Carbine: Stories

Circle

0 Circle = It was not as though he had no education. Clearly he remembered once having watched an animated film. The film’s main character was a circle. The circle circled around and sang: Your head’s a bubble, Your head’s a bubble, Your looking at trouble, Cause your head’s a bubble. There had been a point to him seeing this film, he recalled, but he did not remember what the point was. Now the skin on his face was thick and coarse. Windburn, he believed, or age or drink and what difference did it make. Somebody said it could be a symptom of something. It began to peel. Turned out not to be a symptom. Turned out he had a syndrome. The syndrome that coarsened the skin of the face and caused it to peel. Not the disease that coarsened the skin of the face and caused it to peel. Perceptions of survival, he understood, were unique to no one. Every one, each one, had an individual concern. His wife, Cassie, said, I told you it was nothing. When he replied it was not nothing, it was a syndrome, Cassie said, that is nothing. Maybe she was right. He hoped she was right. She seemed to know a good deal about these sorts of things. Anyway a syndrome—a skin syndrome—how serious could it be? It was only a name for a condition he already had anyway, wasn’t it? He wanted to exorcise these devils of hope, of perfection, of a life other than quotidian and get to the business of contentedly hanging around inside his life. He had no debt. The house, some hundreds thousands there, and the cars, thirty, maybe forty, but none beyond that. All right—no consumer debt. And most could not say that. When he’d bought the last vehicle the salesman had complimented him on that. Yes, he’d felt good about that. Sure, it took some effort. Besides the film with the circle, he remembered a poem. From, was it, China? The sky is porcelain, My heart is broken. Maybe not from China. That was all of it. Maybe western but in the Chinese style. If he remembered, he’d ask Cassie. She would know. Kept track. That was part of it. Kept a notebook with him and tracked his expenses and obligations. An attempt to organize, to be organized. If only he could get organized—really organized. Where that anxiety came from. Organized enough to function day to day. To see what his expenses and obligations were and meet and control them respectively. That’s where people got caught. Used the plastic and did not track what was going out. That’s what the creditors counted on. Simple, really. Count on a little laziness. A little negligence. Get them where they were weak. Keep them weak and in debt. A debtor society a consumer society simultaneously. A brilliance to it. Cunning bondage in the birthright for a mess of pottage sense. People were fools. Bought the ads for the crap and the crap from the ads and the debt with the crap. If the credit structure were to collapse—well, near the end there was nothing but pander left. A fiction, obvious falsification of the world. He could not imagine it otherwise. Afraid.Afraid of everything we were not and of anything other than this. Circle 0 When he had no idea, he looked, as anyone would, for a thing. Cassie had wanted to see a movie. In the movie, a couple met early and constructed a love. Years later the couple met again and constructed a different love based on the myth of that earlier mythic love. He did not know if Cassie were trying to tell him something but he was certain he should not ask her. He had told her earlier he understood that desire to learn a minor, an obscure, a fading language and to correspond only in it. She told him he was being a fool. He said he was serious. She said he was mocking her. He told her he had no idea what she was referring to, and he made sure he shut up after that. Day or two, it was all forgotten. At least, he presumed Cassie had forgotten. She was always reminding him of things he had forgotten. Why not another language? A language in which...