Chaos knows no plural.
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
Perhaps her hand speaks to you of an excess of freedom that defeats
freedom. Freedom that raises an endless tower that does not reach
heaven but splits the abyss, cleaves the earth. You will name it:
separation. You will refuse: pride.
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
V.1
SHE TAUGHT me method and control. She was playing her damned mind
games. Man, how I hated the migraines she gave me. She taught me control
of words and ideas by the worst possible way.
She controlled me. She showed me how malleable I can be. And when
she corrected my compositions, she always used that infernal red ink!
As if she never ran out of it. I can see her, even now, those sunken
cheeks and cold, bright eyes. The cropped hair curling over her high
forehead.
I can hear her. She had a voice low for a woman her age, a little
after the full bloom, the prime. Yet it was most feminine in tone,
in its rising and falling. Once, she taunted me and challenged me
to write in front of her.
She told me I always wrote in the presence of everything. There was
no use in hiding. All candles lit my pad. All the ink of the world
flowed as blood through my pen.
"So, I write because everybody's watchi--?" She cut me
off, "Don't anticipate me. Just listen brat. You write because
you want everyone to watch. You write because you want to get their
eyes, see? What you want is to possess their dreams and there are
only two ways to do that.
"To be God. Or to come close. To be able to create their dreams
for them."
Gobbledygook. She tends to be so archaic. Vague nonsensicals, I sometimes
muse. But she caught it in my eye this time.
"You will write in my presence, little boy." Damn! Why
does she have to call me that? "Right here, in front of me."
Failing at debate, I began.
Man how I wrote then. She was an egging demon. A nagging bitch. After
two sentences, she came close to my ear.
"This is your lesson..." I tried to shrug her off, "what
the hell is this? I write and you go teaching?" But her eyes
burned through mine, red firebrands pressing on soft, young hide.
Your-father-will-not-be-pleased, those eyes always said.
"Your next lesson is chaos. Keep on writing boy!" Chaos?
What the f-- "Just write." She whispered again, "it
is chaos that drives you. It gives your order meaning. It gives meaning
meaning."
She was a humming mosquito. I erased stuff like hell. I can't stop
writing. She will not get the better of me! "Life will happen,
lovers will die, even your father will fall." "No power
is absolute. No flesh will hold long enough here. It is called entropy
boy. Nothing else will have meaning without it.
"Meaninglessness is the only true, consistent structure. Because
every structure points toward the possibility of structurelessness.
It is the most obvious thing.
"Like unto life, what we all deny is that which is ever-present:
nonexistence. Death. Yet they cannot accept that, they cannot understand
that. Therefore you write and try to make sense.
"But it's always just the next best thing.
"You must choose order or go mad. But the instruments of chaos
are at your disposal. Everytime you start writing, I told you before,
you may begin by writing over and over:
"I have nothing to write.
"I have nothing to write.
"Or variations on the theme: 'I can't write anything,' 'I can't
think of anything,' 'Nothing comes out.'
"Until your soul rebels. And it yields. You prove it wrong.
You only need to reap. You begin to create."
Who can 'reap' anything in this darned din? She's whispering but
she's all over me. I can't get the lines through. Metaphors I've already
caught jump from the tip of my brain because she keeps on tugging
the line.
But only one thing: She must not prevail.
"You always know, but you will always deny knowing. That is
the dance of the pen. Any way otherwise, they will not understand
you.
"They never hear the cry in the desert, boy. They only listen
for the trickle of water. They will tear off cacti and chase mirages
to the end of their days for that sound. Even the Hallowed Truth is
empty to them. Background noise.
"This is writing. This is what you must go through if you are
to be the exemplar of The School. As your father fashioned me."
She was whispering violently now, through side-glances, I could see
her face convulsing under her static hair.
Yadayadayada. I must write! Only that because one thing remains.
She will not prevail.
My pencil snaps. Silence. Then our eyes meet.
"Got a spare?"
****
All heiresses are beautiful.
John Dryden
V.2
She taught me to write so that I can piss my conceited self off.
She taught me to rack my brains, first with some methods and whatever.
We would go through topics, supporting sentences, twists, and all
that crap. She would say the strangest things. Capitalize on your
feelings. Those are your roots. Don't ever lose sight of those. They
will always be there. They will never lie. They are more important
than thoughts.
It made me feel so gay.
But I did everything she told me. Come to think of it, she always
knew I would take the punishment. So I wrote a love letter, high falluting
words and all. Took me a whole weekend too. Got all red and furious
when she tore it apart and told me I'm a pretentious bastard. With
typos to boot.
I stormed out of there, shouting you-put-me-through-all-this-and-you-have-the-NERVE-to-trash-me!
And she calmly said something like, you-have-the-nerve-to-SHOUT! You're-a-no-good-bastard-your-father-may-be-mr-BIGSHOT-but-that-doesn't-make-you...
ANYTHING. I pretended not to hear her although even with peripheral
vision I saw the cold calm in her thin, pale lips. I just shouted
right back with SEE-if-I-care-I-won't-COME-back-you-hear?
But I came back. Well sort of, because I just slipped this page in.
Under her door. It was one page. I wrote with thick pencils. She could
feel my strokes if she bothered to run her hand across the back of
my yellow paper.
I wrote a longer piece really. Three longer pieces. I trashed them
all because I felt they were inadequate. Then I wrote that piece because
I wanted to piss her off in her own terms. I wrote about devirginization.
First with details, then I scrapped them. She knew those more than
I did.
Porno was not my point anyway. I wrote about a conquest. A pain-giving
and a pleasure-taking. Although it was not rape, it was pure hate.
It was still love. But there was a necessary selfishness. A growing
pain of sorts, except that it was deliberately inflicted.
The "White Phallus' Burden," she gave me the title afterwards
by circling a phrase there and adding in red : "put this up front."
Just a few corrections. She wrote in the same red and crossed out
more unnecessaries. "Fat," she called it. And I could almost
see her trim, tanned arm and her bony wrist with the slim silver pen
resting on my yellow paper, liposucking away.
She added: "Pass more stuff. Your dad will get good word. Or
else, the next thing to be corrected would be your allowance."
Somehow, I felt like damn-the-allowance or something. So I wrote on.
Madly.
I passed them under her door. I hated her red ink. How could its
judgment flow so quickly on the hours I labored on three to-be-crossed-out
paragraphs? How could it bleed so carelessly to drown my thoughts?
How could those tapered fingers wield such a device? I wanted to get
my hands on that silver pen, dash it to the ground, and bring down
a nice, thick piece of granite on it. Then I'll stare at the red ink
and those silver splinters, blood on a shattered dagger.
But the lessons weren't over. I must endure the crosses and side-notes.
I tried to focus on the stuff she left behind, those purely black
in yellow. Stuff that went through. And why would I dare make the
same mistake twice?
Though I was always caught when I slipped and made them. Twice, Thrice.
Clearly, the lessons weren't over.
