Friday, February 6, 2004

Herb

Description paper for english.

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The smell is musty. The place is old, dank and dark. With little light.

He's old, decayed, inundated, worn-out—he's wasted away like a rust-crusted car with chipping flesh paint, with beaten tires worn from spinning, from traveling here and there. Here and there: point A to point B. Was it really so simple? Just a car going a steady twenty-five miles an hour from Born, Womb to Endsville, Death; just a steady car, then new and fresh and full of potential, now worn down, the engine overused, dying. That was him. Just a car, just a thing traveling to its preordained location.

He manages a smile as he walks into the place, the old place—dank and dark. With little light.

His eyes are red in the corners, his pupils are black holes. His eyes tell you about him if you just look. They can let you into his mind; let you into his heart; let you into him. Look closer. The eyes are still alive. Out of space. Out of time. But still alive.

He is a short man. His hands are old but strong—creator's hands. Designer's hands. Maker's hands. The hands of God.

His face is wrinkled. Wrinkles expand from his eyes and mouth and forehead like ripples in water from throwing in a heavy rock. A rock that first makes a big splash, then ripples, then secedes to the river's dirt bottom.

His hair is gray. The signification of old—old as a silent black and white movie, old as a black man segregated from a white man, old as snow on the cracked asphalt of a highway in the middle of nowhere, to nowhere. His gray hair is in thin strands, strands so thin they are like twisted and gnarled twine. That hair used to have gradient, shade and hue. But time is a robber. A thief who steals gradient, shade and hue.

Time numbs. Time dumbs. Time's bondage can break and make and shake a person's uneven core. Time is endless and groping. Time is a pendulum racking to and fro, back and to; and in each fell swipe, in each pendumlum's throe, there is the second's death, and the minute's waste, and the hour's moan. And in each throe, in each ululation, time is knowing of its doing. Each second a human's heart beats, it's another beat to the last. Another prick, another preen, another tally to time's perpetual preservation, perseverance; another less second and another less heart beat to our deaths away and passed.

The old man smiles at this thought. He couldn't have said it better himself.

"It's time to get to work, Herb," he says to himself. He looks around the room; the old musty-smelling, dank and dark room. With little light.

Books. The spines of books, those bones which hold all other bones, stare back. Words on each spine glare. They all stand on shelves.

This is his library. This is his room. It's not anything else.

In the far right wall of the room, away from the glaring staring books and spines, there is a desk. A small, humble desk. On it there is a case of pencils, the case carefully closed, some ink ribbons, paper, and a typewriter. Everything on the desk looks old and used. The typewriter is an especially old, outdated model, still where it is even with the advent of computers. Some of the blank paper has yellowed with age, sick and malnourished. And on the desk, and everything on it, there is a collected specimen of dust. It is thick enough to say Herb has not been here for quite some time.

Herberton Belay walks over to his desk. Immediately thoughts cant out of him, twist into him, begin spinning in him.

It had been a long time since he had been in here. It was here he feels he has lived his whole life, and it was here he died and now seeks to live again, as long as he can. And he will live again.

He can smell the smell that is ink to paper, pencil to paper; the smell that is writing. The smell that is words, those eyes and hands and mouth and feet, the words that let you feel and see what you can't. He smells creation; he smells, most of all, storytelling. Storytelling he had given up long ago in frustration. Writing has always smelled musty; has always been mystery.

Herberton Belay sat down in the old, uncomfortable chair for the first time in years. He readied his typewriter, put in a fresh sheet of paper, and Herberton Belay was soon no longer Herberton Belay. He was gone and had left, and in his absence there was feeling. There was the motion of actual movement, of actual inertia and force.

Herb had been pushed away; pushed away in the mystery. The smell that smells musty and trailing. Herb had been pushed by a good friend who was always old and could guide. An old friend who was stronger than the hand of Death, stronger than the perpetual pendulums of time.

Writing had stolen Herberton Belay. Would it give him back? Not until he couldn't be pushed any longer. Not until he was gone.

And he would never be gone. He would exist as the words.

His hands sat knowing on the typewriter's keys. He began typing away, one word at a time, one second at a time, one pendulum at a swing. He typed quick, and with meaning and with heart.

And on the blank page, and many after it, he wrote must and dust. And he wrote dank and dark and graceful and light. But most of all, he wrote with heart; with imagination's child. And for once, he was young again. Younger than he had been when he was just a hopeful, as well as hopeless, teenager at the age of seventeen; younger than he had felt when he was just a small child, just growing and learning. Herb felt alive. More alive than age could ever give, or youth could ever spring. He was with imagination's child, he was with himself.

He has the most powerful gaze as he types away.

He thinks it smells like old pickles. Cucumbers that were placed in vinegar and changed, and that had sat there forever and were still just as tasty, good and great.

It was old pickles. It was flawless.

He wrote and wrote. And when he stopped, it felt like he had began again.
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