Thursday, January 28, 2010

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.


After many changes, edits, adits, davits, etc, here is another installment in our mysterious on-going story, Capability.

I have a feeling that the narrative is beginning to veer off into an actual direction. Or is it a hope?

Time will tell.


Capability





Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.
—Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter




Miniver tapped an inch of ash into an urn which had once contained the cinders of a hero. Or so this Turk insisted—through his guide—a quick-witted urchin whose eyes and ears and burlesque English allowed him to eke out an existence translating for tourists in the bazaar.

When pressed about its origins, the old man raised his hands in theatrical protest. The relic in question, which unfortunate circumstances forced him now to sell, had been preserved in his family for one, two, three generations, centuries, or millennia. Although the precise frame of time was left vague, Miniver felt sure he meant the last. The fellow had counted out a trio of stiff logarithmic fingers. The boy nodded in agreement. Father and son, in business together, no doubt.

The urn itself was a crude replica of a more famous original which Miniver had first perceived, as a child—though his own pale reflection—behind a pane of glass. The neat ivory note-card in the oak case said it was a gift of the Sultan to the Queen upon the occasion of her marriage. It had been donated by Her Majesty to The British Museum, as a widowed afterthought, four years after the Prince Consort’s death.

The exact source of the Sultan’s gift could not be established—with definite authority—beyond the soils of Anatolia. That it was immensely old, scholars agreed. It was regarded as the Rosetta of ancient ceramics, as it detailed a famous scene attributed to Homer before the bard himself (according to classical tradition) had even been born. It is justifiably celebrated—not for its beauty per se—its craftsmanship poor, its figures almost cartoonish—but for the truth it represents, what it silently suggests: that the Trojan War occurred, that Helen herself once walked the earth. The late Herr Schliemann’s discoveries at Hisarlik appear to confirm this hypothesis.

Thanks to the peculiar popularity of a pair of engravings executed, anonymously, for The Illustrated London News—travelers in the Mediterranean may now find copies of this vessel, in various sizes, offered for sale from Alexandria to Asia Minor. The best are hand-painted. These are manufactured for export by an ex-patriot Greek, a Mr. Kratides, formerly of Hampstead, presently and comfortably living in Rome. Collectors may identify his creations by his trademark, a tiny cuneiform K, incised as three wedges in the semi-cured clay before firing.

The specimen Miniver inspected in the market bore no such distinguishing feature. It had evidently been abused to make it look more ancient and more actual than it really was. Here and there a flake of glaze was missing; the lip was neatly cracked; much of the meander necklace that formed the lower border of the scene sanded away by events.

A smudge of maroon dust remained on Miniver’s black calfskin gloves as he revolved the artifact in his hands. The essential elements of the story depicted on the surface remained intact: here we see Patroclous, disguised in Achilles’ armor, about to be gored by Hector, his spear perpetually frozen on the point of entry into his opponent’s flesh; there, Achilles himself, eaten by offended Pride, broods over a brazier in his tent, forever opposite—but powerless to prevent—the sorry fate his beloved friend is about to meet.

Miniver admired the outlandish inventiveness of these two Turks. The improbable tale the collaborators told of the vessel’s provenance made it irresistible to him: it gave the purchase a kind of poetry the object lacked—like the Iliad itself. This was life: the perfect souvenir. He paid the dealer a pound and tipped his tot a shilling and considered it a steal.

He returned the urn to his marble mantle and tossed the end of his Havana into the fire. It was his last. The smoke from these cigars had circled the world. He had smoked one on every continent, save the southernmost. (Always leave some landscape in reserve for the imagination to occupy was Miniver’s attitude.) The final cigar he reserved for Europe. The first he lit in Constantinople. When he closed his eyes he could see that last tendril of Christian smoke curling around a minaret, embracing it, a new religion, before dissolving in the arms of the heavily scented night air.

He swirled his brandy, sniffed and swallowed. Through the liquor, in the library, he watched a heavy log of cherry crinkling to extinction in his hearth. His heart. One letter separated these two words, like the waters of the Dardanelles, into two worlds: West and East. Life and Art.

A discrete knock at the door, followed by momentary flare in the fireplace, announced a visitor had arrived. Cartwright coughed softly into a curled white glove, “Mr. Keats.”

The vaporous being clutching the battered Gladstone could not have provided a more ethereal contrast to the voluptuous presence of Lord Miniver. Even Cartwright—whose own particular blend of poise and tact rendered him rather less substantial than a blur of fine gray infinitely attenuated mist—stood like a gravestone next to the impalpable Mr. Keats, a man who did not so much as remove an ulster as transcend it, as a shaft of electric arc-light passes through a globe of frosted glass. Cartwright, coat and hat evaporated in the warm glow of welcome that transfigured Miniver’s features.

“Keats, my dear fellow, how kind of you to come. Please, draw a chair up to my—the remains of my fire. Would you care for a brandy? You look like a ghost.”

“Your Grace is too kind,” the young inventor smiled uncertainly, “Thank you, I would.” He withdrew a puff of speckled handkerchief from his tattered tweed to dry his hands. He wore no gloves.

Speaking to the decanter on his desk as he poured a fresh drink, and added a splash, considered it, then added second, to his own, Miniver addressed Mr. Keats, “When I had no reply to my wire this morning, I began to despair of you this evening, John.” He presented him his brandy. “Your health.”

“Your Grace.” Keats nodded, sipping the liquor cautiously.

Miniver set his brandy on the mantle next to the vase and carefully brushed a bit of extraneous ash to the hearthrug. He regarded his visitor in silence. It was a few minutes before his guest could nerve himself to speak.

“Forgive me, your Grace. The results of my investigations, in your absence, have been most discouraging. I cannot account for the difficulty. When I received your note, I picked up my pen to reply, but I was so overcome with shame that I could not put together the proper words to express my—your Grace has been so kind, so patient, and—” words tumbled forth from the tongue of the reticent young man in a torrent.

The corners of Miniver’s mouth dipped toward a frown.

“John, I have been—I shall continue to be—happy to support you in your efforts—in so far as sovereigns and my poor understanding allow. Your studies in the science of art—the art of science—are—what can I say? They alter one’s conception of time itself.” He searched himself for an illustration. “Beautiful as this instrument is,” he said removing a thin sliver watch from his waistcoat and placing it in his pink outstretched palm, “even my Breuget cannot make such a claim. It can measure a minute for me, but it cannot give meaning to the hour. Only you can do that, John. I have seen it. That is why we are here.”

Keats lowered his eyes toward the flame guttering in his glass.

“John, whether we succeed or fail tonight is immaterial to me. No one, so far as I am concerned, need ever know. I am already amazed by what I have seen. Whatever happens, in the future, if nowhere else, I hope you will regard me less in the capacity of a patron and more as a—,” he punctuated his sentence with a muffled snap, “—as a friend.”

“A man could not hope for a better—a better friend than you, sir. But I am afraid, in all honesty, that what I bring tonight is disappointment, not discovery. It is a poor start to any friendship. That is the source of my dismay.”

Keats placed his scarcely sampled brandy on the table, beside the reading lamp, and reached down for his bag.

The curious contraption Keats extracted resembled nothing so much as an ordinary policeman’s dark lantern—that squat black cylinder with its one large—all-seeing—eye.

The body of the lamp, however, differed from its relatives in three respects: a tiny hole, in the left side, admitted a key, which Keats withdrew (with a length of chain) from his right trouser pocket. Nor was this lamp fashioned from the black enameled tin typical of its constabulary kin: this was made of brightly polished brass. Below the key were engraved three scarcely discernable mathematical symbols: a + and – separated by a zero.

The eye, or lens, was also unusual. Rather than the glaucous hemisphere of silicate one would expect to see, a gutta-percha gasket gripped a gorgeous gem—a single crystal of Herkimer quartz consisting of six low equilateral triangles—cut precisely at the point where the shaft of the crystal begins to taper toward its prismatic end.

This mechanism, to achieve proper distance and elevation for demonstration, Keats balanced at a slight angle on the edge of a folio edition of water-colors, The Birds of North America, on Miniver’s monumental mahogany desk. The souvenir urn on the mantelpiece stood directly in its projected line of sight.

Thus, divided by a beam of diamond blue, the two men studied the characters—Hector, Patroclous—illuminated on the vase.

“As you can see, your Grace, when the key is turned in the positive direction we achieve the desired end. Even using so—I hope I may be candid without reflecting any disparagement on your Grace’s good taste?”

“Please, continue, John,” Miniver responded with a flicker of amusement, “I may attach some sentimental significance to this particular curio, but I still regard it as an ashtray, nothing more.”

“Even using so crude a creation as this,” Keats motioned though the light, toward the mantle, with his intangible hand, “We are able to supply the one dimension the artifact lacks: time. Observe how the story continues.”

Slowly, as if arousing themselves from a stony stupor, the tiny limbs of Hector and Patroclous began to move. The tip of the spear slid silently, like a secret lover, into the breast of Patroclous. The shocked spine of the Greek arched backward as the shaft tore through his viscera, his helmeted head flying back, reflexively fleeing the fearful momentum of death with increasing velocity. He hit the hot sand with a thud. To the ignorant army of invisible spectators, it appeared that Achilles was dead. Hector had finally killed him. One could almost hear the hosts of Ilium beating their shields and roaring with joy.

Just there, at that moment, Keats turned the key to zero: the light went out. There, the isolated scene froze—exactly as it stood. Patroclous was dead. Achilles, one may imagine, still brooded on the other side of the vessel, perhaps a dim suspicion dawning on him as the thunder of the Trojans, transmitted through the broken glaze, reached his ears.

The story begun by the artist—the potter, the painter, the poet—whoever he might be—had advanced less than fifteen seconds in narrative time. Miniver’s watch recorded ninety. (The reader’s chronometer may register a different interval. The writer can only speculate.)

“Before I left for Turkey we performed a similar test on an engraving—a reproduction—a single panel of Hogarth—if I remember correctly. His rake came to life and we followed the young gentleman’s progress from prosperity to dissolution to insanity. All very tragic, but hardly disappointing from an aesthetic point of view, John. The clarity of the projection produced by the lantern is in fact much improved from what I remember. I would call the experiment a success.”

“It is the quartz. The quality of crystal quarried in New York State is higher than any place on Earth. The problem, your Grace, lies in using this equipment to reverse the narrative process. I am afraid it doesn’t work.”

“You mean Patroclous is dead? My vase is forever altered? Even though it is an ashtray, I do prefer it the way it was.”

“Then you shall have to travel back to Turkey and buy another one. A vase is not a book, your Grace. One cannot leaf backwards in clay so easily. I have tried,” Keats added, with an explosion of sputum into his speckled handkerchief...


Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Landscape with Cannibals


I was feeling a bit poetical today, so I thought I would post a new poem.

It may not be my best work, but I think it is kind of fun all of the same...


Landscape with Cannibals
For J.L.K.


I’ve never seen one quite so alien
as yours, or so hospitable. I can
imagine diving in—drinking it
all in—toads, twisted trees, citrus,

pancreatic delicacies
cut from beasts I do not recognize;
I hear them crackling on the hot coals,
shared like songs, or stories, round a fire.

I’ve been to other worlds and I have
eaten other things. Stolen kisses.
I’ve plundered planetary systems, too,
for souvenirs. They jingle in my pocket

now, like keys to an apartment I
long ago surrendered. Yes, I know
these teeth open no doors today, nor do
I care. I keep these little trinkets to

remind me where I’ve been, what you contain:
another universe. Full of stars.


Thursday, January 21, 2010

Capabilities


Busy, busy, busy these past few days with far too much work on my desk and far too little time to devote to writing.

Never fear, dear reader, though my fingers may be otherwise occupied in the drab task of earning my bread and cheese the wheels of imagination have been rapidly turning, turning, turning.

Today I would like present a highly revised version of our short story. I have given it a new title, too, and an introductory epigraph. The whole project stands at 1700 words so far. I am thinking a final tally of 3,000 will probably be sufficient to tell this tale. But we shall see, we shall see...



Capability





Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.
—Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter



Miniver tapped an inch of ash into an urn which had once contained the cinders of a hero. Or so this Turk insisted—through his guide—a quick-witted urchin whose eyes and ears and burlesque English allowed him to eke out an existence translating for tourists in the bazaar.

When questioned about its origins, the old man raised his hands in theatrical protest. The relic, which unfortunate circumstances forced him now to sell, had been preserved in his family for one, two, three generations, centuries, or millennia. Although the precise frame of time seemed to trail off into oblivion, Miniver felt sure he meant the last. The fellow had counted out a trio of stiff logarithmic fingers. The boy nodded in agreement. Father and son, in business together, no doubt.

The urn itself was a crude replica of a more famous original which Miniver had first perceived, as a child, though his own pale reflection, behind a thin pane of glass. The neat ivory note-card in the oak case said it was a gift of the Sultan to the Queen upon the occasion of her marriage. It had been donated by Her Majesty to The British Museum, as a widowed afterthought, four years after the Prince Consort’s death.

The exact source of the Sultan’s gift could not be established—with definite authority—beyond the mythic soil of Anatolia. That it was immensely old, scholars agreed. It was regarded as the Rosetta of ancient ceramics, as it detailed a famous scene attributed to Homer before the bard himself (according to classical tradition) had even been born. It is justifiably celebrated—not for its beauty per se—its craftsmanship poor, its figures almost cartoonish—but for the truth it represents, what it silently suggests: that the Trojan War occurred, that Helen herself once walked the earth. The late Herr Schliemann’s discoveries at Hisarlik appear to confirm this hypothesis.

Thanks to the excellence of a pair of engravings executed, anonymously, for The Illustrated London News—intended to adorn a retrospective appraisal of the famous archaeologist’s excavations penned by his colleague (c.f., “The Tragedy of Troy,” by A. Evans, February 14th, 1891)—travelers in the Mediterranean may now find copies of this vessel, in various sizes, offered for sale from Alexandria to Asia Minor. The best of these are hand-painted. These are manufactured for export by an ex-patriot Greek, a Mr. Kratides, formerly of Hampstead, presently and comfortably living in Rome. Collectors may identify his creations by his trademark, a tiny cuneiform K, incised as three wedges in the semi-cured clay before firing.

The specimen Miniver inspected in the market bore no such distinuishing feature. It had evidently been abused to make it look more ancient and more actual than it really was. Here and there a flake of glaze was missing; the lip was neatly cracked; much of the meander necklace that formed the lower border of the scene ingeniously sanded away by Time.

A smudge of maroon dust remained on Miniver’s black calfskin gloves as he revolved the artifact in his hands. The essential elements of the story depicted on the surface remained intact: here we see Patroclous about to be gored by Hector, his spear perpetually frozen on the point of entry into his opponent’s liver; there, Achilles, eaten by offended Pride, broods over a brazier in his tent, forever opposite but powerless to prevent the sorry fate his beloved friend is about to meet.

Miniver admired the outlandish inventiveness of these two Turks. The improbable tale the collaborators told of the vessel’s provenance made it irresistible to him: it gave the purchase a kind of poetry the object lacked—like the Iliad itself. This was life: the perfect souvenir. He paid the dealer a pound and tipped his tot a shilling and considered it a steal.

He placed the urn on his marble mantle and tossed the end of his Havana into the fire. It was his last. The smoke from these cigars had circled the world. He had smoked one on every continent, save the southernmost. The final one he reserved for Europe. The first he lit in Constantinople. When he closed his eyes he could see that last languid tendril of Christian smoke curling around a minaret, embracing it, a new religion, before dissolving in the heavy night air.

For Miniver Europe meant England and England meant London. He detested them both: the withered lilies of a race doomed to rot in the rain. Dealings in the East were different. Men were different—darker—devilshly ambiguous. Mustapha’s face was the only one he remembered well enough to assign its shifting features a particular identity. Perhaps because his name began with an M: Miniver couldn’t say for certain. Nor did he linger over the problem. All he knew was that that boy had been his first and best bargain. Mustapha stood for the world—all nations, all races, all men—all that is individual—all that lives and breathes and longs to touch—touch something. Not love, necessarily. Love was too limiting a word for the experience he craved, he felt.

He swirled his brandy, sniffed and swallowed. Through the liquor, in the library, he watched a heavy log of cherry crinkling to extinction in his hearth. His heart. One letter separated these two words, like the waters of the Dardanelles, into two worlds: West and East. Life and Art.

A discrete knock at the door, followed by momentary flare in the fireplace, announced a visitor had arrived. Cartwright coughed softly into a curled white glove, “Mr. Keats.”

The vaporous being clutching the battered Gladstone could not have provided a more ethereal contrast to the voluptuous presence of Lord Miniver. Even Cartwright—whose own particular blend of poise and tact rendered him rather less substantial than a blur of fine gray infinitely attenuated mist—stood like a gravestone next to the impalpable Mr. Keats, a man who did not so much as remove an ulster as transcend it, as a shaft of electric arc-light passes through a globe of frosted glass. Cartwright, coat and hat evaporated in the warm glow of welcome that transfigured Miniver’s features.

“Keats, how kind of you to come. Please, draw a chair up to the—the remains of my fire. Would you care for a brandy? You look like a ghost.”

“Your Grace is too kind,” the young inventor smiled uncertainly, “Thank you, I would.” He withdrew a puff of speckled handkerchief from his pocket to dry his hands. He wore no gloves.

Speaking to the decanter on his desk as he poured out a fresh drink for his guest, and added a splash, considered it, then added second, to his own, Miniver addressed Mr. Keats, “When I had no reply to my wire this morning, I began to despair of you this evening, John.” He presented him his brandy. “Your health.”

“Your Grace.” Keats nodded, sipping the liquor cautiously.

Miniver set his glass on the mantle next to the vase and carefully brushed a bit of extraneous ash to the hearthrug. He regarded his visitor in silence. It was a few minutes before he could nerve himself to speak.

“Forgive me, your Grace. The results of my investigations, in your absence, have been most discouraging. I cannot account for the difficulty. When I received your note, I picked up my pen twice to reply, but I was so overcome with shame that I could not put together the proper words to express my—your Grace has been so kind, so patient, and—” words tumbled forth from the tongue of the reticent young man in a torrent.

Miniver gently frowned.

“John, I have been happy to support you—in so far as sovereigns allow—for all of your efforts. Your studies in the science of art—the art of science—are—they have altered our conception of time itself.” He searched himself for an illustration. “Beautiful as this instrument is,” he said removing a thin sliver watch from his waistcoat and placing it in his pink outstretched palm, “even my Breuget cannot make such a claim. It can measure a minute for me, but it cannot give meaning to the hour. Only you can do that, John. That is why you are here.”

Keats lowered his eyes toward the flame guttering in his glass.

“John, whether you succeed or fail tonight is immaterial to me. No one, so far as I am concerned, need ever know. I am already amazed by what I have seen so far. Whatever happens, in the future, if nowhere else, I hope you will regard me less in the capacity of a patron and more as a—,” he punctuated his sentence with with a silver snap, “—as a friend.”

“I shall, your Grace, I shall. A man could not hope for a better—a better friend than you, sir. But I am afraid that what I bring tonight is disappointment, not discovery. That is the source of my dismay. I cannot account for it.”

Keats set his scarcely sampled brandy on the table, beside the reading lamp, and reached down for his Gladstone.

The curious device he extracted from his bag resembled nothing so much as a policeman’s dark lantern, a squat black cylinder with one large—all-seeing—lens.

The body, however, differed from its stylistic progenitor in three respects: a tiny hole, in the left side, admitted a key, which Keats withdrew (with a length of chain) from his right trouser pocket. Nor was this lamp fashioned from the black enameled tin typical of its constabulary kin: this was made of brightly polished brass. Below the key were engraved three scarcely discernable mathematical symbols a + and – separated by a zero.

The lens also was unusual. Rather than the glaucous hemisphere of silicate one would expect to see, a gutta-percha gasket held a gorgeous stone, a three-inch diameter section of Herkimer quartz—a single crystal consisting of six equilateral faces—cut precisely at the point where the shaft of the crystal begins to taper toward its prismatic end.

This mechanism, to achieve proper elevation for demonstration, Keats balanced at a slight angle on the edge of a folio edition of water-colors, The Birds of North America, held between the two porphyry lions crouching on Lord Miniver’s monumental mahogany desk. The souvenir urn on the mantlepiece sat directly in its projected line of sight...

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Vapour


Having spent the last few days walking around in circles, in a sort of imaginative cul-de-sac, I have found my way again in my story, Lord Miniver's Machine.

I wish I could say that something tremendous has happened in the story to occassion this blogpost, but it has not. We only meet two new characters today. One of which may familiar to the reader, in a slightly different context.


Lord Miniver's Machine


Lord Miniver tapped an inch of ash into an urn which had once contained the cinders of a hero. Or so this toothless Turk insisted, through his guide—a quick-witted urchin whose eyes and ears and boisterous burlesque of English allowed him to eke out an existence translating for tourists in the bazaar.

When questioned about its origins, the old man raised his hands in theatrical protest. The relic, which unfortunate circumstances had forced him now to sell, had been preserved in his family for one, two, three generations, centuries, or millennia. Although the precise frame of time was left vague, Miniver felt sure he meant the last. The fellow had counted out a trio of stiff logarithmic fingers. The boy nodded in solemn agreement. Father and son, in business together, no doubt.

The urn itself was a crude replica of a more famous original which Miniver had first perceived, as a child, though his own pale reflection, behind a thin pane of glass. The neat ivory note-card in the oak case said it was a gift of the Sultan to the Queen upon the occasion of her marriage. It had been donated by Her Majesty to The British Museum, as a widowed afterthought, four years after the Prince Consort’s untimely death.

The exact source of the Sultan’s gift could not be established—with definite authority—beyond the mythic soil of Anatolia. That it was immensely old, scholars agreed. It was regarded as the Rosetta of ancient ceramics, as it detailed a famous scene attributed to Homer before the bard himself (according to classical tradition) had even been born. It is justifiably celebrated—not for its beauty per se—its craftsmanship poor, its figures almost cartoonish—but for the truth it represents, what it silently suggests: that the Trojan War was true, that Helen herself had once walked the earth. The late Herr Schliemann’s discoveries at Hisarlik appear to confirm this hypothesis.

Thanks to a popular engraving in the Illustrated London News, travelers in the Mediterranean may now find copies of this vessel, in various sizes, offered for sale in a thousand stalls across the Levant, from Alexandria to Asia Minor. The best of these are hand-painted. These are manufactured for export by an ex-patriot Greek, a Mr. Kratides, formerly of Hampstead, presently and comfortably living in Rome. Collectors may identify his creations by his trademark, a tiny cuneiform K, incised as three wedges in the semi-cured clay before firing.

The specimen Miniver inspected in the market bore no such distinguishing feature. It had evidently been abused to make it look more ancient and more actual than it really was. Here and there a flake of glaze was missing; the lip was neatly cracked; much of the meander necklace that formed the lower border of the scene ingeniously sanded away by Time.

A smudge of maroon martial dust remained on Miniver’s black calfskin gloves as he revolved the artifact in his hands. The essential elements of the story depicted on the surface remained intact: here we see Patroclous about to be gored by Hector, his spear perpetually frozen on the point of entry into his opponent’s liver; there, Achilles, eaten by offended Pride, broods over a brazier in his tent, forever opposite but powerless to prevent the sorry fate his beloved friend is about to meet.

Miniver admired the outlandish inventiveness of these two Turks. The improbable tale the collaborators told of the vessel’s provenance made it irresistible to him: it gave the purchase a kind of poetry the object lacked—like the Iliad itself. This was life: the perfect souvenir. He paid the dealer a pound and tipped his tot a shilling and considered it a steal.


He placed the urn on his marble mantle and tossed the end of his Havana into the fire. It was his last. The smoke from these cigars had circled the world. He had smoked one on every continent, save the southernmost. The final one he reserved for Europe. The first he lit in Constantinople. He imagined that last languid tendril of Christian smoke curling around a minaret, embracing it, a new religion, before dissolving into the evening mist.

For Miniver Europe meant England and England meant London. He detested them both: the withered lilies of a race doomed to rot in the rain. Was this the best that Humanity could do? Cabs, clubs, Parliament, square little shops with set prices? Even the desultory dickering his uncle (Miniver an orphan and his ward) did in the exchanges, he felt, was grounded more in ritual than reality: a gentleman knew the price of everything. The question of value did not enter into the transaction. In the less respectable stews and iniquitous alleys where his countrymen trafficked more directly in flesh, life was more negotiable, perhaps, but not by much. You paid what was demanded. Or someone else did.

Dealings in the East were different. Mustapha was different—like all the others. Mustapha’s face was the only one he remembered well enough to assign its features a particular identity. Perhaps because his name began with an M. Miniver couldn’t say certain. All he knew was that that boy had been his first and best bargain. Mustapha stood for the world—all nations, all races, all men—all that is individual—all that lives and breathes and longs to touch—touch something. Not love, necessarily. Love was too limiting a word, he felt.

Lifting the stopper from the decanter, he heard again the tinkling bottles of scented oil Mustapha unwrapped. Then followed the soft sucking vacuum, the tiny cork’s pop, the swift equalization of pressure, the array of scents he might choose: almond, orange peel, saffron, cinnamon, attar of roses, the distant tang of other men in other rooms. He wanted them all.

He started carefully—with a tincture of cloves and cinnamon. The scent overwhelmed his senses. Experienced hands attacked his muscles. By small degrees, his shoulders relaxed. His spirit relaxed. He ceased to be a Miniver. He ceased to be a man. He had become a vessel himself—the genuine article. He groaned. He had enjoyed the transformation.

He swirled his brandy, sniffed and swallowed. How inhospitable his home seemed tonight. Even this Napoleon generated no heat. Through the liquor, in the library, he watched a heavy cylinder of cherry crinkling to extinction in his hearth. His heart. One letter separated these two words, like the waters of the Dardanelles, into two worlds: life and art.

A discrete knock at the door, followed by momentary flare in the fireplace, announced a visitor had arrived. Cartwright coughed softly into his curled glove, “Mr. Keats.”

The vapourous being clutching the battered Gladstone bag could not have provided a more etherial contrast to the voluptuous presence of Lord Miniver. Even Cartwright—whose own particular blend of poise and tact redendered him rather less substantial than a blur of fine gray but infinitely attentive mist—stood like a gravestone next to the impalpable Mr. Keats, a man who did not so much as remove an ulster as transcend it, as a shaft of electric light passes through a globe of frosted glass. Cartwright, hat and coat retired.

“Keats, my dear fellow, how kind of you to come. Please, draw a chair up to the—the remains of my fire. Would you care for a brandy? You look like a ghost.”

“Your Grace is too kind,” the young inventor smiled uncertainly, “Thank you, I would.” He knelt before he sat. From the Stygian depths of his Gladstone, he withrew a rectangle of chamois cloth and a flicker of brass. He quickly dried a pair of raw hands chafed by the rain. The cloth he quietly folded and placed in the lower left pocket of his tattered tweed, next to Miniver’s telegram, with a pat...

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Additions


Today I have made a few alterations to our story, Lord Miniver's Machine. Some changes are significant, most are minor. Distinguishing between them, I leave to the reader.


Lord Miniver's Machine

Lord Miniver tapped an inch of ash into an urn which had once contained the cinders of a hero. Or so this toothless Turk insisted, through his guide—a quick-witted urchin whose eyes and ears and limited English allowed him to eke out an existence translating for tourists in the bazaar.

When questioned about its origins, the old man raised his hands in theatrical protest. The relic, which unfortunate circumstances had forced him now to sell, had been preserved in his family for one, two, three generations, centuries, or millennia. The precise frame of time was left vague. Miniver felt sure he meant the last. The fellow counted out a trio of logarithmic fingers. The boy nodded in solemn agreement. Father and son, in business together, no doubt.

The urn itself was a crude replica of a more famous original which Miniver had first perceived, as a child, though his own pale reflection, behind a pane of glass. The neat ivory note-card in the oak case said it was a gift of the Sultan to the Queen upon the occasion of her marriage. It had been donated by Her Majesty to The British Museum, as a widowed afterthought, four years after the Prince Consort’s untimely death.

The exact source of the Sultan’s gift could not be established—with definite authority—beyond the mythic soils of Anatolia. That it was immensely old, scholars agreed. It was regarded as the Rosetta of ancient ceramics, as it detailed a famous scene attributed to Homer before the bard himself (according to classical tradition) had even been born. The urn was celebrated not for its beauty per se—its craftsmanship crude, compared to more modern designs, its figures almost cartoonish—but for its historical significance, what it silently suggested: that the Trojan War was true, that Helen herself had once walked the earth. Schliemann’s recent discoveries at Hisarlik appear to confirm this hypothesis.

Thanks to the popular press, travelers in the East will now find copies of this vessel, in various sizes, offered for sale in a thousand stalls across the Levant, from Alexandria to Asia Minor. The best of these are hand-painted. They are manufactured for export by an ex-patriot Greek, a Mr. Kratides, formerly of Athens, presently and comfortably living in Rome. Collectors may identify his creations by his trademark, a tiny cuneiform K, incised as three wedges in the clay.

The specimen Miniver inspected in the market bore no such distinguishing feature. It had evidently been abused to make it look more ancient and more actual than it really was. Here and there a flake of glaze was missing; the lip was neatly cracked; much of the meander necklace that formed the lower border of the scene ingeniously sanded away by Time.

A smudge of maroon martial dust remained on Miniver’s black calfskin gloves as he revolved the artifact in his hands. The essential elements of the story depicted on the surface remained intact: here we see Patroclous about to be gored by Hector, his spear perpetually frozen on the point of entry into his opponent’s liver; there, Achilles, eaten by offended Pride, broods over a brazier in his tent, forever opposite but powerless to prevent the sorry fate his beloved friend is about to meet.

Miniver admired the outlandish inventiveness of these two Turks. The improbable tale the collaborators told of the vessel’s provenance made it irresistible to him: it gave the purchase a kind of poetry the object lacked—like the Iliad itself. This was life: the perfect souvenir. He paid the dealer a pound and tipped his tot a shilling and considered it a steal.

He placed the urn on his marble mantle and tossed the end of his Havana into the fire. It was his last. The smoke from these cigars had circled the world. He had smoked one on every continent, save the southernmost. The final one he reserved for Europe. The first he lit in Istanbul. He imagined that last itinerant tendril of Christian smoke curling around a minaret, embracing it, a new religion, before dissolving into the evening mist.

For him, Europe meant England and England meant London. He detested them both: the withered lilies of a race doomed to rot in the rain. Was this the best that Humanity could do? Cabs, clubs, Parliament, square little shops with set prices. Even in the less respectable stews and fog obscured alleys that trafficked more directly in flesh, life was less negotiable.

Dealings in the East were different. Mustapha was different—darker—more desireable—like all the others. Mustapha’s face was the only one he remembered well enough to assign its features a particular identity. Perhaps because his name was so easy to pronounce. Miniver couldn’t say. All he knew was that that boy had been his first and best bargain. Mustapha stood for the world now—all nations, all races, all men—all that is individual—all that lives and breathes and longs to touch—something—warm——not love, necessarily—that would be too limiting a word, he sensed—external to himself.

Lifting the stopper from the decanter, he heard again the crude music of those tinkling bottles of scented oils Mustapha unrapped in the hammam. Then followed the soft sucking vacuum, the tiny cork’s pop, the equalization of pressure, the array of scents he might choose: almond, orange peel, saffron, cinnamon, attar of roses, the distant tang of other men in other rooms. He wanted them all. Experienced hands attacked him. By small degrees, his shoulders relaxed. His spirit relaxed. He ceased to be a Miniver. He ceased to be a man. He had become a vessel himself—the genuine article. He groaned, enjoying the transformation.

He swirled his brandy, sniffed and swallowed. How inhospitable this leather-lined corner of the Cosmos seemed tonight. Even this Napoleon generated no heat. Through the liquor, in the library, he watched a heavy cylinder of cherry crinkling to extinction in his hearth. His heart. Only one letter separated these two words. Like the waters of Dardanelles, two worlds.

Were Miniver an engineer he might have found his mind wandering toward a way of bridging the gap which separated these images, rather than dwelling on the abyss which separated them from their physical counterparts in the material world.




Friday, January 8, 2010

Impasse


Having reached an impasse with my Takaaki poem, I have decided to put it on the back burner for now and work on another project while it simmers.

Over the next few days I plan on offering a short story, in installments, tentatively entitled, Lord Miniver's Machine. Many of you will no doubt recognize the name of our hero as being remarkably similar to another
Miniver from literary history. This is not a coincidence.

Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned for the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

A.E. Robinson, 1910


I first encountered this poem in Mrs. Vollmer's 1st period 8th grade English class, at Sweet Home Junior High School, in the spring of 1982. That morning was notable for introductions, for not only did I meet the unfortunate alcoholic, Mr. Cheevy, but I also made the aquaintence of a very sad butcher named
Bright and an aristocratic, but rather troubled, flaneur whose cognomen was Cory. Seldom, since the morning I sat in class nervously narrating the life of Miniver Cheevy to my classmates, has the case history of that gentlemen been far from my consciousness.

What I hope to accomplish with this story, I hope will become clear in the course of its telling over the next few days...

Lord Miniver's Machine

Lord Miniver tapped an inch of ash into an urn which had once contained the cinders of a hero. Or thus the toothless Turk insisted, through his guide—a quick-witted urchin whose eyes and ears and English allowed him to eke out an existence translating for tourists in the bazaar.

When questioned about its origins, the old man raised his hands in theatrical protest. The relic in question, which unfortunate circumstances had forced him now to sell, had been preserved in his family for almost one, two, three generations. Or centuries. Or millennia. The precise frame of time was left un-translated. Miniver felt sure he meant the last. The fellow counted out a trio of logarithmic fingers. The boy nodded in solemn agreement. Father and son, in business together, no doubt.

The urn itself was a crude replica of a more famous original which Miniver had first perceived, as a child, though his own pale reflection, behind a pane of glass. The note-card in the case said it was a gift of the Sultan to the Queen on the occasion of her marriage. It had been donated by Her Majesty to The British Museum, as an afterthought, four years after the Prince Consort’s untimely death.

The exact origins of the Sultan’s gift could not be established—beyond Anatolia. That it was immensely old, scholars agreed. It was regarded as the Rosetta of ancient ceramics, as it details a famous scene from Homer before Homer himself (according to classical tradition) had been born. It was celebrated not for its beauty per se—its craftsmanship crude, its figures almost cartoonish—but for its historical significance, what it silently suggested: that the Trojan War was true, that Helen herself had once walked the earth. In many minds, Schliemann’s startling discoveries at Hissarlik now confirmed its artistic assertions.

Thanks to the popular press, travelers in the East will now find copies of this vessel, in various sizes, offered for sale in a thousand stalls across the Levant, from Alexandria to Asia Minor. The best of these are manufactured for export by an ex-patriot Greek, a Mr. Paul Kratides, formerly of Athens, presently and comfortably living in Rome. Collectors may identify his creations by a small maker’s mark, a cuneiform K, incised as three wedges on the base.

The specimen Miniver inspected in the market bore no such distinguishing feature. It evidently been abused to make it look more ancient and more actual than it really was. Here and there a flake of glaze was missing; the lip was neatly cracked; much of the meander necklace that formed the lower border of the scene sanded away by Time.

A smudge of maroon martial dust remained on Miniver’s smooth black calfskin gloves as he revolved the vessel in his hands. The essential elements of the story depicted on the surface remained intact: here we see Patroclous about to be gored by Hector, his spear perpetually frozen on the point of entry into his opponent’s flesh; there, Achilles, eaten by offended Pride, broods over a brazier in his tent, forever opposite but impotent to prevent the sorry fate his beloved friend is about to meet.

Miniver admired the outlandish inventiveness of these two Turks. The improbable tale the collaborators told of the vessel’s provenance made it irresistible: it gave the purchase a kind of poetry the object lacked—like the Iliad itself. This was life: the perfect souvenir. He paid the dealer a pound, and considered it a steal.