Line and Pause by Forrest Roth Book Preview

7/31/2019 Line and Pause by Forrest Roth Book Preview

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Line and Pause

Forrest Roth

BlazeVOX [books

Buffalo, New Yor


2/47

Line And Pause Forrest Roth

Copyright 2007

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced withoutthe publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Geoffrey Gatza

First Edition

ISBN: 1-934289-09-4 ISBN 13: 978-1-934289-09-9Library of Congress Control Number: 2006938624

BlazeVOX [books]14 Tremaine AveKenmore, NY 14217

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publisher of weird little books

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I feel my elemental self: I will never age a day. Cold wooden paths lead to the grand templeSliding my way across on socks. No one sees meotherwise my knowledge will be lost. . . A long hallway in abeyance. . . . At the farthest point an aperture reveals details of a room tosteadily gaze upon. . . hidden light fixtures illuminate bronze-wrought lilies submerged in a

flawless disc. . . . I am entering the room, and I am unafraid.


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12

Father, downstairs. I found him. He stood facing the living room window. Hands

folded neatly behind his back. I watched from the stairwaynot to disturb. He

seemed to stare above the homes on the other side of the road. Never looking at

them.

Forgoing safe position, I walked up to his side. Tugged the sleeve of his shirt.

I prodded in my faintest whisper.

Reading, he answered without turning his head. The clouds.

Whimsya hintsettled in his voice. I didnt recognize it.

I fingered my nightgown. His shoulders slumped.

He sighed. Weather reports.

I had noticed them.


7/47

1

I left school early. I could sneak around the back of our home without letting Mothe

know I had returned. Our veranda felt comfortable outside in the bath of warm air.

The blinding sun remained fixed high above. A solitary cloud passed over.

Sitting, I stared at the circle formed inside it, and continued on.

I was careless. A sunstroke hit me.

Mother may have been in disbelief finding her daughter prostrated facedown

in the broken earth of her garden bed.

Her reaction that day still forces its way inward. It settles between a gasp an

a cry of anger.

This, an inhereted lack of precision concerning the unfathomable.


8/47

14

Retrieved in the bedding. An electric fan whirred about on the floor. Light breezes

touched my face at regular intervals. I considered: time had moved backward. The

same morning living again as when I woke up that day.

I did it, I triumphed. So this is what Father meant!

Until daylight waned at each passing oscillation of the fan. A headache

gathered strength.

Mother came in to change the cold handtowel on my forehead.

Kei-chan, she scolded, you willhave to explain yourself when youre

better.

She left a cup of ice water at my side.

I slipped back miserably into dreamless sleep.


9/47

1

He leaned forward. I felt my face turning blanch.

Youre feeling very sick right now, arent you?

Yes.

Well, I can see it. So you know you deserve to be punished.

Yes.

Ill make a deal with you. Ill tell Mother you were just being foolish and

taking a nap outsideif you promise me not to ever pull that stunt again.

I flinched.

My parched lips mouthed inaudible words. They were not:I was on the

veranda, I had a vision, I saw no one, I asked a question in my mind, I had a vision.

Finding prescience made a lie.


10/47

16

During this sleepless stretch I tried recalling the method I had used to reach the

cloud. Useless. My opportunity had arrived and, with it taking advantage of me, left.

A false promise. . . .

I tossed in my bedding. My body grew cold. Darkness blanketed me, one

layer, and the next.


11/47

1

I will leave home some day. Leave Mother and Father.

Question for next time: What will I do then?


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18

They kept the viscera of animals for their holy fascinations. Ritual turned science.

No one possessed the daring to misinterpret Providences will. Seeking support for

their masters (who couldnt help looking inquiringly over their shoulders as the

reading took place), oracles drew characters with something other than quills. They

knew exactly where they stood relative to the blood spilled on the table.

The violent aspect of his craft was never absent: what else could those clouds

that passed over our quiet neighborhood be to him? Sacrifices left discarded.

Emptied. Their vaporous bodies would float onwards, unaffected by the probing

from below upon them. His handit must have been up there, reaching for the

chosen animal, cutting its life away with a single stroke and pulling the entrails out.


13/47

1

A speculative history of sorts on a dubious practice that perhaps never existed to

begin with, except in his mind.

Years later I was able to write meticulously on the notebook cover after the

trembling stopped.


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The ancestry of contemporary cloudwatching closely resembles the practices of augurs inservice to the Roman Empire. . . . This is not to say the two schools are directly related in

method. . . but only in result, and sometimes situational practice. . . .

. . . classic augurism from the Roman times was concerned with Natureanimals, birds,thunderstorms, an ill-timed sneeze. . . spelled out portents to the finely-tuned mind. . . .

The decline of augurism. . . perhaps can be attributed to its obsolescence coinciding with thefall of the Empire. Perhaps the Romans thought that Providence. . . had abandoned them tomeet an undignified end in this world, without proper rites bestowed upon them by theirdescendants, their kin, once they had died. Nature had returned to the Romans to claim itsmastery, and, in effect, throw away the shackles of divination, leaving mankind to stumblearound in the darkness while it explored other diversions. . . none of which have yet returned

mankind to the favors that the Romans enjoyed at their peak. . . .


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Regarding the Japanese islands. . . many examples of divinationgood and ill-intendedstretching back to the Heian period and beyond possibly, but none that show any direct

ancestry to Roman augurism. Japanese divination lended itself to actual manipulation of timand space: spirit possession, physical alteration, curses and so forth. . . . The intercession of

Amaterasu mikami may have been seldom asked for because of the presence of the sonsand daughters of Yamato who dispelled any notion of providential abandonment. . . . HighPriestesses of the royal court were left to their own devices. . . .

Cloudwatching may also have origins among the peasant class during this time as well, so ato fulfill their own sense of connection with Amaterasu mikami that perhaps the aristocraccouldnt bring them. Their own practices took what was simply around themwhat wasfarthest from themin plain sight: stars, sun, clouds. . . .

. . . the peasant class could not invest much in the celestial sphere. Clouds were the onlythings they could claim for themselves, that they felt loomed closest to their own position. Tthem, the tapestry of the sky provided their medium for augury, particularly since it required

little material (or none at all) to make it happen. . . .


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Skills involved in cloudwatching are not hereditary. . . not gifted in any way or form. Theinherent talent to augur must ultimately be discovered on ones own early during childhood

development, or it is completely lost; likewise, situational practice cannot be directly taughtfrom the parent to the child.

The child must discern the methodology on its own since the young mind is less susceptibleto pragmatism. . . and there proficiency can seep within.


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2

The veranda became my hide-out. Saturday afternoons I escaped outside there with

the book I tried finishing for homework. But there were only interruptions by our

neighbors tabby cat, his unwelcomed prowling through Mothers immaculate

garden. These predatory surveys for mice at our home: a silent intrusion, forcing me

further into the words I read. On the page I held counsel with a patient, tranquil

heart, throbbing beneath rumpled orange fur dirtied from countless forays. Then his

pulse would race in a flashpoint. He made his catch. He filled his mouth with

warmth, familiar, brimming.


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I could never fool Mother.

She snatched a letter to my grandparents from underneath my hand before I

finished it. Our motivational sessions were having little effect on me. She perceived

my lazy handwriting. A proposition, then, to find a tutor more skillful than herself

for shod lessons.

My fancies had remained roaming too long through fields of jonquils like so

much poesy. I was figurative. Anything other than what I already cherished turned an

uncertain shade.


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. . . a practice simply materializing from interaction with. . . surroundings. . . imitated byspreading ink on paper. . . .


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26

Latching onto an aspect of a persons physical appearance when introduced to them

helps if they arent a stuffy octogenarian one expects from the Neighborhood

Association.

I would notice other traits, but they were dictated permanently in my memory

by that first one.

Her teeth. They were large and pearl-like. She had two smilesthe first

smile was the upper set, the second being the set below. So she smiled at me at her

doorstep with two sets of teeth, flickering like a zoetrope projector, seductive in its

hypnotic antiquity.


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I donned an odd pair of braided leather slippers gingerly, not at all used to their

feeling.

A long woolen shawl enveloped the upper half of her body.

I complimented her. Mother had prepared me for the politeness of

recognizing esoteric tastes.


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Escribe.

The weather was particularly hot that day: she would converse only in

Spanish. I nodded along. Apropos of me sitting down at the table, she took the brush

and drew a perfect set of hiragana in orange ink. A model study.

She punctuated her critiques with Muy bueno. . . excelente, No es malo,

or Tu comprendes? It depended on how quickly I progressed.

Then, a break. She poured tea and addressed me like I was a young lady of

high stature one minute, the next, a boy who had just finished playing football in a

courtyard the next.

I finished my tea without delay to continue my exercises.


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A little Spaniard boy sits in front of her with dust on his face, intrigued by all the

implementsthe ornate ink basin, brush, a little water jar in the shape of a peacock

with a hole in its eye where the water comes out, the stick of Chinese ink. He

watches the methodical grinding motion of the stick in the ink basin. He cant sit

still, or straight even.

For the first lesson she writes a model in hiragana of the four seasons. She

explains the words to him syllable by syllable.

Ha. . . ru. . . na. . . tsu. . . a. . . ki. . . fu. . . yu.

He infers what she was saying but doesnt fully understand.

He holds the brush like it was a broom. He tries to write the seasons himself

Over and over again. He is supposed to sit upright, left hand on the table when the

right hand moves, brush between thumb and forefinger, balance his posture.

No. . . not yet. . . keep that left hand firm.


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She corrects in rapid orange ink. Things the untrained eye does not notice:

the end of the strokes, the splashes, small drips of spilled ink from the brush. Asks to

repeat the exercise.

Pouring water for the peacocks wound.


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3

Swift bristles pull. My brush kept shifting the paper while making a difficult stroke

Yet she never had any difficulty closing hers, lifting the brush so that the paper

stayed firm on the table.

Solid, undisturbed linerelentless. Dashing off to the edge.


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32

I thanked her outside for her instruction. Again, her two smiles.

My walk back home shadowed by an imagined brilliance.


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People will laugh at me if they see this, I considered later while holding what I

thought had been my best work.The flaws and irregularities. Awkward use of space

Off-balance characters. The misstrokes. Overall lack of character. She had said ther

was an idea writing these scripts, not a human hand with a brush in it. If the hand

was perceived, then I must have failed.


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3

One of my wealthier patrons, a senior executive who I have dinner with now and

then, will complain about the ssho-styles incomprehensibility when his advances

become tiresome for both of us. The motion of long grass twisting in the water whic

the style suggests can be dizzying to follow. I explain to him that connoisseurs toda

foreigners especially, desire a sense of flair in the works they purchase, not steady

perfection, regardless of whether they can read it or not. Most of my works are don

in gysho-style, where this perfection is easier to attain. Some of the ssho-style

works, however, are not as exclusive as one would think. Certain drawings by the

American artist Jackson Pollock bear a resemblance to them, for example.

To use ink against ink.

This is both an attractive problem and a timid solution.


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An early verse: a certain tabby had grown fat and tired from all the mice he devoured

over the years, and, with no strength left to pounce on anything that moved, he found

a sheltered spot under some bush to sleep, tucked away from a childs attentive

affections.

She reassured me later my penmanship showed improvement.


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3

Clouds are not harmless, benign vapor accumulations. . . but harbingers.

. . . advancing storm clouds tell of changes in atmospheric conditions (usually for the worseetc. It is only when they break apart into their indeterminate, shifting forms across the brigh

blue expanse that they appear cheering and playful. Looking at a cloud closely in this lattercondition, one will find objects representative of this world: a dog, a house, a human face.Yet dwelling upon these cloud structures before their disintegration reveals more: the family

pet played with as child, the home one grew up in for many years, the face of a lover stilllonged for. Cloudwatchers form the apotheosis of this instinct, that clouds, laden with theirown image-potential, are susceptible to augury by the attention of the beholder. This involvea peeling away of the cloud layers until finally reaching the most dense part of thestructure, referred to in this study as an entry-point, that resists pedestrian viewing. Theseentry-points cannot be seen by the uninitiated. . . like the ancient augurs, not everyone iscalled to cloudwatching. . . and some are more adept than others.

Recalling the purpose of these cloud-visions, clouds never directly dictate action. This is

illustrated in the opening scene of the Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou: a man sees a thintrail of clouds perfectly bisect a full moon at night, and then repeats the same action with astraight razor on a womans eye. There must always be a conscious separation between theviewer and the cloud, between the observer and the observed; otherwise, the message of thecloud-vision disintegrates and the observer acts [crossed out] irrationally. . . .


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Clouds meeting standard meteorological criteria have image-potential. Either this image-potential is utilized by a cloudwatcher, or it is negated by simply not recognizing its

existence. The primary skill of the cloudwatcher to interpret image-potential into cloud-vision is dependent on previous knowledge of the augury and the ability to recognize entry-

points. . . .

Cloud-visions are not forced on the observer. There is no accidental cloudwatching. . . .

Some cloud structures. . . are accorded more image-potential than others. Stratus cloudsthose at low altitudesare generally the least potent of structures because of their lack ofdensity and close proximity to the observer; this applies to Stratocumulus structures as well.Cumulus structures, which contain clearly defined entry-points, have a high image-potentialand favorable proximity to the observer. These structures are generally the most ideal forcloudwatchers to engage, up until they produce massive Cumulonimbus structures, which inturn create large storm systems that are unreadable. Altocumulus, Cirrostratus, andCirrocumulus structures, though having the advantage of being high altitude formations, are

hardly dense enough to produce a complete cloud-vision, and for that reason can be indulgedby the cloudwatcher as entertainment, or ignored completely.

Cloud structures cannot not be recorded photographically. . . all cloud-visions can only occurin the waking mind of the augur.

Experience can be interpreted and recorded in conventional mediums.


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3

To the best of whatever knowledge I may present at any given time, parents sleep

with assurance while unaware of small discoveries being made.


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Terrible, appealing suggestions filled me.

The lakes in Gunma prefecture. I held the reflection of snow-capped peaks

more exquisite than the mountains themselves. I knew I could disturb the surface of

the water, sending its image away momentarily, and have it reemerge under my eyes

to my conditional satisfaction.


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4

Like most girls, my consciousness dwelled very early on what pertained only to me

such as a particular green dress with a teddy bear hugging a sunflower embroidered

on the front. If I wasnt wearing that dress, my attention continually fixated itself on

that teddy bear and sunflower, worried the scene would somehow change while

stored in my closet.

Learning how to become uncomfortable, that first affliction of children, also

required practice.

I smoothed my other dress out repeatedly in the car. Mother had chosen it fo

me at Fathers request: pink and white vertical stripes, closed at the neck with a bow

No teddy bear. No sunflower.


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Later, then?

The eaves of the main house, which stood at the east end of the premises,

basked in the sun.

Circular stones narrowed a path in the grass.

I was through showing a degree of sophistication.

Father remained talking to the other men. They always looked serious when

they were together.


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4

Sweet, musty smells. Aged timber. I stepped across the threshold. I took formal

position next to Mother, pretending none of the eyes came alive upon my entrance.

Assistants in plain kimono entered, left through a sliding panel. Final

preparations made. Behind the panel they were shushed by an older woman.

The seated men and women, in suspense of the social vacuum, engaged in

muted chatter, no doubt enjoying the rooms ephemeral delights. They waited for a

petal to fall off the single lily that sat in the alcoves gourd vase, for the small, whit

cakes dusted with confectioners sugar, the dark red paste pulsing within, and for th

primordial darkness of a hikidashi-guro bowl where tea laps stagnant in fissured

hollows.

A disturbance followed me.


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Mother whispered. She could discern how the oak beams were used in the room

without any specific architectural knowledge. She didnt elaborate about the scroll

that hung in the alcove above the lily or the Chinese bureau; for these things she

made superficial comments, as though they were secondary additions. They spoke to

nothing of the rooms foundation where, by the tremolo of her voice, was her

husbands design bestowed, expansive and unrecognizable.


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Why should I be afraid?

I had thought the drop of water on my nose wasnt really there until I was

inside.

A towel on my shoulders. In my hands, a cup of hot tea. The garden was

inundated from the eaves cascading.

Father stood by the entrance. He lit a cigarette while keeping his right hand in

his coat pocket, letting the smoke drift outside. While the Cooperative members

huddled about and admired the downpour, he remained expressionless. He took stock

of the weather with them.

The tea did this much for my shivering.


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4

Cant see. It is cold.

Very cold.

What brushes past me.

Wish.


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The origin of practicing cloudwatching is the question that may never be spoken. The searchfor approval from those who can give it. . . .


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4

Questions may only be directed to an entry-point. The entry-point to a cloud may consist of shadow that crosses a plume, thus the side opposite of the sun. The advantage is that it is

easier for the eyes to behold, since, of course, staring at the sun is not. . . .

(Advantage of smaller entry-points, showing up against the thick, white plume?)

The chosen cloud formation must be moving. More potent images occur when the eyefollows a long entry-point of undisturbed clouds. The higher the better; likely tilting the heafor extended periods affects the blood flow to the brain and increases levity of thought. Andgenerally clouds at a higher altitude have more complex formations and patterns, not tomention larger entry-points. Lower altitude clouds tend to break up easier and the viewer isleft staring out into the sky inanely.

Storm clouds are ineffective and do not render any visions. Their entry-points are occluded,and thus any visions rendered must be considered unreliable. This holds true in sunshoweras well. Rain, or the threat thereof, thus cancels the possibility of visions. Under certain

conditions, however, cloudwatching may be possible at night provided a full moon at its peais not completely blotted out by the crossing cloud formations. The content of such cloud-visions ascertained has yet to be determined. . . their reliability when compared to theirstandard day-time counterparts.

. . . hands must be free. No writing, no note taking. . . .

Subject ideally stands at the sea-level ground (this also has safety aspects in mind) with theleast amount of surrounding physical distraction as well. Trees with dispersed boughs have

shown a negligible effect, though may still provide an unwelcome point of reference thatfollows to the ground and hinders levitation of conscious being towards the cloud-vision.


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Father laid the newspapers out on the ground.

The pages were illustrated with an array of colorful brushstrokes, oddly

formed kanji. Pictures, mostly decorated. There was one of Michiko-sama, the

background all around her figure painted in white, her face partly surrounded by a

fiery halo of orange dots. Others were like this. Advertisements, the chess section,

arrows, painted corners, illegible messages, bodies painted over bodies, growing

incomprehensible, childish.

He seemed at ease. We said nothing to each other as he threw my pages into

the incinerator. He composed himself by the time rising smoke mingled with the

scent of his burned leaves.


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5

People said, Ah, adorable. . . she was moved by the Kannon, or She mustve

prayed for a dead grandparent. But it was nothing they understood.


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52

He had a son, but no daughters of his own. He was eager to make up for it.

After doing survey reports for Father, Mr Hirao would bring a gift for me: a

wooden doll from some far-off corner of the country, maybe a small stuffed animal. I

ran off behind our home to light senko fireworks he brought me once during Obon,

the branched sparks coming to life at my fingertips. I wanted to enjoy them alone.

The seaweed candy. It may have been an intentional agitation. Each piece

wrapped in a clear oblate. I attempted peeling it off, thinking it was an inner

wrapper. He stopped my busy fumblings.

I put the whole candy in my mouth at his request. Sweet, translucent paper

dissolved in an instant.

Can I have another, Father? Ill brush my teeth again. . . .

He grew annoyed with my begging. But I knew he kept his temper with

company present.


47/47

Later that night, Mr Hirao remained downstairs. I listened to him and Father

while I was in my bedding. Small buds of my tongue kept touching the wall of my

inside cheek.

The faint sensation was too difficult to bring back on my own.

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Line and Pause by Forrest Roth Book Preview