Laterals

Ο Ασκόμπαφλος αναζητώντας τη θέση του στην παγκόσμια πρωτοπορία, δημοσιεύει για πρώτη φορά αποσπάσματα από το νέο βιβλίο της Cloé Yasmin Mumkin "Roots". Το έργο, το οποίο ανοίγει με το κείμενο που ακολουθεί, αποτελεί δείγμα του χαρακτηριστικού είδους πεζοποίησης που εδώ και χρόνια υπηρετεί η Mumkin (προφέρεται ΜYMKẼN και όχι Μάμκιν, Μέμκιν ή Μούμκιν, όπως διάφοροι την ονομάζουν στην Ελλάδα). 

Joe lived a colourful life and now it ended. Since this is not a transition but a final passing, we should hold a big celebration. 88 years. And now we plant a memory tree. It is about time…

She was born on a Wednesday but she passed two days later. No chance for a name. Perhaps no chance for memory. Are you sad?

Jonathan was born on a Friday and he actually got a name! Don’t be sad, everything is fine! His favourite thing when he was four years old was to make patterns with buttons. He also liked spinners. He liked spinning things. He used to spin his mother’s underpants to make them dry faster. Jonathan didn’t last long, at six he caught polio and passed. Are you sad?

Michael made it to ten! Unbelievable… unfortunately it did not last long. The second war broke and he was living in Amiens. He loved life on the farm, he liked to check every year since he was six if the swallows’ nests were occupied in the barn. Poor fellah, he ran an errand for an American (his mother had said he was from Des Moines, Iowa, a strange (second) name), and was shot. End of this one.

Sarah was special. She was a slow starter but her eyes caught the imagination of people! She was quite thin from a young age and her friends called her Sticks. Her smile captivated poor Bill who was too shy to show his feeling. His heart sank and he never made it. Don’t be sad for Bill, he just changed his name! Sticks didn’t play with matches but got involved into activism and civil rights. She was seen spinning a twister at a rally in Ohio when she was in the range of one of the national guard. Apparently Neil Young made a song about her and the others.

Howard was from Antrim, fed up for the green fields he left for the new land as soon as he made the ticket fare by cleaning the barns. His baggage consisted of a spinner and a mandolin. He met Eric in New York and opened the bakery together. He prepared his mother’s blueberry pie which one late night Mary came into the shop from the rain and tasted. She also tasted Howard’s lips that night and soon their daughter was eating blueberry pie too but at separate houses each weekend. He gave the spinner to his daughter when he passed from cancer in 2010. The mandolin broke on his short trip. Don’t be sad!

Henry gets a job, lives a life, sleeps a sleep, mediates mediocrity and exits stage left for a long sleep somewhere around fifty. Are you sad?

And he spins the spinner, walks a confident walk and a wears a constant smile. He is lucky along the way, but works hard to realise his dreams. He went to university, finally, and got a job. He tasted mediocrity and it was not like blueberry pie. Instead the lips of Rosie actually did taste like the blueberry contrary also to the name. Left his job and mediocrity, nowhere is the dreamer of the misfit so alone than there. He read a quote by T.E. Lawrence, shooted off without second thought to visit places. He read passionately and accumulated knowledge like a sponge. He only gets one shot. He saw more places and never left a stone untouched. Rosie couldn’t keep up, but neither was sad. Are you sad?

He never watched TV, but made sure he looked at the trees and read art and poetry and history and listened to music. Memory is history, and he likes to remember everything living for. He relinquishes countries, borders and sometimes friends. He makes a few more on the way. One day Kay comes along with a flat bicycle tyre from twenty years in the past. Her scent is familiar. She had a better chance finally than Bill. He fixes it and soon they were riding to the beach. The water took them away across the sea. Then a train took them ten years ahead into an apartment with a cat and a view. The cat stayed but they were always on the go and a taste of freedom. Suppression never resolved in any form. It remained suppressed.

And so Joe hits 88 with a watered sponge, a smile, a spinner and a memory tree next to Kay’s. It was about time…