastic interview for my podcast. You have a great voice for audio.”

“Do I?” Imad laughed, but his mirth vanished as his face twisted into a grimace.

Cole frowned. “Listen, Imad. You’re really not looking so great.”

“I’m fine.” As Imad rose to his feet, Cole couldn’t help notice the awkward movement of his body. The way his sweaters bunched around his torso was decidedly odd. Something like a thick strip of cloth hung from the back of the layers of fabric. As Cole watched Imad leave the room, he could have sworn that it twitched.

Cole returned to campus later that evening. He unlocked the department office and sat at his desk without turning on the lights. He considered making a show of checking his email, but the performance would be for no one’s benefit but his own. As long as he was here, he might as well get this over with. 

Cole wanted to tell himself he was sneaking around for Imad’s own good. That was true, to a certain extent, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He’d always regretted not investigating the waterlogged doll, and he promised himself that he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that again. Still, as he set off down the dim corridor of faculty offices, he couldn’t help but feel guilty. The grad student office wasn’t a private space, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t violating Imad’s trust. 

There was no strange smell when he opened the office door, just the lingering aroma of bergamot tea. The two cubicles closest to the door were empty. Imad had claimed the cubicle by the window, and he’d dragged a table next to the wall behind his chair. It was covered in library books.

There was nothing unusual on Imad’s desk – a bottle of aspirin, a jumble of cheap pens, and a spare phone charger. He hadn’t pinned any photos to the corkboard cubicle divider, but a collection of thank-you cards from students was propped in a corner. Several manilla folders were stacked on top of each other in the opposite corner, each neatly labeled in Arabic.

Cole opened one of the folders. The paper inside was covered in dark smudges. This must be a copy of the manuscript scan Imad told him about. Cole didn’t know anything about Arabic, but even he could tell how bad the image quality was. It was amazing that Imad could read this at all. Interleaved between the photocopies were pages torn from a yellow legal pad. The loose papers were covered with annotations surrounding a handwritten English translation.

 Cole scanned what Imad had written, but none of it made sense to him. As far as he could tell, this particular passage had something to do with constellations. The next page was a clean photocopy of what must be a Latin translation, and the next was a translation of the Latin into severely antiquated English. Under that was a printed copy of the Wikipedia page about the sky quadrants used by medieval astronomers.

Something seized in Cole’s chest as he flipped through the pages. This was exactly the sort of academic work he once imagined himself doing. A lone scholar sitting at a quiet desk with nothing but paper and a pen as he studied ancient texts, taking careful notes while excavating the meaning of words written in centuries past. There was a certain romance to the idea, and Cole wasn’t at all surprised to find that Imad’s handwriting was as beautiful as his voice.

He picked up the legal pad sitting at the center of the desk and flipped to the last few pages. A word written in capital letters immediately caught his attention: SHOGGOTH. Under it, Imad had written: “What is formless will be given form. The shoggoth will heed the call of its creator, if called in a [dream??] voice speaking its proper name. That which hides in the deathless gap between hours can be retrieved by a shoggoth, grasped within its hands without hands.”

The next page contained a series of vectors that Imad had labeled with numbers and overlaid with pencil sketches of constellations. Cole recognized the Big Dipper of Ursa Major, as well as the three stars of Orion’s Belt, but something about the angles formed by the connected lines felt wrong. Looking at them too closely made his head hurt. 

The next page was a photocopy of an illuminated manuscript written in Latin. Cole didn’t understand Imad’s annotations, many of which were crossed out, but a square yellow sticky note appended to the bottom of the page caught his attention. Almost without being aware of it, he read the note out loud. “The hands without hands, fhtagn ph’nglui.”

As the words left his mouth, the image of the thick pale thread emerging from Imad’s sweaters jumped into Cole’s mind. He was struck by the smell of water. Roiling seas under an endless expanse of sky, stars and constellations without number, pinpricks of light fitting together into an intricate matrix of impossible geometry.

Something unpleasant rose in his throat. He barely made it to the bathroom in time.

Cole couldn’t leave the building quickly enough. He was sick again in the bushes beside the parking lot.

It was only sitting in his car, with the air conditioning blasting in his face, that his nausea dissipated. As he clutched the wheel, Cole chided himself for letting his imagination get the better of him. A cursed book was all well and good, but the notion of a cursed photocopy was absurd. He’d managed to spook himself for no reason. Whatever was going on with Imad had nothing to with star charts or Latin manuscripts. A section of the roof of Whateley Hall had collapsed during the heavy snowfall of the previous winter, and Cole wouldn’t be surprised if it had resulted in extensive water damage to the building. The insulation in the walls was more than likely riddled with mildew.  

Someone should get Imad set up in a different office. That someone, as it happened, was him. He’d bring it up tomorrow, Cole resolved as he backed out of his parking space. Still, he was troubled by the word Imad had written in rough letters at the top of his legal pad. What the hell was a shoggoth? 

Cole woke up the next morning haunted by a lingering sense of shame. What had possessed him to drive back to campus and sneak into Imad’s office? That was creepier than any cursed book could ever be. He needed to talk to Imad. Really talk to him. Maybe even ask him out to dinner.  

Cole washed his hair for the first time in a week and trimmed his beard as it dried. His apartment occupied the top floor of an old Queen Anne house, and the morning sun streamed through the tall windows under the peaked gambrel roof. Songbirds chirped in the branches of the stately ash tree growing beside the house. Cole had been toying with the possibility of moving back to Ohio, but he couldn’t deny that there was a certain charm to summer mornings in New England.

In the department office, he chatted with Peggy as he handled the visa paperwork of an incoming grad student, all the while feeling a sort of secondhand pride that someone would come all the way from abroad to study at Miskatonic. He ate lunch on the outside patio with the two elderly women who ran the office of the Modern Languages department. They showed him photos of their cats on their phones and told him stories about their grandchildren as they enjoyed the sunshine. Afterward, they brushed their teeth together in the women’s bathroom on the second floor, which they agreed was the nicest in Whateley Hall.

 Cole waited for Imad to come to the office. He waited so hard that he couldn’t read Wikipedia, not even the entry about the mysteriously nondescript warehouses used to house banks of internet servers. Everything he saw on social media annoyed him. Eventually he gave up on trying to do anything productive and opened a website that emulated screensavers from the 1990s.

After spending half an hour watching digital fish float through an overbright coral reef, Cole realized that he was being silly. It was a beautiful summer day. There was no need for him to kill time in an empty office while Imad was making himself sick looking at crusty photocopies of wizard nonsense for the sake of a dissertation that no one would ever read. 

Cole’s palms were sweaty as he knocked on the door of the grad student office. What if Imad had noticed that his research notes had been disturbed? 

“Imad?” he called out, but there was no answer. He wiped his hands on his pants before grasping the doorknob. At best, he’d have to apologize to Imad for going through his papers. At worst, he’d have to drive him to the hospital. 

There was another possibility: a void, a vacuum, a tear in the fabric of reality. A window opening onto an oceanic abyss trapped beneath sheets of ice for millennia. A silent city suspended under lightless stars. A multitude of insectile eyes focused on the present moment: a miniscule oasis in the ever-expanding desert of time and space. 

Cole opened the door. The office was empty.

The window was open, and a faint breeze carried the scent of freshly cut grass into the room. A ceramic mug of tea sat on the table next to a laptop with a burnished copper finish. 

Cole closed the door and stepped back into the corridor, where he was greeted by a strange but familiar smell. The odor wasn’t unpleasant, just unusual. It reminded him of the lake shore where his uncles had hosted cookouts when he was a kid. He’d spent most of his summers indoors, reading his way through the local library’s paltry stock of fiction. His isolation made the outings to the lake with his cousins all the sweeter. In truth, Cole loved the smell of water, and he had a good idea of where it was coming from. 

He retraced his steps down the corridor until he arrived at the bathroom by the elevators. With no hesitation whatsoever, he went inside. 

At first, Cole didn’t understand the sight that greeted him. He recognized Imad’s face, but it took a few seconds to process the rest of him. Five fleshy appendages ringed with red patches of irritated skin emerged from Imad’s naked torso. The tentacles were limp but twitched spasmodically. 

Beads of sweat pooled on Imad’s forehead as he stared at Cole in horror, his sweaters clutched in his hands. “Listen, I don’t… I mean, I can explain,” he stammered. 

“You can explain later,” Cole replied, his concern for Imad’s discomfort winning out over his shock. “Just sit tight. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

Cole dashed to the department office, hoping against hope that Imad didn’t flee. He grabbed a can of ginger ale from the office minifridge and rushed back to the bathroom.

He found Imad sitting on the bench by the door. His face was utterly forlorn, and his tentacles waved listlessly in Cole’s direction. 

“Buddy, you’ve got to hydrate,” Cole said, popping the tab on the can of ginger ale.  

Imad accepted the can with a curt nod and drank. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The words of the ritual,” he muttered. “The book was a historiola, but I got the words wrong. I couldn’t read them correctly.”

“Maybe you can get them to send you a better photocopy next time,” Cole replied. “For the time being, you need to take better care of yourself. Your, uh… Tentacles? Can I call them that? Whatever’s going on there. It looks like they’re irritated by your clothing. Peggy has a giant bottle of hand lotion on her desk. I’m sure she won’t mind if you use it.” 

“This doesn’t bother you?” Imad asked.  

“It’s not making you evil or anything, is it?”

“I don’t think so.” Imad’s shoulders sagged. “It’s just a lot to get used to. And sometimes I see things I’m not sure are actually there.”

“What type of things? Anything fun?”

Imad managed a weak grin. “Why? Do you still want to interview me for your podcast?”

“Forget the podcast. But I’d love to talk with you. I’m not busy right now. Do you want to take a walk? Maybe go out for coffee or something?”

Imad’s tentacles perked up at the question. “Are you asking me out?” 

“I… yes. I’m sorry if that’s not appropriate. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” 

“You don’t want to make me uncomfortable.” Imad stared at Cole in disbelief before breaking into laughter. His tentacles undulated with good cheer. 

Cole returned his smile. He’d been worried that something was terribly wrong with Imad, but this wasn’t so bad, all things considered. Imad’s tentacles were kind of cute. Perhaps they would have been more horrific if they’d come directly from a cursed book, but there wasn’t much damage a grainy photocopy could do. Whatever this Kitab al-Azif was, he and Imad could handle it together, preferably after they’d gotten something to eat. And who knows, it might even make a good episode for his podcast. 

The post The Annotated Kitab al-Azif appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Snow fell quiet in dropped cotton kisses. 

I wear my jacket in class every day. Mr. See’s classroom has one window that looks out on the parking lot below, and he keeps it open at all times, even over the weekend. Though I bet the janitors close it. Maybe he asked them not to. They would listen because everybody loves Mr. See. We shiver in the winter and learned quickly to take our jackets out of our lockers where we had stuffed them to wait out the day. Sometimes it’s kinda nice; fresh air dispersing the spritzes and sprays we swim around in. But it’s also super annoying. 

Snow sheeted the parking lot below the window, each and every car disappearing beneath a layer of icing. But Mr. See says that nature and love are the food of life, so we should embrace them when we have the chance, that we should always keep the window open. It just seems cold to me. 

Last week, Juliet came up to me and asked if I like cars. The skylight above our lockers was completely covered with snow, crystals shimmering over glass. How much pressure can those windows take? Would the frost break through and avalanche me alive? Would she dig through the snow to find me? You like cars too? She had asked. No, not really, but–Maybe I can.

She fixes them up and sells them, which is pretty cool. Maybe I can like cars, I told her. She laughed at that. I can like cars for that, I think. Silver bells. Sometimes my face turns pink. I hope it didn’t then. 

Mr. See said he wanted to tell us all a love story. We groaned–hadn’t Marquez done enough to us for one day? But it wasn’t Marquez’s story. It was Mr. See’s. A story about a different snowy day–before our class ever lost that blue dog’s eyes–and he was driving home early from school. The teachers, he said, they all leave school after we do. I guess we keep trying to hit them with our beat-up, hand-me-down cars on our way out of the parking lot, where we speed home or do doughnuts. He says we try to kill them–not on purpose, I don’t think, but either way, he waits until the coast is clear of all us scary teens. I don’t think I’ve almost hit someone before. I’d probably remember that. On this snowy day, though, he told us, he had to pick his kids up early for a doctor’s appointment, so he left halfway through the day during the group B lunch. My lunch is group A, which means I have to eat a turkey sandwich, curly fries, all washed down with a foil-clad juice packet at 10:30 in the morning, right before running a mile in gym class. It’s all sweat and turkey for the rest of the day, and that’s never seemed all that good to me. No wonder the hallways are rank and rotten. 

No wonder Mr. See lets in the snow. 

The juniors and seniors get to leave school for lunch if they want to, which is okay, but you’ve still got to have a car if you want to go anywhere other than Walmart. If you’re seventeen and have a car, you can get French fries from a McDonald’s down the street instead of the curly ones from the cafeteria down the stairs. I think the fries in the cafeteria are a lot better because they’re actually hot and they’re not soggy from a steaming journey in the passenger’s seat or held fast between some jock’s thighs. But an hour of freedom is worth floppy fries and getting older. I guess. 

That day with the “Eyes of a Blue Dog,” when Mr. See also told us his story, the window was open wide, and the snowflakes fell in marshmallow chunks. All we were thinking about was a snow day, about how much we had earned one. Would Juliet win in a snowball fight? I think she would. Flakes swirled downward. We thought about snow while Mr. See talked about the story, “Eyes of a Blue Dog.” Love and love and love, he said as the flakes layered over the windowsill. Gabriel Garcia Marquez said it, love, and love, I guess. In those trippy, dreamy words. 

I watched the snow swirling.  

In the art classroom, where I took drawing last year, they make a pot of coffee every day. You wander through the hallway, and it’s the normal nasty B.O., Axe body spray, and sticky, choking hormones at every twisting turn, but then you pass by the art room. And bam. Just coffee. Roasty and warm, and you can hear the sizzle and drip from the machine if you get there at the right time. And sometimes my 7:30 Red Bull isn’t good enough to make it to 9:00, let alone 10:00 or 11:00. And my mom told me that I can’t have two or else my heart will explode. That she worries, and I should eat an apple instead, some peanut butter, she says. But I don’t know about that. I usually pop into the writing room, make my way around, grab some coffee, and say hi to my old teachers from before. I think the teachers might be bored because they always wave and chatter when they see me. They ask about my weekend, about movies, and friends. It was boring, I tell them. Last weekend was too.

I wonder what Juliet watched this weekend–maybe YouTube or Batman–did she and her friends go to Joe’s for a burger and fries too? Maybe they hung out in the parking lot to eat in the curative weekend air. Maybe it was boring like mine. 

What does it look like? The two of them asked my class—Mr. Marquez and Mr. See asked us, talking about blue dogs and breaths of falling snow. What does it look like? Love? When it’s walking down the street, or wandering the fluorescent aisles in the grocery store, how about in the school hallway chaos, sweating at the 24-hour gym, driving around town for something interesting to do, in our dreams? 

Yesterday, when Juliet came up to me, she asked where I got the coffee. Hell, yeah. I can talk coffee. That’s what I told her. No problem. It was a white, winter day, and she was wearing a jacket like a skinned Muppet all purple and fuzzy. We stood just outside the front doors of the school, and everyone else swam around us while we talked. I like it when she talks about cars and the snowflakes stick like glitter to her lashes. All cars and snow and cars. What does it look like? They asked. 

I raised my hand because what the hell were they talking about? 

Love, Marquez said, whispering messages in dreams that leak. 

Mr. See nodded, love. 

I don’t know about that. 

When Juliet asked me where I got the coffee, I took her to the art room. This is Juliet, Juliet, these are the old teachers. I see them every day. My weekend was boring, I told them as we walked by. We–me and Juliet together–went over to the coffee pot, which was still dripping and hissing. The cups next to the pot aren’t really big enough, so I showed her how I usually grab one from the cupboard the teachers restock from.

I don’t need to ask, which is cool. 

She hadn’t met my counselor before. I wonder who hers is and if she likes them. I walked her back to the office while we waited for the drip to finish up. I can ask my counselor for stuff that I need, and he might say yes. That’s how I got my new glasses, but I don’t wear those at school. Just for homework and stuff, if I remember. 

This is Juliet, everyone. 

As the snow fell, Mr. See told us about that day. That other snowy day. He was sitting at a red light during B lunch. It’s when most of the juniors and seniors fly free. Big flakes slushed to icy puddles on the asphalt as he waited for green. Then love hit. 

Today, Juliet and I got coffee again, and I showed her where they keep the half-and-half and the sugar, too. They sometimes stash some secret snacks over there. Before class, we talked about coffee and cars, and curly fries. I wonder if I should sit next to her tomorrow. Or if that would be weird. Maybe I should ask Mr. See. 

Mr. See said that when he got hit that day in the snow while he waited for the light to turn green, the first thought he had was about his kids. He’s got two, I think. No. He’s got two, I know. He talks about them in every class at least one time. He said he saw their faces in his mind and heard their voices talking about soccer and cereal. When everything else went black. But he was okay. Only after he opened his eyes, after he was okay, he felt frustration. Felt annoyed, he said. Of car repairs, insurance companies, of being late to the doctor, and having to reschedule. Felt furious, he said. Of the faces of his sons, of his kids waiting, and worried, and wondering where he was. Of the awakened thought. Only a moment between him and his boys. Between never picking them up again. He should’ve waited, he said, just another hour, or should’ve asked his wife to grab them from school instead. But he was too excited to see them, he told us. To hear about soccer and cereal. 

I wonder if my dad would be excited to take me to the doctor. We might talk about coffee. Would he leave work early? In the snow. Talk about curly fries at school. I could ask Mr. See. Maybe the art teachers. What do they think? But it’s kind of boring. 

The insurance card was in Mr. See’s hand, hazards on, and he was closing the door behind him, but he told us, when he squinted through the falling snow, there was no movement in the other car. There was no damage, aside from his own headlight, he noticed after scoping out the scene, waving other drivers past. Lunchtime juniors and seniors. 

The snow makes everything quiet. It’s like a giant blanket smothering everything beneath it. And Mr. See’s head was hurting because he must have hit it in the clash. The flakes fell silent, and even all the cars going by seemed to hush past. No one stopped. They all drove by until there was no one left at that light but Mr. See. And the guy who hit him. 

There was no movement from the car. 

His frustration was rising–his kids would be waiting and worried–he marched over to the driver’s side door. Every window was completely fogged over, the driver invisible. What the hell was this joker doing? Mr. See swears like that sometimes, even in class. He knocked. No answer. 

A whole minute of knocking went by, then shivering, then knocking again. He had his phone open. 9-1-1, ready to go because something was wrong. Maybe he was hurt. Or maybe something else. But it was just a little bump. Just his own headlight. What was going on inside? And the snow was cold and quiet. 

It was enough. 

Mr. See yanked the door open, jumping back to a haul-ass position just in case.

I probably would’ve hit the deck no questions if it was me. Or ran away as fast as I could. Would my dad answer the phone if I called him then? I think he would. 

But Mr. See didn’t need to hit the deck. Or call his dad. 

It was just a kid. 

Probably a senior, sporting a letterman jacket, like the ones all the football players sport daily: red and blue, a design unwearable and embarrassing after high school except by burnt-out bummers or at some kind of reunion. I probably won’t go to those. Will Juliet? 

The angle was almost impossible to make out the letterman’s features. The guy’s left hand still had a death grip on the wheel. His body twisted, extended as far into the passenger side as he could go, clearly holding something below the passenger dash, eyes barely peeping above the wheel. 

Mr. See told us how his heart ran all around like a thumping, metal bassline. He was in the military, I think, so his imagination went off roaming. All of the things someone could be reaching for raced like Hell’s grocery list through his head. What did he have to be ready for? What did he have to do? 

Mr. See tried to visualize the details of his sons’ faces until, with wet, blue eyes, the letterman looked up at him. Tears streaming down his face, his chin quivered like frostbite. He desperately whimpered sorrys, hiccupped pleas of don’t call the cops, don’t call my mom, and what do I do nows. Mr. See went blank. 

The letterman choked how sorry, so, so sorry he was, sir, through macho tears. He couldn’t see the lines on the road because the windshield was all fogged up. Mr. See glanced around at the falling snow and the gray and silent sky, still eyeing the kid’s right hand, which hadn’t moved at all. And he nodded.

What he would give to be back in his own car, he said, driving to the doctor, his kids in the back fighting and playing, screeching, and laughing. He’s going to tell his kids this whole story when they’re older, I bet. Even the part where he nearly peed his pants and booked it when the letterman in the car suddenly straightened from the passenger’s side and aimed the contents of his right hand directly at Mr. See’s face. 

Everything stopped swirling. 

The kid blinked. 

Mr. See’s face must have looked wild, drained, and distorted. 

Then in a tiny mouse voice, the letterman whispered sorry he needed to keep them warm and sorry sorry. The heater was out on the driver’s side. He desperately needed to get back before the end of lunch because the fries he had brought for his girlfriend were getting cold, and she had broken her leg, and she was all alone, and she needed–the letterman’s eyes lagoon blue and overflowing, she loves fries, he choked. Lukewarm and soggy, he had to do his best. Had to make it back to her. He didn’t want her to slip on ice, so he went himself. Didn’t want her to fall and hurt herself, the letterman said, with eyes like a dog, and looked at the sloppy bag of fries in his outstretched hand, which were definitely worse than the ones in the cafeteria. But you pay a price for that taste of freedom. Even if it’s second-hand. I guess I’ll find out when I’m older. He had been holding the fries under the passenger’s side heater as he drove, so they wouldn’t get cold because she really needed a pick-me-up and and sorry sorry sorry. 

His blue eyes welled. 

Mr. See’s pulse steadied–it had been like a marching band going, thumping around his chest, he told us–but his breath calmed, and he nodded at the letterman before returning to his car, one headlight just a little messed up. The light turned green and he drove to pick up his kids. Snowflakes curled.  

That’s love, Mr see said after telling us a story about a gray and snowy day. What is? What is love, we asked? But he just smiled and told us to take out Pablo Neruda. The bell for lunch would ring in twenty-one minutes, and I bet I wasn’t the only one who could smell the fries–waiting for us, warm, crispy spirals in the cafeteria below. Juliet had asked what I was having for lunch. We could sit together, she said as the snow eddied, and I could almost taste those fries, rich and substantial. What was I doing for lunch? Fries. I think, and then I shrugged a little, like the guys in the movies do. How can you tell when something is significant? What was I doing for lunch? Sitting with you. I couldn’t say that, though. But she nodded at me anyway. So maybe we’ll sit together. Maybe she likes fries too. Outside, was a different world now, snow spiraled. Nothing looked like it had when the bus dropped me off in the morning. Now quilted in clear white, and a horizon of fries was twenty-one minutes away. Maybe. 

Mr. See sat on the windowsill, a winter breath from the open window twisting around him, and he held up Neruda. Love, he said. 

I opened my book. 

I don’t know about that.

The post Coffee Love and Curly Fries appeared first on The New Absurdist.

We all know why we’re here: our country is being stolen. They’re here to take our food, they’re  here to take our jobs, and they’re here to take our homes. They think they’re entitled to our  healthcare. They think they’re entitled to our wealth. They think they’re entitled to our possessions.  We know what’s going on: they think they can be the new us. 

For too long, we have suffered this injustice. I say, no more! No more to their lack of morals! No  more to their terrible English! No more to their sucking on our women’s breasts! It’s time to act.  Babies will not replace us! 

Look around! Babies are everywhere: in our pre-schools, in our playgrounds, even in our maternity  wards! And they’re disgusting. They don’t even look like people. Their heads are gigantic, their  hair doesn’t grow right, and — and — Excuse me. It’s just so unnatural — no real human is that  short. We should not have to share our air with these aberrations.  

And have you ever talked to one of these monstrosities? It’s impossible. Many of them just make  noises. Not a word of English! And the rest are even worse. They need you to read to them. Can’t  do it themselves! No education! And they don’t even listen if you try. They refuse to understand.  You read about green eggs and ham and they talk about “gween eggs anam.” You read about three  little pigs and they go on about “free yidduw bigs.” And don’t get me started on Peter Piper picking  peppers! If they won’t hear us, why should we tolerate their presence? They have to go! 

Now, I know some say we should love babies. “Babies are God’s creatures,” they say. But I’ve  read the Bible. Look at Genesis! It’s right there. God created one man and one woman. Where are  the babies? Nowhere. It’s Adam and Eve, not Mommy and me. “We were all babies once,” they  say. But we’re not anymore. We left that behind. We’re better than them. “We need babies to keep  the population up,” they say. But what about the immigrants? Our beautiful immigrants need space  to live. Their accents are so musical and their cultures are so vibrant. We don’t need babies and  they don’t deserve our compassion! 

So what can we do? Well, first, deportations. The babies have to go. All of them. Back to where  they came from. Back to women’s bellies. It will take determination, but if we do enough chopping,  and grinding, and maybe seasoning, our women, our capable, capable women, can eat all the babies  within a year. Then they’ll be gone. And then? Then we make sure no more of those minuscule  abominations enter our great country ever again: We need new laws to defend ourselves. Our  schools must teach the dangers of heterosexual sex. Free contraception must be available to the entire population. And abortions — abortions, our God-sent panacea! — abortions must be  mandatory. Everywhere. For everyone. The character of our country is at stake.  

We can’t wait any longer to save ourselves from being replaced. We must act. And we must act  now! Vote for me and I promise to do everything in my power to save our way of life. Down with  the babies and up with the flag! Make our country grown again! Now is our time! 

Thank you. God bless you and God bless our great nation. 

The post The Growth of a Nation appeared first on The New Absurdist.

I. 

He got rid of the Saturn Astra in Frederick, Maryland. The car barely made any money, a  tenth of the price that his father had bought his first car for (a Volkswagen), but its AC had  kicked the bucket and he had no money for its repair. The buyer was a white woman that  smelled of garbage and expired food, and this seemed to be the last of her money.  

It was enough for new clothes, measly lunch, and a trip to the pool. In the men’s  bathroom, he applied hair dye on his fraying thin hair, and stepped outside to watch other  people, hear snatches of names he could take from. At the pool: a mild murmur, drowned out  by the waves the swimmers made. He didn’t see the appeal of swimming, largely because he  couldn’t. His father, whose father had been in the Navy, had never much enjoyed swimming.  His mother loved the sea but had no use for the pool; the chlorine didn’t do her curly hair any good, and she hated wearing swimming caps. She told him multiple times to take care of his  hair, to which he — then as now — responded with bleach and chemicals. He had done this for a couple of towns now: wash the dye; find a job, a crappy place  to stay; go do whatever job he found, cut down on food until he had enough money for a new  car. Then he’d drive off until he ran out of fuel or arrived at the next town, whichever came  first.  

Back in the bathroom, he stared at a shock of red hair going off in all directions, with  spots of white blond from where he had forgotten to apply the dye. He looked like a bet gone  wrong. A night nobody remembered, the morning that everybody regretted.  

“Mickey, go get your things!” he heard a boy shout. He smirked to himself. 

Soon enough, he came across a record store and badgered the owner into staying there in  exchange for working at the record store; the owner, a large white man, offered a storage  room that was really a recording room for local bands, and his own bed was a mat tossed  aside at the corner. There was a drum kit installed prominently at the center. He decided then and there that this would be his instrument and began to play drum fills, not very good ones, but soon enough he approached something he could only describe as sludge. “Good playing,” he heard. 

Across him was a dark-skinned man; bald and hunching, carrying a guitar in his hand,  he approached Mickey with a sparkle in his eyes. 

“How long have you been here for?” Mickey asked.  

“Maybe an hour. You were playing the drum track to When Doves Cry there, weren’t  you?” 

Mickey shook his head. “I was just playing anything.” 

The man took out the guitar from his case and plugged it in. He swished over the strings, playing in a way that was neither rock nor R&B nor punk; it was too jerky, too  jagged, too discordant. It stretched any definition of the word music, but the man nevertheless  continued playing.  

Mickey hit the kick once. The other man kept playing. Mickey hit the kick again. He  added a snare when he felt like it, then a drum fill. The logic was that there was none. The  drum barely made sense with the now screeching guitar, but it made Mickey play, and Denzel  did not stop, either. 

Denzel abruptly stopped. Mickey added a drum fill and hit the hi hat, and Denzel  laughed. 

“This ain’t your instrument, but you obviously played one before,” Denzel said. “And  you obviously know rock.” 

Mickey smiled. “So do you.” 

“What do you think of punk?” 

“You mean what Nirvana’s doing? Garbage.” 

Denzel smirked. “And Television?” 

He shrugged so as to answer the question without addressing it. “I like music that  ain’t got much to do with charts. They’re played on college radio once and they think they’re  hot shit. MTV made it worse. There’s no counterculture anymore. It’s all mainstream now.  Fugazi might be cool, but they don’t alienate. It’s ‘cause Black people aren’t part of this. No  wonder Bad Brains is the only band worth a damn.”  

He heard Dylan, almost smelled the waft of cigarettes, in half of these words. The  more Mickey talked, the wider Denzel’s grin got.  

“Name’s Don. Join my band,” Denzel said. 

“Mickey.” He got up and shook his hand. “Gladly.” 

In this version of the dream, they play together: Reese on drums, Dylan on guitar. A knock to  the door. Dylan stops playing, then goes out to see who it is. Mudman comes in. He looks at  Reese, and Reese knows he’s going to die. He starts to whack the drums instead. The force of  it kicks Mudman back and down to the ground; now Reese pummels on top of him, and he’s  gone.  

The name was Bridgeburn. Their sound: annihilistic, a word that Don combined from  annihilation and nihilism. Some of the pamphlets he made, the ones that Mickey could read  anyway, declared, “It isn’t metal, nor punk. Bridgeburn is COUNTERCULTURAL,  INTELLECTUAL and VISCERAL.” Mickey had no idea how intellect and viscera could  correlate, but Don was not receptive to feedback. 

Don was tall, though how tall, Mickey couldn’t tell from his hunch. Maybe six foot  five, maybe more. Everything related to Bridgeburn went through him: garish posters and  potential album covers, melodies so gossamer they might as well be hallucinations, lyrics that  were best performed spoken and not sung. When he played lead guitar, he’d stand like he was  peering down on an ant crossing his path. Mickey surprised himself by identifying Lou Reed  out of the creative rubble — his father revered him, and the first record Mickey had heard  was The Velvet Underground & Nico.  

Don, upon hearing the name, turned to Mickey with an indignant air, glared once, and  decided to sing instead. It sounded like scratching metal. 

Blair excused herself for a smoke break, motioning for Mickey to follow; as soon as  they were out, Blair said, “Make him speak again. This is horrible.” 

“Wasn’t aware this was on me.” 

“Say you didn’t hear Lou Reed.” She glared at him and puffed smoke in his direction.  “Soon as I’m done with this cig. The other day, my supervisor wouldn’t let me finish it. Because the shelves weren’t filled yet.” She rolled her eyes. “Damn shelves never fucking  end. And this cig’s not strong enough.” 

Blair, the bassist, was also tall, but she stood straight as a rod when playing. Her face  communicated her desire to talk as little as possible; but here, on one of her many smoke  breaks, with Mickey next to her, it exploded to long complaints of her job at the supermarket,  which included nasty customers, odd coworkers, pesky bags and dusty shelves. That she  didn’t bring up her parents’ heritage seemed a dogged insistence that she was as American as  everyone else, though frequent rants about citizenship applications let Mickey know that she  was not, at least in the legal sense. She never smiled, though it wasn’t for lack of Mickey  trying; the one time he didn’t, she asked him if he had gotten ill, or if he was mentally ill. He  said it was the latter; it made her smirk.  

They returned from the smoke break. Mickey said to Don, right away, that the Lou  Reed from before was bullshit. Don nodded; for a moment the air in the room was blessedly  silent, and then Don decided to sing again. Mickey exchanged a glance with Blair and  shrugged. His job was to play drums, though in his case, it translated to hitting them with no  rhyme or reason. As long as he kept Mudman at bay.  

He sometimes thought Don would disappear into his brown jacket, the jacket taking  over, turning liquid, like mud. This usually happened when Don decided to voice his thoughts  out loud. Like how he thought Mickey was more white than black. Said it had to do with the  smell, the vibe. Blair only shrugged when Mickey looked at her for help. She thought him  soft because he didn’t fight.  

It wasn’t that Mickey hadn’t thought of any violence. When Dylan fought with his  father, using his actual fists, Mickey had dreamed of fighting his dad all night, ending up with  a bloody mouth. It was that Mickey couldn’t fight. He blamed his nose for it, which bled by  itself. Anything could set it off and just about everything did. He couldn’t smell and taste all that much, but blood, he always managed to. Its pungent, metal smell never faded. That  interrupted the rehearsals more often than it had to, and only because the drums started to  sound wet, which was against the intellectual viscera that Don wanted Bridgeburn to have. 

Don thought Mickey had polyps in the nose. Don thought maybe Mickey should play  one song with the snare only, no kicks. Don thought Mickey should get himself checked.  Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was just because he was genetically malfunctioned, a  cripple. 

Those times Mickey thought of violence again. Surely there would be some way to  hurl something at Don and rattle his brain a little. But Don told him to speak up if he had  something to say, and Mickey didn’t. 

Dylan, in his mind, always half-grinned when he said this. Just before Reese would go  somewhere, he’d shrug. Reese knew the story, right? There was this cult member who  believed he was made of mud. He’d go around biting others, harass and psychologically scar  them to induct them to the cult. He did this by biting people: their legs, their necks, their  shoulders. Then these people would become mud people. It was a virus of some kind. So  better not walk alone when it’s mud season. Mudman would always be there. When he told his story, the smile never reached his eyes. 

It was just past dawn when Mickey sat in front of the drums. He whacked over the snare, with both drumsticks and quick succession, then assaulted the rim like he was going to break  the drumsticks in the hope that it would hit him. Whack-whack-whack, patter-patter-patter,  clunk, clunk.  

“MUDMAN!” he shouted. He shouted it again, elongating the u, the a, a growl as he  continued whacking over and over. “MUD! MUD! MUD!”

Distantly he heard the bass and the guitar joining him, but Mickey heard his own  noise first, and he felt his throat strain from shouting. Blood dripped down the snare, mixing  with the sweat from his hands. The beat was audibly damp. He stopped to a thumping heart,  throbbing hands, and a clogged nose. He couldn’t tell where the blood came from: his hands,  his nose, his fingers. His head kept shouting: MUD! MUD! MUD! 

Blair and Don looked at him, Blair with her mouth open, Don with a glimmer in his  eyes. 

“Mudman?” Blair asked. 

Mickey swallowed. He wiped the blood off his nose. The world spun ever so slightly  in his vision; he distinctly felt that he would fall if he were to get up. He nodded. “This is it, man,” Don said. “Where’d you get that one from?” 

Blair raised an eyebrow. “You like it? Thought you didn’t want nobody doing the  lyrics but you.” 

Don laughed once. “I never said that.” 

II. 

In the dreams, Mickey was aware he was dying and then dead. Every time he woke up, it felt  like he was reborn. It didn’t feel as holy as it sounded. 

“Mudman”, pressed and distributed independently, came at a perfect time. Punk had broken,  as though punk was a dam keeping the putrid water of music journalism and the overall  establishment at bay, and now, more than usual, Mickey found Don talking to white people in  their band shirts and a card in their hands. Sometimes, they ran into Mickey, mostly at  restrooms; those times, Mickey pointed outside and led them back to Don. Don was clearly  into it. All the venomous looks he shot Mickey’s way were proof of it. In the touring van, Don openly discussed labels as though either Mickey or Blair had a say. SST was a no-go;  Dischord was good, but Don didn’t like to be in DC; Geffen was an absolute no-go. All major  labels were off the table, including a man from Atlantic Records that had promised them  “Beatles money”.  

In Chicago, Mickey paid with the remainder of his money for a recording studio,  enough for three days. They were about to record “Mudman”, the only song of Bridgeburn  that hit college radio, when a journalist – a white woman with thick-rimmed glasses – waited  for them at the entrance. Blair was nowhere to be seen, probably in some bathroom trying to  get her fix, and Don said they could use the break.  

They conducted the interview at the studio. The journalist was from a high-profile  music magazine that had recently begun to interview underground bands. Her eyes were only  on Mickey, and she shook his hand first.  

“And Blair?” she asked. 

Don looked at Mickey. Mickey rolled his eyes. 

“We can continue,” Don said. 

The first question was if Don was inspired by Public Enemy, because he, too, was  “rapping”.  

Don: “It’s not rap. I don’t think of my performance as rap.” 

“Sounds like rap to me,” the journalist said. 

“Is this because I’m Black?” 

“It’s because you’re rapping.”  

“We’re not—” Mickey said. Don raised his eyebrows, but didn’t cut him short.  “We’re not inspired by rap. I would say we do our own thing.” 

The journalist turned to him with a wide grin. “Surely you’re inspired by someone.”  “Mickey has no inspirations,” Don answered. His posture was eminently calm; Mickey had no doubt that Don believed this to be true. “He does what I tell him to.” “So Mudman is really your creation?” the journalist asked. 

“It’s not,” Mickey said before Don could claim that it was. “It’s mine.”  Don narrowed his eyes, straightening up as the last resort of towering over Mickey in  some capacity, but let him talk. 

“I like Fugazi,” Mickey answered. “Guy Picciotto is a great songwriter, abstract and  evocative. I don’t suppose I have a lot of inspirations besides that. Maybe some poems my  mom used to read to me, but I haven’t been able to read much these days.” 

“Yes.” She jotted this down. “Yes, I hear your similarities now. So would you  categorize your work in Bridgeburn as post-hardcore as well, or would you call it emocore?” Bridgeburn was a band with no remarkable talents swept up in a tide of media interest. They had one song, an emotional outburst Mickey had to perform by himself every  other day, and it was the one Don didn’t write. “I think we’re an older brand of post-punk,  closer to Wire. It’s about rattling the soul.” 

“We’re not close to anything,” Don said. He stood up so straight that he appeared a  head taller than Mickey. “People are close to us. They see us and want to steal what we got.” She looked at Don for the first time. “Mind telling names?” 

“Depeche Mode stole from our outfits. Looks too. The goatee—” 

Mickey laughed; he closed his mouth so more wouldn’t come out. That was his  goatee, not Don’s. 

“Goatees are dope,” Mickey said once he calmed himself down. The journalist’s head  turned right back to him. “Black and leather too. The scene is smaller than it looks, so I think  some overlaps are part of the point.”  

Seeing her jot it down brought him a little relief. At least he would come out alright.  These were group projects individually graded. Don would come to the same conclusion soon enough, and when that happened, Mickey would take the “Beatles money” an Atlantic  representative promised Don, go solo, buy a plane, and fly across America. He managed to  write some lyrics lately. There were toplines, some chords. He could use them all and it’d  still be better than the bullshit they recorded here. He rather liked it up on stage; the lights,  the shouts, the sweat, the blood working together to create a concoction more powerful than  chloroform. It was so nice to not exist for an hour or two. To not remember anything afterward. 

The journalist looked at him like she wanted all area access into his brain. “Mudman…” she said. “What a song. Truly ferocious.” 

Don said, “Matter of fact, we’re about to record it right now.” 

She furiously nodded. “Is it alright if I could sit in the room and watch you? To my  understanding, it is a Mickey Stanbull solo.” 

“It is—“ Mickey started. 

“Not a solo,” Don said, voice so clipped that Mickey flinched.  

The silence that followed was cold and thick. She didn’t write this down. “Don will play the guitar,” Mickey murmured.  

“On a song with only drums?” 

“Studio versions always differ,” Don said. “And it originally started as a band.” The journalist jotted it down. “But Mickey, you can play the guitar.” 

Mickey nodded. “I can. I started out acoustic. I wouldn’t mind going acoustic, even  folksy, down the road.” 

She tapped against the notepad. “This is interesting. I wonder if you heard of Dylan  Fitz—“ 

“I don’t want you to be part of it,” Don suddenly said.  

“—gerald,” the journalist said. She turned to Don. “No?”

Don’s leg jerked up and down.  

“Gerald?” Mickey asked. What’s this about?” 

“Dylan Fitzgerald. This talented young songwriter from Vermont. It’s a real tragedy  what happened to him. We could discuss this off the record,” the journalist said. She glanced  at Don. “Are you truly against me joining your recording?” 

Suicide was not a tragedy. To have a song stolen, to find no audience, to put all your  hopes in one song – these things were once tragedies to him, but now that Mickey had met  record label executives hounding him in parking lots, asking him to sign a contract, he  understood that it was all quicksand regardless. The tragedy was that Dylan had told Reese  he’d be outside for a minute and never returned.  

“Yes,” Don said. “Shit comes out when it comes out.” 

“I agree,” Mickey added. “It should be a surprise to everybody.” 

The journalist nodded, peeked at her wristwatch, and cleared her wrist. “Final  question. Mickey Stanbull, Mudman, I believe, is deeply personal to you. Where I’m from, in  Vermont, we have five seasons and not four. Lots of mud there. Vonnegut called it  Unlocking.” 

“That’s a good speech,” Mickey said. “I know that one.” 

“So are you from Vermont?” 

Mickey laughed. “Yes.” 

She fixed her glasses. “So how come you don’t know Dylan Fitzgerald?” Mickey didn’t know Dylan; Reese did. But he felt like Reese again. He felt it like  toothpaste remnants on his shirt. He was too old, too tired to think that driving from state to  state would wash it away, but he did once harbor the hope that Reese Fitzgerald would  reemerge as a part of himself, like a snippet of a melody in his head. Instead, Reese had  become a journalist’s scoop, part of the coveted biography of Mickey Stanbull. 

He found it quite hard to breathe in here. “Burlington has room for… um, all kinds of  lives and stories,” he managed to say. 

“I believe he had a brother. I saw him once. They performed the song together, over at  the Blunder, in South End?” 

“That’s nice.” 

“I’m just saying that you look like him.”  

His mouth felt stuffed with cotton. “Is it because I’m Black?” Mickey asked. She didn’t answer. They left it at that. She shook his hand and grazed Don’s. 

As soon as she was gone Don stood up straight; he seemed seven feet tall. He entered the  recording booth, cocked his jaw at Mickey, and picked up his Fender.  

“You don’t need the electric guitar,” Don said. 

He whacked it down to the ground in a beautiful arc. Even from the isolated room, the  sound was gnarly. The recording engineer, a muscular man with a Viking-like beard, shot up  from his deck. But Mickey was faster; he flung the door open, he was about to swing his  clenched fists, but a breath out and blood dripped down his nose, all over the rug. He put his  hands to stop it; energy seeped out of him like a teabag dropped into hot water. He could  barely stand straight, saw stars in his vision, black and white. He fell to the ground, his  fingers sticky.  

The viking jostled past Mickey, which made him bleed even more, and now it dripped  from his palm, thudding onto the rug. “Get the hell out of my studio!” the man bellowed. Mickey felt something past him and slid to the ground. 

III. 

He left the record store, the one in Frederick. The sky was a slab of white marble, the streets swept clean save for one figure at the horizon.  

Mickey knew at once that figure was Mudman. 

He wanted to turn around, but his body had become stone, his eyes burning the longer  he stared at Mudman. His mouth was parched; he couldn’t scream. His heart thumped too  slow. When he did move, it was a sudden jerking motion. It didn’t hurt his body, nor his legs.  Soon he floated backwards, and the entire time, he stared at Mudman. Mudman was getting  closer by the second. He was running, sprinting towards Mickey. There was a baton in his  hand that he whipped out, and his rattle petrified Mickey. 

Mickey fell. Now Mudman was on top of Mickey.  

“I…” Mudman began. A disgusting mix of horse and human feces emanated off him.  “I… crave….” 

Mickey was going to die. 

He shouted, screamed for help, yelled for somebody to come save him, but no one was there. Not one person opened their windows. He staggered up, felt his feet hit the  concrete as he ran as hard as he could. The horizon didn’t move. Something whipped him to  the ground again. His whole body shook from his tears, his open, loud sobs. He couldn’t  move his body, and this time, he felt a sudden coldness in his legs. He was being stripped;  Mudman would eat him, leg up; Mudman would kill him, He closed his eyes shut and let snot  and tears run down his face to the concrete. Everything in him tensed. There was no God to  pray to. Only Dylan on the other side. 

His stomach growled. Behind him, he couldn’t feel Mudman anymore. He felt something wet and rather sticky beneath him. When he opened his eyes, he found he lay on a  puddle, staining the street ruby red.  

Then he felt a horrifyingly large scraping inside his stomach. Like he’d never eaten before.

Mickey woke up. He was in the recording room. The viking man was shouting at Don; there  was a fight of some kind, outside the studio, the viking’s arms pressed against Don’s, locked  in something Mickey couldn’t quite get. But he saw Don, Don in his coat, and he felt the  scraping from the dream that didn’t feel like a dream anymore. He felt himself floating  toward Don. He heard himself say, “I’ll handle him”. They walked outside.  Don looked at him and asked, “What?”  

What a nice day it was outside, crisp and blue. Dylan killed himself on a day like this  one. Mudman had never had a chance to bite him. And if there wasn’t Dylan to warn him  from the threat, then could Reese be blamed for being caught after all? He tasted blood on his mouth. “I…” he said, “I crave.” 

IV. 

One to Watch: Mickey Stanbull 

This story was reported by Janet Lexington-Schwartz 

As soon as he got onto the mic, a blue Jazzmaster strapped on his shoulder, Mickey Stanbull  bellowed MUDMAN on stage and gave everybody a good fright. Time stood still and  became an eternal present — the thick riffs that were choked further against the amp; the  repeated wailing, oh my God, the wailing; the face, the locks falling like an angel fallen to  the pits of hell. This man spells out sex, desperation, and dirt all at once.  

The pit waited for this moment for almost an hour. And in four minutes, this grim  eternity was over. I was rattled, and grateful that this was the last song. The entire stage was  as spellbound as I was.  

Rock cannot be consumed through radio and MTV alone, and Mickey Stanbull is  living proof of it. He has a presence best experienced live. No more nerdy characters mumbling their way to the stage; it’s not cool to act uncool, despite whatever pretensions our  current leading men are under; and it’s not cool to be overeager about stardom, despite  whatever delusions Billy Corgan puts himself in. Our greatest frontmen are showmen,  whether conscious or not, whether willing to play on purpose or by accident. Hours ago, in  conversation, he struck me as the former; now, I am not so certain.  

After “Mudman” ended, Stanbull locked eyes with the nearest spotlight. His face was  startlingly empty when he looked up, as silent as everyone else. The audience erupted into  applause, roared for an encore, but Stanbull moved backstage without thanking anyone. I  couldn’t help it; I ran backstage, a few fans in tow, calling for him. He turned and didn’t  seem to understand. He looked at us and seemed to ask himself who “Mickey Stanbull” was.  It was to the degree that I briefly wondered if this “mud-man” he sang about chewed at  critical portions of his brain, leaving him crippled but savant, without an identity. In truth, as  he tells me later, he was rattled too. He felt the song exactly as we did, an earthquake of an  experience. What had just happened could not be repeated — until it would have to, all  across America, for many years on end. 

That night, in Chicago, he announced his departure from Bridgeburn. The death of a  band is the birth of another star. 

Lately, Reese dreamt of him playing music with Dylan, both on acoustic. He’d toured all  across America, and he was in Connecticut now. It wouldn’t take long to go back to Vermont  now, just in time for mud season. He’d just have to wait for Dylan to step outside for a little  bit. 

The post Mudman appeared first on The New Absurdist.

I start this not to suggest that there is anything I feel against this motif. I, too, am a lover of Wendy Cope’s The Orange, or Gary Soto’s Oranges, or even Roisin Kelly’s poem by the same name. My favorite rendition of this is JP Infante’s Yasica, Puerto Plata. 

“When I saw my great-grandmother peel a tangerine with her bare hands while men used knives for oranges, she became god.  I imagined what she could do with the sun.” (excerpt from Yasica, Puerto Plata) 

There is an endearment to writings like these, I think, that a lot of people find. That idea of someone taking you, the orange, in two gentle hands, tearing your skin to find what is truly you, pulpy and tender and hidden away. But why? Where does this come from? Why detach from our human selves and find understanding in citrus? 

Among the many opinionated literary folks of the world, there are some people who are completely exhausted by this idea, even calling it a cliché. Some string it alongside the common writings on pomegranate, a fruit that had come to have symbolism for feminism and love but has since become a sort of indicator for ‘bad,’ ‘performative’ TikTok poetry. The same has begun to happen with figs, after Sylvia Plath’s fig tree concept. 

But I am not here to discuss pomegranates or figs. Rather, I see oranges tumbling down into the same rabbit hole of dilution. 

For one, even as oranges find their way into language and writing time and time again, they can also be found in metaphor and phrases, like in Spanish. The phrase ‘mi media naranja’ or ‘my orange half’ refers to the idea that every person has another half that they are constantly in search of, suggesting a kind of destiny or generational connection that goes far beyond what we see in this one life we see presently. This is often linked back to the Greek myth recorded by Plato in The Symposium, where the idea that every soul is missing its other half is also expressed, claiming that Zeus caused this divide out of the arrogance of humans.

With this origin, I found a sort of poetry alone in the fact that oranges and many citrus fruits are the only fruits to be naturally subdivided, while usually for these orange metaphors the focus is primarily on the peel. You split one open — with a knife, maybe, like JP Infante’s poem — and half the work has been done for you, politely waiting with the segments in their expected places. 

I believe part of our exhaustion with oranges can be found in this. We give them surface level meaning, as surface level as the 3mm vivid, aromatic peel. The irony in this is that part of the symbolism we are always creating with oranges is about seeing things beyond their simplicity, like the orange peel theory; the idea that how or if someone peels an orange for you can indicate affection or care. 

Dare I say this theory has watered down the juice. To stop at the peel is to lose so much of the magic that can be found here! Dig a little deeper into the bright sun of it and find, perhaps, Amy Schmidt’s Abundance, in memory of Mary Oliver. 

“It’s impossible to be lonely 

when you’re zesting an orange. 

Scrape the soft rind once 

and the whole room 

fills with fruit. 

Look around: you have 

more than enough. 

Always have. 

You just didn’t notice 

until now.” 

This poem follows Mary Oliver’s Oranges, which I think also seeks further into the idea. 

“Cut one, the lace of acid 

rushes out, spills over your hands. 

You lick them, manners don’t come into it. 

Orange−the first word you have heard that day−”

(excerpt from Oranges) 

I think what often happens with poetry as it circulates online is a gradual misunderstanding of meanings. This present day loves to take a concept and spin it into one specific thing, keep it contained in a box that doesn’t allow further critical thinking or creativity (like orange peel theory!). We consume things quickly, in small rushes of dopamine that fade as quickly as they come. The same has happened to oranges.

When do the mundane things become beautiful, and vice versa? How does the repetitive nature of our modern day prevent us from being able to enjoy these poetic motifs? Sometimes things must be taken deeper than they are, looked at from a new angle, given new life. What I mean to say is sometimes you can’t garner the meaning from the simplest of explanations or viewpoints. Take a dip into another set of eyes, find the angle. 

To be able to absorb these ideas with a grain of salt — seeing past the misuse and confusion caused by modern day media — is to be able to peel past the skin, find the segments, see what more there is to something mundane.

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