The Age of Wire and String - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Ben Marcus (THE HOUSE) #8

THE HOUSE

THE GOLDEN MONICA

There exists in some precincts the phenomenon of the intruder or mad invader, who enters the American house in order to extinguish himself in the presence of the mister, the female, the children, whomever. The man powers in, arranges a prison of wire or rope onto the members of the shelter, and settles onto a comfortable area — the rug, a layered blanket, the soft membrane of the floor — to attain a posture of attention to his own body that will render its demise. They are forced to watch, the family. He lights a fire, this man. Or he arranges the appliances to emit the sensations of music, acquits himself of the gentleman’s dance in the center of the room, queries the animal likeness carved into his garment. In other versions he strips to his skin and manifests a final saying to his audience. Make no mistake, they are bound such with the wire or rope that they are forced to acquire the status of audience to this act, and then further to the self-created corpse, which singularly occupies their attention until rescue arrives. The condition of corpse is achieved with a lotion, usually. The intruder might apply a final wound onto himself with pistol or kerm. This knife is curved, fluent in the obstacles of bone and cloth.

What is interesting, as always, is the aftermath. The body, as such, lies often coiled on the floor. Whosoever sits bound at the perimeter must witness its stillness. The television, when activated, accompanies the temperature of the room with a purling forth of warm air, casting the captives under the bluish gild of the broadcast runnel. Thereafter, through unspecified elaborate means, a single figure from the bound hostages — and plural it is, always — manages to delimit himself from his lashed state and escape the site. It is this figure — the escapee who abandons his bound gang for some place of lesser tension — who not only is accused of a murder but confesses to one, thus absorbing the suicide as his own act, despite the weirdly meek pleas of his family, whose claims for his innocence sound hollow, fictional.

The acts of doing and watching are interchangeable here. It is the genius of the perpetrator of the monica to shift volition onto his audience. The spectacle is arranged to emanate from whoever watches it, where seeing is the first form of doing. The audience is deceived into a sense of creation for the act it has witnessed. A member of the family seems riotously certain that he has murdered through the body, attaining the kill.

The act is called a monica because a suicide is forced into the purview of an audience of hostages. It is an apt model for the assessment of the shelter and its forms, assembled in these locations under the rubric of the glimmering, new suicide — houses in which to die. The American areas, in constituency, collaborate to intrude and invade, looting the body of what it does not require, fortifying it with the American medicine of the final home. While any critical neologism made here will be shucked by the world’s refusal to bear the statements of anyone but its author, a certain new assault can be claimed for a shelter that would close the bodv down, deny it light. This body will no longer heal itself, feign wellness, posture some possession of any type of solution. Indeed, where air or light does not exist, it will fashion its own, at whatever cost, whatever pain, extracting that tonic from its own ravaged materials. The witness to this body, and even (or especially) the figure who seeks to escape the welter of the home proposing the monica, will be transfixed at once by the style of death that each man achieves, rightly paralyzed in the beauty of a new mode of exit. And then ultimately, always, by necessity, he will feel certain that he has caused this disappearance, through some stillness or silence of his own.

It is simple, really. Where a house is, this man will maul it with noise and steam, scouring what is stuck and stubborn therein with a lather of golden light, producing an exit of life that is marked by the inception of a shadow. And the shadow takes up residence inside the world. And the shadow is a scar that will not soon be put off.

THE ENEMY IN HOUSE CULTURE

The name is given to members of a pre-early East American culture in the Southwest, predecessors of the original SLEEPING GROUP. Because of the cultural continuity from the SHELTER WITNESSES to the sleeping group, via the drowsers and their string theory of fatigue, they are jointly referred to by archaeologists as the Enemy culture. They are so called because of their extensive and alert practice of house burial; by covering the shelters with seeds and baking them with fossilized sun steam, the team averted fireproof enemies. One system of dating places their arrival in the area as early as the wakeful period of 1979. They seem to have been at first nomadic air hunters, using wooden fire techniques, sleep holes, and the math gun for food. They lived chiefly in grass with grass floors and learned to grow milk and squash, probably from southern neighbors in what was then Utah. As they developed a more extensive food system, they dug pits and lined them with milk for house storage and later carried finished houses to the river as an offering to Perkins, to secure sleep knowledge or possibly to prevent the numbed limb slumbers under Arkansas grass, brought on by exposure to houses built without grains or steam. At some time, perhaps 1983, they were succeeded in the area by the ancestors of the sleeping group, who probably absorbed many of them by creating exhaustion in the fields. Some houses may have been moved and may have contained the ancestors of other shelter tribes, others might have resisted sleep migration and collapsed. Archaeologists divide the time of this culture into the house maker and the house destroyer periods; in the latter period, participants turned increasingly to nonuseful and abstract houses, eventually constructing the penetrating gevorts box, of which one thousand wooden units were made during the Texas-Ohio sleep collaboration, 1987. Gevortsing has subsequently become known as any act, intention, or technique that uses negative house imagery during the dream experience as a device to instruct inhabitants to sleep-kill or otherwise destroy themselves, their walls, windows, doors, or roofs upon waking, until a chosen version of the culture has been sufficiently driven from their home.

WORKS FROM THE WAR BETWEEN HOUSES AND WIND

THE STRATEGY OF GRASS

She was the first grass guard of American shelters. Augmented by a man, usually, the girl wielded her shade stick so that the sun might never collaborate with the grass in destroying the house. It was the third, early time that houses were under attack from outside forces. House-crushing schemes were previously observed to no avail; indeed, shacks were burned nightly by sun water bogged upon grass, fire chalk scratched out tents and sheds, and cabins of the period were lobbed in fire by green weeds until the girl took employment on American lawns. The technique of shade has since this time allowed houses to flourish, with the dog being designated as the first shade-chaser, or, more formally, the Person. Although not human, the person holds an innate need to save the house.

Shade has throughout known times warded off enemies, particularly those dispatched by the fiend, if the fiend is defined as any item of great or medium heat, extending from a wire. Although shade is formally gray in color, red-hued shades permeate the lawns of Denver, and a colorless, cooling shade has been observed in the seventeen primary locations of Illinois. While shade was first disproved by Jerkins in his FARM EXPERIMENTS (in which he claimed that shade was a black sun welt to be soothed or corrected with water and straw), it has currently gained favor in the communities due to the expert wielding of the sun-smashing girl. No sun is actually ever touched by this employee. The dramatic nomenclature indicates merely deft stick skills, an abundance of strength in the fingers, and an impervious posture toward heat. A shade sprayer by trade, her work involves de- and re-housing areas when the sun is brightest, dodging the topographical witness scheme. The dog stalks the rubbered cooling skins across the lawn or over sections of house, acting also as a shade dragger when the girl is at work beneath the house. Although shade is mistrusted by many occupants, and has rarely been selected as a primary weapon, it must not be overlooked as a key defense against objects that might burn in to take the house from the air, in secret agency with the wires of the hallowed sun.

Since grass preceded the house, and is considered to be a grain yet older than wood, it must be wondered whether the grass wars of the 1820s contributed to the brief minus of houses observed during this era. That no shelters were in view either indicates perhaps a correlation with the hiding time of those same days.

Lawn boys were numerous in Ohio in the early weeks of the first seventies. Boys and their counterparts, including those at the level of first apprentice, were dispatched across lawns to serve as wind poles during the street storms of this period, and the shorter, sturdier boys (maronies) were often the first to blow back into the houses. This explains the rugged ornamentation of certain shelters in the Middle West, most notably those houses of the tower period that contain chronicles and prayers etched into the tubes that spilled over from the dome or turret. The taller, skinnier boys could more successfully deflect, block, or stall the wind from the house, and they became better known as stanchers, although salaries were meager and they were forced to work in teams, sharing and regurgitating the same meal. During the chalkier street storms, however, the boys went entirely unfed and often starved upon the lawn, creating skin flags, or geysers of bone and cloth, which during more elastic storms could ripple back and snap windows from a house until glass spilled into the air, cutting down the insect streams. What was left of the employees was then smothered by this powdered glass and air blood that fell upon them, rendering a burial site at each house. Houses of the period were named after the boys that died protecting them. Boy piles on grass were richest after storms — this residue was called gersh — and planting was heaviest until this fertilizer was rifled by scavengers — often young girls and their animal sisters, who dragged the soil away in sacks and wagons for burial and sang the lamentations of the house for their brothers, dead on the grass from fighting the wind.

AIR DIES ELSEWHERE

When air kills itself in remote regions, the debris settles here on the grass, sharpening the points. Men of the house may not walk on these areas, nor may they ever observe the grass without pain in the chest and belly. They exist as figures which are doubled over, in static repose against the house territory. When children sleep on these points of lawn, the funeral of air passes just above their heads in a crosswind with the body. Funerals generally are staged in pollinated wind frames, so that the air can shoot to the east off of the children’s breath, dying elsewhere along the way, allowing fresh, living air to swoop in on the blast-back to attack the house. This funeral-chasing ability of children explains why they are allowed outside during the daytime and back in again the next day. The Mother cleans the child’s mouth with her finger and is said to act as a transom for the warring agencies of wind. This is why she is placed in the window, wires bobbing from each hand, bowing forward against the glass.

Other forms of sleeping also calm the sky. Wealthy landowners hire professional sleepers to practice their fits on key areas of the grounds. The best sleepers stuff their pockets with grass and sleep standing up. Many amateur sleepers never wake up, or never fall asleep. If a professional wakes and discovers a protector still sleeping, or unable to sleep and making an attempt of it — in the shed, for example, downwind of the house — he is permitted to practice smashes upon this body. Freelancers take their dream seizures near the door, and storms are said to be held in abeyance. They are paid according to success. Much booty has been disbursed, but no one has ever succeeded in sleeping so deeply that the house is not smashed upon waking.

If men or parts of men in the house regions are ever studied, it will be their feet or their forelegs — whichever object is comprised of a knuckle buried under taut, dry, hairless skin. The primary bulletin of these times ensues between grass and the paw. When we kill men, we kill them because we are sad. sadness develops in and outside of the house, either just after entering or just after leaving. These are also the times of war, when we encounter men losing or gaining the house and we have the opportunity to act upon them. The feet of men, through a tradition established outside of the Schedule of Emotions, are soaked in Corey, a chemical produced in grass after air has mixed the shape of the house. Experts believe that our bodies grow heavier after being noticed, lighter when touched, and remain the same when left alone. This is further true of the wires that generate sadness through the chimney and other open areas.

RULE OF EXIT

When the sun’s wires are measured, we discover the coordinates for a place or places that shall hereafter be known as perfect or final or miraculous. The house shall be built here using soft blocks of wood and certain solidified emotions, such as tungsten. By nightfall, the bird counter will collapse, and a new or beginning man must be placed at the road to resume the tally while the construction continues. His harness will be a great cloth fixture bound unto his head, to protect his mouth from the destroying conflicts, lest strong birds sweep in on the wires to knock back the homes. Every house prayer shall for all time ever read thusly:

Please let the wires not have been crooked or falsely dangling or stretched by the demon sun, let our measurements be exact and true, and bless our perfect place with abundant grasses. Cover us in shade so that we are hidden in your color. Hide us from birds and wires and the wind that sends them. Let smoke conceal us during the storm life, and give us strong walls. Let not any stray wind break us down and we will honor you. Bless us and a great shelter will be made for you in the new season. Help us thrive. We lie low here in the place that you have given us. Please remember that you have killed us and you can kill us and we wait and long in our deepest hearts to be killed only by you. Let this be our last and final house. Amen.

EXPORTING THE INNER MAN

Coughing, in humans, device for transporting people or goods from one level to another. The term is applied to the enclosed structures of the throat as well as the open platforms used to provide vertical transportation within cars and while lying in bed; it is also applied to devices consisting of a continuous belt or chain with attached buckets for handling bulk material. Simple throat hoists were used from ancient times, often retrieving people whose whereabouts had long been unknown. This retrieval can be halted or staggered if any of the human air ports are obstructed, causing limbs of the body to inflate or swell during coughing. This is called expanded house, and, in effect, increases the area a person has available to himself to hide in. For effective retrieval, the coughing must be focused on a specific limb and requires an exact, crouching posture of the cougher. Otherwise, the hiding person will vanish inside the boggy limb from one secret place to another, skillfully avoiding the suction of the cough and remaining undetected.

VIEWS FROM THE FIRST HOUSE

It is understood in terms of the phenomenon of combustion as seen in wood and brick; it is one of the basic tools in human culture. In ancient America and earlier, it was considered one of the four basic objects, a substance from which all things were composed. Its great importance to humans, the mystery of its powers, and its seeming largeness have made the house divine or sacred to many peoples. As a god, it is a characteristic feature of Messonism, in which, as with many house-worshiping religions, houses are considered the earthly model or emblem of the HEAVEN shelter, the essential difference being that occupants of a house are instructed always to LOOK IN (strup), to examine the contents within a house (Chakay) and derive instructions and strategies from these, whereas with the heaven container it is only possible to LOOK OUT; the area is one-way constructed with cloud shims and cannot be seen into. Occupants, if any, must train their attention outward (bog); they must never be seen watching themselves or looking at any other objects within the house (heen viewing, forbidden, punished by expulsion to lower house). The belief that houses are sacred is universal in science, and such beliefs have survived in some highly hidden cultures, including those that destroy houses for food and fuel, as well as nomadic cultures whose members derive spontaneous houses from water, cloth, and salt.

The most carefully preserved shelter cult in America was that of Perkins, the first god of territory. His disciples forbade sleeping near, in, or on their houses because it was believed that the sleeper was the first to be attacked by the fiend. The fiend sailed off the south shadow of his own shelter, tacking in the wind bowl at the back door, while the slipstream that poured from his roof broke open the houses of Perkins and sealed any sleepers in a fossil of hot wind and crumbs. These became the crumbs of the fiend; the ones that were not eaten were used to rudder the house that the fiend rode. An implicit goal of the Perkins group was to douse this necklaced chain of fossilized sleepers with salt as it keeled behind the house, in the hope that the sleepers might bloat into anchors and cancel the advance of the fiend.

A further American truth is that of John, a house / garment correlationist who developed the first shirt shelters and land scarves that were sufficiently large enough to supply a family with shelter while still outfitting them in rashproof garments that did not crush under. It was John’s theory that a family member should exist within the confines of a garment hovel; naked collisions were notable in this interior, and sleeve rooms were often damp and difficult to traverse, but tailoring of such a shelter was achieved easily by zipping cloth onto a room or snapping hoods onto windows or dog doors. John claimed that when visitors traveled from one house to another, they entered a public garment area (the tunic) weaved of municipal cotton, in which garments were shared with other travelers until a house was reached. At this point, private house law dictated that the visitor permit body scrubbings, the application of skin pooter, shrinkage testing, and synchronized family walking training before the resident family deemed the visitor worthy of sharing their clothing inside the larger house costume.

The ramifications of the human ideas about houses are tremendously complex and can never be exhausted, extending as they do into the concepts of heaven construction theory, which posits heaven as the only usable, cooled shelter from which one can safely witness or bog the endless combustion of god (self-banished house member), who by definition resides outside of the heaven house in a broken house of air, with no means of entering in again. There just remains the torching of this EXILE out on the lawn (sky), the swarming embers that pull down the trees (clouds), and the sparks that blacken the gravel and burn their way down through house after house after house (instruction from sun*).

* Never shall sun be allowed to approximate an entry into the house. The windows shall be blacked up with wind and no chimney shall exist, nor may vents be punched into the walls. If the door is necessary, a bag shall seal the frame. Heat will come, as always, from the inside.