East of the Sun and Other Stories by Dean Francis Alfar

Author:Dean Francis Alfar [Alfar, Dean Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9786210100662
Publisher: et al Books, Inc. and Flipside Publishing

Guilly Mendoza [email protected]

November 20, 2012 1:15PM

To Macks Ong [email protected]

Macks,

When we began climbing hours ago, everyone was studiously quiet—obviously because of the gravity of the situation. But you could feel the repressed excitement, especially from the mountaineers. But after we had climbed for around an hour, everyone started talking. Not just talking, but babbling about anything and everything—and you know I’m an expert in babbling.

We talked about the fact that we saw no one else—not any of the flights who went ahead of us, not any of the Concuera folk—saw no traces, no remains (which, of course, for the marines meant corpses), not a dropped piece of cloth or discarded bottle of water (we talked a lot about water too), not a shoe or a slipper or a useless cellphone (although, in fairness to the science guy who brought it up, there was no point in bringing something that had no utility). So of course I’m immediately reminded of O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and told everyone the plot of that short story, and everyone began an inventory of what they had in their backpacks, satchels, and murses (mine).

We talked about water, how we didn’t carry enough and how we wanted more. We talked about the mountaineers’ observation that it wasn’t getting harder to breathe, which we were thankful for. We talked about how the bottom of the stairs couldn’t be seen anymore and how we didn’t have a point of reference, because even the sun was hidden by clouds or the stairway itself. We talked about how nothing we had could communicate with anyone we knew below. Which led us to talking about people we knew and valued, which made me talk about you.

Macky Macks, I realize that with all the words at our disposal, we’ve scarcely said the things that matter to each other, or buried them under the ironic stylings of the hot ad copywriter and the snark of the equally hot presidential speechwriter. But this sudden Beckett self-referential vignette made me think of everything I do want to say, and how I’m going to say them, and I realized that while words make us powerful—we can describe the past and create the future—by their nature they are uncertain, only sounds that we agree have meaning. So by extension what I think I feel becomes uncertain when I utter words to describe it, which just makes me sad. But when I do see you again, after all this, when I come back, I will find a way to show you what I mean. Because in this world that is coming to an end because of words and numbers, only what is solid is true, and we are solid and true.

Gui

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