History That (Dis)Invents Itself
: If a book can learn, so can it teach—like
the sages & bards from the time immemorial used to propagate. So, I do.
When I was a three letter old youngster, my granddad would take me with him on
his binge fishing adventures. We’d hop on the boat at the break of dawn,
enchanted by the magic of the quiet colors that smeared a pastel caking over
the whole universe. Or, so it seemed to my young self. I was mesmerized by the
song those wee hours would sing to us, as we listened to the gentle, barely
audible swooshing trace the bottom of the boat was creating whilst sliding through
the friendly streams, through the benevolent microsplashes of the river
awakening from its night ride. I hardly knew what a fishing rod was, but I have
a memory of a fully-fledged fishing experience. We’d go to the spot where a
huge oak tree overarched the bank, keeping the grass in its shadow fresh and
dewy. We’d drink the smell those tiny drops exuded. The vibrancy of its
greenness was our source of perseverance, as we patiently waited for the bait
to signal the presence of a fish. : On such occasions, my granddad would recite
from memory excerpts from the book he so fiercely admired that I always
suspected he might have been, in this or that way, involved in some of the
content it offered. He decisively denied it. But, boy could he recite from
memory! He’d do it so effortlessly, with no external oratory
ornamentations—pure content straightforwardly, seamlessly delivered in a voice
of a dream fantasizing about its own oneiric brooding. His unvarying tone,
stubbornly unchanging pitch reverberated with the line of contact where the
river was licking the sandy waves. He’d tell me about the world which didn’t
know when it was. The world didn’t know the time when it was happening because
everything in it was subordinated to the rule of chronos so much so that such a
radical immersion in the phenomenon of subservience eradicated the role of
distance, sabotaged the awareness of the situation, severed the significance of
the metalevel. whadafuck. they were so hypnotically bowing down to the reckless
sovereignty that they never knew when it was. All they knew was to accelerate
the shit out of their good selves and count themselves lucky if they remembered
what the hell it was that they necessitated such an expedited course of action
for. But, they never knew when it was. Neither did the world.: Later on, when I became an adventurous
person myself seeking the same sparkle of the reverie of the quiet morning, I’d
find myself many a time sitting by the river and together with some likeminded
characters encircling the campfire who’d tell us stories in the voice echoing
granddad’s minimalist narrative extravaganza, his laconic, sparse storyteller
abundance: his disarmingly blunt semantic, acutely knit syntax, piercingly
playful morphology, and phonology rivaling the gentleness of the conversation
between the boat and the water overlooked by the vivacious color vortex. We
were astounded. We learned about sunny days that showered the city with
lightspells, infused into the air currents the flavor of warmth, and snaked
throughout the cityscape its own reflection.
We were stunned by the intensity of the mildness such a site emanated. Yet, the
extremity of such a pleasurable impression could be felt by the listeners
rather than by those who happened to be participants--for lack of a better
word-- in the experience we were told stories about. The partakers would just
busy themselves through the buzz of the plastic jungle not knowing that they
were constantly being illuminated by the gift generously poured over the whole
world. The partakers would just rush through the fog of that silicone haze insensitive
to the brightness of the surrounding. We figured that shit. We knew our meta
thing. i learned my distance early on.
The stories we listened to were delivered to us from the gem
antecedent/offspring in the world of letters. It’s called On How To Phunkie ReadWriteRemix (øøøø).
like phunk!
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