On the Reckoning Harald Toksværd Should he be prose-writing in the American, he wonders, vexing odors blooming from crotch- and armpit-like areas. Lotta cool cats came outta there, he reckons, but seems like it’s been walking downhill for a while, popularity waning in the printing presses. Perhaps Kantonese or the other one, the fruity one, he thinks, knowing none, never having been near them. He could make it big in the American, he reckons, big and star-like glittering, make a fortune, as they call it here, walk the fame, eat the pussies and the shrimp, drink the drinks and be someone. He’s not ready to be someone, though, he thinks, he’s not ready for the lights and flashes, he’s still just a wavy jellyfish wafting through walls and down sidewalks, slurping up the small bits of attention lying around on the street. Don’t have the appetite for it, he reckons, lying to himself. The American isn’t new anymore, it’s rusty brown recyclable, why should he carry the cross up that hill when there are cars and Lyfts now, Golgatha Transportation Ltd and all that. Jazz is dead, so’s the beat and that whole revolution they’d been cooking, left it on for too long, now the big guys in the jacket-type things went and ate it all up, went and took the houses away, left the ramblers on the street, sitting perched up there with their sexy chains and silk screens, imported straight from Japan (the reallest of countries, according to the voices up top). Maybe he just doesn’t know the American good enough, he reckons, maybe he’s just talking dope and living the lives of others (the knowers, the reals), maybe he should stick to the branch he was sat on, it’s a fine branch, all gnarly and thick. He don’t believe in the big ideas, the red balloons passing by, he reckons that flash of glittering green in the eyes of hopefuls is just dollar store LEDs, no more true flashing left around here. It’s too late, for the American, he reckons, too much editing been done, too little of the grammar school work, the hard-type work, now typing’s out of style and speech-2-text is where it’s at. It hasn’t been in the American forever, he reckons, now it’s in the ‘stans and the ‘elas, in the ‘ia-countries that are really getting on the know, walking the fame and eating the pussies. They see some new jazz, he reckons, on their skin-type drums and their quick-tapping feet, they’ll come take it all over like that stretch of sand got taken by that new kid on the block that one time (guy with the beard? You remember him). They have the new stuff, the alive stuff, that stuff they don’t put in the movies or in the silicone chips, it’s too late for the American to catch up, the new cool has been established. He reckons he’ll learn Swahili, be hip and new, maybe one of them little tiny speaks, the two-dozen speaks, so people see how he didn’t need them, how he couldn’t stomach the old flu, but was cool with the cool, eating the shrimp and the pussies. He’ll be all the rage then, he reckons, be like a pearl in the mollusc, if molluscs still grow pearls, like fruit on the vine, the ripest of ripes. He could be the one to take it all over, he reckons, ride some coattails and get there, in that place, there where all the kids hang out and talk the secret words and tap their feet to whatever they’ve gone and dug up out of the ground. Be a kid again, he reckons, that new one with the wings and the chrome and the ribbons. He’ll be on that walk one day, he knows, be the one to call down and make up the new type stuff, no recitals no more, all new and shiny. The old folks won’t understand, he reckons, they’ll be there with their noses, all looking-but-pretending-not-to-look. That’ll be the end of it, he reckons, no news after that, ice-9 dropped in the ocean, all frozen up for him, he wrote the final word, did the final line, made it all up as he went and closed the doors behind him. They’ll love him, he reckons.
91.
