Editing Malady (section)

==Recursion==
Tonight we cooked pasta with red sauce. Sadly, the food we cook
for ourselves is better than anything we find on the street. Then again,
we're pretty good in the kitchen, and can't bring ourselves to pay more
than two pesos for a meal. Dinner was good. The real reason we
cooked was to practice for tomorrow, when we are to prepare dinner
for the folks that run this place. I feel like I owe them at least a dinner
- after all, it was their kitchen counter onto which Aristotle was born.
This kitchen counter. Dylan and Tyrone finish their course at the
university tomorrow, and then we're going to cook dinner. After that
we'll stick our arms in the road, and see where we can go. The point is
that it's time to kill this wicked bitch, at least until I'm stateside, and I
can type all this up. Then I get to set about the brain-breaking work of
fixing up this inveterate pile of lash trash, this cavernous corps orb. For
the record, I stole that from Craig Dworkin. You can read about that
in Going Down, that other book of mine that I mentioned as we were
setting out.


Good to bookend the thing with some shameless self-promotion.
Good to bring it all full circle, if you can. That's why we're here,
anyways. Ralph Ellison said that the end is in the beginning, and lies
far ahead. That's another thing that Mr. Marchant taught me in
eleventh grade. Well, what if the beginning is in the end, and lies far
behind? I think that would be lovely.


Aristotle thought Lucy looked lovely, wearing one of his old kurtas,
and nothing else. It was sort of like a set of fatigues that a soldier gave
to their spouse upon return from war, but much more comfortable,
and breezier, and more flattering to her curves. He had no use for
them - the closet full of flowing black robes - but he was fond of them,
and he wanted Lucy to have them. At first she felt odd, wearing his
things like some sordid pretender - then she grew used to the feeling,
and finally she grew fond of it. They were their only relics of the
revolution, aside from the node - but everybody had one of those. The
kurta was worn thin in places - at the seat, and where lucy had grabbed
her hips some countless number of times. She loved to do that. She
called it 'putting her bitch wings out.' It was almost grey now, and only
grew softer with age. There was so much magic in that piece of cloth.
Lucy felt strong when she wore it, drew power from what it had meant
to so many humans.


When the rising had ended, Aristotle was forty-five, and Lucy was
forty-eight. They returned to Thomas' farm, which was full of memory,
but also seemed unfamiliar when their comrades had gone. Much had
been destroyed, but the houses were just barely standing there when
they first returned. The violence that had occurred there was visible,
but also ancient, and covered in the fine desert dust. The wind
occasionally blew all the way from the ocean. Aristotle could tell from
the hint of salt, and the molecules of mother that tickled his nose.
They had set to work rebuilding the two houses, knowing that there's
nothing quite like a home that you've built with your hands. They
patched bullet holes, and scrubbed what were surely bloodstains from
the floor. The built a fire in the hearth, and blew billows at the fire in
the heart. It was all quite simple, and so very peaceful, compared to
the way they had lived before - but simple peace was what they
needed. Though they were proud of what they had done, infinitely
proud, they also wanted to put it behind them. They didn't want to
forget - they wanted a chance at something else. They only wanted to
let their love live.


Nearly every night, Lucy lit the candles that they kept by the bed,
and they unleashed that torrent of their love that had seemed to flood
the entire world. It seemed that way still, when the candles flickered
and the moved inside each other. It seemed that their love was enough
for an entire planet - or hadn't they proven that? They never closed
their eyes - only stared unblinking at those dancing wet spheres. The
watched in wonder as the orbs bounced and blinked and pulsed.


They had grown closer, even when the strange calculus of fate, or
the stranger calculus of life-fusion had pulled them apart. Every day
they were closer, and though they had a lifetime now, or most of one,
they still did not have time for fighting. A hundred lives with Lucy's
eyes didn't seem like enough. They certainly did not have time to
quarrel. They could live forever inside each others' eyes, but never
would there be an ounce of anger. There was too much respect, too
much love, too much impulse for all that.


At first they had considered having a child, but hesitation dictated
that it would not be so. They were enough for each other, in the end.
Though the joy of parenthood was something that they both
sometimes longed for, they held no regrets. The land beneath their feet
was enough, and the night sky above them - the wooden home that
moaned with the wind. They worked the land, and they stared in
wonder at the sky. They listened to the creaking, and they were not full
of regret.


When the sun came up each morning, they rose, and walked out
into the land. They did their best to make it bloom. They never
matched the harvest that Ari and Thomas had reaped together in that
last summer before the revolution, but they grew quite enough. They
had their good years, and when the rain did not come, they had their
bad ones. When the sun fell behind the ridge to the west, they came
inside. It was as they had wanted - a simple life.


From time to time, a car or a motorcycle would send up the light
red earth of the road. It had an almost martian quality. They were
pilgrims, come to see where it had all began. Aristotle's presence was
the last thing any of them expected to find. They wanted to see what
they thought were ruins. Imagine going to graceland and running
smack into Elvis.


Aristotle always invited them to stay the night, and he listened to
their stories. If he or Lucy really took a liking, they might even tell a
tale or two of their own. Many of the pilgrims were folks who had
come to the farm to meet Aristotle before he was the most famous
human. Many of them still had their very first copy of the pathology.
Always they would talk a while, and before he sent them on their way,
Aristotle would ask them never to tell that he had found his way to the
farm. He knew that one day it might get out - there was no helping
that. He made them promise not to tell, though, and it seemed that a
promise to Aristotle was one that these pilgrims wouldn't break.
Perhaps they did, but the tale that the most famous man in the world
was simply working the land on his old friend's farm seemed to tall to
be true. In any case, no gaggle of reporters ever showed up, and on
most days the silence and the solitude laid thick over the land.


On evenings he had come in from the field, or during the long
winter hiatus that marks time in a farmer's life, Aristotle still
sometimes fidgeted with systems and machines. He could still speak to
them with an unrivaled fluency. Perhaps he had used up all the juices of
invention that had been allotted to him, or perhaps he lacked an
urgency, or perhaps his heart belonged to much to Lucy and the land -
but he never again held that astounding prowess of creation. It was a
constant source of comfort that his chaotic dream had truly come
true. He fidgeted some, but he knew that his work was done. He only
saw it as a chance for conversation.


On occasion he called up to MIND, still buzzing in a cloud above
him. He watched the number of nodes, still growing, and wondered
what consciousness had become. Was it a single MIND we shared? It
had to be. Aristotle could tell from the breathing and bouncing and
bulging of the planet - he could tell from the pulse that beat in unison.
He saw circuits alive with the consciousness of all complexity. He
could feel how much greater our impulse had become.


Lucy, on the other hand, did not feel that her work was finished. In
the ten years after they fixed up the farm, Lucy wrote three books. The
first was called 'On the Nature of Impulse,' the next was 'On the
Nature of Pulse,' and her final tome was 'Pulse and Impulse.' Though
Aristotle contributed his ideas, he never penned a word. Lucy became
as famous in her own right, and her books became the foundational
text of a new conception of the soul. It was the closest thing that most
humans had to religion.


Aristotle and Lucy wrote poems, too, but only for each other. His
took most after Hafiz, and hers were more unique. They read their
words to each other sometimes, and kept them by the bed. They
hoped they would have the strength to destroy them before they
finally passed. They wouldn't, but I only know that because this is my
story.


Time passed slowly on the farm. It seemed to the not-so-young
lovers that a single day there was as long as the years they had spent in
the flood. That's exactly all they craved - a chance to make up for lost
time - that's exactly all they got.


On Tuesdays, Aristotle made stir-fry. He had almost forgotten why
he loved it so much - almost, but not quite. He put more care and
more love into the stir-fry than anything else, except for every moment
that he spent with her. He grew the ingredients in a garden that sat
beside and between the two houses. It was a great source of pride, that
garden, much greater than the vast alfalfa fields that stretched their
way to the western ridge. On other days, ingredients came from the
market. On Tuesdays, though, from late spring and on into summer,
they always came from the garden.


The first row was red bell peppers. They gleamed as they grew, and
cast their deep red sheen into the distance. Then came the orange
peppers, more tangy, less sweet, but just as vibrant and visible. Next
were the yellows, sometimes too much to look at in the California sun.
The greens grew large and crisp, cleaved themselves into four or six or
eight symmetrical lobes. The onions grew below the ground, with their
small green shoots sticking up to let Aristotle know they were there,
alive, growing, getting ready for their role. Carrots, too - they came out
dirty, but they cleaned up well with a little bath. Garlic and beets and
radish, in neat rows, calling up from the damp earth, only waiting to be
ready and ripe. There was celery and cabbage, and they got fat off of
just a little sunlight and dew. Aristotle didn't have to ask the plants to
grow. He only planted the seeds, and made sure that they had enough
to drink. In the last row grew the sweet corn, stretching proudly
towards the sun, and so much taller than the others. Aristotle loved
the sweet corn most of all - how quickly it rose, and how sweet it was.


To Ari, tending the garden was an art, and like all art, it took
practice. His skill grew over the years, until it became something he
knew only by hand. The wet, packed earth and the morning dew, the
quality of light, and the spacing of the seeds. Aristotle knew it all, but
it wasn't something he could write down. It just was. It was in the
doing, seeking no justification and receiving none. It was right because
it was right, and it was as simple as that. Ari loved that garden. Lucy
loved it too, but it was Ari's alone. It was one of the few things they
did not share - not for any reason, but just because that's the way it
was.


When winter grew into spring, it was the garden that marked the
passing of time. Every day brought the moment closer when Aristotle
could go out and pick a few perfect specimens of each thing. Then it
came, and Ari brought the fruits of his labor inside.


He prepared the ingredients in the same order that they grew, if
you looked toward the garden from the east. With a nine-inch chef 's
knife, he sliced the red peppers into thin, crisp strips. The orange
became rings. Ari always tasted them as soon as they were cut. The
yellows he sliced into square the size of pool chalk, only slightly larger
than dice. The green he sometimes only cut in halves - more often
into quarters, but sometimes just halves. It depended whether it was a
small one, and whether Aristotle felt like having a nice big steak of
pepper in his dish. One half of the onion was cut finely, and the other
side he sliced into a rainbow pattern to produce narrow, arcing strips.
The carrots were cut at an angle, to produce larger, ovaloid disks.
Sometimes they were thin, and sometimes they were fat - it only
depended on what smells were on the wind. The garlic was minced,
and the beets became small dice. The radishes were chopped into
thinly translucent circles - purple on the outside, and on the inside
only the color of wetness. From the celery he ripped the stringy
chords, before making each stalk into a set of tiny arcs. The cabbage
was torn and ripped and crushed by hand - in a certain way, cabbage
cuts itself. Last was the corn - boiled for just a minute inside its husk,
before Aristotle slid the knife down its spine, and let the kernels fall
into a bowl.


Only then was everything ready. The ingredients sat on the counter,
each in its own identical bowl. On a normal day, it could be said that
the new house had too many bowls. They were all made of steel, and all
perfectly alike, except perhaps in size. On Tuesdays, from late spring
and on into summer, they had the perfect number of bowls. Escoffier
said that a true chef has all the ingredients in place before the first
flame is lit - he called it mise en place. Well, that's not what this was.
Aristotle had never read Escoffier. He simply liked the look of it - all
those ingredients sitting in their bowls, waiting for the slow heat that
would bring them all together.


Ari unhooked a heavy cast-iron skillet from its nail on the wall, just
above the range. The skillet was big enough for four good pancakes, or
bacon and eggs at the same time, or twelve big bowls of fresh, clean,
sculpted veggies. It carried a hundred years of flavor in its bullet-proof
bottom, and fifty more in its six-inch-high sides. Ari lit the front two
burners, and set them to the same medium heat. Into the skillet went
half a stick of butter, and two seconds worth of olive oil. The fats
mixed, and Ari seasoned them with rosemary, cracked black pepper
and big, kosher salt. In one hell of a hurry, the smell filled the house.
You probably could have smelled it by the jumbo rocks, if you'd been
there, and if you'd kept your nose to the air. The garlic went in, and the
smell changed slightly, but it was still the rosemary that filled you up.
When the garlic stopped crackling in the hot fat, Ari put in the celery
and the carrots - they would take the longest, and he wanted them
almost soft by the time this was done. When the edges of the small
green arcs had begun to clear, Ari went in with the radish and the beet.
Everything began to take on a pinkish, purplish hue. Ari gripped the
handle of the skillet with an old rage, and gave the melange a few mean
shakes. He liked the pinkish purplish carrots. He added the strips of
pepper before the squares - the cabbage and the corn. More salt and
pepper and the second half of that stick of butter. You could never
have too much butter. Finally the onions, and the twelve bowls stacked
neat and empty on the counter. The fat clicked under the weight and
wetness of all that vegetable flesh. Ari stood back and looked at the
variegated shapes and colors - maybe he tried to figure out exactly
what he loved so much about stir-fry. A few more violent shakes, some
stirring, and the passage of time. Soon it would be food. Just a bit more
salt. When the onions were nearly translucent, it was done.


It wasn't done, but it would continue to cook in all the heat it had
soaked up from the two gas flames. The stir-fry was done with the fire
- I'll put it that way. It came out of the skillet and into a white piece of
porcelain with cobalt blue flowers in a chinese design. Aristotle
sprinkled the last bit of rosemary on top, and steam rose as he brought
it to the table. It was the same table around which the original five had
gathered, a table leaden with memory. On that table sat the porcelain
bowl with steam billowing out the top. The bowl sat on the table, and
Aristotle called to Lucy.


They sat across each other at the center of the table, and let the
end stretch out to either side. The table could seat twelve easily, and
many times it had. They sat just across from each other, but they
remembered the emptiness. Aristotle looked at Lucy through the
steam, and Lucy looked back. Sunlight with a quality of milk fell in
through the window behind her, and sat in her hair. It would be old-hat
to say that she looked angelic, but what else are you supposed to say
about a beautiful human, backbathed in sunlight and viewed through a
rising column of steam? Nothing. Lucy looked angelic.


Aristotle raised a wooden spoon, and plunged it into the far-too-
large pot of stir-fry. He served Lucy first, two heaping spoonfuls, and a
couple extra pieces of carrot. Then he served himself, three scoops,
and a bit more beet. He couldn't get over the color. He took a square
of yellow pepper first - she took a disk of carrot. You could write a
whole book about that moment - and perhaps I have. The pepper was
soft as skin, but still firm, and hot enough that Aristotle had to open
his mouth and suck in air. Lucy laughed her heaving-gasping beauty of
a laugh.


"Every time." Lucy had been blowing on her tender, uniformly wet
orange disk. It was hot enough that it had its own billowing column of
vapor, which rolled and rose with all the chaos of a turbulent fluid.
Then Lucy took the carrot into her mouth, seemed to roll it around,
savored it. Aristotle looked at Lucy with the molten eyes of a child. It
was important to him that the stir-fry satisfy her. It was always
important, and it always did, in the most genuine sort of way. She
stabbed a couple pieces of pepper - one yellow, one red.


"Best one yet." She had said that about every steaming pot of stir-
fry that had sat between them on the long wooden table. It had always
been true. Every Tuesday, from late spring and on into summer,
Aristotle cooked his stir-fry, and every time it was a bit better than
before. It tasted more like home, more like memory, more like a
peaceful life together after a tumultuous time. Every Tuesday from late
spring and on into summer, Aristotle cooked his stir-fry, and every
week they loved each other just a little bit more.


Ignatius came by from time to time, for a week or a weekend. After
the waters of chaos receded, Iggy had found his way back to Phoenix.
Being one of the original five had made him more than a celebrity. He
had taken a job lecturing at a university, in philosophy and economics
and literary theory. He could have taught Chinese, if he'd wanted,
though he didn't speak a lick. So he taught what he wanted, when he
wanted, and raised a family with a woman named Katie, who he had
met during the rising. From time to time he came to stay in the house
adjacent to Aristotle's, where once a man named Thomas had lived.


The car rolled roughly down the dirt road, kicking up the same
plume of martian soil as the others. Aristotle knew that it was Iggy,
though, from the profile of the electric sedan. The brothers nearly
sprinted to each other, and took each other in a long embrace. They
liked embraces better than words. Katie stood from the passenger's
seat, and Ari asked about the kids. Iggy said they'd left them with
Katie's folks. Ari loved those kids, a boy and a girl, as if they were his
own. They loved him back. They were the only people that Ari had
ever gotten to watch as they grew up. They kept him in touch with the
world, so full of new things, and he told them all his stories. Still, Ari
was glad that Iggy and Katie had come just the two. It would be lovely
just to sit and talk. Always there was much to say.


Iggy carried two bags to the old house, and Katie came around to
give Ari a hug. They had first met here, when Iggy had sent her to meet
his brother in the days before MIND was awake. She and Iggy had
already fallen for each other then, but Aristotle hadn't known that at
the time. He would have been a bit more open. Then again, Katie was
open enough for the both of them - honest and sincere, soft-spoken
though she was.


When Iggy returned, it was with a grin that rivaled the ridge for
wideness. Nobody had touched the place since last he came. It had to
be a couple of months. He said Ari didn't have to keep the place all
shut up, but Ari only said that that was its purpose now. He wanted his
brother to have a home here. Ignatius felt that he did - the furniture
and the furnishings and the fixings were all he and Katie's. The kids
even had a room of their own, which they had decided to paint a
peculiar shade of eggplant one summer.


As the sun arced above them, and began its slow descent toward
the ridge in the distance, Iggy and Lucy and Ari and Katie gathered
around the table. There was a bag of grapes left over from the ride. Ari
took the green globules and dumped them in a steel bowl, which he
placed smack in the middle of the table. They popped the balls of juice
and flesh into their mouths, and set about talking. Iggy and Ari could
squeeze a debate out of anything, and it topped the list of their
favorite things to do. Mostly they debated somewhat frivolous things -
factoids from history, and the impossible game of guessing at an
author's intent. But occasionally they would veer into the realm of
their story, of the cloud of memory that buzzed around them all like
flies. They popped the green grapes one at a time, or two at a time, and
talked about the time they had first sat around that table. Ari said it
couldn't have gone any other way - the story, that is. Iggy begged to
differ, and said that they hadn't needed all that chaos, all that terrible
noise. If only Ari hadn't turned himself in. They stopped before their
voices raised. There was one grape left in the bowl, stewing in the acid-
green broth of condensation.


They left the grape to steep, and went to walk towards the sunset -
what would become the sunset by the time they got out there. Iggy
asked if his brother had heard the news - MIND's system log was full
of poems, full of the most marvelous poems. Ari hadn't heard. He
didn't much bother with the news any more. He also wasn't the least
bit surprised. Iggy asked if they were Ari's words, a little present left in
the code - Ari had been known to do that. Ari said they weren't, and
Ignatius unfolded a piece of paper as they walked. He read a poem
called 'The Wildest Surf.' He asked Ari if he was quite sure that the
words weren't his. Ari simply intoned that he couldn't write like that.
When Iggy asked one more time if he brother was sure, Aristotle
stopped in his tracks. He placed a hand on Iggy's shoulder, and brought
their eyes into alignment.
"Brother, believe me, we wrote that."


The sun had finally dipped below the ridge. They turned back
towards the two houses, old and new. In the silence of their soft
motion, they thought they could hear the planet breathe.


When Iggy had gone, Aristotle sat on the porch of the new house,
facing the cool of the night. Lucy slept. It was late, who knows how
late. Three birds shot from the sky, seemingly from the sky, out of the
sky they shot. Three birds silhouetted by the sky. This is what caught
Aristotle's attention, and plunged him into the deepest sort of revel.


He seemed to sit forever, unashamed and accustomed to the act of
simply sitting. He thought about what life was, and what life had been.
He thought about what life would be. From somewhere inside him, a
voice called, and it wondered if he was the same Aristotle who had sat
at a bus-stop some twenty, or thirty, or forty years before. He assured
himself that he was. He was quite certain that he told the truth. The
voice grew quiet, and Aristotle was left only with his own shadow, cast
by the growing gibbous moon. He did not feel alone. In a rocking chair
of his own design, he sat forever and rocked. He did not feel at all
alone. He let himself think about Walt Whitman and cunnilingus. He
let himself think about the middle ages and all manner of sundry and
scintillating things.


The sky is silver-grey - not quite rain, but certainly full of moisture,
and decidedly hopeful. Aristotle is sitting with his shadow when the
story ends.


It's as simple as that. Though, I've got a few things left to say. You
do have to say goodbye to Ari now, sadly, and you're only going to be
left with me. Really, now's your chance. I'll give you a moment.


I can tell already that these last few pages are going to be the
hardest to write. I must write them, though, because the sun is coming
up, and today is Dylan and Tyrone's final class. It really is time to sum
it all up. I hope you don't mind if I take a few more pages of your time,
but feel free to split.


It's like this - I think that writing this book is the best thing I've
ever done. Never mind if you think it's a pile of shit. I don't think so,
though I know that it needs a lot of work if I ever want you to see it.
All that will be invisible, though, so maybe you don't know what I'm
talking about. I think it's the best thing I've ever done for a few
reasons.


The first, the most important, is that this has been the most fun
I've ever had. The whole experience - being here in Havana with
Marcus and Dylan and Tyrone. Staying up all night and becoming a
sort of insane reclusive asshole for a couple of weeks. It's definitely
been a blast, even if it was quite trying. I hate to finish, but I know
that there will be more adventures and more stories for me. I'm quite
sure of that now.


Second, I learned a lot. If I do the math, I'm pretty sure that this
notebook contains more than half the words I've ever written. The
only way to get better at writing is to practice, and so I'm certain that
I'm a better writer now than I was when I set out. That's why I've got
to go back now and rewrite so much of this.I'm twenty years old, and I
know I've got a lot to learn, but I'm glad I came to realize that learning
is doing, especially when it comes to using words.


Third, I really like Aristotle. He taught me a lot about myself. Not
that I'm a revolutionary or a hero or a myth - nothing like that. It's just
that he and I share a lot, and watching him go helped me realize some
things about myself. It helped me realize that I can write, and it
showed me some of my core beliefs, even if I don't have the will to
fight for them as he did. I say 'watch him go,' because that's really what
it felt like. I didn't have the much conscious control over the story. I
did at first, but that quickly changed. Some things were just right, and
some things were just wrong. All I did was try to find the right words.


Now, fourth and finally, I don't think it turned out so bad. Maybe
with a little work it could really be something. Somebody thinks it is, if
you're reading this. But I wonder what you think. Do let me know,
please, if you get a chance. I really would appreciate it.


So that's why I think this is the best thing I've ever done, but if
you'll hang in a bit longer, I've got a few more things I'd like to say. I'd
like to say a few words about our hero, Aristotle the Cynosure. I think
he's a hell of a guy. He's strong and brave and willing to fight for what
he believes in. Trust me when I tell you that he didn't get those things
from me. All he really got from me were some elements of the first
three chapters. After that he was on his own. I wonder now if I was
too easy on him - things did seem to always go his way. Then again, he
had a pretty tough cookie to crack, and I figured the least he deserved
was to be right all the time. That seems like a fair trade, in fiction at
least - set out to save humanity's soul, and you don't have to deal with a
bunch of mess-ups. I'm fully aware that the world doesn't work that
way, but you're allowed to trim a story. Or perhaps that's not a good
excuse. Maybe I'm just making it easier on myself. Maybe I should go
back and throw him a few cur veballs. Either way I'm proud of
Aristotle. I just wanted you to know.


My pencil keeps trying to talk about the moral of the story, but I'm
not so sure that it's a good idea. I mean, first off, if a story can be
reduced to a simple moral, it probably doesn't get the whole
postmodern thing. Then again, would that really be so bad? Maybe we
should bring morals back. Anyways, the real issue here is that I'm not
at all sure that this thing had a moral. If it does, it's probably a really
obvious one, like the world is fucked. Then again, it might be
something a little more lovely, like that stuff about impulse and pulse.
We are kind of like a single organism, when you think about it. I
suppose I'll have to go with that, but just know that I'm full of
trepidation in saying so.


The moral that I wish it had, that a better book would probably
have had is that you should write a book. Seriously - you should pick
up a pen or a pencil or whatever you want to use, and start writing, and
don't stop. That's the tricky part, not stopping, but I swear on
whatever you want me to swear on that it's worth it. Really, that would
be a nice moral - maybe for my next one. You bet your ass I'm going to
try.


Okay, a couple more things I want to address. You can tell it's just a
couple from the number of pages to the right - and some of those are
filled with legalese bullshit. I've been talking about this couple of
things since page one, I think. What I wanted for this book, more
than anything else, was for it to be honest and original. You're free to
decide for yourself whether that's the case, but I'm going to give you
my take.


As for honesty, what I'm doing right now played a pretty big part.
See, this is me, the author, Isaac Wilder, talking to you as honestly as I
can. There's noillusion that this is anything more than it is - a story
that I made up for fun and the off chance of a little recognition. This
really is my voice, as best as I can put it into words. The other part of
the honesty equation is in the story itself. I tried to call it like I saw it,
so to speak, but it wasn't always easy. In fact, at times it was quite hard.
I guess I'm talking about poetic honesty here. I said before that the
story just sort of unfolded in front of me, and that's true, to a great
extent. The problem, though, is that maybe I didn't tell it exactly right,
or exactly as it should have been told. Maybe I exerted my own will on
it at times, without even realizing what I was doing. A story before it's
told turns out to be a very fragile thing, and one little push from the
author's squeaky bitch of a will can mess it all up. I hope that didn't
happen, but there's no way to be sure. So on the honesty front, I
definitely can't give myself full marks. What I'm doing right now is
certainly good, but I'm afraid that it just might not be enough.


Now on the originality front, there's a whole slew of other factors
at play, some of which I don't think I'm fit to judge. My voice, for
instance, now and in the story - I don't know if I just copycatted the
whole thing from writers that I like. Harold Bloom, who I don't like all
that much, talks about the anxiety of influence - maybe that's at play.
On the other hand, maybe my words don't read like ones you're read
before. It's really not for me to say, but I would appreciate your input.
The next thing to consider is the story itself - the plot and the
characters and what have you. In a certain way, every story is original.
There's a baseline credit there, sort of like writing your name on the
SATs. But some stories are certainly more original than others, more
novel, more out of the ordinary. I tried to be original in this way at
times, but I fear it may have come off too full of fiction, and not in a
good way. The skill here is to tell a story that's really novel, and to not
have it seem so far fetched. I know I'm not there yet, but I promise
that I'll work on it. The final consideration, as far as originality goes, is
this you and me thing. I haven't seen any authors do this - not that I
can think of. I mean, I know that narrators address readers all the
time, but how often are the narrator and the author the same? And if
they are the same, how often does the author just come out and talk. I
know you don't have any way of telling whether or not this is really me,
but it is. It really, really is. I mean, maybe you find this pretentious or
gimmicky or trite, but I rather like it. In any case, I think I score some
originality points here, in the margins, if you will. Even if I lose some
in the story. Again, not full marks, but not a failing grade. I can live
with that.


So that's it. That's all I've got to say right now. Tyrone is up and
eating a piece of last night's chicken. He and Dylan are going to be late
to school. I'm supposed to wake Marcus up when they go, but that will
wait until I finish this page. It's my last, after all. What a strange
feeling. The sun is up over Havana, and I can hear people walking in
the street. The fan whirrs on, and the ashtray is way, way too full. It's
8:32am, the twenty-first of July, and I have written a novel. I'm proud
of myself, and a little bit full of it at the moment, but that will go away.
Tonight we cook our big dinner, and then tomorrow we're off. We're
going to go to the town of Trinidad, where Marcus' kin got off a slave
ship. Then we're going to go to Santa Clara, where Che is buried, to
hear Raul Castro give a speech on the twenty-sixth. That's
independence day down here. As good a day as any, I suppose.


I really do hope you've enjoyed this book. Maybe you'll get my next
one too, when it comes out. Now, if you don't mind, pass this thing
along to someone else. There's really no need to horde all the books for
yourself - unless you run a librar y, in which case it's perfectly
understandable. Or, if you do want to keep this, then maybe you could
tell your friends to go and get one - if you enjoyed it, that is. If not, just
keep your mouth shut. No need to go around badmouthing me and my
book. Maybe you do feel the need, but I'd really appreciate it if you
didn't.


It's time to say goodbye. Au revoir. It's been real, and it's been
lovely, and enchanting and ravishing and all that jazz, but I have to go
wake up Marcus. You've probably got things to do on your end, too.
Let me know how I did, though. It would mean a lot. My email address
is in here somewhere. Do it now if you're not too busy - they always
say there's no time like the present. Alright then, so long, and glad
tidings from Cuba.