The Brooklyn Rail

Comme ci, comme ça

In a dream I am holding a gun up to my dad’s head and saying look, are you dying or not, just tell me now, but it’s a modified kind of Russian roulette and on the fateful round the gun poofs into a bouquet of flowers and he smiles warmly, says thank you, that was exciting, it’s been a good life, maybe I’ll live a little more, you can have the flowers if you like, and I eat them all: the flowers, the gun, my shoe.

Salt

It may seem easy to blame the officials, but really who can blame me for blaming the officials when the only thing they can think of in terms of preparations is to put a giant pile of salt on every street corner, then position some strong-armed creature next to each salt pile, explaining to them that when the time comes and they hear the whistle, they are each to grab a hunk of salt and crouch down low, ready to fire it off quickly, a barrage of salt taking precise aim at the parade of mourners coming down the street. If I am the staggering, stumbling type of mourner, they will use the bigger hunks of salt, fist-sized balls of salt, big enough to smack me in the head and knock me out, cold and fast. If I am the wailing kind, the disastrously loud and babbling kind, it's going to take a lot longer, a long steady shower of salt pebbles, launched at me from every corner, all the corners, a steady accumulation that will slowly fill my gaping wailing mouth over the course of a block, two blocks, one kilometer, maybe two kilometers will finally do it, fill my wailing mouth with enough salt to finally shut me up, and then maybe it will be another ten, twenty kilometers more before my entire body is immobilized, buried, and no longer visible or identifiable in any way. It seems the only kind of immunity at all remotely possible in this wretched situation is the one where the terrible loss alchemizes into a renewed and inchoate life force, a force so stunning and powerful, wild, thick, and brilliant, that it leaves all the strong arms frozen in astonishment, leading to a pause in the launching of salt, at least for a flash of a moment, the tiniest of reprieves, and in times like these, you take whatever you can get. But then again if it turns out that I am the raw and fleshy kind of mourner, all the muscles and blood and nerves twitching and exposed, right out there in the wincing cold of air, then the salt is going to hit me and hit me hard, whatever shape or size or format of salt, that salt is surely going to hurt me, and I will stagger on weakly for as long as I do, I will feel the pain for as long as I do, curses to the salt, curses to the state.