Nomo Fosho

Sometimes I speculate that there have been no universal literary classics since Catch-22, no absolute must-reads. Perhaps the time of literature is over. I always wonder who could have a taste for Richard Brautigan except me, who likes books in which nothing in particular happens, and the prose just rolls on without reason and for its own sake. 

Of course, then I think this kind of book comes after something, or before –- that it is dispersed as the path that a ship runs behind it in the water; the dispersal of literature, of everything that literature has been, of all 'universal classics.' Somehow, writing has discovered itself through literature; has chanced upon itself, blind and unknowing, forgetting everything and diffusing it all as the contemplation of an adolescent in a field of grass left to her own devices.

Language itself has become the sea of grass across which no path passes. The deeds of the world are slowly disappearing. Our lives will be written on a uniquely American page… all writing henceforth will concern the ordinary, the everyday, and the mundane—there will be nothing else even arguably noble to write about.  Language, meanwhile, will gyrate like a suburban adolescent dreaming about rap music, and all of literature will become part of that dream. And when it awakens, it will gaze upon us without a face and leer at us with no eyes and speak in words that we will no longer recognize. Perhaps it is good that the time of literature is over. 

Bob Church©9/1/07

Granite, Gravity and Grace

There, upon the rock, facing the stream, Ricky sat. Knees scrunched up against his chest, arms wrapped across his shins with interlaced fingers securing and giving him balance against the northerly breeze, head perched neatly on top of his knees with eyes focused on nothing but the eternal passage of the swift current, he waited and contemplated. Somewhere, birds called to their mates and taxis beeped warnings to impeding traffic, Serbian women chattered in a complicated Croatian dialect while hanging wet laundry on the line, yet not a single sound nor extraneous thought penetrated his realm as it existed today; not rushing water, not thunder, not Elijah trumpeting his clarion call throughout the world.

The rock, huge and round and placed precisely on a promontory he’d selected and designated his own, felt soft and cool to his touch. No outcroppings or imperfections of any sort offended his fingers as they lightly traced the water-and-wind-burnished surface. How many birds, lizards, squirrels, chipmunks, snakes or other humans had shared his window into eternity? Had they shared his quiet awe of this majestic place? Why did the water rush by, seemingly ignoring the upper majority in support of the much smaller and less visually acute base? Do water secrets exist down there, protected from prying eyes by fathoms of froth and algae and legions of water plants? Maybe one day he’d dive into the icy race and try to hold on long enough to investigate, to ply his strength against the current, to search for any hand hold, to feel his lungs threaten to burst against the pressures of the depth and to know the exhilaration of impending doom.

Maybe… but not today. Today Ricky claimed his satisfaction just sitting and wondering if his rock loved him as much. After all, it’s hard to really know the emotions of a ten-ton hunk of granite eroded by eons of wind and water. Had he sufficient intellect to claim comprehension of such complexities, perhaps he wouldn’t be here at all.