06 - The Letter B

Exercise 06: Patterns/Style/The Letter B: [basically same as in exercise 05, except instead of the letter A we use the letter B and instead of "cows" we are instructed to write about "shelter"]. 750 words.

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BECOMING


1.
The trees in the forest, covering the body. A blanket, a tent, a blanket-becoming-tent. Jim Jones's wooden shack in the middle of the park, bury bodies near the river bank. The earth, surrounding the cold body. Beneath the soil is the life of an ecosystem. Outwards, a trailer in a trailer park, a house in a neighborhood, a mansion in the suburbs. A chateau, isolated, in a forest, on the bank of a river. An 80-story high rise near the interstate, near the hospital, near the industrial corporation.

My house is an apartment. It is large and spacious and filled with things that I like. There is a closet that goes nowhere but I pretend it leads to the door I just came out of. My apartment has enough floor space for at least one hundred people to die at the same time. There is no necessity for bodies to touch once they are static, the ground isolates the fact that everyone has come together to die. In death there is no Other.

I walk around my apartment regularly, counting the paces it takes me from one end of the large room to the other. Sometimes my result varies, sometimes I end up with a consistent number of steps. Sometimes I forget what I'm doing and stand in the same position for hours upon hours.

You are at the beach. Dark clouds hover on the horizon, threatening destruction. You see a cave 10 meters in the distance. What do you do?

Inside of the cave you find darkness and warmth, protection from the howling winds outside.

I watched crabs crawl out from under the sand, I felt them crawl over my body as I remained away from them. The beach haunts this cave, my echo chamber of the crashing sea. When high-tide comes I am stuck. I hear the smooth & swift fins of sharks swimming near the mouth of my home at night and fear an attempt at escape that I have yet to plan. This beach landscape doesn't make any sense.



2.

Storm clouds hover above the beach.

I watch the waves break. There is a terror-becoming that floats in the sky and deafens my ears with a screaming. The screaming is low pitched and resembles the rumbling of a volcano.
The rest of the bodies have been buried.

I have a sustained belief that I will never have to leave my cave. The ocean banks against the sediment that performs my shelter. I hear a pounding and a rhythm that lulls me into a space of non-sleep, rest.

My blond hair shines. My bare skin glistens in the sun as I lay on top of my cave. I have never been this tan before and nobody would believe my dark complexion. I am not afraid of cancer because I cannot tell if I am actually alive.

The sight of my own blood reminds me that I am alive.

I isolate fish eggs in small divots of water and keep close surveillance until I can see the fish born. (I try to cover the hole with a blanket, but the blanket is not large enough and falls to the earth below.) I want to bury my sentiment in the sand and sit in my cave off the coast, watching as the waves pull it apart and send it dissolving into the salt. I have a suspicion that beneath my cave there is another, larger, more complex cave, but I have no way of knowing if this is true. Sometimes I think I hear whistling, songs by Nina Simone, but it is probably the wind.

Since the beginning I have survived drinking saltwater. My own body is gaunt and missing. I am not sure how I am still around. In my dream I am holding a bunch of grapes. I pluck each one off individually, savoring the taste in my mouth, the juices burning my dry tongue. I have not tasted fruit since I entered the cave, I survive on seaweed and fish that flop onto the rocks. I save the matches I brought with me for special occasions (it took three weeks for them to dry fully; I wasted many matches before this).

Yesterday I stared at the sun until I was blind. The brutal rocks of my cave have become a second skin. I fear the day when I see someone else.