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IMAGINE CROWD NOISE
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An old time radio announcer stayed home for away games, unbeknownst to the fans, and read the play-by-play off the wire, making up details, playing crowd noises, giving his listeners the game they expected, his voice as familiar as the rituals of men on first and third, nobody out. A swing and a miss. Top of the order coming up. Their rote emotions as practiced as a waltz: the twinge at a loss, the reunion with comfort at a win. We are so accustomed to things! And what léger de main there is in words! How easy they make it to live in our heads, to stay at home and imagine the game.
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MIDAS AT THE BEACH
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When Midas went to the beach everyone in his kingdom was nervous. They liked the foot shaped patches of golden sand, scooped up like cattle patties, and they were used to the nimble ruckus of the entourage, staying somewhat close but avoiding the bump. Their fear was for the sea, for his first step, for the yellow muck hardening around his ankles like it did in his brief Saturday night baths. They would rescue him, of course, if the water trapped his feet — throw him chains which they would later add to the treasury once he'd grabbed them and been dragged over the sharp, concreted waves. It was a matter of some speculation for them, but as he stared across the water, their anxiety rose, and they muttered about the loss of the fishing industry, imagining the blue sea becoming gold. It was the philosopher's punishment, anyway: He'd been estranged with his daughter long before he'd hugged her to death. Like everything else in his kingdom, she'd become an object of evaluation. Even the words he used to describe things were like little boxes of confinement, little rocks he threw at the moon, separating him further, bringing him pieces, lodestones. And the guilt of his isolation — he'd sworn off concubines, it was that look in their far-off eyes, the crackling realization reaching their minds that they'd been bought, while he caressed the distant, perfect object in his hands. He went often to the beach and stared like other people do at the meditation before him. The sun's long dangling finger across the water, the honied line, shimmering like a zipper on what he was coming to understand about it: one conclusion, or another, here a god, there a god, everywhere a god-god — he was aloofness itself, and by that held the upper hand, the sponge, squeezing it while soapy runs splattered into gold chaos on the gray rocks. The servants scrambled, able but wary, picking up the treasured flotsam. Age made it worse. Aloha girls waved, ever receding, their swaying hips making the horizon like the hem of a grass skirt. At least there was the gold. And he was the king, king of the homunculus, giver of sciences, wolfing down salad leaves before they lodged in the back of his throat, cutting off fingernails, letting them fall with a shrill clatter onto the smooth golden floor which mirrored his feet. He would cough, and wonder if his spray of golden spittle would ignite the air into golden brightness and make him fall with the last tinkling music into the consummated, unabdicated otherness.
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Bibliography
John Philip Johnson's Page
Writer's Website
Writers On-Line
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