Don’t Adjust Your Set
—Do you feel pain?
Suddenly walls stood in four sided rooms that opened into each other with wide, door-less frames. The only light burst from the television and baked the walls and the towel around my waist. I stood in the dampness of the moment, just out of the bath and anxious to see any updates on the screen.
I was aching for a singular
tragedy. It had not occurred in quite
some years and I figured time was coming…for someone; a murdered monarch in
some once great nation, a favorite son of a wealthy family kidnapped, or maybe
just the “accidental” overdose of a tragic artist well revered for her
illumination of the human condition.
The news was a cycle of repetition
those days. When it had been
regurgitated and received by the most eyes and ears deemed possible by the technicians
in the control rooms a break was assigned—clever commercials produced by
captains of industry to reach out into our homes to invite us to enjoy their
products. We, the eager capitalists,
paying for the wire to connect us to the information. Paying to have people suggest we spend more
to get more.
When just the news was not enough,
heads started popping up. At first, they
were a welcome change. The wildflower
whose seed fell from the wind into our yards and brightened up the lawn as they
matured. Insight was fed into the
wire instead of just the observation of news happening. Then heads started multiplying. Permutations became obscene and they took
over like raging weeds battling each other for the best spot in the light. The cacophony became a success. We took sides. I really think this guy is the smartest man
on television. You prefer the guy on the
other channel because he seems to be more grounded. This one’s an entertainer, that one’s a
fink. I dig them all and I have my
favorites.
A single man or woman would sit
staring out at you with mighty pen in hand, the source of all authority, and
spill a compiled list of viewpoints deemed necessary for cable subscribers, for
us.
—Do you feel pain?
I watched the news channels every
chance I could. I hungered for a
substance that never seemed to arrive.
The news was the same. Somewhere
a man clung to a tree in raging flood waters that stopped rising but rushed
furiously. A crew in a helicopter, there
for the rescue, arrives just in time for the crew in the helicopter who catches
it on film. The man in the tree would be
a boy tomorrow. The next day the boy
would be a woman in a tree in the raging floodwater.
Somewhere a commendable rescue of a
little girl caught in a tree just above raging, muddy water was being captured
in the minds of only those present. I
would never see this. I would never
anxiously anticipate the moment of triumph.
No camera crew had arrived. She
silently shuffled into her future as a memory told by her family when they
gathered at Easter or when she sat with her parents and they watched the rescue
of some lucky civilian from the torrent rapids flowing around the tree, seeming
almost to run right through the tree itself.
News1; gone to commercial.
The first four seconds of the
erectile dysfunction commercial are always the most painful. I watched the couple run on the beach.
She ran her fingers through his
hair.
He shot baskets at the court with
his friends, all of them quietly part of the same conspiracy; to defy nature’s
urge to keep them from pleasure.
The name of the pill crawled up the
screen like a slow erection and stopped right in the center. It held and then faded as the man sat on the
couch, “Tonight, I’ll be ready…”
The woman in his life creeps up
behind him in slow motion. Bends down to
get close to his ear. She puts her
finger on his shoulder and whispers in his ear.
The man turns to her, turns back to
the audience, “…for her.”
The station cuts into the stream of
advertisements to remind you, “Up next on American Truth, Truth takes on
President Rimmel and his willingness to go against the wishes of the American
nation regarding the U.A.F. Join me,
Harvey Mitberg, on American Truth, right after the Jones Show.” The station has played Harvey Mitberg saying
that at every commercial break from four hours ago. The Jones Show is News1’s most popular show
with ratings higher than every other cable news show.
The light in the bathroom
flickers. It reminds me, because I was
not thinking about it, of the cold tiles that line up in the straightest
pattern from the floor to the middle of the wall. They are white and have memories. They have reflected the passing hours with a
weakness. The light that could bring me
or you into view on one of those tiles would have to be so bright that a
million suns would seem a trifle. And
so, in the night when a million suns reveal themselves across the dome and I
sit in the warm water in the cast iron bathtub under the window with curtains
drawn it is true; I cannot see myself and I cannot see you.
The tub full of hot water creates
the vapor that hits the walls and slides down the tiles in slow rain drops like
soothing perspiration. In there I sit
with Silence who hides everywhere, invisible; listening on the closed toilet
seat, behind a mask of steam in the mirror, or traveling a circuit around the
rim of the tub.
Silence cannot participate in the
clamoring city of thought that rises of its own design—here a new tower that
the memories of the day will call home…at least, for a while…there, the park
where thunderous birds beating their breasts flock to statues of ancient names
I’ll never see again.
Millions of little ideas bustle
anonymously up the scraping spires, across the midday traffic, through tunnels
under the subconscious bays that connect to the vast ocean just out of
sight. The little ideas lead their quiet
lives and die unassumingly and unnoticed in the periodicals that bring word of
feeling and sensation. “This just in…,”
the voice moans, reading the text of the extra edition of The Body
Times-Ledger, “…the body is submerged and wet in the bathtub. The steam and water look to be relaxing for
another half hour or so. More updates to
come.”
—The first four seconds of the
erectile dysfunction commercial are always the most painful.
From one of the new tower’s windows
comes the distant beckoning of something I said almost twelve hours ago. “Remember me.
Remember me.” The voice yells as a man, leaning out of the window toward
the sky, waves a banner of the things I said earlier.
In the bathtub, Silence always slips
away. The first moment or two all would
be calm but then it just goes away—behind the mask of steam. I dread the cold tile in the dry daylight.
—Do you feel pain?
The flickering of the bulb reminded
me of this that moments ago I was in there.
I tried to entice the silence, to pull it in. I lit a joint and smoked calmly in the tub
until it got too small. Until the paper
at the tips of my fingers smoldered from a creamy white to a virtuous black
that signified a well rolled cigarette.
I deepened my promise to relax. I
dropped down in the water so that my chin stopped just under the surface. I heard the silence. I heard it come in. I knew it was there. I could sense it waiting for me. I wanted to catch it and keep it and train it
to obey. I showed it the back of my hand
to ease it. I let all sense of fear fall
away. I stood naked and without
threat. And then I began to beg.
It dropped behind the mask and my
head became the city. Crews got to work
building the towers. Cars tore through
the streets. Banners hung from every
window. I waited for it all to pass.
—Do you feel pain?
Ajax, Halliburton, Musselman’s,
Alcoa, Welch’s.
Merck, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Pfizer,
Genentech.
Marlboro,
Apple, Epic, Armani, Ferragamo.
Delta Dental, Delta Airlines, Smith
& Wesson, Glock, Steyr.
The commercials went to News1.
The bombings were getting worse
every week. The death tolls held steady
in the low 200’s but they came with greater frequency. Souls left the earth before they learned to
walk. Milk spilled from the breasts of
mothers and swirled in the aftermath with the pooling petrol and blood of the
animals that were stabled at the market those afternoons.
Eight years now, this conflagration
has raged. The buildup to it was
apparent to any eyes that saw it all come together. Twenty years ago, when I was only nine, the
nation of South Africa persuaded its neighboring countries to form an alliance
they called U.A.F. (United African Freedom).
In time, their neighbors convinced their neighbors and so on, to join
the U.A.F. It took almost ten years for
them to solidify their ranks to the nations south of 10˚ N longitude. All those with territories north of 10˚ N,
were split by tribal warfare and the border of the new nation, U.A.F., was 10˚
N across the sweep of the continent.
Fifteen years after the first
alliance of South Africa with Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Mozambique,
Zimbabwe, and Botswana, United African Freedom was on its way to becoming a
superpower, the third one.
Russia had already returned to
communism, which it touted as a new, improved version built on lessons and
mistakes learned from its previous stint at fascism and mass murder, and become
the second superpower again. The world
stage was now set much like in the middle 20th century, plus or
minus a few powerless nations here and there.
U.A.F. was up for another land grab
in that fifteenth year and no one really wanted to stop them because of the
benefits the members of it had achieved by coalescing with a whole, larger
body. Their stated goal, which was distributed
from the bloated capital in Johannesburg, where organized crime ran operations
side by side if not sometimes within the government of U.A.F., was to stretch
its boundaries to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. This was 21st century manifest
destiny.
As the effort to push this to fruition
raged on, an eager extra-Africa world watched with mixed emotions on cable news
and read in newspapers. Every once in a
while you could lean forward as though sitting at a sporting event in
anticipation of the grand slam, of the hat trick, or the triple crown, when one
or more country would give way and sign on with United African Freedom. It was violent revolution on a continental
scale but the world had suffered long with the African continent; unable to
solve their hunger, disease, debt, and tribal genocide. A united continent might eventually be a
scary contender to reckon with but their strength would allow other nations to
grow also. ‘You’re only as strong as the
weakest among you’, was a phrase people could do well to appreciate.
This played out on News1 between
nattily dressed hosts of shows that bore the title of their own names: Renaldo Hour, Source1 with Gil Carmel, Namir
Element, and scores of others. Accomplished
men with degrees of knowledge sit in pantomime of the one true pundit who never
will reveal himself.
The first four seconds of the
erectile dysfunction commercial are always the most painful.
The sewer rat at the bombsite sniffs curiously at the miasma of blood, milk, and petrol and thinks it safer to just walk away.
appeared originally in Eight
