The Unsaid

Underworld, Pt 2

Another excerpt. This sentence is absolutely thrilling.

The sound woke him some mornings when the planes flew right over and sometimes he stood outside his quarters before nightfall and watched the matched contrails of half a dozen aircraft in tight formation, the planes themselves long gone, but it was the drag and sonic shock, this is what awed and moved him, and then the afterclap rolling off the mountains, like they were blowing out a seam in the world.

Underworld, Don DeLillo, pg 408

“…Like they were blowing out a seam in the world.” How fucking brilliant is that?

Underworld

The book is 827 pages long. It starts in the 40s, then warps to the 90s, throws itself back into the 70s and then plays among those time frames willingly and without caution. Its placed the reader inside the mind of seven characters and counting. I’m only halfway through. Yet every page reads wonderfully. His prose capture my complete attention. This stood out especially. It’s so tangible. Klara discovers and ignores, it reveals a mountain of information about the human condition, it’s voyeurism but we enjoy it anyway. Judgements layered in commonalities. Something about it puts a smile on my face every time I read it. I wish like Hell I could write like him.

Standing in someone’s kitchen, slicing a lemon, she understood that the knife would slip and she would cut herself and she did.

It was one of those microseconds that’s long and slow and nuclear-packed with information and she knew it would happen and kept on slicing and then it happened, she cut her finger and watched the blood edge from the knife line and slide unevenly down her knuckle.

She watched people sunbathing, they did it so completely, dominating the experience, a woman flopped on a ledge with a blanket and a pitcher of iced tea and a child’s drinking glass appliquéd with flowers and a paperback book that Klara tried to spy the title of—they did it without conceding anything to the stone ledges or pitched roofs or breathless tar surfaces, it was the spectacle of here I am, and there’s a window washer’s empty rig scaling the side of a slab tower. She saw a brick facade flushed with coral light, more or less on fire with light, and the brick seemed revealed the way only light reveals a thing—it is baked clay of some intenser beauty than she’d ever thought to notice. And there’s the old lady again sitting in her webbed chair with the reflector under her chin and faces sacrificially into the sun, a plattered head going mummy-brown in the deeps of a summer day.

She watched the blood slide out from the cut and noticed the creases and whorls in her finger and heard the music in the next room, it’s Esther’s husband Jack playing one of his old 45s, the swing-band music that drives his guests out onto the roof.

The garbage was down there, stacked in identical black plastic bags, and she walked home past a broad mound that covered a fire hydrant and part of a bus sign and she saw how everyone agreed together not to notice.

Underworld, Don DeLillo, pg. 387-388

On The Road

What a fucking night!  Now, when I dream of the beat lifestyle that I will never lead, this is what I had in mind.  Traveling from place to place, seeking out any sort of entertaining stimulant, drinking where necessary, eating where necessary.  It clicked for me.  It wasn’t the greatest night of my life, but eventful all the same.

My phone is dying.  The number of messages I sent to my best friend tonight rivals those of the most brilliant texter.  Every intoxicating detail.  I keep my God damn word. I’m coming down from a decent buzz.  Curious about tomorrow, worried that my phone may die somewhere along the way. Despite charging it at home, it’s already in the red. Fingers crossed that leaving it off for the next few hours will help it sustain its life for a little longer.

Suddenly, I’m transported back to a pig roast with my family.  The memory isn’t vivid but what remains intact is the heartache I felt for you so many miles away.  The roof came crashing down that day, yet when the dust cleared the structure between us was a little stronger, built a little taller.

I’m in my room.  I’m safe.  My phone is dying.  I walked through a drive through tonight.  I ate grilled cheese, played Monopoly and guzzled cold beers.  Despite the mental Hell storm I threw myself into over this, the hours are turning out alright.  Two A.M. and the buzz remains, slowly being replaced with exhaustion and hunger.  The hunger will have to wait until morning, but the droopy eyes can be cured within the next ten minutes.  Now I am rambling.  I miss my best friend.  She would have enjoyed this debauchery, this cocktail of events.

Love. Belief. Both are discussions that are hard to have through pixelated screens and keyboards. The confusion in my brain over it, I have never had such a hard time explaining myself or being certain the words were the proper ones. Don’t fuck this up, Brit. Perhaps it is a lack of hard evidence? No, you have been shown the affection. So what is it? The answer should be clear as day, but my doubt in people overwhelms my trust in them. I’m so afraid of being cast aside, of being filed as second best, of being forgotten in a couple years. The back of my mind is so scared for the future it can’t see you in the present. But at the same time, your eyes tell me you care and that should be enough. Now I’m really rambling… The rest is understood. You know where I’ll go. I will understand this if it kills me (or maybe until). Live now. Live forever. Accepting that you are a mirror is where the struggle is.

I’ll figure this out. I promise.  Goodnight.

Listen to “On Call” for me.