The
Right to De-light
99
& ½?
Night sky populated by myriad sparkling dots. Each
titillation forms a tiny ripple. Waves spread across the vastness of the cosmic
ocean. Night sky leaks into the center of the whirlpool in the viewfinder.
Constellations vibrate in the dark space of the room. The observer of the night
sky is still searching for Saturn—once detected, now unidentifiable—invisible
planet brooding in darkness filled with memory of the celestial rhapsody.
Is it the dark room into which one withdraws having
failed to reach the much sought entity on stellar maps? Is the darkness a
reflection of the haunting office space one successfully abandoned? Is it the
unease of all futile attempts to spot one’s guardian star in that uninterested,
solemn inky empire? Is it an echo of dislocations such as broken families? Is
it an epitome of the hollowness plaguing pubs and bars on Friday evenings, once
the offices close and cohorts of eager socialization seekers swamp nearby joints
holding a drink in one hand, cell phone in the other, and look…well, somewhere
that appears as elusive as the space of the room, once the lens of the
telescope admits its limits and all recordings exhaust their audio-visual
capacity to tell stories about the past, to devise a perception of the present?
Or, is it where one reconnects with oneself having realized
that Laura is a concept from Petrarch’s sonnets--not a girl on the pier, at a
strip bar, or some such facility, that uncle Rey’s tales are testimony to his
moral drama in the aftermath of an adulterous familial debacle--not one’s
former wife’s confessions about an affair with a coworker that ended the
marriage, that brother Cal’s concern about uncle Rey’s will is his--not the
whole world’s--dislocation, that stargazing is part of observing the sky—not
constitutive of a blurry chasm of boring editing job in an office saturated
with energy so hostile that it feels like void?
Or, is it where one discovers the music of Dr.
Feelgood --“down by the jetty” (“All through the City” 6)[1] --
as Jon Michaels, the protagonist of Lee Rourke’s novel Vulgar Things (2014), seems to be oscillating between partly
bewildering, partly reintegrating explorations of the enchanting estuary
abundant in both cultural and familial legacy he found in Canvey Island?
His search may be a possibility to re-discover the
intersections of the time axes redeeming the past, reimagining the future, and
resurrecting the present. His search may be a possibility to find in the face
of a stranger familiarity that renders wandering something else, something
sensible:”It’s the sort of face that looks like it’s lived many lives. A
friendly face – wrinkled, weathered, trustworthy, the lines on his face like a
map of territory I already know” (Vulgar
Things 86).
Is it solely in the darkness remaining when all
gadgets fail to provide comforting imagery where one re-enacts encounters such
as Jon’s with Mr. Buchanan? Is it solely darkening spaces that sometimes act
like a mirror? One would like to know.
/
Rourke’s novel exudes the color imbued in each
instance of its plot, infiltrating every single component constitutive of the
characterization, conquering the setting regardless of its versatility. It is
the black river flowing into the sea (Vulgar
Things 106). It is the darkness of inky vacuum wilderness hosting
indifferent orbits mirrored in wanderings of the characters zoning through
unlikely atmospheres of the modern day enslavement of politically inferior
denizens by a demimonde in the country of a political sovereign. It is the
darkness looming over the boardwalk even on the brightest of days, over
amusement arcades filled with noise of exhilarated thrill chasers. It inhabits
Jon’s encounters with a proliferated chimera that he calls Laura. It speaks
from the pages of uncle Rey’s book entitled Vulgar
Things from which Jon learns who his Laura was, and who his father is. It
is the sound of the recordings testifying to uncle Rey’s years of wrestling
with a moral goliath haunting him from the depths of the nightmarish past,
sneering at him with a whiff of forbidden fruit eaten with his brother’s wife.
It is the sound of the message from the Dr. Feelgood T-shirt reading Oil City Confidential – “down by the
jetty.”
It pours on the earth with slants of rain. It dries
it with gusts of wind. It soaks the roots with dripping tar. It lathers windows
with the patina of time. It smears the viewfinder with a blurry image it cannot
capture. Sometimes, it acts like an anchor, as Jon asserts:”thankful to the
force of gravity for keeping me from drifting off into space” (Vulgar Things 93). It appears to be the
very force that urges Jon to rescue his Laura from captivity:”to save her from
any darkness, to bring her back from the depths of night, back up into the
light of day” (Vulgar Things 109) –
down by the jetty.
Darkness is a sensation of being webbed into a deceitful
totality of experiences revamped by emotional turmoil (Vulgar Things 114). It is like the void on the stellar maps where
once Saturn was. It is like dazzling sparks buzzing through constellations
unable to solve the astronomical mystery of its disappearance. It invades one
with the vibrancy of “silent geometry, something poetic and unfathomable” (Vulgar Things 143). It lurks from behind
delusional anxiety of Saturn’s absence. It is when one realizes that “[g]ravity
isn’t enough” (Vulgar Things 143). It
is also when repurposing rhizomorphic web seems either like a viable response
to a transformation of roots into aerials or an enactment of it. When
everything feels anchored in the very remapping, as Saturn shyly resurfaces, bringing
smile back to the gloom of the universe. Such are the colors of Lee Rourke’s
novel Vulgar Things. Such is the
sound of storytelling from darkness.
/
Every morning, in that history drenched caravan, Jon
wakes up to a new day of search, new day of discovery, finding in his uncle’s
book, in his recordings, corrosive noise of moral dilemmas and self-haunting
consciousness. Like an impenetrable jungle of unruly emotions, the caravan is
suffocating under piles of random objects, random memories hanging cumbersomely
throughout the dusty air contained within that acerbic cagy empire. Every
morning, the handle of the tap treats him with a contingent of cold water, as if
the pulley-lever on the roof remains indefinitely open welcoming incessant
outpour of cold tears from indifferent interstellar abyss. Jon rejoices in the
freshness of water—each droplet washes away hangover induced fuzz brooding
through each atom of his body. Like floating heaviness across the celestial
subzero chasm, his search is coded in the color of night swimming in the lake.
The lady bathed in moonlight absorbed the glow of the constellations. He
recognized in that weird scene a sense of detachment so familiar that the very
collision of the sensations ensured generative potential guiding him through a
labyrinth of reenactments of variants of strangeness crowned by unpompous
courage to abandon it:
My understanding of its
separateness must have been born within me the very first time I stepped onto
the island. I’m sure of that. I’ve always understood, deep down, beneath the
laughter, why the locals refer to it as the
island, deep down it’s always made perfect sense to me: to feel
dislocated, to feel lost and forgotten. (Vulgar
Things 17)
Canvey Island seems to be more a sensation than a
geographical location. In the repetitiveness of conversation at the Lobster
Smack, he may have sensed the vacuum devouring roaring surface effervescence
and exuberation, as strip bars were being filled by salivating gazes on urban
Friday binge entertainment. As if it always were Friday. As if unambitious
reconfigurations of hierarchy amid that estuary apathy reflected something that
corporate culture cultivates with a much more testosterone loaded feel:”you can
see the younger generation of drinkers growing in the shade of the towering men
at the bar, readying themselves for the next old-timer to fall, eager to pick
up their stool and take their place” (Vulgar
Things 22). The clubs such as the Sunset Bar and the Cornucopia, while
grooving to a different muscular impulse, shortcircuited
with hostility and aggression, give away the same stink of staleness that like
spleen spreads over long nondescript days bridging the gap between equally
insipid nights:”It’s strange, I’ve never hung around with other men in packs,
and the thought of drinking with a large group of men in a strip club turns my
stomach” (Vulgar Things 155). Distastefulness sublimated in vivid imagery.
Unlike constellations.
/
Mr. Buchanan reminds Jon that a lease on the caravan
expires soon. It needs to be vacated within a week. Uncle Rey’s stuff needs to
be cleaned, sorted out, packed, and unnecessary bits disposed. Jon is nowhere
near finishing the task. His days on Canvey Island meander like an estuary
unlikely to rejoin the main flow, let alone reach the confluence. His days on
Canvey Island are a series of dislocations: from cold morning showers, via
hearty breakfasts, wandering in pursuit of Laura, boozy, heavy dinners in the
company of Robbie, a.k.a., Mr. Buchanan, researching uncle Rey’s messy archive,
and yes, stargazing.
It doesn’t take him long to re-focus. Uncle Rey’s
stuff is being cleaned quite efficiently. The book Jon takes with him,
alongside the recordings. Dr. Feelgood music is being transpositioned from
vinyl into Jon’s world that he only starts discovering. It is no longer merely
a slogan on a T-shirt. It is no longer solely background noise of a family
drama. It is the rhythm of observing an endless dark ocean populated by bathing
constellations.
He separated trash from the stuff he keeps, stuff of
relevance. The caravan is like a mundane version of the void peeping through
the pulley-lever, Jon like an organic telescope. He unexpectedly discovered in
himself an admirer of inky wilderness, unknown interest in Saturn’s presence, unquenchable
thirst for ungraspable vastness, susceptibility to enchantment by mesmerizing
darkness. He wasn’t rich before he came to Canvey Island. Now he is. He
inherited a fortune from the elder. The check evidences uncle Rey’s generosity,
care, guilty consciousness, humanness…who knows. Jon found in that quirky
legacy the reclusive bard left behind the incomparable treasure : the sound shimmering
with the groove resistant to the climate of dying pub culture—the scene from
which it emerged--the sound radiating myriad sparks absorbed from the leakage
through the whirlpool of the viewfinder.
Jon becomes a node in the rhizomorphic
omniwebbing:”I look up at the sky, at the grey clouds, knowing that Saturn is
somewhere up there, with me, hanging above me, keeping me rooted” (Vulgar Things 188). It is a sense of
groping unshakably in the midst of oscillating uncertainties. Jon has learned
that, or, perhaps re-discovered it somewhere deep inside, deep down where a
starry shadow recognizes a dedicated acolyte--loyal worshipper--where it
reconfirms the comfort it offers in infinitely challenging capricious
appearances and inexplicable gaps between them:”Saturn is somewhere up there,
hanging in the same blackness, silent, waiting. I can feel its presence. A
small jewel in the night, a yellow brown marble, the rings hovering around it,
a protective shield” (Vulgar Things 202).
He stares at it till his eyes and the telescope are
no longer enough to capture it all. He records the site with his cell phone
camera. He does so in order to prevent himself from falling into that creepy
chasm, from being sucked into a dizzy whirlpool of Saturn’s spinning rings,
from being pulled into and getting lost & forgotten in a dark labyrinth. Later,
he can watch it. Later, he can watch a digitized version of the mysterious
giant’s empire. If he needs to. But, he doesn’t have to. He watches it on his
way back to London. But, he doesn’t have to. He watches it on his way to London
where he goes only to leave it. He has made a decision to sell his apartment,
go to find mother, to recuperate fruits of distrust, tales of shame…thereby perhaps
relieving his search from uncle Rey’s haunting past, lift the burden of
troublesome residues of futile jobs, echoes of flawed relationships,
communication…who knows.
Each pixel a dot – an anchor – on the map of that
obscure, colossal, incomprehensible space. Each binary coded signal an aerial
in the rhizomorphic web indefatigably conveying the communication flow despite
the interlocutors’ limited capacity to decipher it in its entirety. Or, perhaps
by virtue of such constraint. One thing, however, is quite likely to be
certain: the sound he found “down by the jetty” soaks his whole being with
sparks : nodes mirroring each other in the etherized ocean, mirroring territory
they know.
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