A collaboration with Margaret B Simon
Published ‘The Q Review’ 1997
The sky outside this orbit fades to yellow blues and greens, then ocre like my mind feels rather ochre. Like something someone would eat and spit out. I’ve been here strapped into the seat for ten hours and they keep screaming at me to be still and bringing me beverages which are most distasteful.
I dislike flight by air. I always have, and I always shall. For me, the water soothes me, the winds and waves afford me comfort. Suffer I would gladly behind the blast of sudden storms, I have no problem within. But these nandy pants catering to me make me ill, and their feet are far too small. One of these women who wait on me is quite intelligent. I must not forget this. She could have made a fine cosit, I suppose. Ample muscles, large for these who are representatives and her feet...I am happy with the size of her feet. Her voice I know as a shrill chirp calling. This is good. I asked her name, once.
Nobody would tell me.
It’s black otherwise. I’m in my window watching as we circle.
Once, I watched a vized version of fish in a tank. This is good, I thought, for I know the ways of the fish. This is good. But rather odd, to put them away in a tank, I thought. It’s rather a waste of my time, I think, to try to put these thoughts into a language of comprehension for them but then why not? It bothers me to have nothing to do.
It’s late, now. Milky white skies and spackled with sunstars. I couldn’t make out the landing, but what else could be expected when one realised that this country was at least a couple of centuries younger than anywhere else? Or should I say – older?
I took the eyeglass to the window and could only make out a few phrases here and there,
‘he was heartless...’
‘blood stood still...’
‘one breath of air lasted a lif-’
‘name was ... avid - sucked out from the pit...’
‘flights never ended...ailerons slanted’ iced?’
Jolted my handsticks to pen. Feel selfbeing hefted from what I’d taken to be the present to the sun oh too bright through the wind...
Awakingsleep wait for me the scratching of the featherbone on parchment someone sticking me with pinsounds
‘This is your Captain. A bit of rough air, here. We should land shortly. Sorry about this, stay in your secured locations until further notice.’
At last or at least a full and complete sentence. I contemplated squeezing shut my eye in order to see more clearly. Rather than endanger myself further, I extended a disposable feeler which was immediately chopped twice, but no more than a pinprick to me, naturally. There was a sensation of water, shafting of lights, distortions of the less than ordinary for even this otherworld - and thus, I plugged myself inside for emergence level purposes.
‘odd!’...put...sides with tank seven o five charlie are you...?’
‘founder... can’t pull it...' must be a vi____? Silk on paisley ocre designs explosions seepage no choice but to will myself outward until the scuttle whap of landing jarred me backward to common time and time was empty...
The more that things do not change, the more they actually change. That’s the way it is. Things are intended to change and if they don’t change, they become things other than they are.
I lean back in the deck chair and try to dream of cool beers on a beach where the sun chill blinds. Well, most people think ‘thinking’ is a bit like wearing randy pants and the less you think, the more you can go to swish parties and be held up as a ‘doer’, a man who makes moves without breaking sweat....
A plane roars overhead - probably taking richer people than me to hotter incontinents than the beach. Assuming it doesn’t crash en route - an orc with snapped wings.
Unfortunately, I only have one eye. Always have, always will.
And then again, whatever....
