Not Yet the Sounds of Speech

The patterns on the backs of the fish resemble nothing so much as static if you look closely enough. And you have not allowed your mind to be clouded by expectation. By those books that demonstrate how to put together duvet covers and chessboards with materials you find readily at hand. Left over in the attic, say, when the previous occupant had to run for his life. Imagine! Plumbing in a corner of the world where up until recently we didn’t even know what the Torah was. We had never bought our furniture from the same store where you can buy your sushi and your microwave ovens. We just didn’t know such options existed. And once we were informed, we couldn’t have cared less. Sometimes it’s better to meditate in the afternoon than whisper to some deity you can’t even be sure wears any clothes. How embarrassing would that be! Your grandmother prostrate before a figure naked as the day he emerged from some other figure’s forehead. Or from the foam on the ocean created by some dreadful, pre-sexual deed of the sort we dream about now and then. But we don’t understand because we are so thoroughly steeped in the world of flesh and caresses we can’t imagine one where such things have yet to be invented.


Charles Freeland | Mudlark No. 35
Contents | A Disturbance in the Magnetic Field