Tag: surrealism

• Tuesday Citation: They Do Not Always Remember by William S. Burroughs

  

  First published in Esquire, May 1, 1966, this routine (Burrough’s term for his writing jags) was later collected in Exterminator!

  Here is Burroughs talking about the story in relation to his creative process in a lecture at the Naropa Institute (Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics):

  

  Now I get about forty percent of my sets an[d] characters from dreams. Sometimes, just a phrase, a voice, a glimpse, and sometimes I will get a whole story or chapter. All I have to do is sit down and transcribe the dream. An example is a story in Exterminator! called “They Do Not Always Remember” And, sometimes in dreams I find a book or a magazine and read a story. So perhaps writers don’t write, perhaps they just read and transcribe.

  Now what are dreams made of? – Much the same material as a novel – pieces of old movies, newspapers, magazines, novels, sensory in-put. The line between subjective and objective experience is purely arbitrary. No objective reality could be experienced without somebody there to experience it subjectively, and no subjective experience could exist without something to experience.

  THEY DO NOT ALWAYS REMEMBER
  
  It was in Monterrey Mexico … a square a fountain a café. I had stopped
  by the fountain to make an entry in my notebook: “dry fountain empty
  square silver paper in the wind frayed sounds of a distant city.” “What
  have you written there?” I looked up. A man was standing in front of
  me barring the way. He was corpulent but hard-looking with a scarred
  red face and pale grey eyes. He held out his hand as if presenting a
  badge but the hand was empty. In the same movement he took the
  notebook out of my hands. “You have no right to do that. What I write
  in a notebook is my business. Besides I don’t believe you are a police
  officer.” Several yards away I saw a uniformed policeman thumbs
  hooked in his belt. “Let’s see what he was to say about this.”
  
  We walked over to the policeman. The man who had stopped me spoke
  rapidly in Spanish and handed him the notebook. The policeman leafed
  through it. I was about to renew my prostests but the policeman’s
  manner was calm and reassuring. He handed the notebook back to me
  said something to the other man who went back and stood by the
  fountain.
  
  “You have time for a coffee señor?” the policeman asked. “I will tell
  you a story. Years ago in this city there were two policemen who were
  friends and shared the same lodgings. One was Rodriguez. He was
  content to be a simple agente as you see me now. The other was Alfaro.
  He was brilliant, ambitious and rose rapidly in the force until he was
  second in command. He introduced new methods … tape recorders …
  speech prints. He even studied telepathy and took a drug once which he
  thought would enable him to detect the criminal mind. He did not
  hesitate to take action where more discreet officials preferred to look the
  other way … the opium fields … the management of public funds …
  bribery in the police force … the behaviour of policemen off duty.
  Señor he put through a rule that any police officer drunk and carrying a
  pistol would have his pistol permit canceled for one flat year and what
  is more he enforced the rule. Needless to say he made enemies. One
  night he received a phone call and left the apartment he still shared with
  Rodriguez … he had never married and preferred to live simply you
  understand … just there by the fountain he was struck by a car … and
  accident? perhaps … for months he lay in a coma between life and
  death … he recovered finally … perhaps it would have been better if he
  had not.” The policeman tapped his forehead “You see the brain was
  damaged … a small pension … he still thinks he is a major of police
  and sometimes the old Alfaro is there. I recall an American tourist,
  cameras slung all over him like great tits protesting waving his passport.
  There he made a mistake. I looked at the passport and did not like what
  I saw. So I took him along to the comisaria where it came to light the
  passport was forged the American tourist was a Dane wanted for
  passing worthless checks in twenty-three countries including Mexico. A
  female impersonator from East St Louis turned out to be an atomic
  scientist wanted by the FBI for selling secrets to the Chinese. Yes
  thanks to Alfaro I have made important arrests. More often I must tell to
  some tourist once again the story of Rodriguez and Alfaro.” He took a
  toothpoick out of his mouth and looked meditatively at the end if ot. “I
  think Rodriguez has his Alfaro and for every Alfaro there is always a
  Rodriguez. They do not always remember.” He tapped his
  forehead. “You will pay for the coffee yes?”

  I put a note down on the table. Rodriguez snatched it up. “This note is
  counterfeit señor. You are under arrest.” “But I got it from American
  Express two hours ago!” “Mentiras! You think we Mexicans are so
  stupid? No doubt you have a suitcase full of this filth in your hotel
  room.”

  

  Alfaro was standing by the table smiling. He showed a police badge. “I am the FBI señor … the Federal Police of Mexico. Allow me.” He took the note and held it up to the light smiling he handed it back to me. He said something to Rodriguez who walked out and stood by the fountain. I noticed for the first time that he was not carrying a pistol. Alfaro looked after him shaking his head sadly. “You have time for a coffee señor? I will tell you a story.” “That’s enough!” I pulled a card out of my wallet and snapped crisply “I am District Supervisor Lee of the American Narcotics
  

  Department and I am arresting you and your accomplice Rodriguez for acting in concert to promote the sale of narcotics … caffeine among other drugs …”

  
  A hand touched my shoulder. I looked up. A greyhaired Irishman was
  standing there with calm authority the face portentous and distant as if I
  were recovering consciousness after a blow on the head. They do not
  always remember. “Go over there by the fountain Bill. I’ll look into
  this.” I could feel his eyes on my back see the sad head shake hear him
  order two coffees in excellent Spanish … dry fountain empty square
  silver paper in the wind frayed sounds of distant city … everything grey
  and fuzzy … my mind isn’t working right … who are you over there
  telling the story of Harry and Bill? … The square clicked back into
  focus. My mind cleared. I walked toward the café with calm authority.

  WSB

  2025.02.05

• Monday Composition: The Sea is a Horse, Of Course

  A man named Beaver had a baby with his wife, Bunny. In the weeks before the birth, Bunny bulged big, and Beaver walked proud. Yet, when the labor came due in the maternity ward, the baby was born not from Bunny but through Beaver’s mouth.

  This caused several complications.

  When the wee babe’s scalp crowned, all of Beaver’s teeth fell out. All that precious ivory, yellowed so diligently with years of coffee cups and pipes of tobacco, gone.

  I will need Bunny to nurse me like the baby, Beaver thought. Beaver thought, like my son, I will need to eat strained carrots. 

  When the umbilical cord was cut, it did not retreat down Beaver’s throat but flopped about his mouth like a second tongue, creating its own babble of poppycock and taradiddle. 

  My language has been confounded, Beaver thought, and my words will scatter away from my face until I can once again sift falderal from folderol. 

  As for the afterbirth, having nowhere else to go, it settled in Beaver’s gut, bloating his belly and hunching his back. 

  Once they had returned home, Beaver lay long in bed under the weight of the afterbirth. He resolved a reversal was in order. He told Bunny he would swallow the baby and let it be born again, through her.

  Ith my birthrighth, he gabbled.

  Having none of that, Bunny slept on top of the baby every night, while Beaver haunted its crib, looking for his son while he gummed the bedposts.

  One night, instead of covering the baby, she replaced it with a smooth stone wrapped in swaddling cloths, and Beaver swallowed it.

  The next day, Beaver visited Dr. Brevity to complain of a pain in his gut. The doctor poked his skin feeling the stone perched within atop the afterbirth, and diagnosed, you have a stone.

  Will it pass? Beaver asked.

  With luck commensurate to the size of the stone.

  Whew, said Beaver, and he headed off to sea, to float on his back and find relief in the weightlessness of water. I will pee and let my salty sea join the greater sea and the greater salt and the stone will flow away from me.

  But with each wave, the tide grew higher and Beaver sank lower, dragged down by the weight of the stone he could not disown.

  As he began to drown, he thought, this isn’t birth.

  He thought, this isn’t right.

  A selection from Esau’s Fables, published by Mount Diablo Books and available in print and as an e-book from Amazon. The piece also appeared previously in Bending Genres Magazine.

  

  2025.02.04

• Monday Composition: Learning to Dance

  Learning to Dance

  A young boy kept his neighbor’s foot under his bed. It lay among the dust bunnies, idle, bereft, still wearing its oxblood leather shoe. The boy had not forgotten the foot, but he rarely took it out anymore.

  Months before, the boy had stolen it on impulse. He had seen his elderly neighbor napping in a hammock in his backyard. Cleverly, he took the foot without waking the old man.  

  For a while, the boy thought the foot a marvelous toy. He made it march about his room. It would kick through the boy’s green plastic army men in great mock battles. He dressed it in his mother’s pumps, painted the toes, and practiced his pose. Occasionally, the boy would feed the foot, peeling back the shoe’s tongue and tenderly hand-feeding it oats or kernels of corn. 

  With time, the games grew crueler. The boy would swell like a lion and ambush the foot or tickle its arch until it cringed in a corner. But soon he became bored and ignored the foot and felt depressed.

  The boy turned to his neighbor for help.

  I have lost all joy in the things of this world, the boy would say.

  The old man could only weep, while hopping on one foot. 

  Life seems very long, the boy would cry. How my days stretch before me.

  After weeks of such talk, the old man spoke. Give me your hand, he said. I’ll teach you to dance. 

  

  Selected from Esau’s Fables by Jedediah Smith. Available in paperback from Amazon.

  2025.01.13