Instruments

For my birthday, my brother got me an ocarina, which, despite having very little experience playing a flute, beyond the recorder, I have of late become quite adept at playing. Certainly, the Dorkmuffin probably didn't appreciate my atonal fumbling at all hours of the night, but that is neither here nor there.

I've had an idea of late, because the wbriting of my dissertation has led me to something of an intellectual impasse, of writing a narrative. I say "narrative" and not "novel" 1) because it seems to me there's nothing much new about novels anymore and 2) because I want to write a work of criticism that is neither straightforwardly historicist in the manner I know my committee wants but can't quite manage to say nor yet another masturbatory exercise in self discovery like so much of this PoMo lit-crit crap I read on a daily basis. This act of criticism/narrative is likely yet another in a long line of elaborate projects I will abandon the moment I realize it will require actual work and discipline, but even so, I like one of the fragments the idea has produced so far. Here it is, completely without context.

"The whole examination room was dark, a living history exhibit you see at one of those themed parks on the East Coast, except I have the sense no one visits this place much not even the sun. Everything is dusted, meaning there isn't much dust for such an old place, but nothing really looks clean: solid metal instruments of examination from an era somewhere between blood-letting and MRIs covered in discoloring blotches of tarnish and in some cases rust. Aunt's old koto leaned into the corner next to the medicine cabinet, and if I hadn't known better I'd assume it was like every other instrument in the room, outdated, without purpose, and without any use beyond anachronism and decoration. As I tiptoed around the room, a stray thread from the hem of my jacket got caught on a protruding nail head, and when Aunt saw it, she grabbed a forceps from a nearby desk, pulled the string taut, and severed it at the hemline with a pair of ancient snips. She grunt-sighed in her usual way, obviously put out for having to exert herself in any way whatsoever. So she went back into the parlor to listen to her programs, noiselessly shutting the door and leaving me to my own devices."

The whole thing is likely to be about music and poetry, but you may have guessed that already.