The Spark - Excerpt from a novel I stopped working on.

The Spark slouched on a bus stop bench under a burning sun. She half-slept under a black umbrella with electric pink and green polka dots. The Spark was black, clad in dark clothing, with a half-sleepy look on her face. She didn’t move. She hadn’t moved, in fact, for several hours. She might have been dead during that time. It would be hard to prove either way, unless you took her pulse, and there was no one around who could be bothered. Even if there was, they would be less inclined to touch her than they might be to touch anyone else, given that she might be presumed dead and thus susceptible to zombism. Even before the zombies’ recent overthrow of the Rules of Life, starting with the rule outlawing cannibalism, she would be a person most human beings would hesitate to touch. They might have to tangle with her somehow. And she was a big woman. Two-fifty if she was an ounce. Furthermore, she was sort of mean-looking, in that way that a sleepy-eyed lioness looks mean; that is, uninterested in you unless you are prey. And she was old. Or young. Depending on how you looked at her. Her skin wasn’t creased so much, although it was healthily pitted; no wrinkles, it just looked worn, like a church-house bible, smoothed but almost calloused by careful use. She sometimes looked as if she had been around since the dawn of time, but at the same time couldn’t possibly be a day over thirty-five.

The Spark sat under the umbrella under the bus shelter and smiled. She had been smiling for days, weeks, perhaps, white teeth glinting out from under the shadows and curves of her lips. It is possible that the zombies had simply considered her dead already, ruled out as fodder. It was more likely that the zombies did less considering than all that, and simply ate anything that looked like a meal and happened to be moving. The Spark may have looked like a meal, but wasn’t moving.

In happier times she had been of the Afrikaa Bambaataa Zulu Nation, a wayward youth drawn in by the electric hum of Something Different, punk rock fed through a synthesizer, disco programmed by sandpaper itself, overseen by space aliens of boogie, a tremulous droning sneer that you could dance to. There was always a message to electro, always a meaning, even if it was just Dance Today, Be Free Today. Usually it was more complex, the inter-marriage of Black Pride and Social Conscience, the will to civil rights and social justice. Usually it was about Unity and Identity somehow at the same time. Usually there was no cause for a fight, because we can use all the help we can get. Usually it was unusual. The Spark loved the Unusual. She might have been called the Unusual if she had not been called Spark.

“Would you believe I once had bright red hair, like an orange flame?”

“I guess so.”

“I did, honey.”

The Spark had been the name she wrote on trains, the name she would have tattooed into her shoulder if she had ever wanted a tattoo, the name by which she would be known when her given name was of no use to anyone. Now, for instance, a couple of zombies, swaggering and staggering with tongues lolling out of their useless heads, dead tongues like fish, jerked and revolted down the street past a barber shop. The price was ten dollars for a buzz cut and several more for a style. The front window was shattered and the chairs inside were slightly spattered with blood and that blue solution combs are kept in. Apparently someone had, just prior to having a very close, zombie-tooth-administered haircut, thrown a jar of combs at the offending monster. A trail of combs and blue drips led to the rear of the store and undoubtedly into the alley out back.

The Spark was hallucinating, she was sure. She had begun hallucinating days ago. Someone had told her once in an AA meeting the court sent her to that the day would come when she’d just start to see things that weren’t there. This was the day she had better quit drinking, because those hallucinations were DTs and DTs could lead to death. The Spark had asked what she should do, was there any way to fix it? There was not, they said, don’t move around too much, and don’t lay on your back. Yeah, said another guy, you don’t want to choke on your own vomit. This started a conversation about Jimi Hendrix and some other rock stars that had unintentionally done that very thing, but the Spark was busy then, thinking about how she was going to get out of that room with all those fucking crazy people. Nobody drinks that much, not nobody I know, she had thought to herself.

The Spark was hallucinating badly now, because there were all sorts of evil things treading around and causing a scene. She wondered if maybe it was riots like she’d seen before, and the DTs were just making it look like a horror movie. This was the worst withdrawal she had ever experienced. She was so sick and weak she didn’t want to move, so that part was easy, but sometimes she felt so full of fear that she thought she would just burst open. And there was that little part of her that told her that this was all real, that everything she was seeing was non-fiction, that this would go from 398 in the Dewey Decimal System (Folklore) to 909 (World History). She told that part to shut up from time to time, to go run and hide from this evil. She watched the zombies drag their cluttered forms past the barber shop and the car wash and keep heading down the street toward greener pastures.

The Spark simply sat, stock-still, waiting for the hour when the fever would break, when she would sleep and wake up in a cold sweat, feeling like she’d pissed herself and smelling like she had sweated out evil incarnate. The Spark sat, and she smiled, and thought about a Leonard Cohen song. “I smile when I’m angry.” The sun beat down on the world, merciless and crude, but a bus shelter and a parasol shielded the Spark.

You fell and the world fell with you. Look at all you have accomplished, dust. Look at all your great fire raging at the emptiness of space, ash. A flicker, a walking shadow, a desolation wind. See you on the shady side of the wall.

Into another time we passed and made our marks on the backs of your fathers, your brothers and sisters, mothers, and all kin. Sold, enslaved, we marched you and yours back and forth, from hearth to heath, field to farm, and bled a nation dry. Bled a people dry. We are truly humbled by our own participation, but how can we say we are sorry?

Our mouths now grind the grist of our brothers' labor. You were we and we were ours, our own, our owned. We were slain and brutally raped, murdered and tortured, but we were not you then, and that was the condition. Our eyes now feast on the fruit of our sisters' labor. She was her and they were them and us and we have been too fortunate. Some have been more fortunate than any heretofore, and some have seen the glinting end of the knife in the dark. You have wept more bitter tears than any and we have not exhorted you to bring your struggle to light. We have held back more cries of mercy than befit a civilized people, we have held back more howls of adjudicant rage than should be ever wanted. Our ears have gone deaf, says the man, "to the screams in the South." WE were US and all encompassed. Your lives, he says, "and my life will never settle."

In my time I have never held a man in captivity, never bound a man to another, never held the single key to manacles by which I could free a man. No whip brandished, no assaultive words to replace a tired beating. Instead I have blended in, ignored conscience. Remained silent when by all rights I had reason to shout, "Injustice! Oppression!" God help me but I am young to regret so much. For what reason could I have ever stopped a bus, set a fire, drowned or hung a man? We have seen so much in your years, and our years have never done right by you, as if we traded. In my time I have been a coward, in my way I have been despised. We were bred for luxury and pacific mutability, sponges. We multiply and can hardly be killed, but are most useful in our deaths. In my time I have never felt more than shifts in temperature and salinity. I am divided, multitude, sepulchrous.

How can I be sorry for being born? Shall I lament, uncreate myself? Do I tear at my clothing in a display of shock and horror, a lacerated beast at last? To whom do I owe this pleasure, you who have seen little of your ancestry? Are we all now bound? For where?

And in the hour of dying we are all our own lives. In the day of our deaths, nothing seems to be wrong, worn-out, or sharp as it could be. In the season of your last breath, may your cold winds blow as cold as they may ever blow, and your warm winds temper you rather than keep you weak.

Your color was the color of diamonds: gray and white and whatever else. I am beginning to think that this isn't such a good idea. Like when? Like when you said things would be good again and you looked into my eyes, your forehead clear and white like china, and you said the reason we cannot love is to be found in our eyes. I stared at your eyes for so long then.





Topiary gardening isn't as easy as it looks. I should know: I do it for a living. I know you think, "Well, all they have to do is just cut the bushes and trees into the shapes they want." This is partially true, but think about it from my perspective. Have you ever tried to cut a hedge? Have you ever tried to cut a straight line out of a hedge, much less shape an elephant or a giraffe? It is infuriating.


When I started, all I could do was the hedge maze, for hours and hours, trying to get the hedges just trimmed back to where they had started. A snip here with the nippers, a grunting reach up to the arboreal heights with the loppers, and of course moving the ladder around in the wee hours of the morning so that it doesn't affect the daily rounds of children with ice cream cones and mouths full of screaming and laughter and ice cream, hands tearing and jostling my beautiful hedge maze.




Mr. Warstone, he was my boss for this period of time. "Head Gardener" read the brass nameplate over his locker in the cabana. "Ours is a simple task," he would begin to the rounds of new recruits - turnover was like you wouldn't believe - "to keep the hedges and topiary sculpture trimmed, groomed, and in decent foliage year-round at Winter World/Summer Land theme park. We are Winter World in the winter, when all the topiary will be covered in snow. Mostly it's just a matter of raking leaves and protecting the plants from any damage incurred by youths armed with candy canes and sleds. I guess you can figure out when we operate as Summer Land.




"Spring and fall, however, are really our peak seasons, as they are for all gardeners, farmers, and people who live off the land. In summer it is too hot to plant anything, and since we don't grow fruit, there's nothing falling off the vine to collect. In winter it is too cold to plant anything, and very few plants bear anything worth collecting in the winter. In spring, however, plants are in full growth, and the topiary sculptures beging to sprout all manner of unsightly ingrown shoots." At this point he would point to his nose. "Do you trim your nostril hair?" The unbearded grounds crew, mostly high school and college students, would usually laugh and imagine what it would be like to have copious amounts of nostril hair, or a nose like Mr. Warstone's, as big as a pluot, in which to cultivate it all. "Well, one day you will. Until that day," and at this point he would gesture out to the grounds, "you can practice on our sculptures."




"Fall is a different matter altogether. We must replant and regroup." Mr. Warstone would point at the seemingly disrepaired and unused shovels huddling in the corner of the cabana next to the folded mackintoshes and galoshes in an array of cubbies with pieces of tape over each square cubicle marked with names like "Graney" and "Shep." "Those shovels will be of some use to us then. Your backs should be strong enough to shift some earth. We will braid the new plants into the existing foliage, always thicker." Mr. Warstone's eyes would begin to stare off at some far-off Platonic ideal of topiary foliage, through which no light nor child's arm would ever pass, a hedge that would cleave like butter, at right angles. Then he'd take us outside, to the mammoth.




The mammoth was his pride and joy. It was a woolly mammoth topiary sculpture, about life-size, roughly the size of a two-story cottage. He would ask us if anyone thought they could sufficiently trim the mammoth, with a base hedge of juniper and ivy draped over it for the woolly part. He reserved the trimming of this sculpture into late June - most of the trimming took place in May - in order to prove a point. Invariably, some young lad who had been on last year and thought he had mastered the shears would raise his hand. Mr. Warstone would set the young man up on the side facing the cabana, away from the side facing the entrance, and let him at it.




In less than five minutes, Mr. Warstone would be tearing into a screaming fit. "You're ruining my mammoth! What is the matter with you?" Without fail he would with tears in his eyes run at the mammoth with clippers in hand and in a few short minutes would stand back, look forlornly at the mammoth, to all eyes but his exactly the same as it had looked ten minutes earlier, and sigh, "Well, I think I may have saved it." Then he would turn toward the crew and give us a disappointed scowl. "But I think I had rather die than let any of you near my mammoth again." He would assign us to more menial tasks - trimming, raking up excess clippings, mowing the lawns, watering, and so forth - and go to work perfecting his mammoth. He could spend hours on the juniper tusks jutting toward the sunlight, and one wondered how a man with so much patience at his craft could fly into a rage at his staff of high school students.



Summer wore on and some boys would quit, unable or unwilling to bear the spate of verbal abuse that was sure to accompany any run-in with Mr. Warstone. Any task, no matter what stage of completion or how well or poorly it was done, went without some comment. "Don't cut so much. No wonder Bambi's mother was shot; you amputated her," he would sneer at a boy trimming the leg of a deer. "Do I have to drown you before you understand how much to water the ficas fox?" It went on and on. Warstone was not an especially happy man.



I remember the day Robbie Childs ran up to the cabana to awaken Mr. Warstone from his daily siesta. Robbie was the smallest among us, probably only about 139 pounds, a junior in high school, barely able to lug a shovel around, much less do any good with it. He knocked on the door. From beyond the portal came a groan, "What?"



"It's two-thirty, sir, like you said." Robbie listened at the door and looked at the windows to check for any signs of life. Mr. Warstone was known for throwing a shoe at the door to frighten the offending party off with the loud noise, but the other shoe did not drop today. "Wake up, sir."

Like a light pours from an open window into the street, unguarded and unbarred. A womb, art, this garden where I lay unfulred looking across the abyss of flowers and sky. Each stem is a tiny world where light and the fuzzy glare of afternoon plays on the ends of petals. There is a perfection in these weak moments, a satisfied grunt of grass smells and the sticky tangibility of grass touching my arms' skin.

Cough, cough. Something about this album grabbed me right from the start. The Black Eyes and their harsh, counter-melodic rhythmic carpet-bombing made me crave memories and concrete. Outspoken, bizarre, Christian, and on Dischord: what was not to like? It was noise and art and intentional and smart. Who's to say?

Guess what I wrote in my black notebook today? I padded back in from the bathroom determined to make conversation.

I don't want to hear about it right now, she snapped. Why don't you get out of here before something happens again?

The red and yellow streamers she'd hung flickered on the ceiling. The room was on fire. It was so hot. I watched them ripple and wave in the fan's extension-cord powered wind. Silence, except for the white noise from the fan and the street, pervaded the conversation. It was like a separate party, arguing incessantly for breathing loudly. The cars rolled by downstairs. The fan huffed.

I said get out of here. You better. Her eyes narrowed and there was a little jump in my heart. I was happy to have her attention, but I couldn't understand what was the matter.

Are you having a nervous breakdown or something? I asked, hoping that she would answer yes. I have had a nervous breakdown. It's not fun. I did not tell her this.

Do I look like I'm having a nervous breakdown? I just want you to leave. A light rain joined the conversation, though the sun was still shining outside. Do you understand me?

It's raining, babe. I don't want to go. I want to figure out what I can do to help. I started putting on my backpack and my shoes anyway. She wasn't going to budge, not now. I was going to have to leave. My shoes squeaked on the wood floor as I double-knotted the laces. No socks. Great, I thought, my feet are going to be soaked when I get home. Have to put the shoes in front of the heat register.

You can leave. She was on the verge of tears now.

Are you, uhh....is it that time of the month? I pulled my backpack straps down, momentarily tightening my backpack before letting go and allowing the bag to drop a few inches and settle with a satisfying 'whuff.' So there, rain.

She shot a dark look to let me know that her menstrual cycle was not up for discussion now.

I just wish I could be of service to you somehow, I whined as I turned to walk out of the room.

Well, you can't. I could hear her lower lip shaking through the words, an oscillation that could have been interference from the fan, but wasn't. You can't help me with this.

I knew well enough not to ask if there were anyone else involved. It could only make matters worse. Besides, I didn't really want to know if there were. What was I going to do, hit them with a baseball bat? My feet plodded out the door and into the hall. Well, bye. I guess I'll call you.

She didn't answer. A lot of things went sprinting through my mind. Should I wait outside and see if anyone slips out the door? Where would I hide? It was raining. This was ridiculous. If she wanted to have her problems to herself, whatever they were, then let her. I opened the front door and looked up the unlit stairwell into the corner where the stairs bent into the upstairs hallway. I love you, I said. Please let this be okay.

Outside the ground had the fresh smell of rain and dirt, street grit kicking up into the graying skies. Summer was coming to an end. I felt each individual splash of rain on my legs and bare arms. Usually we don't have real rain, just sprinkling drizzle for days. This felt good almost. It was real.

Down the street a woman walking her dog cinched her sweatshirt's drawstring so that the hood wrapped tight around her face, framing it like a coccoon. Her hands were pulled up into the cuffs, too, the leash shooting out and waggling here and there following a great big German Shepherd. She looked like one of those 'invisible dog' leashes with the wire stuck in the leash and collar, except backwards, like her clothes had the wires in them and the dog was the real part of the trick. It wasn't cool enough for what she was wearing.

When we passed, I asked, Aren't you hot?

I know it, she said, with her almost invisible face. I chuckled and kept walking.

This gray atomie looks to me like a shower of gray atomies. Nothing is the same as it ever has been and nothing will ever be the same again. I can't stand thinking about the past in this way. I can't stand looking at all the nauseous people, there on the subway, with their books and their photographs in their wallets, holding onto scraps of paper.

Living on a pitchfork with whip in my tail, there were only two things I needed to say: I am not here and I haven't got time for this. It was only a matter of time before the right-handed part of me looked back at the left-handed and laughed.

This came out of me in my white notebook. These notebooks are fictional. The notebooks don't exist. They are real, but in a strictly physical sense of my owning them, possessing them, or even planning to possess them they are a figment of my imagination.

There are notebooks.

There are notebooks in stacks, and I have green ones emblazoned with the University of Washington logo, purple ones, blue ones, maybe even a white one, certainly some red and some black ones, their spiral-bound cardboard covers dulled from their original glossy sheen, scribbled all over with Sharpie pen ink bled and smeared, Bic pen ink gouged into the colorful veneer with all manner of slogans, sayings, and scratched-out words. Abandon hope, all ye who enter was one of my favorites.

At one time I believed I was living in hell, that this world was a literal punishment for something I had done at some time in the past that I could not remember, or a punishment perhaps, if the Lord were especially vindictive, for something I might do in a predetermined future. These notebooks contain the sum total of my soul's desire to prove itself worthy of existence, and should they never see the light of publication, I will be much blessed for the fact. There is very little a soul can say to justify, in the Valley of the Shadow or the Garden of Eden alike, its existence. The absolute glory of creation is enough, isn't it?

There are notebooks. The notebooks I have kept since I was old enough to want to express myself in the written word and young enough to believe that this would make a difference. Now it is something I simply live, day in and day out. If I were to stop writing for any considerable period of time, I would lose something in myself, something intangible but central to the fiber of my being. The core of what I am would melt and I would be adrift again in the Arctic Sea of my own conscience. I write. My dreams and hopes and desires and fears, stories I have made up and haven't made up yet, poems to soothe the burning infamy of consciousness; all these things flow from me.

But the notebooks to which I refer in italicized bookends in my short blog entries, these are simply fanciful mechanisms. For water to flow from a sink, one must turn the faucet, and to turn the faucet off to stop the flow again. The notebooks are valves, with multi-colored handles, listless and impatient.

Promises kept and days ended, the wordless widow kept her watch. The cottage smelled like fresh flowers, and few visitors ever made it this far down the path to her little villa in the sun. The path, overgrown with brambles and sunk in marsh-water, was not easy to tread, after all. With her sewing and cooking, she had enough to do, but was always more than gracious with any visitor.