roachboy

two people call them A and B are walking the cadence of their walk is regular you can adjust to make it so.

two people call them A and B are walking one holds a cup of coffee a white styrofoam cup with a white plastic lid a small triangular piece at a right angle to the lid.

A, who holds the coffee, who is A because of his position in the sequence of descriptions, drinks from the cup periodically, using his glasses to keep the triangular piece which is at a right angle to the lid from poking him as he does so. perhaps he wears the glasses in the way a welder wears goggles it is hard to say.

A is an abstraction and what A does is walk while periodically drinking from a cup of coffee. the conventions that shape this story enable you to position nouns spatially and by doing so to project walking and drinking in your imagination.

one drinks periodically from a white styrofoam cup. he is A. the other does not. he is B. B carries a book, a novel by robbe-grillet, which is written in the same style as this story or vice versa.

the two are walking side by side. the rhythm of their walking is identical: they could be together or they could be synchronized by the sounds of compressors and automobile engines that envelop them probably without their knowing it is safe to say without their knowing as the street up which they walk---and it is a street----is busy in the way a city street is busy.
let's call it a city street.

along the street: a bakery, a pollo loco, a store called disco 2000, a dollar store. the chain of storefronts which continues in a straight line beyond the limits of the frame in two directions.

the heat. the way the heat makes the air appear thick. the way that thickness appears to waver. the heat is like too much information. it weighs everything down. what can happen in this information, in this heat? a day like this makes everything about itself. a day like this feels like it will never end. the boredom of it, imposed by it. a day like this feels almost malicious. a day like this inflicts itself on you: continuous distraction; an inability to focus.

A: i read somewhere that drinking something hot on a hot day helps with the heat.

B: is it working?

a truck is backing up. the warning signal sounds at regular intervals. it comes from the side, perhaps from an adjacent street. the signal's pitch is high and intrusive. it floats above the sounds of compressors and automobile engines, through the wavering air.

A holds the white styrofoam cup in one hand. he looks at the cup and either considers the question or listens to the warning signal that floats above the sounds of compressors and automobile engines, through the wavering air.

B steps onto a metal grate. the smell of the subway follows.

to their left, on the street, a procession of cars each with an orange placard on its windshield. the heat seems to push the exhaust downward, trapping it close to the pavement, spreading it laterally. the procession is passing, but seems to go on and on.
at its end, a hearse.
then it is gone.
the dead leaves.



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[[added a little later, as a caveat lector:

ok so maybe i should explain this thing a little. i decided to treat the rules as constraints in a kind of OuLiPo sense--so there are two types of rules, then: you have to keep to the rules within the story, but make it in such a way that it can be read without knowing the constraints and still work. the other set is that the story itself has to be shaped by the constraints. so here i decided to interpret "dead leaves" in a kind metaphorical sense, as dead pages--so i tried to make a story that falls in on itself, that is in a sense dead.

so i decided that i would put make these pseudo-characters that dont really work and put them in motion on a hot nasty summer-in-philadelphia kinda day because there is nothing i hate more than that. so the situation itself is supposed to be deadening. then i figured that an effect of it being deadening was that attention would wander---and if that was true, then the narrator's attention would have to wander as well: so he had to leave the story and so kill it at another level.

and it is best if you spring all the tricks inside the story as well. but that one's tough. in the above, it's a bit hamfisted, i think.

it turns out that this is a hard game to play and i am not sure that i like the results--mostly because i think the ending is kinda cheap.

alot of the stuff i write works in this kind of way. that and the lack of caps may explain why folk find it difficult or strange: they are rarely really about what you think they are about--there's always always a meta-game, and often more than one going. i like playing with structure, even if i dont always manage to do it well. just telling stories isnt that much fun for me. they have to do what they are talking about.

like this: i dont know it this works or not--but you couldnt tell me if you didnt know the tricks/moves behind it, so there we are.]]

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite