HOW TO SAY THAT YOU HAVE HIT ROCK BOTTOM.

Two books, published a generation apart, and two ways of saying that you have hit rock-bottom.



Andrzej Szczypiorski, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman (1988):

It seemed to her sometimes, to her own surprise, that she had within herself a strange instrument that somehow resonated improperly, like a cracked fiddle…She was an old lonely Jewish woman on the streets of Paris, for whom the thought of Poland was like a wad in her throat, like a gag. She told herself sometimes: I am unfair…But why should I be fair? People have a right to be unfair when God afflicts them with misfortune.



Halle Butler, The New Me (2019)

One sign that she has is down and out:

She no longer enjoys being with her best friend. I’m finding it hard to conjure social excitement…I think, Oh whatever, as loud as I can, three times, and shake my head and shoulders.

Another sign:

She is watching old movies. There was no room for new information in her mind…She didn’t’ laugh at a joke in the movie, even though she acknowledged that it was conceptually funny.

The ultimate sign:

Her mother no longer asks her to phone home. She doesn’t exactly hang up on her, but she tells me that that’s kind of enough for her tonight, and I silently commend her for her honesty.

THE COVER AND THE REAL THING

The cover of  my novel The Effects of Isolation on the Brain was taken from a painting by Graham Lute.  Below a copy of my novel and the real thing!

POEMS BY MICHAEL TOPA: UNFINISHED BUSINESS



The Street Cleaners



Talking with a friend

Downtown outside late at night

Blur of passersby



You don’t see what is

Happening but someone takes

The moments away





I think I’m one of the street cleaners myself: I sweep the past into my novels, not as it happened, but tidying it up until it fits the story.



The Headhunter of Hands



At night

I go down to the lake

And search for your hands



I find a certain antiquity

In bones tinkling under the moon

Stone flowers amid lacustrine trees



In the blue-baited dawn

The bandicoots return to the shaggy black moss

Growing quietly on the north side of a tree



They stuff what is left

Of your hands

Into their pouches.



Lacustrine trees! blue-baited dawn! I’d like to go there to finish the business and be happy.

@chandlerisms: Outrageous similes

From Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep:

Decorative trees trimmed as carefully as poodle dogs

Meaty leaves like the newly washed fingers of dead men

He used his strength like a show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings

A smile as wide as Wilshire Boulevard

As empty of life as a scarecrow’s pockets

Blood began to move around in me like a prospective tenant looking over a house

BEST HISTORICAL NOVEL: THE INQUISITOR'S NIECE

Good news, friends. I was awarded the Colorado Publishers' annual award for "best historical novel". Above the certificate "suitable for framing"!