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The Anonton Glyphs |
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The following fragments originally came to my attention as source material with which to augment the "Teach Yourself Yourself" program. While their efficacy as learning aids for the method proved elusive, with their arrival and the patient consultation of the few remaining speakers of Anonton Creole, I was introduced to the autobiographical writings of Allan de Pomme. Whether de Pomme subscribed to the method, or to what degree his thought influenced it, I cannot say. I learned nothing about myself during that time or -- indeed -- during any other. I did, however, learn a great deal about dancing. De Pomme was a notorious pacer -- as is commonly noted -- and included with the supplementary material I received was a floorchart of de Pomme's most frequently traced steps, as diagramed by Eleanor Noble, who was at the university during de Pomme's brief association with the institute. As per Noble's instructions, I most commonly retraced the charted steps accompanied by golden age rap records, although de Pomme's own preference for appropriating earlier black American music is well documented. As for the textual fragments, I have taken the liberty of replacing certain untrans-latable passages with familiar and accessible tropes. I hope you recognize them. I have taken liberties with Noble's charts that I don't care to relate here. Suffice it to say: I have danced. So. . .
& . . . a new movement. The caller has called for an unbelievable lilt, half drunk, towards the fake moon. A lilt to the left, to the left alone by the wall. She was a distant cousin, alone and pregnant with song in this most barren of states. . . & . . . is my breath, like the breath of a baby fresh from the pap, and I can taste it as it leaves me, like everything leaves me - breathless - then pause for breath and lean your cheek against my cheek and then I'll hear it again, hidden in the petit-chasm between tracks 2 and 3. The sound of something of mine, sweet child of mine, the record's not over. . . & . . . is a Royal Elderberry record that I think those were the words to. It was an imaginary time just before the last real war. The house we now live in was being built. Someone was driving a nail, a finish nail, in the clean white line of clean white pine. The hammers were ringing out in 3/4 time. With a hammer, you broke my Ray Ulrich record, the one with 'The Anonton Waltz' on it. I want to listen to that record now, as the light has slipped back in the south bay window that gives to the breeze what it takes from the light. . . & . . . orange man who has found you these last few nights -- out of your parents' earshot. After the lullaby, the lights out, you must lie still and feel yourself growing yourself. Don't fear, he is not real. He is a man. Like all men, a compendium of his own imaginings. He is dreamt by himself. Dream yourself yourself, son. Your mother and I are going out dancing. The babysitter's boyfriend is lying in wait, hidden beneath your bed. Waiting for the fake moon to be swept aside and the new light of night to reveal the whole world in shades of orange. She says he's a drummer in a band. . . & . . . punctuate. We are, after all, the inventors of music - that slipshod punctuation. . . & . . . lacked the necessary grammatical sutures to heal the wound that defines us. We stitched ourselves ourselves, we tattooed the scars to trace out the jitterbug. The drummer tattooed the nighttime lie, and me. . .I turned your mother in a contradance in east Anonton one night. That's all it was. East Anonton, cut time. The caller, my cousin, the moon, the hills in the foreground and the trees in the past, kicking up dust so slow it stunts the sun and turns the low moon orange. . . & . . . there are almost as many recipes for silence as you'd imagined. The falseness of our nighttime, the path of the needle between tracks, the church-farts I smell while you are asleep. Footprints on a floorchart. Maps in the hills. A hand on the waistline. My dancing is best described as mostly imaginary. . . . . . Then
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1996 © 2008 |
. . . on a pig farm outside of Anonton. Like all other pig farms in that part of the country, ours was surrounded by other pig farms, some no more than sties really, arranged around a culdesac, as if readying a round dance. Dancing was forbidden except at the harvest. My earliest memories are of our split level pig farm. Upstairs my mother raised both corn and hell, below I learned how to weld and yell. Nowhere were there pigs, but pigskin drums abounded in the region. . .