I'd really appreciate some feedback from anyone, truly I would.
fourteen
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Fourteen-hundred and forty
By
Frank G. Fowlkes, 30APR03
[The walls are white, and the human sounds coming from behind the door are no longer heard; facing north-west the window covered with a mesh of rusted bars hovers above a nestle of tree stumps, several concrete benches, a polluted drinking fountain, an empty swing moving back and forth in the wind, off in the distance, cars below towering white clouds move or stop at the stoplight, and, at the far left edge of the scratched pane, the descending sun, which for only a week or two during the summer, is setting behind the leaves of the only tree still standing, a misshapen tree outlining the peripheral bank of the Center Green Park.
Once, in another room, another rectangle window, another door, and another C.G.P., there were different relations?cemented in the room: a dirty paper napkin, a couple of books, a b/w television set, one of her dirty undergarments; plastered on the window: a blue p/u truck running through a yellow light, a cigarette butt being thrown out of the window; vibrated forward from the door: comforting human voices, and sounds of knocking and doors opening; and when still able to walk down to the C.G.P.: her lips touching the clear stream of water, and listening to other couples plan?that would distract attention from the only relationship left, the relationship with the fourteen-hundred and forty.
But all of those distracting past relations don?t matter anymore, for, with brevity, attention, in the only moment of clarity, intentionally severed both eyes and ears. Cool sterile air descending from the vent is the only thing attention feels, and all attention senses, and concentrates on, is the fourteen-hundred and forty.
?You will lose all your relations?,? a whispering voice repeats and repeats past severed ears, and a memory separated into six constitutes, each constitute, furthermore, separated into two parts, one of people, mother and father, brothers and sisters, friends, and attention?s dearest, her lips still touching clear water, and the other of everything else, light, lines, mass, numbers, timber, steel and stone, begins to rise out of the undergrowth and, thrust high above this bowelled earth, is being arranged, with the same determination behind thousands of desert men straining to move the inert obelisk, into the unnatural order, wherefore only one part of each constitute will be remembered and the other cast away to be forgotten. Out of the fourteen-hundred and forty possible arrangements only one will be held, only one will be remembered. ??first with people, then with everything else, and then with yourself.?
And, so, fragmented and vague as they are now because of toil, wear, and exhaustion, the six constitutes are lifted out of this world and manipulated to find the arrangement.
I
[The sun is high, and the palm trees set against a cloudless blue sky stir without the unison of the waves that are spilling onto the sterile sand, and if by chance one came, stopped, and closed their eyes they might hear the voices of families intermingled with the sounds of the waves and breeze; clear blue water surrounds the body of a swimmer moving towards the green and rocky atoll rising above the planed expansion. Attention turns its concentration away from the suspended green leafs and begins to wonder about the approaching swimmer, and, learned many times before while searching the depths of the dark water outside of the white corral ring, wondering is enough to raise the feelings and emotions that separate attention from the atoll and the suspended green leafs to the suspended swimmer, and, so, as a submerged diver will always instinctually rise for air, eventually, so do those feeling and emotions that drown everything else out but one. The towering trees vanish, and the volcanic black rocks and sterile sand submerge. Only the swimmer?s approaching movements in the blue clear water remain; her suspended naked body illuminating where the sun does not; her breath touching where wind and water do not, and, soon, she will rise out of the surf and come whisper a hope.]
II
[Its Sunday, 1400, and pedestrians begin to exponentially evacuate; the exiting lines start to diminish under the few remaining trees; the ground and benches are filled with trash and waste, a half eaten burrito, a couple of empty beer bottles, a ripped program guide, a used condom, and thousands of voices in unison can be heard cheering an announcement coming from somewhere in the cozy center. And there, amongst the drain, exodus, and cheering, is where attention closes his senses till all the united pieces are separated, suspended in mid-space, and manipulated into a new relation.
A slender pale hand touches attention?s shoulder, and attention senses open again to hear the words, ?there you are.?]
III
[A pen writes, ??and, therefore, early relations are formed with light, air, and water; the middle relations are formed first with people and then with everything else, and, at the end, the late relations are again formed with light, air, and water; furthermore, considering the limitations of anything currently here on the earth having the ability to form an any type of permanent relationship with people or everything else not to mention the types of relationships formed having not the time or vitality to run the distance; there is only one possible choice since all relationships here on earth have limited value to the development of the final intervention: redistribution, the obelisk will go further to form the unbreakable relationship quite unlike any of the ones experienced here on earth?
?Honey, will you stop writing that book, put it down and come to dinner.?]
IV
[Her naked body?gap?the gentle breeze coming through the open window?gap?the cartoon sounds coming from the next door neighbor?s television set?gap?the smoke rising from her lips?gap?a siren blasting somewhere in the distant?gap?the sterile smell coming from the kitchen?gap?gasp??I love you.??gap ?gap?So!...gap?a door closing and the curtains moving, obscuring the light of the room.]
V
[The permanent descending walk under colorful kites, over the green grass, and around families having picnics, young couples kissing, a soccer game, and a merry-go-round slowly rotating, has arrived.
Slowly feel relations being pulled away from your grasp; slowly feel the undertow dragging you away from breathing free air; slowly feel your caustic extinction, and you too will feel the razor?s edge and know there is nothing important on the strait white line only the ends, one tied against a post and the other a neck.
No one ever hears suffocating sounds; everyone knows someone that is suffocating is suppose to eventually stay down, and down attention would have remained if it wasn?t for the first intervention breaking the top surface of the water, and giving me the only relation to hold on to for dear life.
And, so, it begineth, the foam, the spray, and the momentous climb upward.
?You think everything in this world is here for you; you think everything is here for something that isn?t going anywhere; you think everything is here for you to go on a journey completed trillions and trillions of times before; you think that the world?s remaining resources are going to be lost so you can also go on this journey too. You better think again!?
A new relation arising anew deserves more than just the scraps. The newborn attention assembles will be more enduring.]
VI
[The sterile sand and the elevated green leafs have sunken beneath a swimmer?s decapitate body hanging motionless in the clear blue water; she never did get far after leaving. The waves over two sometimes reflect something moving away from the earth, the finale relation built with the last of the world?s resources, a baby moving towards the only possible loving relationship, the one too far for any man to reach.]
Thousands of hands heave, and exhausted attention again despairs under the strain of the six constitutes. The constitutes sink, and attention knows he is no closer to segregating each constitute much less arranging them since the very first day of the first intervention.. Feeling deep down inside no hand will hold the constitutes down forever, he thinks of the setting sun now visible through the far left bottom pane, the park benches that are still occupied with younger people planning relationships, our diminishing resources, the cartoon sounds coming from the whole family?s television set, the closed door, the light, her pale face, her cracked red lips touching the clear water coming from the fountain, our beloved baby, and praying there was still one more relation instead of the fourteen-hundred and forty he has separated and combined, and then separated again, thousands and thousands of times before alone.]
Postscript:
46080=6(2)X5(2)X4(2)X3(2)X2(2)X1(2)=6X5X4X3X2X1X(2)=1440 So what, maybe my math is wrong but not my love.
The story I limited for several reasons, one, being the need to work within limits, as a painter does with canvas and color, second, not having enough time or really the ideas to expand the article, and, lastly, my favorite number is xiv.
The story is about the fragility of all relations, the allegiances that interventions bring to those forsaken, and the newborn.
Though I did not really go into a lot of detail about the newborn, the newborn is not artificial; it physically exists as an embryo in the womb of our civilization. And by God it will not be aborted; it too has a right to exist, side by side with all of humanity.
Know I was joking about the decapitation part. I only kept it because it?s cool : )
Silent wings beat 90 beats a second.
Much can happen betwixt now and morrow.
A slip, the fall, nothing to grasp, screaming down,
know there is nothing more to seize than you.
fourteen
------------------------------------
Fourteen-hundred and forty
By
Frank G. Fowlkes, 30APR03
[The walls are white, and the human sounds coming from behind the door are no longer heard; facing north-west the window covered with a mesh of rusted bars hovers above a nestle of tree stumps, several concrete benches, a polluted drinking fountain, an empty swing moving back and forth in the wind, off in the distance, cars below towering white clouds move or stop at the stoplight, and, at the far left edge of the scratched pane, the descending sun, which for only a week or two during the summer, is setting behind the leaves of the only tree still standing, a misshapen tree outlining the peripheral bank of the Center Green Park.
Once, in another room, another rectangle window, another door, and another C.G.P., there were different relations?cemented in the room: a dirty paper napkin, a couple of books, a b/w television set, one of her dirty undergarments; plastered on the window: a blue p/u truck running through a yellow light, a cigarette butt being thrown out of the window; vibrated forward from the door: comforting human voices, and sounds of knocking and doors opening; and when still able to walk down to the C.G.P.: her lips touching the clear stream of water, and listening to other couples plan?that would distract attention from the only relationship left, the relationship with the fourteen-hundred and forty.
But all of those distracting past relations don?t matter anymore, for, with brevity, attention, in the only moment of clarity, intentionally severed both eyes and ears. Cool sterile air descending from the vent is the only thing attention feels, and all attention senses, and concentrates on, is the fourteen-hundred and forty.
?You will lose all your relations?,? a whispering voice repeats and repeats past severed ears, and a memory separated into six constitutes, each constitute, furthermore, separated into two parts, one of people, mother and father, brothers and sisters, friends, and attention?s dearest, her lips still touching clear water, and the other of everything else, light, lines, mass, numbers, timber, steel and stone, begins to rise out of the undergrowth and, thrust high above this bowelled earth, is being arranged, with the same determination behind thousands of desert men straining to move the inert obelisk, into the unnatural order, wherefore only one part of each constitute will be remembered and the other cast away to be forgotten. Out of the fourteen-hundred and forty possible arrangements only one will be held, only one will be remembered. ??first with people, then with everything else, and then with yourself.?
And, so, fragmented and vague as they are now because of toil, wear, and exhaustion, the six constitutes are lifted out of this world and manipulated to find the arrangement.
I
[The sun is high, and the palm trees set against a cloudless blue sky stir without the unison of the waves that are spilling onto the sterile sand, and if by chance one came, stopped, and closed their eyes they might hear the voices of families intermingled with the sounds of the waves and breeze; clear blue water surrounds the body of a swimmer moving towards the green and rocky atoll rising above the planed expansion. Attention turns its concentration away from the suspended green leafs and begins to wonder about the approaching swimmer, and, learned many times before while searching the depths of the dark water outside of the white corral ring, wondering is enough to raise the feelings and emotions that separate attention from the atoll and the suspended green leafs to the suspended swimmer, and, so, as a submerged diver will always instinctually rise for air, eventually, so do those feeling and emotions that drown everything else out but one. The towering trees vanish, and the volcanic black rocks and sterile sand submerge. Only the swimmer?s approaching movements in the blue clear water remain; her suspended naked body illuminating where the sun does not; her breath touching where wind and water do not, and, soon, she will rise out of the surf and come whisper a hope.]
II
[Its Sunday, 1400, and pedestrians begin to exponentially evacuate; the exiting lines start to diminish under the few remaining trees; the ground and benches are filled with trash and waste, a half eaten burrito, a couple of empty beer bottles, a ripped program guide, a used condom, and thousands of voices in unison can be heard cheering an announcement coming from somewhere in the cozy center. And there, amongst the drain, exodus, and cheering, is where attention closes his senses till all the united pieces are separated, suspended in mid-space, and manipulated into a new relation.
A slender pale hand touches attention?s shoulder, and attention senses open again to hear the words, ?there you are.?]
III
[A pen writes, ??and, therefore, early relations are formed with light, air, and water; the middle relations are formed first with people and then with everything else, and, at the end, the late relations are again formed with light, air, and water; furthermore, considering the limitations of anything currently here on the earth having the ability to form an any type of permanent relationship with people or everything else not to mention the types of relationships formed having not the time or vitality to run the distance; there is only one possible choice since all relationships here on earth have limited value to the development of the final intervention: redistribution, the obelisk will go further to form the unbreakable relationship quite unlike any of the ones experienced here on earth?
?Honey, will you stop writing that book, put it down and come to dinner.?]
IV
[Her naked body?gap?the gentle breeze coming through the open window?gap?the cartoon sounds coming from the next door neighbor?s television set?gap?the smoke rising from her lips?gap?a siren blasting somewhere in the distant?gap?the sterile smell coming from the kitchen?gap?gasp??I love you.??gap ?gap?So!...gap?a door closing and the curtains moving, obscuring the light of the room.]
V
[The permanent descending walk under colorful kites, over the green grass, and around families having picnics, young couples kissing, a soccer game, and a merry-go-round slowly rotating, has arrived.
Slowly feel relations being pulled away from your grasp; slowly feel the undertow dragging you away from breathing free air; slowly feel your caustic extinction, and you too will feel the razor?s edge and know there is nothing important on the strait white line only the ends, one tied against a post and the other a neck.
No one ever hears suffocating sounds; everyone knows someone that is suffocating is suppose to eventually stay down, and down attention would have remained if it wasn?t for the first intervention breaking the top surface of the water, and giving me the only relation to hold on to for dear life.
And, so, it begineth, the foam, the spray, and the momentous climb upward.
?You think everything in this world is here for you; you think everything is here for something that isn?t going anywhere; you think everything is here for you to go on a journey completed trillions and trillions of times before; you think that the world?s remaining resources are going to be lost so you can also go on this journey too. You better think again!?
A new relation arising anew deserves more than just the scraps. The newborn attention assembles will be more enduring.]
VI
[The sterile sand and the elevated green leafs have sunken beneath a swimmer?s decapitate body hanging motionless in the clear blue water; she never did get far after leaving. The waves over two sometimes reflect something moving away from the earth, the finale relation built with the last of the world?s resources, a baby moving towards the only possible loving relationship, the one too far for any man to reach.]
Thousands of hands heave, and exhausted attention again despairs under the strain of the six constitutes. The constitutes sink, and attention knows he is no closer to segregating each constitute much less arranging them since the very first day of the first intervention.. Feeling deep down inside no hand will hold the constitutes down forever, he thinks of the setting sun now visible through the far left bottom pane, the park benches that are still occupied with younger people planning relationships, our diminishing resources, the cartoon sounds coming from the whole family?s television set, the closed door, the light, her pale face, her cracked red lips touching the clear water coming from the fountain, our beloved baby, and praying there was still one more relation instead of the fourteen-hundred and forty he has separated and combined, and then separated again, thousands and thousands of times before alone.]
Postscript:
46080=6(2)X5(2)X4(2)X3(2)X2(2)X1(2)=6X5X4X3X2X1X(2)=1440 So what, maybe my math is wrong but not my love.
The story I limited for several reasons, one, being the need to work within limits, as a painter does with canvas and color, second, not having enough time or really the ideas to expand the article, and, lastly, my favorite number is xiv.
The story is about the fragility of all relations, the allegiances that interventions bring to those forsaken, and the newborn.
Though I did not really go into a lot of detail about the newborn, the newborn is not artificial; it physically exists as an embryo in the womb of our civilization. And by God it will not be aborted; it too has a right to exist, side by side with all of humanity.
Know I was joking about the decapitation part. I only kept it because it?s cool : )
Silent wings beat 90 beats a second.
Much can happen betwixt now and morrow.
A slip, the fall, nothing to grasp, screaming down,
know there is nothing more to seize than you.
