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the archive(s):
issue no. 5:
Shuriken Doubt (baby, sure I can...) / Uzodinma Okehi
I want to bitch a little about my job . . . I want to talk about another winter, more cold with fear and darkness closing overhead like a fist . . . Another week, this one a downer, barely able to draw or write or do anything at all other than sleep . . . But then the more I think about it the more I realize that it's this single gossamer strand, this job, just barely holding me aloft over complete destitution . . . A kind of hypocrisy, I know, to complain too much, so instead I'll talk about the heydays, the best of my time thus far at the Bookstore . . . I may have mentioned it before as a kind of golden age, those few summers that I worked in the basement . . .
And maybe, just maybe, the important part is just to convey that while the overview is always bleak the days themselves can be and usually are pretty magical . . . Mithril, glittering in every sense of the word . . . In the given wisdom about writing, the idea is that there has to be a point; some goal or thesis that the work is driving toward . . . Which has always felt false to me, a little too petrified and unlike the way things really seem . . . Maybe what I want to say is that my major failing as a writer has always been the conviction to write more like life, more like the real way that there can never be any sound conclusions or feeling of finality . . . Never any real answers just more questions, more unfinished business, as life itself rumbles ever on . . . That there might well be no overarching point to life; this is the sobering thought, moreso than some elegiac piece of bullshit about death or age or any of the usual rhetoric. . . And there is a kind of triumph in embracing this idea, which is what I mean when I say that the link back then, the camaraderie of those basement days was for the fact that our lives were all desperate . . . As much then as now, but that was the first time, maybe, that I'd been so profoundly in sync with this crucial fact . . .
On the subject of desperation, there's barely enough wind in me now to talk about it at all, much less the sort of long monologue I might drum up under other circumstances . . . Just to say that in my dealings out here in the real world I've never found it to be any tune other than the utmost desperation . . . Clerk, manager or customer . . . Victor or vanquished, man woman or child . . . Only the details are different, the guise we choose to play behind . . . All I seem to think about lately is how little money I have, how many things this week I've left undone, battles unfought . . . about so many years passed with nothing good accomplished . . . It's just my natural urge, Sakura, to want to divulge myself to you completely, even all this gloom and doom . . . But instead I'll talk about spilling out onto Broadway in the long days of summer . . . sharp taste to the air, solid blue skies with sunlight splashing all around . . . Me and the boys from the basement; Blanquito, BonJon Walsh, Vino, Steinburke and the Puerto Rican brothers . . . Denny, the night manager, with his one deformed arm . . . All of us, rank and file, pouring onto the street in sweat-stained clothes, looking for a fight . . . There was always some excuse, some urgent pretext to go rumbling up the stairs like gangbusters . . . Somebody had said something to somebody on the sidewalk, or some girl's boyfriend, or some hazy issue of payback from some fight from back before anyone could remember . . . I guess I can only speak for myself to say that I don't think there was ever any intention to swing a single blow . . . Just the idea of it, to drop everything, to cut out mid-sentence and surge onto the streets like a pack of wild children, like animals . . . It's always this issue of not wanting to seem desperate . . . About anything! . . Chasing girls, looking for a job, etc . . . In every case the cardinal sin would be to appear too desperate . . . But it's like this, here, in the thick of it, with twilight creeping over the horizon that I find I want to dig deep . . . I don't even want to talk anymore, to write unless I can do so with the same grand sense of urgency that gives such moments their only shred of meaning . . . I'll admit readily that none of this, then or now, is any different than what any and everyone has been fretting about since time immemorial . . . Same old story, and yet more than anything Sakura, I want these words I put down to seem like more than gibberish to you, like me just babbling about nothing . . . And I'll admit, I've had so much practice in writing to girls that, even in my most candid moments on paper now, it's hard not to feel as if I'm playing up the situation for effect . . . Over the phone I can barely speak at all, while on paper I always try to say too much . . . But the further along things go, or I should say, the older I get and the more I have to struggle in life, the more it becomes the case that this is the only way, the only method I have to free myself . . . This and comics . . . And since my drawing is still as shitty as ever, still incomprehensible, here's my two cents worth, my ode to you, another steaming trashpile of words . . .
Just to let you know, I must have started this letter a dozen times, a dozen different kinds of little lyrical ruses, little blips and phrases turned inside out . . . Still nothing even close, nowhere near the quick of those days, those mornings, lying on my back, on the floor of the review department, listening to Bach over the PA system with my pal Dale Steinburke stretched out in the next aisle . . . And I wonder about even calling that guy a friend of mine, because in any other circumstances we wouldn't have that much to say to each other . . . There was nothing the two of us had in common, only that civilized life makes men into bitches, and we were the types to start to feel bitter about it, or incensed enough, at least, to start chomping at the bit . . . That was the subtext, the butt of all the easy laughs . . . As it was, the only conversation we could put any verve into was just like a big circle around the two main ideas: food and ass . . . What else was there?. . What else does anyone dream about while his fate is, bit by bit, being consigned to the life of the honeybee . . . at the bottom of some inescapable hierarchy, buzzing around, doing nothing . . . The mornings and nights down there were so dead that it was like working in a mausoleum . . . Food and ass . . . Punctuated by a reoccurring sidenote from a book on the Greeks, on the ancient palace at a place called Knossos . . . For me, these sorts of things were always coming to mind, a dime a dozen . . . But then, it was a rare cultural epiphany for Steinburke, with weighted significance and fresh implications on our own doomed state of affairs, so maybe he was the one who first brought it up . . . And not to say that I was the more worldly between the two of us! . . Anyway, it was a fact that in these huge palaces, like with all Greek buildings where a great multitude of ancient motherfuckers used to toil, the architects made sure to design holes and shafts in the ceilings so that even from the most misbegotten sub-basements and corridors, there would be visible some aspect of light and air, not just for ventilation's sake but also for that enlightening effect these things provide at the core of man's thoughts and spirit, dot, dot, dot . . .
I suppose I don't even want to get too caught up in comparisons or wreath myself into a corner with the clever stink of literature . . . Steinburke was like a spavined horse, an inextricable thicket! . . And so forth . . . There may have been an epic struggle, good vs. evil going inside of that guy at all times, but I never thought that much into it . . . I will say that in order to talk about Steinburke, you have to open everything up, bigger, expand that basement trifold, to canyon-size, everything out of proportion . . . In order to talk about those days you have to see things not as they are but as they can sometimes truthfully become . . . That basement; to us like a world of intrigue and microcosmic up-and-down, daily melodrama . . . For the whirlwind he was, Steinburke cut a tiny figure, and registered less of an impact than one might imagine . . . And not to take away from the guy!. . In the same way though, he was in and out, less often in the action than just, generally around . . . Or, rather he made his appearances but was often not even on hand while the climate he had created festered and bloomed into pure pandemonium . . .
There was a Chinese kid down there with us . . . I can't remember his name offhand, only that it was Steinburke that started off calling him Bunky . . . At any point throughout the day he could be heard sprinting down the aisles in flip-flops, on some wild errand, to settle a bet or returning down from the outside world with some of the usual, outlandish loot, such as an armload of plastic pink flamingoes or a 25lb sack of brass ball bearings . . . There was a daily quota for ass, for attempts, and a regulation number of female customers per shift . . . There were arm-wrestling contests, push-up races, and a running currency in talk about natural disasters, animal attacks and buttfucking . . . Car wreaks, sex marathons, martial arts techniques . . . On that vein, I can think of one night for instance, the only time I can actually remember Steinburke as an active player rather than just snickering on the sidelines . . . For what ever reason, that night we'd decided to hang it all, to eat popcorn and make an absolute point of doing nothing for as long as we could get away with it . . . We'd managed to heave over one of the snack machines, but the only thing that came loose were bags and bags of this microwave popcorn . . . We decided to do one bag at a time, to rotate and set up shop in each of the corners of the basement, one move, one bag per interval, eat popcorn and clown around for the rest of the shift . . . That was the plan, but then predictably it was also based a little too much on conversation between two guys with so little in common to begin with . . . if that makes any sense . . . Suffice to say that after a few hours, we were about ready to slit each other's throats . . . Me and D. Steinburke, like bosom pals by default, made that way through so many hours of fruitless tedium . . . I remember that guy, skinny, yellow teeth with dark hair on the backs of his hands . . . a girl's body, willowy slim and always with his tight Chicago cubs shirt, child-size . . . And it was the sort of thing where those literary details, those quirks, were the very things that would start to grate on your nerves as the hours wore on . . . We were sitting on opposite sides of a desk mounted into the wall, glowering at each other, like the last two men stranded on an island . . . like we were shoveling down that shitty popcorn just to stay alive . . . We might have finally lunged at one another, but what actually happened was the real-life dissolution that always seems to take place . . . What always happened down there, one way or another! . . At some point we were set upon by management and forced to do some work . . . While breaking into some old boxes of books, we came upon a three pointed Shuriken star* . . . Steinburke was mostly an instigator, a kibitzing type, so I suppose it was, in a sense, off-character the way he spent the rest of the night sprinting around chucking that thing at everyone, laughing about it . . . But then that much is neither here nor there, only that it was the sort of thing that was bound to happen, par for course in the basement . . . I don't want to blame it all on Steinburke, just that there was a before-and-after difference in solidarity with him down there . . . If anything I'd say that there is that potential, that same desperate struggle waged under wraps within all of us . . . You can try to hide it, maybe I did or do, but then all it takes is one look, one knowing glance from a guy like Steinburke to set everyone free . . . Because deep down, I can't speak for anyone, not even Steinburke . . . But I can tell you about me, Sakura, and I'm as desperate as they come, no doubt about it . . . Desperate to laugh my way out of this mess, which is why I always tend to think of guys like Steinburke, despite their faults as a kind of missing link . . . Desperate to eat, to live, breathe and fuck . . . Desperate for more sleep, more days waking up beneath the window in a pool of sunshine . . . Desperate for more solace in life, even if every day still has to be a struggle . . . What more can I say about it?! . . Even though it was probably never said between us in so many words, this was the understanding, the thing that you read about him the moment you met Steinburke . . . That no matter what happened in life, one always had to demand more than was offered . . .You had to worm your way into the gaps, then break things wide open . . . Even if it meant that that you'd be known to the world-at-large as shiftless and divisive, as a two-faced bastard . . . At whatever cost you had to live to relax, at least we did, that was the ticket, otherwise each and every one of us would be pummeled down and destroyed, churned apart by necessity itself . . .
And Sakura, baby, sure I can doubt . . . What else can one think or do while trying to make nimble through all the pratfalls in life? . . . All the bitter irony . . . Sure I can make a show of it, keep my composure and disavow any tinge of desperation . . . Believe it or not that's just what I was thinking as that whole escapade ran its course . . . That night, jumping and lunging, with that Chinese star slicing the air overhead . . . Steinburke cackling . . . On one big leap, I held my breath; up off the seat of a desk chair, near the ceiling as the shuriken darted beneath me(!), up arching high, then crashing into a stack of cardboard boxes on the way down . . . I can remember feeling annoyed about it, thinking to myself, asking: Why can't this guy just have some fucking dignity?! . . After a certain point though I also remember asking myself what I was running for . . . What was there really to be dignified about?... I pulled the thing out of the wall and when Steinburke peered around the corner I whipped it at his head . . . I leaned into it, as I leaned headfirst into the fervor of those indefatigable days . . . as one always must in one way or another . . . It wasn't long before the whole floor of guys was into it, back and forth, down the aisles, pausing only to whistle politely as customers browsed by . . . Even the old girl in the back doing data entry . . . She stood up, exasperated, hair flying, like we were her stepchildren, letting loose a wild overhand throw that curled and careened off into the business section . . . Just like that, everything there was to say about those days could have been picked up at any random point along the line . . . In the way she cursed at us then, in any of Steinburke's antics or other adventures, from any of the other loose-cannon types that filed in for work down there on a weekly basis . . . Everyone had their stories and stolen moments, all of which I filed indiscriminately under the heading of that single image, the hazy look of the sunlight spearing down as if through canyons, down onto the asphalt on twelfth street . . . And the saga always continues . . . This was the moral and the uplift that carried me through those hard times . . . More than any specific thing about Steinburke, I want to say, looking back, that it's the truth and the real texture of life that comes out in these instances . . . Maybe even to go far enough as to say that it's important here for me to confess to all of that action as what it really was . . . Not necessarily illuminative in any way, but as just more desperation . . . And not to say that things are so different now! . . I remember above all else about that night an unfettered, clean kind of desperate feeling, and laughing myself sore in the throes of it . . . Running, dodging headlong, hoping not to be struck down suddenly and killed . . . Not at all unlike the touch of the air on my face, eyes closed, standing on the sidewalk . . . I can tell you Sakura, that even on an overcast day it got so that I could see that light coming down, even through rain, even indoors . . . And each time to think it, my thought was always the same . . . Help me make the most of freedom! . .
*For a second, to jump back to 1986, back-to-back Shinobi game, Snake-eyes, Storm Shadow, American Ninja parts one, two and three, back when everything was everything and it was hard not to get swept up in the Ninja craze . . . For those of you above all that, the Shuriken is a three to eight-pointed Ninja throwing knife, like a big metal snowflake, that was probably never once used the way you saw in the movies-FYI
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