Writing
Richard Wright - Black Boy
"He came like a sledgehammer, like a giant out of the mountain
with a sledgehammer, writing with a sledgehammer..."
Historian John Henrik Clarke
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It was an early morning in the Elysian fields, and Tim had just woken up, still in that dreary somnolent state to which many are no strangers. Mornings here were rarely invigorating as they are in any other place that is not your own. The birds were always chirping, but their arias and medleys were somehow adulterated by the sound of a garbage truck passing by, or a struggling car being started outside. Or maybe it was just that their songs did not mean much anymore, that they were strings of some programmed routine, one invisible to everyone else. In any case, Tim had a long day ahead, and reluctantly he embarked on his journey through the day of the moon. Whatever his negative anticipation was, there were a few things to adorn even that morning.
A shower goes a long way when one expects a long and hackneyed tutelage. Tim identified that as the other great sanctuary, not as detached as the illimitable mummification, but more than adequate for a conscious state. The soap was god, and the water redemption. The filth, the dried up sweat, the dirt, they all were foul transgressions, ephemeral for days, but constant, for a lifetime. They were now swirling in the left direction, sucked down the drain, taking with them at least a few anxieties about the day ahead. Most of that trepidation wasn't from the unexpected, but from the possibility he'd lose his hold on the expected.
All in all, it was not unlike any other Monday. Already, he could smell the wonderful aroma of some type of egg-based meal. He was relieved that it wasn't another oatmeal day. That dreaded breakfast had two negative implications. Not only did it add more to the anxieties of the day ahead, but it took much of the precious time he limited himself to for getting to school. He knew that was his own fault, but he needed the sleep, since he consciously chose to start homework at ten o'clock in the evening, during which time he mostly watched the empty tube. Tim was averse to getting out of the shower, and gave himself another five minutes before he turned off the water. The water gave him a sort of high, lifting him from the stalemate that was his life. He knew perfectly well that the effect was caused by his adaptation to the irksome, at first, but then pleasant, ambiance of the pouring water, but he liked to put that in the back of his mind and just enjoy the flow. He wished he could do that with every palatable thing that came before an expected, less desirable one. He didn't always succeed. For every one of the former, there would be a multitude of the latter.
Tim was now brushing his teeth, engaged in one of the activities he didn't mind doing, but was indolent about, and was only driven to it by the established, time-dependent routine. He finished, then shaved with the marked experience of a dilettante, enjoying it, nevertheless. Next was his oil-drying gel, which he applied hastily to his face. He didn't forget the anti-perspirant either. That was the cornerstone of his whole self-sanitation. Without that, he might as well have stayed home. Even when he had to overcome the adverse situation of lack of deodorant, he always improvised, rubbing on the last bits, or even the unspeakable: using a stick of another member of his kindred.
As he descended the stairway of heaven he knew his nose had not been a knave. His olfactory sense did not deceive him. It was, indeed, eggs that he had smelled. His mother, as expected, was busily engaged in some culinary activity in the kitchen. His grandmother was dressed up, waiting by the phone. He wondered what it was she was so arrayed for, but he soon knew. It had to be the ambulance service that came to pick her up every month for medical visits to her doctor. He waited patiently so that his mother would realize that he was in the kitchen, and automatically know to serve him his breakfast. At first, she hadn't noticed, because the water was on in the sink. However, a simple tap of a finger on the table soon alerted her to Tim's presence in the kitchen. She set the plate of fried eggs on the table, along with some baby carrots, a piece of bread with butter, and a cup of tea.
A long day lay ahead at the school of angels. Tim knew it, and tried to extend the delectation of his meal as far as possible. He tasted the eggs to the fullest, biting on the carrots in between. He finished his breakfast about ten minutes after he had descended the stairs. Sipping as much as he could from the still hot tea cup, he got annoyed. He waited until his mother had turned her back and spilled the remaining tea in the sink. Knowing there would be at least one thing he would forget, he went over the most important things to place in his back pack. The home assignments were there, as were his books and absence note. Tim quickly rushed down the stairway of heaven and put on his footwear. It was the middle of the fall season in the skies, so he threw a light jacket over his shirt. His shirt was charcoal black, and his coat was green, complementing his clear, verdant eyes. He rushed out of the house, waving good-bye to his mother, and then his father, who was engrossed with work in the garage. As he walked quickly, making last-minute appearance self-check, he saw the ambulance pull up into the driveway of the heavenly shack. Every minute counted now.
As Tim walked the first of two blocks before his chariot stop, he saw the great vehicle make a right turn from the far bend. He didn't even notice that his feet were flying at full steam ahead until he had reached the intersection and took the shortcut. Tim slowed himself down, expecting the chariot driver to wait a few minutes for more commuters to get on. He was right. That however, just like he thought, was the only thing that would go right that day. Quiet often we unconsciously figure that just because we acknowledge or forecast a thing, pleasant or not, that this admission or self-premonition will surely insure us in eschewing the occurrence of such a thing. Tim, however, identified the self-assuring fabrication as totally dubious and absurd. However, he also knew that recognizing the reality of the latter too, was in turn, false bulwark. That day, not being unlike any other, would not disappoint Tim in its promise of dread and gloom.
After letting all of the people on to the bus, including a female figure about his own age, he got on slowly, chary and watchful of any potential abasement. He knew the procedure. After getting a seat at the very back of the vehicle, he took out his musical apparatus, and putting on the listening device, he assumed his familiar stance of attraction of the seemingly interminable mating season. He had long ago subconsciously premeditated this as a physical assertion of his lax and insouciant, yet somewhat sexually mindful and responsive disposition. As he listened to the timbre of the gentle lyre, he received his usual temporary relief and spiritual salvation from the inspirational tone of the source of his musical narcotic. It wasn't just him, but throngs of countless others who had utilized the manifestation of this art as redress for the problems of their daily lives. They were the masses that wove that use of music-as if to show that they were not afraid to show that aspect of their nature-into the public set of formulas for mitigating personal quandaries, when called upon to shine the light of the public upon it once in a while to reaffirm in an inferred and feigned fashion, and with great glibness and fake smiles, that Paradise was not a place of materialistic and greedy indigenous primates caught up in endless capitalist strife moralized by prevarications in place of ideals.
As he stared out of the chariot window at the bright blue sky, he became conscious of the similitude of one cloud to a small, cowering hare. Next to it was a cloud he couldn't quite make out to be anything he could conjure up a recollection of, but as he got used to what seemed like a hazy ball of cotton, he saw something that he thought resembled a huge question mark, except devoid of a period on the bottom. Tim immediately correlated this activity of killing time with the picture association tests given to people with questionable sanity of psyche. He smiled an invisible and instinctive smile, wondering how the results of such a test would be fathomed should he ever be tested. He quickly assured himself that he would not be at all astonished if he was to fail such a test, not to mention be chosen to take it. He accepted tacitly and without doubt that if such a thing would happen, it would not at all be out of the ordinary. Such was the price one paid for hoarding, harboring, and hiding one's fears, anxieties, and uncertainties. One of the only things that Tim was certain about was that he could conceal all of his insecurities and torments inside of himself without ever developing any psychological problems outside of the ones he already might have possessed. Furthermore, he thought he could pull it off without anyone ever wondering about him or finding him out, and, as far as he knew, he was succeeding so far. He could not imagine how people who were not born with psychological problems developed them, not because of naivete towards the topic, but because he thought that if he could master taming and isolating his twisted side from the outside world, that so could others. He was close, but not quiet there in realizing the implications of this seemingly innocuous practice that was leading him to a camouflaged world of conceit. He did not see how self knowledge led one to preoccupation with self-love, how self-indulgence could turn into self-denial, and how cynicism could rear self-pity and self-doubt.
Tim now fixed his attention, once again, upon the girl that sat in the front of the chariot. He was not sure if she knew that he was looking at her, for she was sitting sideways and perpendicular to him. He decided to be chary and stole ephemeral glances at her. She could not be older than he was. As he looked at her he noticed the obvious aspects of her physique that any male of his age would. She was a brunette, and he stared from her long, coal black hair down to her ample bust, to her solidly clad, but not at all adipose abdomen. He could tell because she was dressed in a tank top shirt that was just short of covering her navel. He looked at her with that primeval, yet congenital and therefore natural look of desire that man has had since the dubious time he came out of the water and onto land. He looked at her as an object of desire to cloy his ravenous hunger for sensation. It was those sensations that men of simple nature who could not cope with the realizations of the emptiness of their own lives resorted to, to veil their sad discoveries. They know that sexual pleasure can never dwindle, for some strange reason. One does not get bored of it, become repulsed by it, or get tired. If all compulsions were to be drained of their fulfillment of hedonistic tendencies, sex would be as full and ripe in bloom as it ever was. Man is a being without a mating season. There is no certain season to collect the harvest. Man reaps the benefit of sex incessantly, without respite or pause. There is no hiatus in man's biological proclivity, and if man does not willingly abstain from sexual affection at a certain point, neutralizing his inbred desire with his cognitive tools, he will be stirred towards any immediate fulfillment of urges. So far as Tim knew, man was the only being to have sex for reasons, feigned or not, other than procreating.
Tim awakened from self-reflection induced by his lecherous thoughts just to see the object of his desire get off at her stop. That mattered little, he thought, for there would be others, day and night, morning and evening, and afternoon, rise and set, time and place, mind and body, that would capture his fancy. His problem was situated in his complex and utter misunderstanding of women, and even more, himself. He went through the phases. He liked them, looked upon them with infinite promise for the future, desired them, was abased by their presence, pronounced himself a misogynist, and ended up more confused then ever. The only lasting phase, that ageless vice, was his desire. It was the only propensity he could not scotch, the only dream he could not crush, the only part of his spirit he could not break, the only caged beast he could not tame, the only inner flame he could not extinguish. He sought to repress it and to proscribe it, but he only succeeded in feeding the flame, until it started burning up all of his other properties, taking over his whole being. He presently found himself in a state of an accepted ambivalence until further developments. He tried to open himself up as far as possible and to view the case objectively. He did not consider the case closed, by all means, but he awaited further evidence. That, arguably, was his biggest problem recapitulated by one word: waiting. He waited to do, he waited to be, he waited to see, he waited to go, he waited to say, but most of all, he waited to live. He didn't want to die, because the ghastly truth of death was unfathomable to him. He couldn't think about it, or rather, he was terrified to do so. Such was the price of accepted atheism, or at least the personal conviction of cynicism apropos to god.
He finally arrived at the intersection of the connecting chariot. He got off, displaying his daily courtesy by opening up the door for a few fellow students. Though he didn't have time to observe them, he did steal a glance at them. There were two boys of his own hue of skin, and an aged dark lady, carrying two bags that were pulling her weight down. As Tim got off, he noticed for the first time the bright sun glare and the light breeze that filled the morning air. He was surprised that he noticed this common condition, for he was deeply immersed in thought just a second before. Recoursing to nature to escape real thoughts was often helpful in pacifying oneself. It was not the bare thought of nature, but the emotions induced by it, rather, that brought yet another temporary reassurance to Tim. Taking in such pristine feelings of nature gave him hope by reducing life to its lowest element, and somehow convincing him that his problems were petty and negligible. These feelings flared up in him from time to time, usually when he was most susceptible to them. At that moment, still on his natural high, he remembered something a teacher once said to him about looking a little higher than usual when roaming the streets, and seeing a whole new world. Half-mockingly and half-interested, he decided to take the advice and looked up over the two-story shops and houses. At first, all he saw was the wide, light-blue sky that had but a few clouds, the same ones he was looking at just minutes earlier. He stared awhile and was about to descend back to the land-dwelling reality, when suddenly he noticed something interesting. It was a prosaic sight at first. A triangle of birds, pigeons he surmised, were flying in their triangle, in all likelihood getting ready for the cold season. Tim kept his gaze high to admire the organization and composure of the birds. He marveled at the way they kept themselves in line, and no one pigeon partitioned from the unit for more than a moment. Then, however, something that seemed peculiar at the time to Tim, occurred. A single pigeon, separated for a longer interval than the others, detached himself from the flying throng of winged creatures, and sat on the power line. A minute passed, and the bird was sitting there as idle as a minute before. Tim knew it was ridiculous, but at that moment he thought the bird looked like it had no intention of rejoining its kin. The gang of birds was intent on not letting him go, and circled around the pigeon like vultures around rancid meat. Then, after several minutes, the birds gave up and flew away. Tim was wondering why the pigeon left the crowd, and was about to turn away finally, when, out of nowhere, a single pigeon flew out of nowhere and set on the same cable. After no more than a second, she started to approach the sectarian pigeon, and eventually ended up right next to him. This was somewhat of an enigma to Tim, but he had no time to mull it over. The intercepting chariot had just arrived.
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