On Land

Written in sync with the album On Land, by Brian Eno. Each story takes the title of a song, and was written in the exact amount of time it took the song to play. That is to say, each successive story is a stream-of-consciousness writing inspired by the mood and sustained by the time of each successive song, in album order, from start to finish.

Lizard Point

We came through the mangroves and found him, a bit of dumpling in the broth. Only his head and upper arms still adhered to the sand; the rest of him was lifting in the tide. A few more minutes and he would have sailed off, a bit of flesh in the big ocean: receding blond hair, a shattered chest, suit slacks, black brogues, and legs twisted like mangrove roots.

The Lost Day

I suppose the train used to mean more than it means now. I shouldn’t suppose; it’s true. But still, every great old city has a great old station, and those great old stations are veritable catacombs. You can barely sense the depth of it when you are tapping across the marbled halls. The ticking and tacking of the schedule neutralizes your brain; the high windows draw your arcing eyes; the coursing masses warp through your irises and weft down your ears and you sit back with the paper and wait. And below you, layers and layers of tunneled earth house air and echoes and rats upon rats upon rats and strange stowaways. They live there, amid the leftovers and the refuse. They were once travelers like you, but they missed their connection, they lost a day, and they’re still trying to make it back.

Tal Coat

What the hell is the point of moisture, anyway? Why do we need this dichotomy of dryness and wetness? Couldn’t we live without water filling our mouths, filling our organs and skin, suspending us in oceans of ourselves? What would it be to be merely sand? Uncolored, incoherent, diffuse, dead? It would, I suppose be a great gathering act—we’d yearn for ourselves, for each little self of ourselves—all divided as separate subjects—to return, return, return to the whole—but each separate grain would resist return, and they would butt and bicker and be blown about. And then someday, coherence would occur but we could only scream dryly for a coat of rain.

Shadow

What kind of cigarettes do you smoke? Camels? Yeah, but it’s too windy to get them lit. We shouldn’t smoke anyway. I shouldn’t smoke, but you can. No, if you shouldn’t then I can’t. I don’t care. I won’t. It’s fucking cold, this wind. It’s gotten fucking cold. Let’s go inside. No, I like the balcony. I can feel part of the world out there when I sit here. It’s a hell of a view. Someday I’m gonna jump off this thing. Don’t say that. Gimme a cigarette or I’ll jump right now.

Lantern Marsh

The water there had taken the appearance of glass. And the red sky streaked across the surface and glowed like a train signal. Thus, the name. I used to go there around sunset, after dinner, sometimes with my parents, but lately alone. It was a popular place though. Popular for summer lovers. But it was an eerie place. A lot of old marine wreckage gathered on one side of a dune, and of course, as the tide switched, the sulfurous, brackish pits sent their scents out. But it was magical as well. I saw many couples that would go there and walk the dunes and sit and kiss. It made me anxious and lonely. One time I heard a woman screaming and wailing just as the sun had fallen under the sea—I rounded a bend and there was a man screwing his girlfriend hard up against the dunes. I walked off and went home and crawled under my bed.

(Unfamiliar Wind) Leeks Hills

That was when the sky turned black and twisted, and a bubble of pressure pushed across the land. We watched from the basement windows as the wind twirled and tossed its way carelessly across the world. It moved as a dancer playing thunderous rhythms with its feet. From the plain it approached the Leeks Hills, humble and twinned. It ground through one and spun off and left it half eaten, its guts of dirt and shrubs all spilled; it made a furious turn and came back again and ate the rest, but then it shrugged and spun itself into oblivion. It didn’t hurt the other hill.

A Clearing

Where the high powerlines crossed—there was a clearing there. We’d go out and throw the football and climb the towers to a certain height. Gilbert said he’d go all the way up and nobody believed him. So, he had to test. He went hand over hand, foot to rung, up and up. He climbed up the inside, through the body of the thing. Up near the top he yelled of heat and clamored that his head hurt, but he had to keep going. Finally he wended around the wires almost superhumanly and stood at the top. You can see the entire town from here, he yelled. He couldn’t get down. The electric company came out and pulled him down, and yelled the rest of us into deafness, to boot.

Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960

That summer a ship wrecked off of Dunwich Beach. It was a ferry that unbelievably steered into Alligator Rock and gouged a huge hole in the hull; water poured in and then it listed quickly and began to sink—well full of cars and people too. They mobilized the guard and helicopters came spinning, and rescue boats, but a handful of people had fallen in upon the sudden list, and others were crushed by tipped cars—it was a storm of grief up and down the beach. Oil slicked in with the tide as people yelled and held their heads. Finally, the guard had pulled out everyone they could save, and the trusty ferry slipped down under the water it had plied so well. The kid who was driving it tried to go down with the boat, but the guard pulled him away. Nobody swam there the rest of the summer. By autumn, people had begun walking there again, but it was a bizarre and painful thing to do, because every now and then, a body washed up, all dark and scraped clean, and dressed in seaweed.

MB 2009

Lizard Point
We came through the mangroves and found him, a bit of dumpling in the broth. Only his head and upper arms still adhered to the sand; the rest of him was lifting in the tide.