The New Issue: November 2008


You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Mark Twain







Perhaps it all began with a lover’s whisper, a gossipy nudge at the fireside, or the muffled chatter accompanying the chores of breaking camp. Full of anticipation, words and sentences rushed ahead to the next water well, scaring the little ones with stories about the lion waiting there for the thirsty wildebeest. "And that's why you always should keep close to your mother!" Fiction in its infancy! The word that was in the beginning. According to the anthropologists, speech in primitive societies is mainly the purveyor of gossip; it accompanies the daily labors with chatter and singsongs about anything and everything.

I saw a feature about two journalists sharing the life of a Kombai village, yes the very people who not so long ago still had practiced the venerable trade of head hunting and cannibalism. The eldest seems to have living memories of the good old days when he still was a practitioner of the art. He asks you to move closer when imparting his story. For the two Englishmen it was an “experience” – it all seems to be about “experiences” these days, put on tape and sold to the highest bidding syndicate in the media industry, a reality show in the jungle – they disrobed, painted and pierced their bodies and, assisted by the whole village, constructed with traditional methods their own shelter in a tree-top swinging in the wind forty feet above ground, just in time to weather the approaching raining season. The villagers lent them their tools, which was a piece of humbling generosity. Axes with century old stone blades that came from a place long forgotten. If damaged there was nothing to replace them. It is their most priced possession.

Not a place for growing fat. Although surrounded by trees as far as the eye could see, game like birds, grasshoppers, and snakes remains elusive and requires long and exhausting walks through the humid undergrowth. The few domesticated pigs are too precious to be eaten, except on special occasions. Protein, even from the larvae of the Capricorn beetle, is on a premium in this season and extracting the carbohydrates from the pulp of the sago tree is a labor intensive affair that involves everybody in the village. It barely yields rations for another three days of bland sustenance. The newcomers suggest a fishing expedition. Out of the question. It would mean two hour’s walk to the river and many more hours of digging a diversion and constructing a trap bank to bank of the ditch. But because of the rain the river didn’t run shallow enough and the bank was an ankle deep mudflat. The people here had never had heard of calorie counting but knew when to sit tight and burn as few as possible; fishing in this season meant hard work with no prospect of success. The two greenhorns had it in their contract to share the villager’s food and eat nothing else. After three days of hunger they and their invisible camera crew insisted on going fishing anyway. So the whole village moved out, hacked branches from the trees and built the trap. The outcome was as predicted. During the whole operation the chatter never stopped; a young woman was heard improvising a song, sung to herself: “Stupid Olly” – one of the two visitors – “wants us to fish, I am cold and there is no fish.

Over the years these just so improvisations become often rehearsed memories and in the communication pick up a life all of their own, even may take a turn into the mythical. Apparently among the Kombai there is a general fear of sorcery, still held responsible for most of the deaths. But the complex process of extracting sago pulp shows that in certain areas superstition had moved on to science. Where the monkey only knows how to throw a stone and then duck, we’ve acquired the capacity to throw out ideas and then see how it flies with the world surrounding us. It is hit and miss, but without actually doing the throwing there is neither miss nor hit.

It stands to show that it is the spirit that came first. And in a world with nothing but the word to keep the shadows at bay, good fiction is like the hypnotist's touch on your shoulder; it is a pleasing lie and it doesn't fail because it is telling a falsehood; it fails when it ceases to amuse. The doorbell rings and there she is, painted toe-nails, the sandaled foot rubbing up the suntanned calf of her other leg, her left hand with lipstick and makeup mirror still poking backward for the tiny purse dangling from the thinnest of shoulder straps. She looks at you, the face seems serious, but a little flutter of her mascara smudged eyelashes gives away the mirth in her narrowing eyes. For me a memory, for the reader a fictional presence. People used to stop Tolstoy in the streets and ask how Oblonsky was doing. They knew of course Mrs. Karenin had thrown herself before a train, but nobody could forget her appearance in that black ballroom dress with a deep plunging neckline.

This site is approaching the next phase, although it is still going to take a while. Here is the deal: I put up a taster of my fiction; if you like what you read and want more, you make the payment and download the PDF from the page that appears after you made your payment. The file is password protected, so when I receive confirmation I send you the password, and you can read to your heart's desire, even print out one copy for your own uses, and bind it in leather. In the meantime have fun with the latest additions below.

And we have something to celebrate! It really happened. We have a colored president and it is not in a Hollywood movie. He also is going to be one of the most powerful presidents in America's history, if the supporting cast in the two houses is not suddenly possessed by a death wish. He has a lot on his plate. When Kennedy entered the White House he said in an interview: "We always said that things are bad under the previous administration, but we never imagined how bad they really were." For now only this: it is such a shame that Mr. Obama’s grandmother didn’t live to see her grandson’s success. I can’t even imagine how he must be feeling. So in all this elation, here is a word of commiseration to Mr. Obama. (And a nudge to the man responsible for Mr. Obama’s personal security: You better watch out! I don’t want to see anything bad to happen.) 

Good luck and enjoy!

michael sympson, November, 2008

© – 11/8/2008 – by michael sympson, all rights reserved





 

For Taste








































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