Table Of Contenttowards the unMaking of Heaven
Not Now :
Death, Dreams & Reasons For Living
Book 4
by Sam Smith
TheEbookSale Publishing
Limerick, Ireland
Copyright Ó Sam Smith 2010
Sam Smith has asserted his/her right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without
the prior written permission of the publishers or author, except by a
reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Author’s Email –
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
1
I could claim deception. I could claim coercion. But, to be honest, I leapt at the
chance of escape.
I was young, clever, and impatient. Eighteen years old I'd had my own
apartment and independence for the last year. It had changed nothing.
Intelligent enough to see what was wrong with my world, I was impatient
with my peers and their no-solution solutions. Young, I was not without
scruples, but I was certainly without loyalties. Better if we abandoned our
city/world, I told them, better if we united with other cities, other worlds. This
shrinking dispersion was foolish.
In that city/world, though, each of my peers believed themselves to be big
names. And that was the trap they laid for me.
I have a literary bent, was, moreover, of that tender age when ancient poets
talked to me about my to-be life. I therefore wanted to be a poet like those
ancients.
On that city/world, though, the fashion was solely for experience-based
poetry; and all poems had to be written in the shape of a right-angled triangle —
with the apex of the triangle being the first line, the longest line being the base.
The other poets were all very clever, and there was much mutual back-
slapping. The women, though, were neurotically sensitive to the point of
quivering inertia, while the men sought to loudly impress their dullard women.
All played safe, sought to titillate rather than to shock; and these were the poets
who defined poetry as the distillation of raw experience.
But what new experience could be had on that outside-in world? None. And,
with no new experience to write of, one ended up with a vacuum. Ergo —
vacuous poetry.
All of the remaining population on that city/world (poets included) lived in
clusters on the clement levels a third below the outer surface. To manufacture
experience, aspiring poets took themselves down to the curved and self-
enclosing ceilings of the deeps. Whose rooms were lit on their arrival, and which
were... empty.
Or the aspiring poets took themselves out to the surface, to the temperate
forests and lawns of our outside-in world. Which, on their arrival, was light or
dark and... empty.
The modern poets projected their imaginations onto this emptiness and wrote
of the feelings imaginatively experienced. Very cleverly. With meaningful
allusions and obscure words.
A few of my contemporaries, those I thought of as my friends, genuinely
longed for adversity to test their mettle. They couldn't find, nor manufacture, any
such test of their own characters.
The result of all this was that, with contempt for us all, I called myself a poet
and I facetiously wrote,
‘I
breathe’
Instead of their taking offence the poetry-lovers praised it. Stroke of genius,
they said, '...takes bravery to be that simple and direct...' '...poetry as the art of
brevity here finds its summation...' 'Okinwe Orbison has the naiveté necessary to
the simple vision of genius...'
At first incredulous, then aghast, then amused, then appalled, I found myself
nevertheless enjoying the attention. Which lowered my self-esteem. So I wrote,
‘I
am
false’
This was heralded as absolute and consummate proof of my growing genius.
I quickly wrote a second version,
‘I
am
so false
I can convince
myself I am honest’
Again I found myself flattered by the disproportionate praise. (On other
cities, other worlds, 18 might be thought rather young to be a poet of renown.
But, as I said, ours was a diminishing population; for which selfsame reason our
education had been crammed. Largely on our own initiative. There being so few
of us, so little else to do.)
I thought to merit this celebrity by turning to prose. Contemporary prose I
soon discovered, however, to be little more than the dressing up of the author's
perversions as literature. And I was too young to have any convincing fetishes.
I did have ideas circling at the back of my mind, ellipses touching the
profound; but when words gave shape to those thoughts they came to the paper
trite. Frustration was mine.
I confided that literary frustration to a few of my poetic acquaintances. They
appeared, initially, to understand and to sympathize; but from the more they said
the more it became apparent that they, although they said otherwise, didn't truly
want their work to be original, didn't truly want to say anything new, only to be
accepted.
Angry at this sham that I was being made a part of, overcome by the smell of
pseudery and the weight of gush, I wrote,
‘This
society
diseases me’
My plaudits were sung even louder still, and my reputation puffed out of all
proportion. I subsequently wrote what was to be my shortest poem.
‘Help’
The applause was deafening.
Shortly after my nineteenth birthday Leon Reduct found me.
2
My childhood was unusual (no childhood is usual) in that my mother stayed with
my father until I was ten. By which time she could no longer stand my boyish
energy and instant excitements and she moved across the city. Only to return
regularly to visit my father.
Although to their children all parents are faintly ridiculous, I liked her. She
held herself very erect, gave the appearance of contemplative calm. Until I came
banging into a room. If I have one clear memory of my mother it is of her
blinking at me.
Needless to say she was initially impressed by my public success as a poet.
And not the least surprised when I was held to be overturning tradition — as I
had overturned her furniture.
*
My father laughed at my every juvenile antic.
"Okinwe Orbison," he shook his head, "Okinwe Orbison. What is going to
become of you?" And picking me up he would swing me around, knocking over
more furniture.
My mother left the two of us.
*
My father liked to play games. Physical games. He made of our city/world a
maze and mapped out routes for himself, tracked himself through it, laughing in
triumph when he arrived at his destination at the time set, laughing at himself
when he got lost.
At home he amused himself corresponding with people throughout Space. Or
he read. Or, when my mother called, he told her fabulous stories, made her
smile. Or they both looked in wonder on me being quiet, reading with the hunger
of the young, to fill my head with knowledge, to just know, to know, to fill all
the inner spaces. And they looked on too with parental concern, guessing at the
desperate blunderings taking place inside my head.
My father laughed. To break the silence, to sunder the mood, he laughed.
After he laughed he said my name, "Okinwe Orbison." The laugh again,
"Okinwe Orbison."
My father was happy for me to be in his life. He was happy for me to leave.
He was happy when he met me on one of his travels through the city.
"Okinwe Orbison!" he would shout. Then the laugh, "Okinwe Orbison."
The blame, if blame there is to be for what became of me, is not theirs.
