Thunder To The Lesser Gods

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 418-423





418  The third DA: See also lines 401 and 411. 

✭  Apart from any meaning heard in what the thunder said, the da da da passage also evokes the concept of DADAISM, a pre-surrealist art movement that began in Switzerland in 1916 and was reaching its peak at the time of The Waste Land. The movement, which ranged from visual arts to literature and poetry to theater, spurned the bourgeoisie reasoning and hard logic that were at the roots of World War I and instead came to place a value on abstract nonsense. Compare this with the jazz movement (note 130), and see also note 433 (ostensible gibberish). Eliot commented on dadaism in his 1921 essay The Lesson of Baudelaire (see note 76): “Dadaism is a diagnosis of a disease of the French mind; whatever lesson we extract from it will not be directly applicable in London”; and again in his 1923 essay on James Joyce, Ulysses, Order and Myth, in which he criticized another critic for failing to see beyond a perceived chaos: “Mr. Aldington treated Mr. Joyce as a prophet of chaos; and wailed at the flood of Dadaism which his prescient eye saw bursting forth at the tap of the magician’s rod.” 

419 Damyata means “Control yourself,”  what lesser gods understood in hearing “Da.” See note 400.

420 Compare line 280 (Elizabeth and Leicester, on the Thames barge).

✭  The BEATING OARS motif is presented twice in the poem, here and at line 280, but there are also several indirect references, first through the adapted description of Cleopatra’s chambers (see note 77) and then in the allusion to Philomela’s abduction (see note 99).

421 Compare the calm sea with the calm and clear night after leaving the Chapel Perilous (see note 388) and the calm day setting of a wedding along the Thames (see note 176).

from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Hawk Block

A Palinode to an Earlier Draft

Effectively I killed my poem
    like a hawk that kills the weak, the sick, the old;
Defined it by the second line
    as a predator that seizes stumbling souls;
Declared its features unsubdued
    like shrieks across a universal sky;
Discovered Death in stanza two
    as a bird reflecting dinner in its eye,
Foreshadowing the obvious,
    the destiny of creatures great and small
And celebrating the irony
    of grace within three pounds of caterwaul.
Repeatedly analogies
    went flying through the predatory air
Pronouncing the mortality
    of all who are alive, awake, aware.

The sad thing is, I love this bird:
    I watch it catch the kettles high above
On muscled wings, remote controlled,
    in the spirit of the words I’m dreaming of
But never grasp: I watch it soar
    untethered to the world till all I see
Is the distance of its silhouette
    becoming an enigma over me:
A mystery, yet clearly made
    of more than Death compressed onto a page
Of whiteness, more than irony
    observed within an origami cage,
And more than all my heavy paint
    can capture.  Now, beyond all odes, this bird
That let me love it from afar
    lives on but flies away without a word.


from Thirty Birds

Hawk Diode

You are predator, defined by what you eat And how you singularly look for food, Your every feature focused, unsubdued To rightly seize the daily running meat: Head down, tail flared and talons out for blood, Lean muscles tensed and dinner in your eyes With mercenary sense to recognize Your victims from afar, and yet you would Toll from your scythian beak a curling call And let your ancient raptor’s feathers cast Their moving shadow on the ground. We earthly Creatures feel the shadow’s chill and pall And all that it foretells; our hearts beat faster Still as you pronounce our mortal worth. You are pacifist, designed to fly above The fray, to find your spirit in the sky On wings extended and uplifting, high Above the inevitable chaos of Our gravity, beyond our battlegrounds And burial grounds, intractable and free. Your revolutions of serenity Enlist us all to tarry out of bounds, To turn aside from where we find ourselves If only to appreciate the strength Of heavenly peace and how you always seem So far away from where you ought to be: There you are, a predator at length, And here are we, lost in our mortal dream.


from Thirty Birds

Moleskin 5.7

It was a fresh start, and at the end of my thirteenth year of life, the year stubbornly called “twelve,” it had all the makings of a clean slate. Our neighborhood was more than a suburb now: it was incorporated, a city unto itself; the Tribs and Sun Times I delivered were joined by local Heralds and Advocates, and my old job up and down apartment hallways was now a real route along several streets —I could use my bike now! And every weekday morning, after the papers were delivered, I went to Lincoln Junior High, a big kid school with tall ceilings and separate classrooms for each subject and teachers with personalities —Mr. Bolman, who posted daily trivia quizzes and doled out lemondrop prizes, and Mr. Sigg, who had a wall full of brain teaser puzzles to solve. There was an upstairs woodshop and a basement archery field...

November

We speak of beginnings and ends,
      of dawns and setting suns,
Yet we move from day to day,
      from rhyme to rhyme
Remembering hours and hours
      before our cognizance
And dreaming up new futures
      all the time.

We speak of taking time.
      November you’re the same
As an early dusk to close
      an autumn day:
I want more warmth from you,
      more flicker in your flame;
I miss the light of September
      and the youth of May.

We speak of tomorrow’s return
      to yesterdays; we dream
Of nothing less or more
      than what we know,
Imagining that spring
      is somewhere down the stream
Replenishing our current
      blessings’ flow.

We speak from where we are
      to where we want to be;
We want to be where we’ve
      already been.
November you’re the source
      of this endless reverie
And in your darkness
      We reset the scene.

from Calendrums

Burrowing Owl at Montrose Harbor

I  
You weren’t supposed to be here but the wind
blew hard a thousand miles east of all your expectations. And the prairie turned to corn, turned into stubble and the fall turned to the ways of winter and the ground came to a giant water edged in steel. By chance you found a respite set within an urban field of designated wild, protected by a roll of a snowdrift fence with a sign to read and reconcile (for those who can or those who will) a tranquil sanctuary for the mind, a magic fifteen acres for the soul and for the bird. Until the word went out in typed staccato, texted with a shout. II It wasn’t supposed to go this way, but you were not the ordinary beachfront owl and we were crazy for a better view; we’d never seen an eastern juvenile cunicularia migrating through Chicago; and we meant to wish you well. Forgive us, then, for rudely rushing to your resting place, for overlooking rules and crossing lines, for passions crashing through the wilderness and wandering off the trail, (for those who will, and don’t we all?) for being curious crowds, for flushing you out of your final makeshift prairie hole, and pardon most of all our great surprise to find you at the dawn of your demise. III A Cooper’s hawk, as Cooper’s hawks will do, descended from its perch above the din and sank its brutal talons into you before our eyes, turned yang to darkest yin spectacularly as your feathers flew into the autumn air and caught the wind to fly no more. And what were we to do? Your wings had shown the wear of having been a vagrant far from home, and you were too exhausted to keep going past the dawn, (and no one can keep going on) too young to know exactly what to do and too vulnerable with your prairie gone. And here you found us with our feverish smiles, so pleased to meet you at your final mile.


from Thirty Birds

What Thunder Told The Demons

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 411-417 





412  Eliot: Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46: ‘ed io sentii chiavar l'uscio di sotto all'orribile torre.’ Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346. ‘My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it... In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.’ Dante, Inferno : “And I heard locking up the under door / Of the horrible tower.” See Appendix D. F. H. Bradley was Eliot’s professor at Oxford, and his book, Appearance and Reality (1893) was the basis of Eliot’s doctoral thesis in 1916. Bradley advanced the philosophy of solipsism, suggesting that only one’s mind exists with certainty and everything outside the mind is questionable. Eliot, and modernist literature in general, refuted this, arguing instead that the world, like thunder, speaks to us all; the concepts of “datta” and “dayadhvam” go even further, telling the poet to give back and sympathize with the world. See note 400. Dayadhvam means “Sympathize,” what the demons understood in hearing “Da.” 

417 Eliot: Shakespeare, Coriolanus (1608) 3.3.125-126: “CORIOLANUS (after being banished from Rome): And here remain with your uncertainty. / Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!”   

✭  See Eliot, The Sacred Wood; Essays on Poetry and Criticism: Hamlet and His Problems (1920), in which Eliot presented his OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE theory of literature, arguing that a literary work needed explicit, relatable elements to express itself and evoke emotions in its audience. By this theory, Eliot proclaimed Coriolanus a better tragedy than the more solipsistic Hamlet. But see note 432 for Eliot’s awareness of emotions beyond explanation.

from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

In a Plane Over the Alps, March 2015

...And I was only going here to there,
thinking my fate was somewhere far beyond
the scenery of 40,000 feet
below me. 30,000... 20... 10....
So steadily we dropped without a care
until we heard the pilot pounding on
the cockpit door, and from our side,
replete with irony: "God damn it, let me in!"
which set us all to screaming through the air 
into the mountains, somewhere in between
the day dreams of our German destiny
and memories of standing on the ground
in Spain, purchasing tickets, unaware
of where an hour later we would be.

Prayer and Meditation II

II

But if I hold my mirror to the sun,

I can’t pretend the two of these are one

and same: although the image of the sun

is in the mirror, it is not the sun

itself; likewise the mirror itself is one

thing and the image is another. One

may never know a thing about the sun

and still reflect its light, just as the sun

may shine its rays of light on everyone

but never be diminished. I am one

who looks through cloudy skies, and I am one

whose eyes are sometimes clouded, so the sun

and what I would perceive are not the same;

whatever else, the sun is not to blame.


from Walled Gardens (Meditation)

Moleskin 5.6

In the fall of ‘75, the fall of twelve, we moved again, this time to home number ten. It was in the same suburb and same school district as the stepdad home, but this home was a step up: a real house with two stories over the basement, in a neighborhood with curving streets and stone street signs. All the houses were older and less cookie-cuttered: ours had stucco siding with sloped corners and leaded windows.  We were miles away from the Des Plaines River now, but we could hear O’Hare a little closer and sense the Kennedy Expressway to the south of us —different kinds of river flows. It seemed to be a “settle in” sort of place, with an easy walk to school, a new set of friends to meet and, once again, a paper route.

Polishing the Mirror

In time 
    we are no longer

testing the arguments

that our experience

will somehow 
    make us stronger

as if each pang of hunger

itself were sustenance,

as if the circumstance

of age could 
    make us younger.

No more this 
    vain pretending

our skin gets tougher when

we feel reality

    burn like the sun.

We are born to suffer and

bear our mortality;

there will be 
    no happy ending

before this 
    day is done.

But this too 
    is from the sun:

a secondary fire cast

from rippling waters,

a flashing picture

of the waters’ movement

    brushed upon the wall,

and you start to see that 
everything is a mirror 
of a higher power

    of aboriginal light;

But this too 
    is from the sun:

the bent reflection 
of passing souls

on a dagger’s face

whose verging angle

and sharpened edge

    turn angels into devils,

and you let your dagger 
talk to you, but it 
never tells you 

what is true

    or what is false.

In time 

    all secondary

images turn to gray,

stealing the light of day

and leaving 

    ordinary

impressions on the mirror

of our mortality,

yet we may never see

a time when 

    truth shines clearer.

No more this 

    disregarding

what keeps our darkened hearts

strong: each determined beat

    comes from the sun,

and every spark imparts

the sun’s eternity

of truth that 

    keeps on burning

after the 

    day is done.

And this too 

    is from the sun.

from Walled Gardens

Prayer and Meditation I

My heart is but a mirror in the fog

of my own hypocrisy; my very soul

is stained by the rust of doubt and unbelief,

and the fog won’t lift and the rust won’t go away.

God knows I’ve tried to make this mirror shine

but all I have is spit and vinegar,

a sprayer of hate and a rag of hostility,

and the fog won’t lift and the rust won’t go away.

“Faith,” I’m told, “will make your mirror shine:

faith and the unstained virtue of your creed.”

And so I turn my mirror to the sun

and through the darkness I begin to pray:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,

renew my spirit, help my unbelief

...that the fog would lift and the rust would go away.”

from Walled Gardens (Prayer)

Far And Away

I look into your eyes
and in them find your heart
full of the sorrow
of far and away.

Far, the color of your eyes
and the story of a journey
stretching out to the horizon
with a word approaching fear
but incomplete:
far, the distance of uncertain,
like measuring a mountain
with the space and separation
between near and disappeared;
far, the feeling
between effort and defeat.

And then away,
another story of
a day after the journey
is over with an order
of divorce:
away, the echo of forever
in the opposite direction,
with the posture and position
of a disconnecting turn;
away, the feeling
of rejection and remorse.

And I can see
the distance and direction,
the echo and order
of fear and always
in your eyes,
telling me their stories,
filling my own heart
with the sorrow
of far and away.

from Calendrums

Then Spoke The Thunder

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 400-410

          Then spoke the thunder

                    See Upanishads, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2.2: The Voice of Thunder
                    (tr. Robert Ernest Hume, 1921): 

                    The threefold offspring of Prajapati—gods (devas), men (manushyas), and devils
                    (asuras) —dwelt with their father Prajapati as students of sacred knowledge
                    (brahmacarya).

                    Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: ‘Speak to
                    us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did
                    understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Restrain yourselves (damyata).”’ ‘Yes
                    (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’

                    So then the men said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this
                    syllable, 'Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to
                    us, “Give (datta).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’

                    So then the devils said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this
                    syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to
                    us, “Be compassionate (dayadhvam).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’  

                    This same thing does the divine voice here, thunder, repeat: Da! Da! Da! that is,
                    restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad:
                    self-restraint, giving, compassion.

          DA

                    Eliot’s note: 'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathize, control). The fable 
                    of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka--Upanishad, 5, 1.
                    A translation is found in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.  Paul
                    Deussen’s German translation was published in 1897.

          Datta: what have we given?

                    The first discipline of datta, or “Give,” is what men could hear in the syllable “Da.”
                    See Eliot, Portrait of a Lady (1920): 

                    But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
                    To give you, what can you receive from me?

          My friend, blood shaking my heart

                    This line once read, “My friend. My friend, beating in my heart” (see T. S. Eliot: The
                    Waste Land, a Facsimile & Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the
                    Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited and with an Introduction by  Valerie Eliot
                    (1971).). Eliot struggled to keep his poetry impersonal; see Eliot, Tradition and 
                    the Individual Talent (1919):

                    Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not 
                    the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. ...There are many
                    people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, ...But very 
                    few know when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has 
                    its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet.  The emotion of art is
                    impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering
                    himself wholly to the work to be done.

                    Eliot even called the more personal Walt Whitman “pathetic” (see Eliot, American
                    Literature (Athenaeum, 4/25/1919)), yet he could not resist occasional turns to
                    friendship and, throughout this poem and elsewhere, allusions to Whitman. 
                    Compare the opening lines of Whitman, Memories of President Lincoln (1892):

                    When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
                    And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
                    I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

                    with Eliot, Portrait of a Lady:

                    Now that lilacs are in bloom
                    She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
                    And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
                    “Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
                    What life is, you should hold it in your hands”;
                    (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
                    “You let it flow from you, you let it flow...”

          The awful daring of a moment's surrender
          Which an age of prudence can never retract
          By this, and this only, we have existed
          Which is not to be found in our obituaries
          Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

                    Eliot’s note: Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: ‘...they'll remarry / Ere the worm
                    pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider / Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’ 
                    John Webster (1612) 5.6.181-189.  The extended passage: 

                    FLAMINEO

                    O men,
                    That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted
                    With howling wives! ne'er trust them; they'll re-marry
                    Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
                    Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.
                    ...Trust a woman? never, never; Brachiano 
                    be my precedent. We lay our souls to pawn to the devil
                    for a little pleasure, and a woman makes the bill of sale. 
                    That ever man should marry! ...

          Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
          In our empty rooms


from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Dedication

To my own Vivienne, wherever you are:

... not to be found in my obituary
Or in memories draped
by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken
by the lean solicitor
In my empty room

Moleskin 5.5

I have to recognize what rivers I’ve been given, though. Chicago, I barely knew your green river, but I liked that nameless creek full of crayfish and that make-do hockey pond down the street, and as I got older I enjoyed discovering the sweet maple river of Des Plaines, groomed with urban forest preserves just a bike ride away. When we were young Dad would drive us to a nature preserve just off of Milwaukee Avenue, with caged raccoons and animal prints cast in clay and miles of trails with markers describing the different trees. Eventually I would find my own way to the Des Plaines riverbanks, and even now, and I am still here, too —that river gives me peace. I did not —do not —need to contemplate its continuum to be a part of it, and I am a part of it and one with every river I have ever known.

Turning Positive

Lately I am looking west at sunrise
Watching the autumn colors change from gray
To vivid blue and gold, seeing the day
Awakened from the opposite horizon.
Where the rising sun once had a way
Of drawing me toward its eastern skies
To see the morning spark before my eyes
I am compelled to look the other way now,
To find the russet brown of the tall grass prairies,
The richest yellows reds and remnant greens
Of mid October trees, the oaken black
And birch white of the wood as the season changes,
As the azure sky reflects a breezeless pond
With the warmth of an autumn sun upon my back.

from Calendrums

Waiting for Rain

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 396-399





          Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

                    Ganga is India’s River Ganges, said to sustain a tenth of the world’s 
                    population. In Indian legend, Ganga, a river goddess, flowed in the 
                    mountains of Paradise until King Bhagiratha prayed a thousand years 
                    to bring her down to earth.  See Valmiki, Ramayana 1 (Bala Kanda, 
                    Book of Youth): 42-43 (ca. 400 BC). 

          Waited for rain, while the black clouds
          Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

                    Himavant is a holy mountain in the Himalayas, literally the snowy 
                    mountain. Himavant is also the mountain personified, the Hindu God 
                    of Snow, father of the river goddess Ganga.  See Valmiki, Ramayana 
                    1.42.23).

          The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
          Then spoke the thunder...


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

12:30

 “...and with all your strength...”

My heart is heavy: if heaviness were
     a bundle I would set it down and leave
it on the roadside bloody there to throb
     and die alone.  Then newly spirited I
by the substitute beat of wings would learn to fly
     and rise to heaven all heaviness defied,
          by invisible will of winds sustained
     and carried, no more burdens to abide.

But let my heart beat on inseparable, strong
     against the grievous push of reality,
          steady as the ground on which I stand,
     constantly attending, the sergeant’s song
at the center of my march to victory
             and the core of my pain.

My soul is sad: and if it were a rope
     around my neck I would struggle to untie
the knots of my existence, to escape
     the tangles of my personhood, to be
unfettered from my sorrows, free at last:
     viva la dolce vita joie de vivre
          translated to the gates of God
     and welcomed in, all weariness relieved.

But let my soul run certainty within
      the intricate schematic of my veins,
          cause of all effect, the unseen force
      of every muscle’s movement, every wind
and spark and charge, the rattle in my chains
               and the source of my sadness.

My mind is numb: if heaven is a dream
     unproven, laughable, a fool’s goal I
          must dream it and believe it anyway:
     upon these wings imagined life becomes
more bearable, the suffering recedes;
     but prove there is no heaven, clip my dreams
          and pain abounds and weighs me down;
     my heart becomes a heavy ticking bomb;
my soul starts strangling me.

                                        But let it be:
     let my heart beat on, my soul remain within
to stubbornly endure; let time instruct
     the vital weave of heaviness and heaven
and let me learn how pain is not a parcel
               to reject or a cord to be cut.

from Calendrums

One Morning

Mr. Cistern had his business grin on, the one that made everyone shudder when caught in its arid bearing. He swept the room with it like a spotlight, casting stagefright upon wouldn’t-be actors and testing to see who had remembered their lines. It could not be escaped. Everyone in the wings, before and after the turgid sweep, struggled to retain their continence.

At the same time everyone knew that it was all a ridiculous show. He pretended to be making rounds, being Mr. Friendly With The Troops, while we the grunts pretended in return (as if we had a choice) to be bred with some kind of patriotic respect for Cistern and Sons, our employer-exploiter, the proud producer of Garden Brand Chemicals. But I the disenchanted exploitee had grown tired of pretending. I was thinking of deserting, running away from the circus, and I had provocatively expressed as much, although perhaps with a little more pungency, just yesterday morning on a stall wall in the company can.

He coursed in a zig-zag amble, following a secret itinerary, first here, then there, then back over this way. “Hello, Marcie,” he said on one side of the shop. “Good to see you made it in today.” “Yes, sir.” Amble, amble. “Hi, Bob. Let’s get those numbers up.” “Yes, sir.” Smile, smile, smile and over to the other side of the room. “Janet, well, it looks like things are piling up for you.” “Yes, sir.” “Maybe we ought to get you another In-basket.” Smile and chuckle.

Everyone smiled back, too, like the Cheese was their uncle. Yet everyone could see, had to see, the cold aim of his big fat furtive glances. Beneath Uncle’s temperate banter and bandy loomed just one frigid purpose. He had emerged from his plush-pit with just one place to go, just one thing to say, and he was, between each zig and zag, directing himself my way.

The stroll and the gab were greased up with a warmth as synthetic as if it had come out of a tube. Not even the worst brown-nosed kissups were fooled. I had thought once that maybe these creatures lived too far out past the fringes of reality, until one day a notorious b.n.k. advised me that I “really should play along.” Yet he had confirmed it: in absolutely everyone’s peonic mind it was all a miserable game. And today even this b.n.k., lapping it all up while the spotlight shone, could be seen wearing a shriveled puke look after the C. had passed him; today it seemed particularly putrid, everywhere you looked.

I waited for him. I didn’t even try to look busy. Only when he eventually made it to the edge of my desk did I look down at my work, and then it was with full attention, as if no one else existed. And it was exclusion, not dedication, only a guise of head-hanging shame to hide the subtle snub. He pretended, too, not to notice.

“Hello, Jenson.” He spoke with frostiness. I looked up out of my own chilled atmosphere, thinking one of us might have shrunk the stupid smile. But it still glared icily, and the lips were even further stretched and taut. “Jenson,” they said again. “Good morning.”

“Mr. Cistern,” I acknowledged, sounding in fact much like an “Mmmmph.”

“Darin, you know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” His voice dipped just higher than a scratched whisper, with the intimacy of a swamp lizard and the integrity of a snake. I shivered as one cold-blooded paw (or the snake itself) dropped onto my shoulder.

“Sir?” Be polite now, I thought. Just a little more.

“Tell you what, Darin, let’s set up an appointment, you and me, okay?” He spoke with blatant condescension. “Strictly for conversational purposes,” he said.

“What about, sir?”

“I’ll just put you down for about four-thirty, how does that sound?” The grin was noisome.

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“We’ll meet in my office, of course, but I suppose you know that much, don’t you?” He laughed.

“Sir?” No rudeness, not yet. 

“Put your nose back into it, Jenson.” His voice had boosted up again. Once more everyone could choke on the bossish humor. Then he patted me on the back, which made me feel just a little closer to wanting to hit him. Self-control, I told myself. Therapy, look away, turn a cheek, don’t watch the queen of shovelfuls mosey back into the pit. I gripped my chair handles and stared anywhere away and apart from his ambling departure. My mouth tasted acridly mad. My eyes stared emptily into the room, away and apart, and only happened to land on the face of Janet Praxis, chuckling in mime exaggeration. Fuck you, J. She stuck out her tongue (such a child) and smiled as stupid as the Cheese, except that it was real and she was a girl and there was something remotely attractive about it. Oh, go to hell, Praxis, we’re just pretending, too.

Cistern was nearly back to the door of his office, almost escaped and victorious, to apex my misery. Janet, compounding the misery, started laughing audibly, just loud enough at first, but with a threatening poco crescendo. I wondered if I was ever going to do it, or if it was going to be suddenly too late. I wondered how long I would be entranced by the last several steps of the queen on one side and the ascending giggle on the other, trapping me and rendering me unable to stand up and prove something, anything, once and forever, making me into a fool and the biggest Employee of them all, the grand pretender. I wondered, I almost whimpered, cried when suddenly my voice found itself and it wasn’t a whine.

“Mr. Cistern!” Just loud enough.

He stopped midway between his final to and fro. He erased the stupid grin without any detectable motion, and he had a little trouble finding a voice himself.

“Jenson?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m through playing.”

“Excuse me?”

“I quit, sir.”

“Jenson, perhaps we might discuss this privately.”

“No sir.” There was nothing to talk about. “I’m through.“

And I couldn’t add anything after that. I looked over at Janet Praxis, and saw her disappointment. Not enough bravado, I suppose. But that was it. I scooped a few things out of my desk drawers and grabbed my coat and quietly walked out the door.


from March to December