It is water that has arrived here at long last from the remotest reaches of the globe and it now intends to flow back whence it came and begin anew the relentless cycle. The professor is no obstacle. He says all that aloud. He is floating on his back, drifting out and talking to empty air. He says the word riptide a few more times until it no longer seems to make sense; it can’t be the right word, can’t even be a word period its sounds are so funny.
Soon he will swim but is there a point if nobody comes? He calls for someone to come. If someone comes the whole thing becomes laughably easy but he knows no one will. He calls for someone to come. He is not yelling because he cannot. The sun is almost fully interred now. It will rise and fall, rise and fall, like a bouncing yellow ball and it will never stop. His shriveled skin looks simultaneously aged and fetal with a hint of subcutaneous water. The dying hair on his head is sporadic and matted down to its skull. The lips are blue. The water is not as flat out there as it looked from the sand and his body undulates up and down so it takes strength to keep his face above water and it takes another kind of strength to keep thinking when thoughts no longer endure to completion.
The ocean is vast. What we call the world is just limitless ocean occasionally slowed by land and the people on it. The word distinguished is senseless too it seems. He is made in large part of water so water can’t hurt him. If it happens what happens is you swallow and swallow until finally it laughs at your impotence and swallows you. The ocean is rocking him like an infant, bringing him closer then taking him farther. The closer water feels warmer. Each star in the sky contains the remains of a person once swallowed and their dolorous light would illume the earth even in our absence. There are more of yesterday’s people in the water than today walk on land. The Halstaff, yes, Academy is no better than the second best academy. Someone will come if only he’ll keep asking. He is closer and hears someone. He is farther and there is no one. He has not built anything, concrete or otherwise. There is something in the water. It floats. There is no moon. Anything holding it will float. Stars but no moon. He will reach it he sees. The watch will be back on his wrist, phone in his hand. He will call Skye, appeal to Skye. He moves purposely now, acting not acted upon. He is moving so he must be alive. The sky is never empty but below it often is. When he reaches it it is a shirt. It was always a shirt. It was always his shirt, swallowed by the water when the tide rose in reaction to the moon that wasn’t there. The invisible moon was there all along, raising up the unceasing waters to cover the sand in forgetfulness and envelop his defenseless possessions. The writing, never read by a soul, has been obliterated; the sculptures have collapsed in on themselves. The shirt is there but it is nothing, it cannot help. It has a high thread count and Egypt is somehow involved. He lies back. He has to conserve energy until he swims. He will swim to shore. On his back he still moves, the water moves him. He is moving so he must be alive. His movement takes him closer then farther. Always the same. Closer then farther, closer then farther. Always. Closer. Farther. Again. The same. Closer then farther then less closer and farther still, less close then more far, less close than far, farther than closer, far farther. Then farther and farther and farther.
V
2n d o f 3 Excerpt s o f Dr . Hele n Tame’ s Introductio n
t o He r Articl e: BACH, GOULD, AND
ACONSPIRATORIAL SILENCE
Of this giant, orphaned at ten, ultimately blinded by life itself, who felt he was merely working but in truth made a gift to the world of immeasurable beauty little need be said beyond a brief account of events he authored around 1741.
Around then humans were still organizing themselves into things like Counts and one of