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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
A Novelini
VOICE of the
Nation
By ADAM ENGEL
"I guess in the end, all you can
really do is talk about stuff, and it takes voices with the maxed
out to understand what most of us just whisper."
Ian Kerner, Author
Call me Plantman
How many nights must I awake to strangers'
music? Kid outside my window screamed poems into a microphone
plugged into to a squat amp he dragged behind him on a wagon.
Launched his dithyrambs against the City. Cannonades of sing-song
bass.
Josh razed Jericho with jingles.
Turn on your radio and tune in The VOICE
of the Nation.
I tried to reach The VOICE myself. Dialed
for hours but the line was jammed. WSOS after midnight The VOICE
beseeched and bombarded by the Sleepless of the Nation. Clearly
I wouldn't make the connection, but should that prohibit me from
speaking?
Micro-cassette recorder on my bookshelf.
Little block of gizmo I'd purchased during my student days to
record the lectures of great men. The batteries were fresh, for
I consulted it often.
I raised the volume of the radio.
The VOICE said to the Sleepless of the
Nation: "Voices that command, command. I overwhelm you with
my immanence if I'm not real who is? My words redeem you, you
can't penetrate my words I pump them into you like bullets you
don't hear them high frequency like dog whistles raise primordial
spooks to haunt your creepy skulls do what I dream you to do,
and THEN you will be loved. You harden in pockets of darkness
like old gum, oh shadows, you are doubts articulated you are
puppets."
I said to the recorder: "Call me
Plantman. I nurture gardens in the sky, bring water, fertilizer
and impeccable grooming to the City's indoor flora.
"The workers anticipate my coming.
Cramped in stalls and cubicles at nose-pinching altitudes, hunched
over keyboards, the workers must turn from their radioactive
sentences once-in-a-while and witness green."
I'm an indoor landscaper, a horticultural
technician.
Brown is Fading
A caller identified himself as Brown,
author of Wild Card. The VOICE commanded him to speak.
Brown said: "My book is a mirror
in which each reader sees his own story therefore each reader
is writing while reading. I worked on it for seven years."
The VOICE said: "Yeah, so?"
Brown said: "So I awoke one morning
and found myself STILL unknown... writers trying to repossess
lost time... type in darkness, thousands of them, tippety-tap-tap-tap...
trying to define the Nation, it is beyond them, they are alone
and frightened..."
The VOICE said: "I'm losing you,
Brown. You're fading. "
Brown said: "...the lights out there,
the bright lights must be humanized, my language will humanize
the lights...the page is a dead land...still water...so many
sentences secreted hourly, the Nation is immense...the writers
are jostled in the street, they must create space for themselves...they
colonize the page with words..."
The VOICE said: Brown Brown Brown is
fading...fading...fading.... Poof."
Topiary Techniques
Over a hundred horticultural technicians
work for Topiary Techniques. It is the largest indoor landscaping
company in the city. Clients of Topiary Techniques range from
small businesses to major corporations. There can be anywhere
from five to one-hundred and fifty plants on a site and the technician
on whose route that site is situated is responsible for every
damn one of them.
It is the technician's mission to keep
the flora on his route alive and young. When a plant dies or
becomes unsightly, the client is entitled to a replacement. The
technician must fill out a form in triplicate and hand-deliver
it to the Dispatcher, who must sign it and send it to the men
in the nursery, who release the replacement to the Delivery men,
who place the new plant on a Topiary Techniques delivery truck
and ferry it to its new home. All this costs time and money,
for the company supplies replacements gratis. Every client is
entitled to unlimited replacements so long as a) the moribund
plant was originally purchased from Topiary Techniques and b)
the Topiary Techniques maintenance staff --we technicians-- are
retained for weekly visits to the site. The client corporation
is entitled to have healthy green life always on its premises
and nary an old brown leaf or jaundiced stem.
The VOICE said: "What heart pounds
in the gut of the Nation, waiting to be born? I am Vesuvius I
am the core, I am the beast crouched, clawing at the womb: I
thrum I resonate I'm hemorrhaging! Bathe in my syllables I devastate
you."
I said to the recorder: "Plantman
ascends towering mausoleums to make the concrete bloom."
Bigger Than Johnny Apple seed
A memo circulated. Company accountants
claimed Topiary Techniques had lost $250,000 over the last quarter
because of excessive replacements. The memo broached certain
economic verities - loss of benefits, salary cuts, layoffs -
if things didn't shape up.
"Inspectors will follow you on your
routes. They'll test the soil for moisture content. They'll scrutinize
every leaf..."
We were costing the company a lot of
green.
"Don't let life slip through your
fingers," the memo admonished.
I said to the recorder: " I'm practically
a folk hero. Bigger than Johnny Apple Seed. Imagine those corporate
hives if nothing grew. If all they saw or smelled was carpet
and Formica. They'd go mad mad mad insane. Plantman keeps their
plants alive. Their pothos and aboricolum; their corn plants,
silver leafs, and marginata; their spathyfilum, spider plants
and ficus. Because of my efforts workers hundreds of feet above
the earth can sit under the shade of a potted fig tree and discuss
favorite television shows or whisper secrets. Who knows what
evil lurks in the hearts of men? The fig tree knows...and it
tells Plantman. "
Where Life Is
I threw on a pair of jeans, shut off
the big radio; clipped a transistor and the tape recorder to
my belt; went up to pace the roof under an idiotic moon. My building
is seven stories high. I see things. Even at that late hour the
stacks and stacks of lighted windows teased with possibilities.
The sky was irrelevant; the stars lacked wattage. Out in the
city was the core, where life is. Out there was the center of
the world.
Many of the City's Sleepless are awake
by choice. The night is their milieu. I imagined rooms full of
bodies cosmeticized by colored lights and artificial fog, secret
corridors of women, drinks, and music. Places where people gathered
to be better than human.
"There are ten million lives in
the City and I'm not living any one of them," I said into
the machine, though I hadn't turned it on.
Earn Bliss of Stasis Pee-pee Two Dollar
The subway was packed. I feared sticking
people with the protruding nozzle of my bucket, which tended
to mimic the barrel of a gun. A frail old man lugged his business
into the car. In an unidentifiable accent he hawked dolls and
imitation cellular phones out of a paper shopping bag.
"Ring ring. Phone three dollar.
Wee wee. Pee-pee two dollar."
When the vendor squeezed the buttocks
of the Pee-pee, a boy-shaped figurine with knickers rolled down
to its knees, water jetted from its stubby zhlong. Accidents
happen: the Pee-pee over shot its mark, soaking the tie and newspaper
of a stranger. The stranger struck the vendor and the air-borne
Pee-pee knocked the coffee from a woman's hand. The woman kicked
the vendor's bag reflexively as the stranger pummeled the old
man to the floor.
The shopping bag bled phones and dolls.
Passengers stomped on them like eggs. The vendor pressed a phone
to each gray cheek and wept.
Was this a job for Plantman? Avenge the
poor fool, who was probably peddling without a license? No. Plantman's
energies are reserved solely for the maintenance of flora.
I looked up and beyond the wretched scene,
above the newspapers and sunglasses and wet heads, to an advertisement
for a cologne called "Earn."
The poster featured a wedding party in
the park. Tree-lined field and in the offing sleek gray-black
towers of the City like titanic men in suits. All the wedding
guests were beautiful people in their twenties. Casual chic.
Successful crowd not dressed for ceremony. A mock-dangerous band
played silent pop. Everything shot in black and white except
the bride and groom. She: barefoot in white gauze - translucent
frock; artfully wild hair. He: torn jeans, motorcycle boots;
a black blazer and top hat. They ran toward each other, arms
outstretched, ecstatic. Caught in time a few feet from embrace;
equidistant from the center.
The entire scene was superimposed over
a curvaceous bottle of cologne. The caption read, "EARN
the moment. Forever. " Was this cologne designed for men
or women? The advertisement was ingeniously ambiguous.
Often during working life, traveling
my route, I turn from the panicked masses and observe advertisements
on the sides of passing buses, on billboards, in magazines forming
inadvertent collages in kiosks. The advertisements feature models
in scenarios of work, courtship, celebration, the pursuit of
death in powerful machines. But really they're doing nothing,
the models, but looking beautiful and still and firmly planted
in the center of the world.
The most beautiful thing imaginable is
to do nothing. To attain the bliss of stasis you must make time
stop directly where you stand. That is the center of the world.
But a horticultural technician is always doing. To foster growth
is to provoke decay. Always it is a struggle against replacement.
I said: "Plantman was underground,
preparing to ascend. Trains roared past like dragons."
Bartleby or Not To Be
Bartleby at the Accounting Firm murdered
a ficus. I walked into his office to find stems and leaves and
dirt mashed into the carpet. Two jagged branches lay like antlers
on his desk.
"I can't replace this," I said
firmly. "It's not in the contract."
"They're fake," he said. "You've
been in here fifty, sixty times, Plantman, and still you haven't
noticed."
I sniffed a leaf.
"Not the trees, you ass. The loved
ones."
On his desk were photographs of an elderly
couple, a large clan at a barbecue, a family of four: mother,
father, daughter, son. The father wasn't Bartleby. Bartleby,
in fact, did not appear in any of the pix.
"They came with the frames. They're
artificial kin," he said. "Everyone needs a home to
come to work to. I grow so tired of your stupid fig trees."
"Ficus," I said. "It's
not a fig tree, it's a ficus. Well, same thing, I imagine..."
"What have we learned today?"
he asked.
"About Bartleby?"
"About Plantman."
I couldn't say.
"He knows nothing."
The Photographer
A caller who identified himself as "the
Photographer" said: "For years I traveled the Nation.
I photographed everything. Great men and events as well as the
desultory dramas of common lives. The cities and their artifacts,
the young who are no longer young, everything that fades I captured.
Now I am old and confined to my studio. My walls are covered
with images of the Nation, every centimeter is dense with faces
and machines. The Nation, c'est moi. It occurs to me: the Photographer
did not record the Nation, he created it. The Nation was conceived
in my camera and born out of my darkroom like Athena from the
head of Zeus."
The VOICE said: "Nonsense. You didn't
create ME. You don't even know what The VOICE looks like. I could
be anyone, even YOU.
The Photographer said: "But I have
seen the Nation, it is HERE. Right here. In my apartment. Studio.
Whatever."
The VOICE said: "Listen to me: once
I had a bellyache I had a bellyache I dreamed the Nation. Go
to sleep, Photographer. You are not well."
Plantman Theme Song
Mouthing an imaginary Jew's harp, I sang
the Plantman theme song to the stars:
"Boing boing a-boing boing boing
boing Boing, boing a-boing boing boing bong Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Plantman has his scissors and bucket Plantman waters all that's
green Folks say Plantman lives in Nantucket Cause after five
he's never seen. Boing boing a-boing boing boing boing Boing
boing a-boing boing boing boing."
Death's Rococo Graffiti
Opposite my building, across the park,
is the Home for Adults. They let the old people out into the
park twice a day, morning and evening.
The old people are guarded from the general
population. But I get close enough to study the complex etchings
on their faces - Death's Rococo graffiti - and to listen. The
old people are vague, obsessed with their own mismanaged lives.
They offer fragments about jobs blown, lovers lost, festering
emotional wounds.
They speak of objects. Things they'd
touched. People caressed who no longer exist.
The old people are ghost radios. They
teach me nothing.
The guards flash me nasty looks for venturing
so close. They have their hands full, keeping teenage boys from
beating the old people to death.
Children play in the park. Their mothers
prevent them from bothering the old people and god forbid contracting
Time.
Enemies
The VOICE said, "Oh hollow notions
you are beer cans you are filter less I reify you."
I said to the recorder: "In a canvass
bag marked with the emblem of Topiary Techniques, Plantman carries
the tools of his trade: one four-gallon watering can, (commonly
referred to as a 'bucket.'); one pair of stainless steel scissors
for trimming and shaping; one feather-duster for brushing dust
motes, skin particles, nail-clippings and other impurities from
the leaves; fertilizer; insecticide; and various other necessities.
"Plantman has enemies: mealy bug,
spider mite, scales, and all manner of diseases and insects that
attack the vegetation of the city. He doesn't hesitate to poison.
With his enemies he is ruthless.
"The green denizens of the City
love him."
The Missing Girl
A caller who identified herself as "the
Missing Girl" said: "You know who I am. Years ago my
face graced the covers of the Nation's magazines. I was the Missing
Girl, poster child for the Nation's lost children. Had I been
abducted, killed? You never knew. I've been around. But never
where I was supposed to be. Recently I traveled with my husband
- I'm married now; my husband was a pilot in the war; he dropped
bombs on the Nation's enemies, many of whom happened to be children,
missing now and never to be found, but I forgive him - to the
Museum of Ghosts.
"There was an exhibit titled, 'Before
She Was Missed.' They'd transplanted my old room like London
Bridge, moved all my possessions from the old house to this museum
in the middle of the Nation. They put on a skit for the visitors
with a teenage actress playing the young me. A ten-minute domestic
drama of no account really, but interesting in its implications.
My parents, older but vital still, played themselves.
"'Sometimes I feel her presence,'
my mother sobbed. 'She touches me but I can't see her.'
"'Objects disappear and reappear
suddenly, without explanation,' added my father. 'Trinkets that
were the favorite of our little girl.'
"They recognized me in the audience
but said nothing. Kept their cool. Times are hard in the Nation
and the Missing girl exhibit appeared to be the most lucrative
in the museum.
"Before we left I walked onto the
set and opened the drawer to my old night-table and took out
a pack of cherry life-savers I'd purchased in another life. I
gave one to my husband and took one for myself. It tasted like
virginity and dust. This is my body, I said as I popped it into
his mouth, and this is my blood. We sipped the sweet grape drink
the museum people offered as refreshment."
The VOICE said: "So what's your
point, tatelleh? 'You can't go home again?'"
The Missing Girl faltered.
The VOICE said: "Orphan of the Nation:
your parents, erstwhile consumers, were consumed. Cannibals leapt
out of the television and ate them. Nnnnnnext!"
The Tree of Life
I said to the recorder: "The Ad
Agency is a labyrinth shaped not unlike a brain. Hundreds upon
hundreds of 6 by 8 foot partitions create this maze of cubicles
in which artists, copywriters, and concept men work day and night
to define the products of the Nation.
"Only one plant at the Ad Agency
is the property of Topiary Techniques; the rest are cacti. The
bucket grows heavy as Plantman trudges from cubicle to cubicle
only to find gaunt ad-men laboring beside the squat, spiked dessert
plants to whom he is irrelevant.
"Tacked to the partitions are advertisements
dating back nearly a century. The clothes and artifacts change
with the decades, but the youth and beauty of the models remain
constant: sylphs and dandies posed like icons on a pharaoh's
tomb.
"Plantman recalls his earliest experiences
with desire. He hums jingles long forgotten, craves the snack
foods, toiletries and baubles of his youth. This is temptation.
"The plant he seeks is the Tree
of Life for which, according to the memo in his pocket, there
can be no replacement. Plantman is certain to find it at the
center."
The VOICE said: "Listen to my echo
machine: Ha!"
"Ha," spawned metallic generations.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahahahahah"
The VOICE was daring us to rise up from
our mattresses and pull our plugs.
Wished I Were Dead
The secretary in the Real Estate office
was alone and beautiful. She'd been smoking hashish, the office
reeked of it.
"So tell me, Plantman. How are your
fertilization techniques?"
I hesitated. I was afraid.
In the Fashion House a designer mourned
the spathyfilum on her desk.
"She's sick today. She's suppurating.
I didn't know plant's oozed like that. What does it mean?"
she asked.
"Jeepers. I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?
You're paid to know. She's slouching like a junkie. Make her
stop!"
I wished I were dead.
Inhale, Exhale
The VOICE said: "You are sick and
weary, you are filthy! Even the Night steals from your bed, she
cuckolds you."
Tomorrow, rather than attain the center,
I will wear alien clothes. I will carry my bucket into elevators
and ascend to space stations where ivy grows and workers toil
parallel to clouds, and Plantman, as much as any advertisement
for eternal being, is a vital illusion.
The VOICE said: "You are clay dolls
animated by my fictions. I release you I abandon you bereft of
my spirit you are vacuums. Inhale, exhale; gather yourselves
and go. For Dawn comes even to the Sleepless."
Radio. Radio. I heard the VOICE. It said
the Green Man will rise from the ashes of this world, this Nation,
this novelini, this cigar. Oh, Sleepless of the Nation!
Contact the VOICE after Midnight at asengel@attglobal.net
but be careful, you might reach Plantman...
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