19. The Ineffable – Esmé Weijun Wang
To be human is to experience strange things that may be difficult to describe with words.
To be human is to experience strange things that may be difficult to describe with words. Some of the most exciting examples of prose extant, such as the opening pages of Swann’s Way, about the liminal border between wakefulness and sleep, occur when an author describes something amorphous with visceral specificity.
– Esmé Weijun Wang
Prompt:
Write about a time when you (or your character) experienced something that may be a common human event (for example: scratching an itch, sneezing, petting an animal, etc.), with concrete language that brings the experience to life. Try using all of the senses in order to avoid cliché.
Anonymous
Nousf-Nousf, mon amour!
Today I woke up with a craving for a café crème, but specifically the kind that in Tunisia they call shtaar, or half-half, basically half steamed milk and half strong expresso coffee. It wasn’t the smell of the coffee, but its name, that sent me reminiscing about one my fondest childhood memories. Somehow, the word shtaar called forth its equivalent nousf-nousf, meaning also half-half or fifty-fifty. In my mind, nousf-nousf was, is and will always be associated with mother who passed away three years ago when she turned 90, and the emblem of a mother’s love!
I must have been four or five years old. It was a cold and damp winter night, one of those we called “black” nights--eight consecutive raw-cold, pitch-dark, and miserable nights, almost always followed by eight “white” nights, signaling that we’re past the dead of winter.
From the profoundest depth of slumber surged the worst pain I had ever experienced, a piercing ear-ache that kept me twisting in bed in unbearable agony for what seemed to me then an excruciating eternity. I cried in muffled silence for a long time hoping that one of my brothers would wake up. In the silent and cruel indifference of the night only a mother, endowed with that special sixth sense, could hear your faint crying when everyone else around you was sound asleep. I shared a room with three siblings, but, on that night, they were of no help. My mother whose bedroom was on the other side of the open courtyard, across from ours, always slept, as she used to say, only “on one ear.” Probably like all mothers, in that golden age of Innocence and Insouciance, my mother, the picture of selflessness and goodness, was the first to rise and the last to go to bed.
Half-asleep, my mother miraculously appeared before me like an angel of mercy, bundled up in a heavy bed cover, as she had to cross a wet and cold courtyard to get to my room. But despite her reassuring and comforting presence and soothing words the pain did not ease. She then crossed back the courtyard to get to the kitchen, returning with a thimble of warmed-up olive oil that she dripped into my aching ear. The warm, soothing liquid seemed to work as it instantly dulled the pain. I closed my eyes and must have dozed off. Reassured, my mother went back to her room. A short while later, the pain surged back more piercing and I started crying again, softly first but then the pain became intolerable. I reluctantly woke up my younger brother Mouldi who begrudgingly went to fetch my mother. She rushed back and this time stayed in bed with me, exhausted and half-asleep, murmuring inaudible prayers and soothing words.
The words that would forever remain engraved on my mind and seemed to have magically released the ache from my ear were murmured as if they were a secret that only the two of us were sworn to keep: “Since I can’t take all your pain, let me at least take half of it.” Then, she rested her cheek on mine and we instantly fell sound asleep. When I woke up late the next day, tired and drowsy from pain and sleeplessness, the ache was gone but the memory of the words she confided to me in Arabic, “nousf-nousf”/half-half or fifty-fifty, will always have the same sweet and soothing resonance of unconditional maternal love!
Genelle Faulkner
Location: Boston, MA
About: I'm a 30 year old science teacher who lives in Boston, MA. I've been isolating in my apartment with no other souls. This entry represents me trying to go for a walk in my mask on a sunny day.
Age: 30
Katlyn McGraw
Location: Louisville, KY
About: I chose to describe bicycling through empty Houston, TX as a common human event because I wanted to describe a simple daily act that brings me joy. Although I have been bicycling for about 10 years, the act was extremely joyful during COVID-19 isolation. Bicycling took me outside, out in nature, out of myself, and out of my head.
Age: 34
The sky gradually changed interval by interval from shades of deep blue to navy, and then, just dark. The breeze cooled and chilled. I mounted my bicycle and placed buds into my ears, aligning the hooks to affix them. I turned on Sofi Tucker, a lo fi electronic dance musician. I cycled down the empty, paved concrete bike path. The quick breeze produced from my kinetic ride grazed over my face. I smelled the slightly rotten bayou, but I looked upon its muddy dark waters with fondness. The lit skyline emerged upward from the grassy knoll as I tried to capture it on camera. It moved all around me, enveloping me in its urbanicity, its metropolitan nature, threatening to envelop me against the contrast of a people-less park. I grinned with the thought that perhaps this world is mine to enjoy, just as it is everyone’s to enjoy.
Lori Tucker-Sullivan
Location: Detroit, MI
About: I am a writer living in Detroit. I'm currently working on a book about the widows of rock stars who died young and what these women taught me about grief. Forthcoming from BMG in 2021. My inspiration for this entry was my love of the music of Freddie Mercury and Queen.
Age: 56
In middle school, I had two best friends who were twin sisters. We loved listening to music and had many bands we enjoyed. But our whole world changed when I purchased the album A Night at The Opera, by Queen. The three of us brought the record to the basement of my parents’ Detroit bungalow. The cinder block walls were covered with posters; a set of cheap veneer shelves held my Radio Shack stereo—purchased from hours of babysitting. Albums and books were stacked on the linoleum floor. We lay on the sofa, arms and legs atwist. I held open the white double-sided album, reading the song lyrics, gazing at the small picture of Freddie Mercury. We played the record over and over, moving only when we heard the thump of the needle against the paper label, and the click of the arm swinging back to its rest.
The best way to listen is still on vinyl. The slight thud catches my heart, the fuzzy scratches lead to opening piano. I take a breath, anticipating, listening: fingers pound chords on the keyboard and I at once feel the surprise and the familiarity, the excitement and comfort. And then that voice. His voice. Freddie Mercury’s pure falsetto has the power to sweep me back in time, twenty-five years or more. Remembering those idle summer afternoons, sweaty palms, my throat hoarse from singing along.
His voice ascended over several octaves and back down, as smooth as the leather pants on his muscled legs. As a teenager, I gazed at him, sly and youthful, and incredibly sexy. At fourteen, I didn’t quite know what I felt, but I knew it was something forbidden, something exotic and a little taboo. It felt dangerous, but in a very good way. How could I ever fall in love with any of the boys in my high school when none of them made me feel like this? None dared to wear eyeliner and nail polish! There was so much about the androgyny that was confusing to my mind, but oh so magical to my heart.
Eventually I grew out of that music, went away to school, and married someone who didn’t even play an instrument. I lost childhood friends and made new ones who liked different music. I didn’t think much about Freddie until I heard that he was ill and near death. On that drab fall day in 1991, I listened to Freddie Mercury’s clear, soaring voice and cried. Everything I felt for him returned to me. I looked at recent photographs of him. He was frail and thin, obviously sick. Tears welled in my eyes. I laid on the floor of my new suburban home and read reports from his friends. They told of how he lost his sight and his voice; how he lay in bed with his cats, attached to tubes. I held my albums, the vinyl that had endured so many spins on my turntable, so many trips to my friends’ house for pajama parties, now suddenly seemed terribly fragile. The cardboard sleeves I would stare at while daydreaming had bent, dented corners, like wrinkles stopped in time. I sifted through a collection kept in a box: old photos, magazine clippings, an autographed concert program, a rare 45 record made before he was even Freddie Mercury, seven torn ticket stubs. They felt soft in my hands, as though time had drained them, along with him, of all the old magic. My broken heart felt heavy with strange feelings—nostalgia for those sweet experiences with my childhood friends, fear of a life that lacked that wish for a little danger, grief over a loss of someone I didn’t even know, but whose work had once upon a time meant so much.
In the years since Freddie Mercury’s death, his music has maintained an important role in my life. I have introduced both my children to it. Together, we have attended concerts and even made a pilgrimage to his statue in Switzerland. It takes very little to recall, with the visceral detail mentioned in today’s prompt, the feelings that come to me whenever I listen to his voice. Though the intensity has quieted over the years, the feelings of love for the man and his talent will always be with me.
Moira Griffith
Location: Alexandria, VA
About: The act of receiving or sending a text or buzzing around on your phone between different apps is done so often that we overlook all the little complexities and sounds. In this piece, the character wakes up after a boozy night out, and the commonplace buzzes and zings of her phone act as a backdrop to a dark, sober realization.
Age: 23
Boozy Saturday, Hazy Sunday
9:23 am
A bing on my phone…hey, you up? I tuck my knotted hair behind my ear, rub awake the crusted creases of my eyes, slowly slide my thumb across the dusty screen, tick-tick-tick-tick…7-8-1-4, my world flashes before me, popping open the lime green square, tick away…hiiiii, what’s up, the soft tap of the keys pops in my ear, swoosh send, the haze of the morning begins to seep in to my worn body, waiting for the dots of response and the bing, I lift open my golden laptop, click-click-click F-A-C-E-B-O…enter swoosh, the page loads and my eyes slowly adjust to the flashing colors on the screen, giddy white smiles, knees bended at the perfect angle, arms locked together, pink and red emoji hearts, “you’re so pretty”s, ads telling me to buy more, final sales, 50% off, a ding and a double click…how ya feeling? you remember last night? you weren’t doing so well, quick tick-tick-tick…uhhhh I feel alright, oh no what happened? Shitttt, there’s a jump of anticipation and horror as the dots jump onto the screen, ding…check the photos on your phone, double click and slide, I see a silhouetted version of me, dark with glazed-over eyes, a little too much leg showing, sloshed drink in hand, swipe swipe swipe double click…what happened???? dots immediately pop, I crack my knuckles freeing my jilted-up joints, bing…it was a shit show, we’ll fill you in at brunch, my brain feels fogged and distant, my thoughts are slowed,
bing…dude you good?
bing…how’s it goin???
bing…did u vom again?
Damn it, my dried eyes murk inside my greasy face as they glue themselves to the gloss of the Instagram feed, slide-slide-slide, double-click double-click double-click double click, the final drops of early morning drink drip away leaving a dull pang wash over my head, bing…u ready for brunch in 10? Tick-tick-tick…yeah, I finally roll my leaded body out of bed, my knees and ankles clicking and cracking with the sudden movement, out the door and into the haze of Sunday, followed by my shadow of a boozy Saturday.
10:53 am
Patrick McDonnell
Location: Montreal, Quebec
About: Thought of nights watching Indian dancers...magical.
Age: 68
A Proustian Moment in New Mexico
The smell of a Mesquite wood fire reminds me of New Mexico. This came back to me when I had a gig in Las Vegas, drawing anatomical suits, and I stopped to visit my art teacher in Albuquerque. Not wanting to stay over night with him and his incessant tobacco smoking, instead I rented a car to drive up to Santa Fe after a pleasant visit.
I stayed at LaFonda hotel in down town Santa Fe; after dinner I walked around in the quiet of the streets, and smelled the air and watched the twinkling stars (they really do that at high altitudes). The air was filled with mesquite fire smoke....it evoked so many memories.
Little did I know that it would be a trip of nostalgia. The last two years of high school in New Mexico I spent trying to survive my teenage angst, with some success, but without any real girl friend(s). Not that I ever got past first base with the girls who put up with me. Once I had a romantic connection to a junior who lived in the same complex - Rosie. I would visit with her at night hanging outside her bed room window, and we talked. I imagined us attending graduation prom. The last I saw of her was on the back of a motor cycle driven by an Easy Rider kind of guy.
My only best male friend was a heroin junky who used to shoot up in front of me. I had an older women friend, in the class graduating before mine, who I could confess my angst to, and we would talk about the colours of the rainbow in soap bubbles which got the chorus teacher on our case thinking were doing drugs. We were all doing drugs!
The people I sympathized with were the Indians, both from the pueblos and the Apache. They seemed to be strangers in their own land, outsiders in a white man's high school. I even tried out for our school's cross country team - the best in the state - with predictable disastrous result. But, I found in my fellow runners - mostly Indian - a camaraderie when they opened up to me. I was always last, out of breath in the high mountain air gasping for breath, till the others slowed down for me, to let me finish with them. Then I found out how friendly and obscene they could be behind their stoic masks. I was one of them.
One of my school friend's father was an Indian agent, and every spring he would invite his buddies on a road trip to see the Shalako dancers at Zuni Pueblo. We would hop into the back of his seatless van and take off into the evening. Arriving at last at our destination it was at first a disappointment, just a bunch of run down pueblo buildings. The sight of the sun set on Corn mountain was a relief. The real show was inside. We ran into his dad, ensconced with his Indian friends, and then off we went on an adventure. Little did I know what I was getting into.
You may have seen the Kachina dolls they sell, at sometimes phenomenal prices, but to see the real thing will take your breath away. Especially when you enter into a Zuni home that has been decorated with the families riches. The walls are covered with silver and turquoise jewelry, and the heads of animals they have hunted. A table of food has been laid out for visitors who can imbibe at will, at no cost - flat bread and venison. And then there are the drummers, old and young men, beating out a rhythm which goes on all night. In the middle of the house, in pit dug down to allow for the height of the dancer's costume, is the Shalako dancer representing one of their deities. He dances all night till morning when they have a race.
The spectators mill around, sometimes sit on the floor or in the few chairs, and talk. I just watched mesmerized by the scene out of a western movie. I didn't know it but I was one of a privileged few; they closed the dancers to outsiders in 1990. To get away from the cigarette smoke and the mesquite fires I went outside in the street where another spectacle awaited.
The Mud Men.
They were mud covered dancers who were the jesters of the night. As a counter point to the religious ceremonies Inside, they would go to different houses and relate long joke filled stores punctured by laughter from the Zuni audience. I learned later that much of what they said was obscene and libellous. But it tickled the Indian's fancy.
Farther on I wandered to the closed down church where I looked into the night sky, alone and lonely. I wondered what would become of me in the future. An existential sadness enrobed me, specially during the second trip when a guy came along with a girl I fancied. They cuddled; I fumed. Ah youth. She was the valedictorian and ended up selling real estate.
We piled back into the van and tried to sleep during the early morning ride back home. To this day, the smoke of mesquite will instantly evoke those nights in the Zuni pueblo. My teenage angst combined with the mysteries of what I was witnessing comes back to me. And the wonder.
The next day I left the hotel, and got on a plane to Las Vegas where I worked for 3 days during a medical meeting drawing anatomy on models. That is where my life had led me, strangely enough…drawing on dancers.
