Dynamo - Bronx Science's Literary Magazine

 2012-2013

 Ball of Yarn

My early morning stroll takes me to the nearby park, backpack slung over my right shoulder. The sun has barely begun to say hello to my neighborhood, and no one roams the streets. I find it better that way. According to my count, I have done this every day for the last 7 years of my life. The pattern soothes me, adds to my need for structure. That reminds me, I have to update my personal catalog of named asteroids in the Oort Cloud.

At the park, I enter through the north gate. There are 4 gates for each cardinal direction. I always go through the north one. I then walk 30 paces and then turn left and continue walking to a tree. There, I sit while facing the east gate. Unslinging my bag, I pull out my sketchbook, a small ink bottle, and a dip pen. Being able to work from home gets me much free time. It is hard to believe. I also pull out a slice of bread as a pigeon flutters down from the sky. Someone else would think it a rather normal pigeon. Maybe so. Maybe it is normal and I just have such an overbearing attention to detail to notice that there is a white dot on the left side of its tail. I have fed the same pigeon on each walk since the first day as well. At first, the slice of bread was going to be my breakfast, but I decided to share some with this pigeon when I first met it. The fact that it came up unabashedly and looked me in the eye sideways probably set it apart from the others, too. I’m biting my upper lip.

He eats about half of my slice and then flies away, but not before I do a quick sketch of him eating. I am not sure if it’s a male or a female, actually. I call him a him because that simplifies things, and I never refer to him by name. Sometimes in my journal I refer to him as Him, as Christians might do for their god.

When he is long gone, I close my sketchbook. There are drawings of nothing else inside.

“You draw really good, mister.” It is a little boy’s voice. I turn to the right, where he is standing in a position which would have granted him full view to my drawing. However, I don’t look him in the eye. Instead, I stare at a pebble next to his shoes. It is rather white. His shoes are some sort of navy blue canvas, and he doesn’t have shoelaces on.

“Where are the shoelaces?” I asked, pointing with my pen.

“I didn’t like having to tie them. So I took them off. Do you draw other birds too?”

Looking the boy in the eye, I hold his gaze for a little, and then avert my eyes again. I get up after packing my sketchbook and supplies, and walk past him towards home, and not once do I look back at what I leave behind. It isn’t as if people care once they get to know the depths of the constraints of my mind.

It is 6:50 AM. 10 minutes before I start my work. I am standing outside my apartment, with my keys in my left hand. I like to look at the peephole and pretend I am looking outside, and then see myself because myself relates to me and that is always true.

My upside-down digital watch sings the time to me, and I step forward and open the door to home. No one wears their watch upside down. Except Harlan. Harlan wears his upside down, but on the left wrist.

My furnishings are sparse. The door swings inward and connects to a small room which I have never heard the name of. Nor ever given a proper name. I simply call it a welcome room. It does not see much use at all for any being other than myself. Leaving my bag by the door, I walk to the living room, where a computer sits dormant in the corner. Books here and there are stacked and tossed haphazardly around the desk. I arranged the desk so that when I sit, my back is not to a window or a door or anything but a nice solid wall. It makes me feel better that way.

The phone rings, a constant noise on my desk. Picking it up, I say placidly, “This is Rory Wynne. Who is there?”

“Hey, Rory, listen, a bunch of prospective authors’ve asked for some evaluations. I’ve sent copies of some polished drafts to your email.”

I wait a little, trying to think of an appropriate response. I chew on my upper lip a little.

“You there?”

“Yes, I am here, Harlan. I was just thinking.”

“Well, if you haven’t got anything to add, I’ll call you as per the usual, eh?”

“That will be fine.” A click on the other line and silence tells me he hung up. People always seem to leave conversations on the phone first. I do not like my job too much. Talking to people is very hard. Sometimes they say things and I find it hard to understand what they mean. Other times they pry into things I feel they should not pry into. Like Harlan did with my thinking.

I also have to read these stuffy novels from self-important upstart authors who fill their work with raw emotion and metaphor and symbolism and silly things like teenagers holding little sticks and saying nonsense to create pretty flashes of colored light. Many of these novels are about fake things. Apparently, the audiences that are targeted by the authors like to be lied to. The only set of works in this genre of “fiction” that I like are those of H.P. Lovecraft. The concept of beings the protagonists and humanity cannot understand is interesting. I try to work things out on the hints and nudges that he gives his readers. The Divine Comedy, however, is full of absurdity, propaganda for the Christian religion, and flowery, useless language.

I suppose this is a small recounting of one of my days. It would classify as a typical, and therefore reassuring and comforting, day. I worked for 4 hours, 52 minutes and 5 seconds. And when I stopped it was because I knew that I had worked enough in one sitting for my work. And it was noon, so it was time for lunch. I went to the kitchen and opened another can of alphabet soup, and I poured the thick slop into a glass bowl. I then added 150 milliliters of water and microwaved it for 2 minutes. While it was microwaving, I stood there and watched the bowl spin slowly. I like slow movements. They are reassuring and threaten me very little, if at all.

I like alphabet soup because I like to try and arrange as many words as I can with the letters before I finish the bowl. I keep a pencil and looseleaf paper nearby as I eat. Every time I eat, I try to make new words that have not been written down before. This can take upwards of 3 hours.

Today, I made the words inconceivable, slander, apocryphal, demulcent, mucilaginous, dyspepsia, perambulating, ramekin, rancor, lionized, embrocating, scintillating, and autarchy. They are listed in the order that I created them. Alphabetically, they are apocryphal, autarchy, demulcent, dyspepsia, embrocating, inconceivable, lionized, mucilaginous, perambulating, ramekin, rancor, scintillating, and slander. That is 13 words. I am below average today.

3 years ago there was a lady who stopped me in the park in the morning. I was drawing Him as He was pecking at my customary offer of a slice of bread. Most days I bring him white, but sometimes I have rye or whole wheat. He eats more of those two than white bread. I like whole wheat too. It sticks to the inside of your teeth less. When I eat bread and the soggy bread sticks to the inside of my teeth while I am eating I spend a long time trying to push it off with my tongue and sometimes I give up and simply drink something. The stuck bread will fall out later.

Bread is also somewhat helpful for getting rid of the burning feeling you receive from capsaicin.

The lady tapped me on the shoulder first before sitting down next to me. She was wearing rather short athletic shorts and a tight-fitting light green shirt. A label on her shirt said “Under Armour” in a strange font with a small symbol next to it. She was very sweaty and breathing very fast. I looked at my sketchbook after I gave her a quick glance.

“Nice drawing. What’s your name?”

“I do not like talking to strangers.” I am getting nervous. I start to bite my upper lip.

“Oh, it’s not going to hurt you. My name’s Eve. Now that I introduced myself, can you tell me your name?”

“My name is Rory Wynne. Why did you sit next to me?”

“Well, you seemed pretty focused on drawing that pigeon – sorry I scared it away, though – and you looked rather handsome.”

“Why are you leaning closer?”

“Oh, come on, darling. I don’t bite.” She laid a hand on my arm.

Jerking my arm away, I said, “I do not like being touched.”

She drew back. There was a weird look on her face. Her eyebrows were drawn together and the corners of her mouth went down. Some bits of her face wrinkled.

“What a weirdo. Talking to you was a mistake.” Her voice changed too. There was something unpleasant about it. I understood, though, that the brief conversation was over. I got up and walked home.

As I read the drafts that Harlan sends, I mark down my grievances with the drafts. I told him I did not want to read fiction, but he does not listen to me. There were 4 drafts I had to read, each about a couple hundred pages. I do not care to recall their plots for the purposes of this log, though I do remember the events that transpired within those texts.

 There was one story I read on a whim. It was called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. A man named Mark Haddon wrote it, and it was published a few years ago. It called itself a mystery novel, though for the first few pages I could hardly see why it was one. The discovery of a dead dog by a teenage boy was part of the book. This boy named Christopher Boone obsesses over it for the first half of the book. I got it at a Borders bookstore because there was this sale once and I decided to try a new genre of literature. I noticed that one of the pages was folded on the top left corner. Or perhaps it was the right corner if you flipped it over. I saw it as folded on the left corner in the first place. When I took it to the register to purchase, I asked if the fold was the reason for the sale. They said no, but I think they were just trying to get rid of defective merchandise.

I met Harlan at university. I remember that I was at a bar by myself on a passing whim. Some people had been talking about the wonders of alcohol. Knowing the effects only by research, however, I resolved to try it out for myself.

The first order I gave to the bartender was for a shot of a liquor called Jagermeister. Shots were not in syringes, though. Like at the doctor’s office for vaccines. Instead there are these very small glasses containing about 1.5 fluid ounces, or approximately 44 milliliters. The caustic drink did not exactly take effect quickly, so I had another one. It smelled like gasoline to me. I didn’t have a car, but the cars near the university all had a gasoline smell. Harlan showed up as I was ingesting the fourth shot. The taste was starting to bother me at this point and I alternated between sucking on a lime wedge and biting my upper lip.

“Strong liver you got there. What’s yer name?” I looked around to see a bleary-eyed, stout man. He was balding, and his shirt had two missing buttons from the bottom and there was a grease stain about 5 millimeters in diameter on his right shoulder. He held a martini glass in one hand. There was a half-eaten olive in it.

Olives taste strange. There is this tangy and oily taste. As you chew, a hint of bitterness also shows itself in the flavor. The Mediterranean people must be very hardy to willingly eat these as food. Sedna.

Sedna is considered a detached trans-Neptunian object within the Oort cloud of the solar system. The surface is a mixture of water, methane, and nitrogen. Frozen as ice. It is very far from the Sun, farther than Neptune.

 I replied to Harlan, telling him my name. The alcohol reduced my inhibition of not telling people my name. Harlan said that I was the most open that night than I ever was since. He laughed once when he said this. It was during a rare meeting in person. I heard some mumbled words involving “men” and “drunk, comatose Rory” and “bed.”

That is really all I remember, however. I woke up in my house with Harlan sitting on top of me. I was on the couch. He thrust a crumpled piece of paper into my mouth and walked out. He was also carrying a bottle of beer. Empty liquor bottles were littering the floor of my house and a chair was broken. Another was upended. There were some torn pieces of cloth and I saw several small indications of emesis. [Being a medical professional, you should have no problem with the definition.] The paper had his phone number and sloppy handwriting talking about a publishing company.

The next day I recuperated from the hangover and the liquor after my morning sketch of Him. I also cleaned the house.

I realize that by writing the fact that I had to update my personal catalog of named asteroids in the Oort Cloud, I was assuming that you knew it was composed of comets. I must apologize. This is called hypocrisy.

I am also testing you. Do you remember, or do you have to look back?

You are not good at your job.

I am sorry.

It has been several months. Harlan has not given any books. Harlan has not called. He has not come. The sketchbook lies on the table, unopened.

I never opened it except when I went to draw Him.

I did not need to. I remember every sketch.

The 1,476th sketch, for example, has an ink blot about 2 millimeters from the right edge of the paper, and He is pecking the ground for a crumb of bread. His left side is turned towards me.

I bite my upper lip.

I wonder what has happened to Him. Perhaps He died of natural causes.

Everything dies. Some earlier than others.

I cannot get the dirt off my hands.

The other three logs are complete garbage. I speak in all of them. Of course I do.

Who else would speak? Who else has this handwriting? This is all my handwriting. Yes. I do not remember writing any of them, however.

They all sound different, however. I see different things in each of them, yet I cover the same topics and events.

I made a sketch in one of them of a cat. Actually, I lied. I am lying. Now I am going to tell the truth. There were three sketches.

They were all of cats. I believe that was my intention. The first one looked like a cat. The second showed a very fat cat compared to the first and it had rough, shaggy fur. It had pits for eyes. The whiskers were very long and wrapped around its neck. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth. The third one was a mess of fur, with two black circles and two drooping, melting ears near the top of the mound. I believe they were all cats because of the recurring grey fur. The whiskers were also a hint.

Or maybe because I only have grey ink.

Harlan has not given any books. I tire of the ones I have at home. They are all so gritty, so realistic. There is no imagination. We desire imagination.

Today I made the words mentalist, anachronism, accompany, satirical, expendable, deranged, lonely, schizophrenic, illusions, Munchausen, and phthisis. Technically Munchausen is a name. It is also the name of a syndrome. But you know that already.

You should. You must.

My upper lip is worn and scarred from biting and chewing.

You must explain that too, doctor.

Tell me all about the picture the artist has painted for you.

At your request.