hobbits. Catholic space hobbits.
He now must go back to his bedside table for the matches. Heâs still getting used to the non-electric life. Nearing the window, absurdly, he covers his bare groin with cupped hands, though everything he covers is grey as a ghost. In any case, the men are no longer where they were.
He goes to the closet again and, forgetting, flips the dead light switch. Then, cursing, returns to the bedside table, grabs the matches heâs forgotten, and finally lights the candles. How is it possible to keep forgetting the same thing?
He does remember the breast that made him quit electricity. Not being a football fan he hadnât actually seen it, not live, but in the after-hubbub he saw replay after replay. He found it interesting that Canadian replays showed the breast, while American replays masked it with blur, like the face of an alleged felon. Actually it was the Canadian version he hated most. To see a breast treated like that. First, that it was encased in ugly armour, then revealed with sham violence. With that gesture, society got a sick self-portrait. And in their outrage that children had glimpsed a breast, the howling Bible-thumpers were just as sick. How has a breast become a dirty thing? How is it
possible
? Eleanorâs breasts, he remembers encountering them that first time and feeling them in his soul as the heart of their difference â and to think that beauty itself could make him breathe quickly! Then the same breasts feeding Richard, this odd connection between mother and son, the taut nipple a kind of weaning umbilicus, granting a child its independenceslowly. That a breast was sheathed in crust then ripped free and exposed as everymanâs soft-brown-shit-of-desire, well, it made him want to quit humanity. He pictures himself up a forested slope roping together a functional hut, no power pole in sight, leading his young Eleanor through the door, under the hanging blanket, both of them barefoot on the cool swept clay. Eleanorâs breasts will have at times seen the sun, but only when it was her whim, nothing to do with the mass neurosis-of-theday. The TV breast wasnât even all that well shaped. It looked like a listless football. It occurs to him that maybe thatâs all heâs complaining about here. He hopes he didnât go to the basement and kill the main switch and quit electricity because some celebrityâs breast wasnât what he wanted it to be.
But thatâs that, no more electricity. He will learn what this life is like, and try to feel it as another opening. Hard, at first. For instance, he thinks he remembers his decision at night, and, after descending to the basement and locating the panel, the second he pulled the switch he found himself in the reality of a pitch-black cellar, against the cement wall most distant from the stairs, with no flashlight. But a promise was a promise and the switch stayed down, though he tripped once finding the stairs. The next day he got a taxi to deliver, along with a few groceries, a gross of candles. Then he had to phone a friend to bring over some matches.
The entrance to his motherâs building sports an ostentatious royal blue awning that lacks only a smarmy doorman. Otherwise the building looks solid. How fancy does waterfront have to be? Richard finds her name on the panel and buzzes. Answering, her stilted voice betrays someone new to the system. She tells Richard her suite number is 631, then instructs him that itâs on the sixthfloor. Richard is reminded that his mother is eighty, then remembers she is capable of that kind of humour.
She greets him at the door and they hug. Itâs been at least three years, and again Richard is shocked by a body impossibly dwindled, a bony baby bird, with a fledglingâs baldness too. Her eyes have gained an odd creaminess and colour, the slight blue of milk. Heâs been suffering this shock-of-age since she was fifty, ever since heâd
He now must go back to his bedside table for the matches. Heâs still getting used to the non-electric life. Nearing the window, absurdly, he covers his bare groin with cupped hands, though everything he covers is grey as a ghost. In any case, the men are no longer where they were.
He goes to the closet again and, forgetting, flips the dead light switch. Then, cursing, returns to the bedside table, grabs the matches heâs forgotten, and finally lights the candles. How is it possible to keep forgetting the same thing?
He does remember the breast that made him quit electricity. Not being a football fan he hadnât actually seen it, not live, but in the after-hubbub he saw replay after replay. He found it interesting that Canadian replays showed the breast, while American replays masked it with blur, like the face of an alleged felon. Actually it was the Canadian version he hated most. To see a breast treated like that. First, that it was encased in ugly armour, then revealed with sham violence. With that gesture, society got a sick self-portrait. And in their outrage that children had glimpsed a breast, the howling Bible-thumpers were just as sick. How has a breast become a dirty thing? How is it
possible
? Eleanorâs breasts, he remembers encountering them that first time and feeling them in his soul as the heart of their difference â and to think that beauty itself could make him breathe quickly! Then the same breasts feeding Richard, this odd connection between mother and son, the taut nipple a kind of weaning umbilicus, granting a child its independenceslowly. That a breast was sheathed in crust then ripped free and exposed as everymanâs soft-brown-shit-of-desire, well, it made him want to quit humanity. He pictures himself up a forested slope roping together a functional hut, no power pole in sight, leading his young Eleanor through the door, under the hanging blanket, both of them barefoot on the cool swept clay. Eleanorâs breasts will have at times seen the sun, but only when it was her whim, nothing to do with the mass neurosis-of-theday. The TV breast wasnât even all that well shaped. It looked like a listless football. It occurs to him that maybe thatâs all heâs complaining about here. He hopes he didnât go to the basement and kill the main switch and quit electricity because some celebrityâs breast wasnât what he wanted it to be.
But thatâs that, no more electricity. He will learn what this life is like, and try to feel it as another opening. Hard, at first. For instance, he thinks he remembers his decision at night, and, after descending to the basement and locating the panel, the second he pulled the switch he found himself in the reality of a pitch-black cellar, against the cement wall most distant from the stairs, with no flashlight. But a promise was a promise and the switch stayed down, though he tripped once finding the stairs. The next day he got a taxi to deliver, along with a few groceries, a gross of candles. Then he had to phone a friend to bring over some matches.
The entrance to his motherâs building sports an ostentatious royal blue awning that lacks only a smarmy doorman. Otherwise the building looks solid. How fancy does waterfront have to be? Richard finds her name on the panel and buzzes. Answering, her stilted voice betrays someone new to the system. She tells Richard her suite number is 631, then instructs him that itâs on the sixthfloor. Richard is reminded that his mother is eighty, then remembers she is capable of that kind of humour.
She greets him at the door and they hug. Itâs been at least three years, and again Richard is shocked by a body impossibly dwindled, a bony baby bird, with a fledglingâs baldness too. Her eyes have gained an odd creaminess and colour, the slight blue of milk. Heâs been suffering this shock-of-age since she was fifty, ever since heâd
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