| The Autumn of Sarah |
| By Nathaniel Thomas |
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http://s89695188.onlinehome.us/wordpress/ |
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It was after she left. After all the Ikea furniture became only so much firewood. Not very good firewood, either. It was that cold flat, with its linoleum floors and harsh lighting, that led me to that park on the sixth day of the month of October in the year 1998. A walk in a park with a chainsaw. |
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Sarah considered herself something of a theorist of pop culture. She would turn to me, lifting her owlish eyes from the pages of the posturing intellectual press, and the patriarchy inherent in the term |
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Some of this wood (the author of my life is taught as an example of misogynistic, phallus-obsessed patriarchy in Women's Studies courses in alternate dimensions) would become a chair. A chair for me. And a chair for the woman whom I would entertain. And the woodpile would become our bed. And the ground our very carpet. The chainsaw was the last machine I would operate before entering a world of nature. A nature I was unafraid to partake of since the emasculation of nature in the park. The winter would come, and I would draw strength from a nature emaciated and not only emasculated.
There would be a wonderful table, too. A table upon which to dine on pine cones dipped in the still running syrup of the table's parts. |
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But a chainsaw is not a sympathetic companion. A chainsaw is not a loyal companion. A chainsaw is a blackguard.
The limning white of whirring blades entered in the wood. The chainsaw would act its part as an extension of the Carl-phallus, but only to its own advantage. The chainsaw-phallus (consumed by not being a hard C) would emasculate the nature of the world, of which all members are a member.
The woodmeat fell like confetti. My tears came upon it. |
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The chainsaw died. The chainsaw was a fool. It was a blackguard, and I am a blackguard too.
Sarah gave herself to the court of K. But now my past burns before me. Burns in the abandoned farmhouse where my cooperative emasculation of nature builds supports. Sarah is not anything beyond a collection of letters, both epistolary and phonetic. K is nothing but a concept.
Luther consigned the papal bull to the fire. So I consign my life to reformation. When you reform, you destroy. I am an old farmhouse being taken apart stone by stone. I am a slaughterhouse put together stone by stone. |
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