Fanon (18 page)

Dear Frantz Fanon:

As you've probably figured out for yourself, I'm reluctant to say whether my evolving project is fiction or nonfiction, novel or memoir, science fiction or romance, hello or goodbye. A little tweaking and maybe it would fit in one category or the other. On the other hand, the hand supposed to keep track of what the other's doing, that tweaking, those categories one might say, are what I've been writing about, or trying to write my way out of, not only the last few years, but since the beginning. Perhaps that's why I'm dazed now and subdued by a sense of bittersweet resignation when confronted by the necessity of tweaking, and the implacable either/or categories. Anyway, gotta go now. The doorbell's ringing. I'm expecting a package.

I want to tell you one last little story about why I need to tell your story, Frantz Fanon. I'm going to employ the license you often employ in your writing, narrating a story in the present tense as if it's happening as you speak. For the writer, writing's always in the present, isn't it, in a vanishing moment the writing attempts to communicate, to transform into something tangible, lasting, something not lost, not gone before it gets here, something not disappearing the instant it's set down in words, words that disappear too, like dreams, like the writer writing them. Remember me sitting on a deck one evening in a garden at the back of a small house in Brittany composing a letter to you, claiming I was trying to save a life. Remember. I promised to say more about the evening, and here's the more:

I'm sitting in a small garden. Dinner, an improvisation of what-ever's at hand, about over. Me outside, quiet on the deck, finishing off the last of the wine, my wife inside, noisy at the sink, hurrying through dirty dishes, me outside, grateful inside for the simple rhythms of this day still ending, still some time to go, watching the light fade or rather sitting here thinking about how slowly light leaves the sky this far west and north in France, fades
reluctantly,
the word popping into mind not so much a word about the imponderable light's way of leaving, it's a word expressing my mood, my awareness of the simple back-and-forth between two people that can render a day's passage unspeakably more than satisfactory, create
a feeling of regret almost, a reluctance to let the day go, melancholy threatening to settle in, though the day's still quite alive, dishes rattling, my nearly empty glass a mysterious thing delivering intimations of other dimensions of time and space, bouncing light, refracting light, light swallowed, sliced, pooling in a dark mirror as I slowly swirl the glass's contents, each configuration unpredictable, once and only once, only here and now, because there is no way to experience what I look at, what I see this moment, unless someone, a god, would start up a universe precisely in the manner some god had started this world I inhabit and give me or another person in that matching universe exactly the place I hold in this one and then wind up the parallel universe and let it play forward to precisely this instant, a silly idea all around,
god, starting up, precisely,
yet those words like the word
reluctantly
alive in the air and I need to say something, make something with them, because they say themselves to me, part of the give-and-take rhythm of this day at approximately 10:15
P.M.
, words like everything else nameable and unnameable, part of me and not me, not mine exactly, like the light outside and inside still strong enough to keep night at bay longer than anyone would have the patience to watch, really watch it slowly diminishing by imperceptible degrees, my wife inside at the sink with her back to the sky, and I can almost hear her thinking out loud. Can't wait to get upstairs and plop down in bed with my book, she's saying inside, water running, dishes clattering, not much mess really, she'll zip through it in minutes and quickly get her wish then take her time once she's upstairs in the bathroom, just like she took her own sweet time earlier rinsing salt from her skin, washing her hair, scrubbing her face, applying ointments, creams, oils, color after our swim in the ocean, busy upstairs till she was good and ready to come downstairs while I improvised dinner in the kitchen, set the table, opened wine, me busy downstairs while she takes her time upstairs and you get the point, I hope, we take turns, or more to the point, I'm beginning finally after sixty
some years on the planet to understand how people are always in each other's way and not and both always and therefore when two people want to love one another they must be clear and lucky and learn bit by bit what either one can give or take, what either one's willing or able or chooses or chooses not to give or take and learn a comfort with the things living together allows them to change in each other or things they can't change, fabricating space, slack, turns taken not in order to earn credit on some blackboard keeping track of whose turn, who's in debt to whom, no, more like discovering you're turned on head over heels, learning to dance or screw or talk with somebody and the other person seems to be enjoying it at least as much as you are, happy doing whatever it is you're doing together and you don't even need to give it a name, don't want to give it a name that might jinx it, because whatever you're doing isn't like it was on other occasions, doing it with anybody else. These new sensations of being glad and being willing to give what it takes to improvise dinner, to wait, to relax into the doing of needful things or silly things, clean up the dishes, get to bed, stare at an almost empty wineglass I jiggle in my fingers. Soon I'll go up the stairs, find a woman waiting for me and not waiting, not locked up by my expectations, in sync rather with a mutual, unspoken rhythm, the woman I've always hoped I'd find and now she's here, for no particular reason, every possible reason required to unfold this piece of the world as it is, just so, her hair sprawling to bare shoulders, bare breasts, she's leaned back against two big pillows, a book resting on knees steepled under the sheet, a part of me up those stairs already, opening our bedroom door, seeing her skin's soft glow, its many hues shadowed, bathed in light from two hooded reading lamps, one on either side of the bed, I'm getting there, on my way, though first the business of this inch or so of wine in a long-stemmed goblet I doodle in my fingers, tilting it to catch glimpses of other possible worlds, night inching not falling and the Fanon book measurable in inches
too, inches or note by note, since I prefer conceiving my project not as a mountain I must struggle up inch by inch but as music, finding it, playing it note by note, word by word, trying to teach myself to play and listen at the same time, as if I'm jamming with another player, listening and playing at the same time, listening for notes the other will play, listening to myself play in my mind the notes I'm guessing might sound good with what I guess I'll hear when the other's music rushes at me from the silence, listening to music nobody else hears, there and not there, inside and outside, beyond me, though the music fills me up and I'm playing before I know I'm playing, breaking silence already broken by the other's music not waiting for mine, searching for mine.

When I listen closely and listen well, what I hear when the best musicians are playing together at their best is give-and-take, the possibility of touching, of closing the space that separates each thing from every other; each player's solos remain just that, alone, solos reaching out, as if to say you can't go here, but listen and maybe you can taste a little bit of how it might feel if you could, and played by a master's hands that little is a lot, and hearing it means something is being made, being resolved out of nothing, out of the wish to touch, to play in the silent space enfolding another, the silence beyond words always separating one person from another, something's crossing the uncrossable space, a contradiction like the god I don't believe who's also real for me because my mother loves him with an enormous, unconditional love she mistakes as his love for her, and so it serves as such, she's sure her love's reciprocated, no, more than returned, magnified because she believes his love for her humbles her love for him, his love burning a million times brighter than her unbounded adoration, his love saving her in spite of her unworthiness, she believes, another proof of his bottomless compassion, a mystery she's content to worship without understanding and her mistake
about him, her belief generates an appetite for love, a flickering presence around her and an abundant radiance within her she shines on me, and who needs, who comprehends more reality than that, I wonder, though it's also a reality I do not share, only observe, ponder, enjoy, envy, a reality crossing through the silence of these thoughts I play and listen to inside, filling in the blanks, reaching out with words like
reluctantly
to describe a sky darkening by the minute, by the millisecond, by inches, by notes, this wineglass reflecting, refracting, drinking light, infinite skins peeled one after the other, bright ellipses floating to the liquid surface, endless layers of what's possible, what's real only for this instant and no other, for no one else, anywhere, moments thinner than nothing where billions of us fit effortlessly as angels fit on a pinhead, each moment giving way, each one a kind of lifetime, a kind of eternity, each a world, like this solid, solid, solid world seizing my attention, this one breaking apart always as I watch, except it's more not less real as I reach out and attempt to cross the silence, reach out and nothing's there, falling short always of your music, if indeed your music's playing out there, Fanon.

Many thoughts like these, so many they must be flying faster than the speed of light, or at least fast enough for a replacement thought to quickly close the void and rescue me from the screaming despair of one particularly devastating thought:
this thinking all fine and dandy but it's not the book, where the fuck's the book,
because I'm able to think another thought and get quiet again inside, and then outside I see snow falling. A quiet rain of large, wet flakes as out of place in summer in Brittany as snow in Martinique. Still I see it and because snow doesn't belong here in this season I gaze with wonder, with almost an edge of fear, like you must have greeted your first snow in wintry France, the dying and killing of war surrounding you, the sky opening and white particles filling the air, disintegrating on contact with your uniform, skin, the armored vehicles, the frozen
black ground. Snow in my garden lasts long enough, the white rain of it glowing against the dark wall of hedges enclosing the rear of the garden, to convince me of its presence, impossible as its presence is here on a summer night while I sit outdoors staring at a glass, twirling it in my fingers, powerful as a god conjuring other planets inside the wine's shimmering depths, stretching this long day I'm reluctant to surrender because it's been full of proofs of love and simple good living and promises more of the same still to come, if I can somehow move from my chair in the garden and walk up the stairs without disturbing the rhythm, without shattering the fragile truce—a truce easy as breathing, uncertain as the next breath—peace two people can enjoy together when it's their turn, when they work at the give-and-take of it and nothing too ugly, too large or overpowering works against them, this truce, while I'm enjoying it, that seems everlasting, invincibly secure, a full stomach, a bed to sleep in, someone to talk with and share the bed, no agonized screams, no bombs exploding or fires crackling, no collapses or shutdowns or excruciating pain inside my body, in other words, this peace a spectacularly lucky interval, a miracle outside, good luck I assume will be my portion always while I'm seduced, enraptured, blinded by the simple pleasures it materializes inside me, a miracle I'm most aware of when it ends or I'm waiting, or hoping, or sorry for myself because I've lost faith the good time will ever come again, all of which may or may not be an adequate explanation of why the light fades reluctantly, why I'm reluctant to breathe, to budge one inch from this quiet place which feels both outside and inside me, a place real as snow falling in summer, snow sinking into the blackness of a green fence of hedges, snow arriving like another person's music, not intruding, not changing my mood, not competing with the silence, blending instead, seamlessly as the coo-cooing of pigeons in thick foliage sealing the garden's perimeter, their call-and-response cries or call and no response except echoing silence suffused with longing and sadness,
though they are the same sounds the birds warble to greet dawn, the difference being inside me because in one case I hear their coo-cooing affirming that light follows darkness and in the other case affirming that darkness follows light, so now for a moment I can't help hearing my fear of what's coming next, my fear of loss and mourning and I hold my breath until I also hear the law of give-and-take, the same law always cycling and recycling to reach out and almost touch the mirror image of itself, the pigeons are simply announcing that it's time, letting me know darkness has descended, the skies black enough for stars now, no snow visible now, it's done its work, imprinted a memory of you, Fanon, your presence, unexpected as snow in Martinique, snow in Brittany in July, the coo-cooing signaling it's night's turn now and if I raise my eyes I'll find the first star then more stars, stars, stars like fixed, glowing specks of snow, snow forever raining somewhere and there's nothing extraordinary about universes bumping, bleeding into one another, conversing, exchanging information like the mute axons and dendrites inside my body, the day changes, sky changes, I change, a give-and-take, whether I look or hear or believe or not, whether I wish for things to be different or not, whether or not I toss out words like
reluctantly
and
love,
skipping stones off water as if the game might reveal what the sea means and help me grasp what's happening to me as I float in my bubble inside the foam, dreaming my dreams, a lost and found-again soul, a transient who will be lost again in an instant, like you, Fanon, like you, drenched by slants of freezing rain one night and then next morning stunned by huge white flakes dropping slow-motion, a pale universe disintegrating around you as you prepared for battle in another region of this country, this France, where I sit tonight in a time of peace you could say, or say I'm lucky to be peaceful this moment in it. Lucky as you, Fanon, or anyone watching snow fall even though war's never-ending.