Posts tagged with “swapmeet”
March 02
sl---morris-bobetter-narrativeais.doc
At last, a first cohesive draft. 09:12 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: writing, fiction, swapmeet, bobetter, draft, in-progress
sl---morris-bobetter-notes5.doc
Notes that haven't made it into the first draft of Bobetter's Oboe. 08:41 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: fiction, draft, bobetter, swapmeet, in-progressFebruary 20
sl---morris-bobetter-narrative08u.doc
I haven't read it through yet, but I believe this is an actual semi-readable draft. Or real real close. 04:18 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: fiction, writing, draft, in-progress, swapmeet, bobetterJanuary 30
(20090130)Morris Bobetter notes
just smiled and said “I know,” and set the case on the table, unlatched it, and held it up to her nose.
As he walked home, fighting anticipation and ease, her words and face and voice hung strong in his mind. He watched it repeat with every step, the mouthpiece up to his lips, the tone, strong and steady come out. Her veins shimmer, a layer of sweat immediate, her eyes focus, and then her veins tighten [medical response he knows?] as her knees went taught and she rose and her mouth opened and her fists unwind and point to the wind and her voice, crackling at first, but then strong and steady too, first groan in some inner key, then rising to match it. Morris taking another breath, he could see her stop in the space and he rushed to blow again, then her voice became a howl and it howled “Gooooood Gleason and the bucket of bloooood,” and her voice dropped low and she stopped and looked at Morris as his breathe gave away. Sally took it, terror in his teary eye, and then he blew and her knees buckled back down, but her arms and voice pumped the air, and her hips twisted in her seat, and Morris left them there and started walking. He didn’t know what it meant. Maybe it was a song, maybe a singer, maybe a singing dream in some fantasy or nightmare kept at bay to build or finally released. Maybe it was where she fell in love, and with who. Maybe it was something of Sally’s. IT could have been anything winding through her synapses like blood through that web of veins, but Morris didn’t care. He knew that whatever it was, it was also time. The time unlimited in the mind’s space, and no matter of box or physical principles weighed and… 02:06 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: notes, moleskin, book of ideas, swapmeet
January 29
(20090129)Morris Bobetter notes
He took it, moved his chair from the clock-facing direction, and set it on the chair unopened. He stared for minutes and started pealing tape when the back door bell rang. A student interested in purchasing an instrument. Morris answered no and shut the door quickly, but they wouldn’t’ go away. Top dollar, they said, they had no time to waste. They’d heard he made beautifully tuned instruments that you could hear at night. He was very talented [bassoon fear + old woman’s instrument] at the bassoon. [may come by to take them away, he finds the flute is the woman’s, brings it to her after he gets the last instrument, and goes home to make time stand still.]
“I only have one and it’s not for sale.”
“Oh my, it’s beautiful,” he said, seeing it through the hallway and propped there in its usual spot.
“I’ve got all the time in the world to tell you its not for sale.” [Actually, it was on loan from somewhere? Left to someone in a will?] Two more students came over the next couple hours, wondering if their instruments were complete, but Morris shooshed each of them away. The girl who first brought the flute came next.
“My mom thinks I should play the piano, and definitely not something from a fire, but there’s something special about it, right? Its like it was reborn.” [could the old woman’s and his wife’s instrument be the same?]
Morris could not disagree. Why waste it. His wife would’ve agreed. He sighed and left her to find the flute. He found the case upside down. A flap built inside it he’d never noticed as the seam was charred was open, and as he lifted the case its contents emptied into his floor. He put everything back except the receipt, which he rubbed with his thumb on the heart drawn in red pen. He couldn’t tell the girl no, so he simply told her he lost the case and she’d need to come back tomorrow. As she left he waited until she was gone and left as well.
“Find me every instrument in this place, and I’ll make it worth your while. Send your son. He’s not doing anything anyway.” He sat and watched her staring. Watched her lips purse from time to time. And when he returned empty handed, Morris… 02:02 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: notes, moleskin, book of ideas, swapmeet
January 28
(20090128)Morris Bobetter notes
At home, Morris moved quickly, finishing shelves and stands for his student’s abandoned instruments, and her own leftovers. Those he obtained from Sally, he set on the workbench. He unplugged the phone from his bedroom, connected it, and shoved its receiver into a box with a mic connected to his wife’s electric guitar amp and ran the on/off wire up to his pedal so it would flip as soon as the pedal left its resting tilt. Six instruments were now connected. He placed a cement block on the footpedal, but it didn’t move. He added another and the nearest instrument, with the shortest tube, his wife’s bassoon, began to moan, then another, then another, until all were moaning out of key. Morris moved between them, adjusting knobs until they came together into a singularity. Outside the wind blew, waving the banana plant. Dogs were all facing, silent, listening. Birds flew like atoms in a bunch, swirling around the wires, and Morris closed his eyes and felt his chest fill with sound and the sound of light. He saw the overheads blind him as he came up the subway stairs. He heard the strains of her playing, those two notes (violin?) that under that terrible tone. That terrible tone that he loved. Why did she never look at anyone in the eye? Anyone save him. They walked together in the park outside the station forever as the birds lined the wires, the dogs barked, and the wind blew the leaves of the banana plants. How man times did she steal a glance at a parent and child? He couldn’t recall. He needed more time with her.
Morris woke up with his face pressed against the footpedal, unsure how much time had passed. He went to bed early, hoping dreams would return her to him, but they did not. He woke up rested, blank, and late, having not set an alarm or heard any dogs bark or birds chirp. He woke up to the front door bell. He answered quickly, straining his hip across the clutter in his way, expecting with a grin another instrument, but found only the delivery man.
02:02 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: notes, moleskin, book of ideas, swapmeet
January 27
(20090127)Morris Bobetter notes
…to hold them.
“Got more like these?” he asked Sally. “If you can’t see it, I ain’t got it.”
“Well what if they’re buried?”
“They’re not buried. Everything’s in order. You trying to tell me how to run my shit?”
“In order? You can’t even keep oil off the floor, you’re customers return with complaints about your bicycles, and your TV doesn’t even work.”
“Think what you want, old man, but its all efficient and gets us by. There’s an internal logic here, and you keep returning to it anyway. Don’t want it, don’t’ waste your time bitching.”
“Maybe I’ve got time to waste.”
“What?”
“Nothing. So what’s with your TV then?”
“I hate TV. But the static keeps her calm and the Muppets gets her chewing. The only problem’s when the volume goes out?”
“Volume? That’s easy. How bout you give me all this free if I fix it?”
“My time’s worth more than that if you bust it worse.”
“Either take that risk or waste an hour feeding her. By the time the lemon is Sally’s glass full, the TVs volume was back up, and his mother was calm.
“I used to drop her off to work in a big van I’d converted to look like a giant silver scaly fish,” said Sally as they watched the woman smile and sing the chorus, and her legs tapped up and down in beat.
“She took music lessons there after work, after my dad died. She wasn’t very good but she did it every single day. Soft lips Eugenie they called her there since she put chapstick on all the time to keep her embechure. She went through a lot of reeds.”
“She picked us up every day from school in that van of my dad’s. And we’d come home and watch this show. We had tons of tapes, but we only watched the episodes with Pigs in Space so we could holler it out, waiting the whole show under a blanket so we could all shout it out together.”
At home, Morris worked quickly building stands on the walls for the horns, and affixed the strings together so he’d have to build the smallest amount of armature arms to draw the bows or strike the notes. He had plenty of tubing so he lined the walls with the brass. He took the kazoo, recorder, and hooked them to the same wire hanger off the central pedal. A string of footpedals connected the congos and drums. 01:41 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: notes, moleskin, book of ideas, swapmeet
January 26
(20090126)Morris Bobetter notes
His wife must’ve known something. No matter how many tuners he built or fixed in his off-time, his wife never used them. She just tuned everything to her bassoon. Oh, he remembered the sound well. Do you remember, Morris, when you met? She would have remembered. She would have remembered you with your grumbly little mouth and your stained beige pants rolled up too high, those same red suspenders, and the awkward smile with which you stared at her. She told you, you remember, how the orchestras used to tune back when they existed, as one, not as individuals, Morris picked up the bassoon off the floor and connected it to the footpedal, sent another line to the mechanical arm that held the bow it would draw across the doublebass. His hip, still sore, popped as he stepped down and the bassoon and bass yawned together, breaking Morris’ memory of his wife from its sleep. He listened to the first note he’d ever heard her play, there in the subway when he’d asked her for a date. He felt the trains rumbling about him and the voices on the loudspeaker and his heart pumped nervously and then his foot reached the floor and it stopped. The birds on the wire remained silent and the neightbor’s dog lay still, with no echo from houses and yards down the block. Why do they waste their time taking care of such creatures, wondered Morris, such creatures who just run around in circles. The exposed wires of his tuners crisscrossed like the veins on Sally’s mom’s legs and arms. He wiped them off the table with a wave of his arm. To his wife’s bassoon, he said “I need a bigger pedal,” as he released the tuning peg from his fingers. [key]
There they were again, throbbing, the old woman’s veins and arteries, then Morris returned to Sally’s booth at the fleamarket. The pace around him felt quickened, the cloth and frames wrapped tighter around the timepieces. He trolled Sally’s aisles plucking items and dropping them into a white plastic bag. He found a beaten up ukelele, a recorder, a drum, and a kazoo and grabbed more bags… 01:40 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: notes, moleskin, book of ideas, swapmeet
January 25
(20090125)<br /><strong>Morris Bobetter notes </strong><br />…enough air through the instrument to tune it to the electronic tuner’s red bars, note by note from top to bottom, following the instructions of his wife’s book. Whenhe was done he looked at the clock and was surprised to see it was still early as it had felt like he was tuning for hours, listening to the dog next door white, no longer yanking on his chains, watching his banana plant sway outside, and a flock of birds land on the electrical lines outside. The wind picked up, the birds flew away, and his wife’s bassoon fell to the floor with a resounding tone (needs to be a horn?). As he righted it, he though of the man’s last words, the sound of Sally’s gun, the veins of the old woman climbing up to the holes in her empty static eyes. <br />Over the next few days, three more rings at the back door made up for no rings at the front. Sad Sandra with her hair like waves over her shoulder brought a tuba left by her brother who’d been given so little time. She never wanted to see it again. He could keep it. It was his wife’s fault for encouraging it in the first place. Four-fingered Peter returned the trombone he’d kept at home once he learned of his old teacher’s death. Michael Mittens’ mother died and needed her banjo fixed. He never came back. Hungry Eleanor called to buy an instrument, but she never came by. Morris built shelves. He brought matching instruments from his wife’s room to use as reference. Every time he walked by it, his wife’s instrument fell to the floor with a twang and a thud. He took apart her table to build shelves to hold them up around his workbench. Right on time, the girl came back for her flute.<br />“But,” she complained, “it’s out of tune. It looks great, but it’s out of tune.”<br />“Impossible,” he says, the day after when she returned with it. Two more students returned with theirs to him and refused payment. His refrigerator looked empty, and the delivery man was angry without his tip. He checked and rechecked his tuner. It seemed to work just fine, so why were they not in tune?
01:40 PM
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January 24
(20090124)<br /><strong>Morris Bobetter notes </strong><br /> “Speak, now,” he says. “His time’s out and he’s running. We just want to turn him in.”<br />“No,” shouts the man. “I won’t go. It’s not fair. My wife’s dying, she’s got plenty of time left. I can’t leave her. I just want my time back,” but the last consonant is clipped by the bang and shell of Sally’s pistol pushing through his skull. <br />“What’s not fair is you wasting ours.”<br />“Your shot, your responsibility.”<br />“I’ll call the handlers,” he says as the other two shrug and walk away. <br />“Can I get back there now without you shooting me?” says Morris. Sally laughs, puts the gun down, and picks up the jar of salad dressing and started shaking it again in rhythm, humming his song. By the time he’s poured it over the salad, Morris has already put his money on the table. <br />Morris stood there, thinking nothing, not even of his throbbing hip, as he watched Sally exchange the pistol for his bottle of vinagrette which he started shaking up and down in rhythm, one two three four, one two three four, poured it over the salad beside the pistol, and handed it to his three foot tall son in a bright blue cape with a pointing finger and a command to feed the boy’s grandma some lunch. [Description of her] The woman sat in her metal foldup chair staring into the flickering image on the eight inch tv propped upon a stool in front of her, its rabbit ears reflecting the sun. <br />“What you need?” asked Sally and Morris blinked and nodded and walked toward the labyrinth of used things but he couldn’t remember what he needed. His hand hovered over the piles as he paced between them. <br />“A shame” said Burning Phil, the fried banana chef next door, now leaning on Sally’s cash register. “He was an allright guy. He meant well.”<br />The boy forked salad into the old woman’s gaping mouth. Morris watched her chew with the boy’s hands on her jaw. Her eyes were miniature TV screens, the transmission out on both. <br />“She’s not chewing,” said the boy, and Morris/Sally flipped the dial on the television until Pigs in Space filled its speakers and the woman began to rock in her chair and to chew, and Morris remembered what he needed. <br />At home that night he used the funnel and rubber tubing to connect the mouth of the flute to a footpedal and a balloon and was able to force…
01:39 PM
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January 23
(20090123)<br /><strong>Morris Bobetter notes </strong><br />…straighten, polish, and reassemble the girl’s charred but otherwise undamaged flute. Chunks of the charred velvet fabric and melted hardshell case had to be removed and some holes needed refitting, but his medical tools more than sufficed until he tried to tune the thing. He had no idea how to play a clarinet. He would need something to help him tune it to the tones laid out in the book snatched from his wife’s studio, and when Morris needed something, which was not often, he went down the street to the daily fleamarket at the train station [he used to take to work] and rummaged through Sally’s piles, stacks, and bins, a veritable technology swamp. He moved quickly through the masses, dodging the prying eyes of vendors selling worthless junk like windchimes and candy, ignoring the lollygagging couples huddled close about their concealed timepieces. No, Morris dangled his out in the open, just as he always had, unashamed, as he approached the aisle at which Sally’s booth overtook almost half of one of almost thirty aisles. He could already see, behind Bowling Ball Sally’s bowling ball head, exactly the pieces he needed. A funnel and a rubber innertube, each arranged with brethren of someone’s logical family schema, in trays and bins lining the grass and concrete floor, and over a dozen foldable tables. Then, a scuffle, a shout, voices behind Morris and Sally traded the salad dressing he was shaking up for a six shooter pistol pointing straight at Morris. <br />“Get the hell out of the way,” he shouted and Morris was knocked over, tumbling with a body on the blacktop. He can feel the scrapes and bruises aleady forming and wnders how long it’ll take for them to heal. “No,” the man shrieks, Golden Larry, always here, always buying up anything golden, as he’s yanked off of Morris by the son and daughter of Sweet Meat Mary the butcher. <br />“It’s not fair,” he yells as they stand him up and hold his arms tight. <br />“Hold it,” says Sally, pistol moving between the three.
01:39 PM
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January 22
(20090122)<br /><strong>Morris Bobetter notes </strong><br />…was the one note stretching and stretched until it was taut and any sonorousness was thin and flimsy, snapping like his patience. But he kept his mouth shut. She was kind enough after all not to bother him about kids. <br />One day, a year after her passing, a year spent doing exactly what he’d done before her passing, opening his shipment of broken medican supplies every Monday and returning them every Friday fixed, ten hours a day at his workbench in between with breaks only to fix himself Spartan meals, to read the latest journals [backstory about time, read in the paper?], and to sleep, Morris found himself pacing his hallway wondering where the delivery man was with this week’s shipment. He paced and paced as the hour hand lapped and looped and eight turned to eleven. He paced and paced, his hands tucked into his armpits, under his suspenders. [she liked that he…he liked that she…and with not a moment to waste, sometimes that was all that was needed for 20 years to pass by] He paced and paced over the already worn tile, trying to ignore the cold stare of his wife’s three foot tall bassoon sitting propped as she’d left it on the bookshelf [as she’s always left it, always to fall, no matter how many times…]. As the hour swung past noon, a doorbell finally came, but it was muffled and old, and either his mind was playing ventriloquism tricks on him, or the ring wasn’t coming from his front door at all, but the back, the door to his wife’s music studio [history of them moving in together…] from where her students came and left. What an idiot, thought Morris, or a new guy, mustering his courage to enter and cross a room in this house that had stayed shut for a year [since her death…]. <br />“We found this when the house was renovated,” said Heavy Jane, the kid at the door whose features looked painted on by a brush too big. “I’ve been meaning to bring it by for ages. It survived the fire of the previous owners, in this case, in a closet beneath a pile of wool sweaters. Can you fix it? Can you make it work?” He told her the music shop was closed, that his wife had passed and he didn’t waste his time with music, that couldn’t she see the room was full, and abandoned, that he had real work to do, though he knew he did not as he glanced to either side beyond her and saw no delivery truck in sight and his foot was tapping on the doorjamb. He snatched the case and slammed the door and uttered only “tomorrow.” <br />It took the rest of the day, a day with no delivery, for Morris to disassemble, clean,…
01:38 PM
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January 21