Flexibility: A Metaphysical Enquiry Into Articulation
I forget how long I had been ill, but I woke up one morning, it was almost afternoon actually, and realised that the fever had gone. Well, almost. It’s sometimes difficult to tell sometimes, what with the bed being so warm. But I was feeling much better. I took a long deep breath and breathed out slowly. Good – lungs still working anyway. And then there were the feet and hands, toes and fingers to be scrunched up and released. Everything present and correct, no little piggies away at market, no little pinkies where they shouldn’t have been. A quick inspection of the genitalia was also reassuring. You can’t tell from a quick glance in the garage whether the car will go, but it’s nice to know it’s still there.
I remove the sheet and blankets cautiously, sit up and push my way out of bed. I slide my legs over the edge and regard my feet. So there you are, I say to myself, and will you work after all this time? I place each foot carefully on the floorboards and stand up. Then I put one foot forward, draw the other up to meet it, pause for an instant and put the second foot forward beyond the first. In this way, I was out of the bedroom and into the hall in almost no time at all.
So this is the way they work, I said to myself, as I went from room to room looking from each window to see what might be the same and what might have changed.
Then there were the sounds. My bedroom had been at the back of the apartment block overlooking a neglected communal garden where few pleasure seekers care to come. It had become a sewerage for dogs and the sort of owners who care not where their dogs do what they have to, so long as it is not on their hearthrugs. Occasionally someone came to take drugs, orally or by injection, but only those who had tired of life so efficiently that they didn’t care where they ended their days.
The flower beds had been abandoned; the unidentifiable bushes suffered alopecia; there was a solitary white birch tree, now grey, its bark peeling like wallpaper in a deserted room.
I’ll mention the other views later on.
Not that you’ll have to take much notice of them. You could easily glide over such passages and on to the next with next to no effort or loss.
I could be wrong. There might be more significance in them than even I am aware of. No writer can be held responsible for everything they write and they can’t always be presumed to understand what they’re doing. Like most other people really. It makes me sick when I hear them talk: of inspiration; the muse; fairies at the bottom of the garden leaving plots for stories wrapped in gossamer and tied with strands of liquorice.
You know what I say to that?
Bollocks.
If that’s one of those words you are familiar with, but don’t care to see in print, forgive me. Actually, I don’t care if you forgive me or not. But if it makes you feel any better …
Oh, I forgot to mention the courting couples, or those troilistically involved, who came at dusk, or sometimes in the afternoon, and spread a scrofulous blanket upon which they performed what they called intercourse – although if you ask me, it was more intra- than inter-. Ah, the divesting, the balletic arrangement of limbs, more so when there are more than two. Intercoursees, that is, not limbs. The cupping and the tupping, the admission and the emission, the sighs of repletion and the groans of despair.
Anyway, there I was, wandering about on my new-found feet, pressing, directing them this way and that, marvelling at how simple they were and how complex, obeying almost your every command, even those you hadn’t thought of yet. How you are walking along, minding your own business, and your foot – could be the right or the left, whichever gets there first – sees, thinks, Christ! a pile of dog shit! Lying there neatly stacked in the middle of the pavement, no doubt awaiting collection. I must not step in that. The consequences are too horrible to contemplate. I could spend the rest of the day toiling over my fershtinkiner botes, scrubbing and retching and coiled up foetally for hours on the sofa.
How do they do it? Of course, if I knew more about synapses, filaments, axons and dentrites, brain chemicals and the like, I might be able to explain how it all works. But until I do, it’s all an exciting mystery.
There are some people who say it’s better to leave it as a mystery. If you find out how it all works it’ll take the awe out of everything. You won’t be able to look up at the stars at night for fear of knowing that they might not be there at all, just remnants of light which will shortly say goodnight Charlie and that will be that. Forever.
Well excuse me, but bollocks. I look up there and I think, remnants of light? That’s a good way of putting it. When you think of what once was and what is now, that’s more than enough mystery and awe to last a few lifetimes.
Now that my feet were working, I thought, why not try the knees and the elbows, see what they have to say for themselves. I tried a trial run, not at any speed, from the living room to the kitchen, about turn and out into the bathroom, about turn and out into the hall, about turn and back into the living room again, and a rest on the sofa to consider the verdict. So far, so good. Each articulation had responded as it should. How they remember after all this time, only the gods know.
Not that this is always the case. I heard of a man who was out walking his dog when all his joints seized up. Knees left and right, left and right elbows. He just stood there unable to move. Except for the ankles, in which there was minimal use. You might describe what movement there was as a gentle running without the feet ever leaving the ground.
There was a bench a few feet away, but he was unable to reach it.
They took a photograph of him. His left knee was locked in such a position as to form his left leg into a triangle with the other similarly afflicted knee and hence leg, so that the ground on which he stood made the base of the triangle. God knows what the crotch angle was, but I have no doubt it could be determined.
As for the arms, the right veered forward while the left reached back, conveying a curious asymmetry. For I believe, and please correct me if I am wrong, it should be the other way round. That is to say, the left arm should proceed in a
forward direction in compassion with the right leg. Likewise the arm on the right side …
Or is it the other way round?
I wasn’t there myself, so I couldn’t say for sure. I looked at the photograph. But you never know with them photos. The position could have been the other way round. If you look at the picture from inside the camera it is upside down. So why not the other way round as well?
Who cares a toss.
The plain fact of the matter is the poor fellah couldn’t move. He’s fixed there like he’s been poured into cement and the dog’s running round and round barking its head off. Thinks it’s a game most likely, but doesn’t know the rules.
Anyway, after a bit, whoever it was onlooking decided, after a suitable lapse of time, that it wasn’t one of them mimes so he goes off and comes back with the park keeper who says to your man, ‘Excuse me sir, but this is against the by-laws.’
‘What fuckin’ by-laws?’ the fixed man enquires through fixed teeth.
After a few such exchanges, the onlooker and the park keeper confer and consider that the man may well be the victim of a malignant posture
occasioned by something he may have encountered or eaten. Or it could be the influence of aliens not a few of whom have been sighted during the past few weeks in the vicinity.
The park keeper slouches off to call for help while the onlooker remains behind to pass the time of day and take the man’s mind off his plight by asking him a number of irrelevant questions and passing airy comments about the state of the nation.
When the ambulance men arrive they bid the dog cease its barking and enquire of the fixed man if his condition is genetic, induced by a psychosomatic condition whose causation may lie in infancy or beyond. To all such questions they receive the same answer: no comment. Expelled, as it were, between fixed teeth. This is also accompanied by an attempt to vigorously shake the head in refutation. But as little or no movement can ensue, all that is apparent is a gentle suffusion of blood to the face until a density and puceness is achieved, which alarms the ambulance men, one of whom has a certificate in paramedicine and is able to offer roadside assistance. And it is this member of the team who enquires if the fixed man has an impediment to his jaw, which would account for his clenched replies.
The fixed man fixes the paramedic with a stare. He whispers in a plea into the para-man’s hirsute ear, ‘Get me the fuck out of here!’ Not an unreasonable request under the circumstances. For by that time a considerable crowd had gathered and various diagnoses ventured. As we might expect, the two most popular are a) it is a cast-off from the Turner Prize signifying a political sclerosis; and b) a narcissistic attempt to attract attention which has gone badly wrong.
A voice is raised above all the others.
A clenched but audible plea, verging on a command: ‘GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!’
He is carried on his side and laid in the ambulance on his back, where he maintains the same position. The dog waits patiently but is unrewarded. There is no room for a dog in this particular ambulance. In other perhaps. Birds of prey, dentured crocodiles, venomless snakes, perhaps. But no dogs, despite the fixed man’s protestations. The onlooker shouts that he will find the creature a good home until the man has recovered, which he hopes will not be long. But, of course, you can never tell what may come to pass. In such an absurdly ontic universe, anything is possible.
THE END
The Editor’s Reply:
Dear Mr Greenberg,
Thank you for your piece entitled Flexibility: A Metaphysical Enquiry Into Articulation, a title which may well deter some readers while raising the expectations in others it fails to fulfil. Our reader found your story, if indeed that is what it is, amusing in parts but unconvincing as a whole. There seems to be little character development, a negligible plot line, and no real diagnosis of the victim’s condition. The majority of our readership would find a reading frustrating. It would raise their expectations and then dash them. Also the references to canine excrement, troilism and the description of the park are hardly wholesome fare. We suggest that you try one of the more avant-garde publications, which seem to prefer this sort of thing and have long ago lost any feeling for plot, characterisation, narrative line, and what the ordinary man and woman prefer to read.
I can hardly wish you luck in your venture because it would be tantamount to a gross dereliction of duty to our present readers, who, you will appreciate, would desert us in droves if they heard of such a thing, let alone our publishing you in a forthcoming issue. We did, however, quite like the reference to remnants of light and the description of the tattered birch tree.
We would advise you to pursue more of this and less, much less, of the other.
Wishing you better judgement in future ventures.
We remain …
