Unto

By Timothy J Swann

Unto is a novella of love, loss and redemption. It tells the tale of The Wanderer, a man who only exists by telling his tale of lost love, and a world where the future is bleeding into the present and many impossible things are becoming possible.

It was originally written by hand in a notebook, with a mix of line-broken poetic sections and prose sections, alternating by notebook page.

It was, or at least became, set in the world of Reason, the novel I wrote ten years ago, and that's why I'm releasing it today on that anniversary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timothy J Swann
• Release date: Aug 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301414499

Timothy J Swann

Writer of poems and stories in many forms. Assistant Psychologist. Christian. Co-host of the Psycomedia podcast http://psycomedia.wordpress.com

Book preview

Unto

Timothy J Swann

Published by Timothy J Swann at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Timothy J Swann

The Wanderer

When you get to the place past poetry

I left

Without drawing a line of destination

Americans have stairs to go down

City to city to city

The happy constant of dull-eyed regret

I’m so tired

But no amount of sleep in anonymous hotel beds

Has even given me back my lost energy.

Scotch is my drink.

Scotch, ice, sorrow, stories.

My own. My own over and over without alteration because it cannot continue

Like someone running down a staircase trying to put their foot through the floor when they reach the bottom.

The Wanderer shivers in the June air – though to him it seems ever October, the month of the Anniversary, the worst time of year. He’d learnt how to subsist on junk food – taking in as many calories as he could in the few bites possible before the nausea of his evisceration halted him. No cigarettes. He was so alienated from his body that he didn’t feel any craving unrelated to hunger, and he always knew there was an ulterior emotion there. His only compulsion was to be. To exist as the Wanderer, an urban legend easily believable as he mutters to himself −

Perception is magnitude.

The bar looks satisfactory. Peace and understanding were easy to find, but of course, and only plausible in that regard, no consolation.

I embrace the silence of loneliness

For but a few more seconds

Inhale pollution, irony

Then descend.

The pungency reaches my nose and I take it in.

The character of unsatisfaction

Everything isn’t enough,

To go beyond everything…

That same catch,

To stall myself from

Telling the tale too soon

There’s a precise ritual to my capitulation to consummate despair.

Somewhere

In the depths

Below cellar bars,

I wish and wonder that if I came across

The right place

The magic words.

No saloon hush descends as the Wanderer enters. Who from what they might have heard of him would know his face? Across the nation, there are those who have heard his voice in the lynchpins of dying conurbations and would not recognise his face. But his voice itself, from when he gruffly requests his drink; he has command of this place. The barkeep, his pontifex of sorts, who by the solemn provision of scotch whiskey might unlock the open secret of the Wanderer, which for his travels is known and unknown, cannot be known in substance, could not be transferred in summary, only in being granted.

Am I a metaphor for the cities or are they metaphors for me?

Because in my core it’s raining

On a city of 80% unemployed,

Post-millennial noir.

It is the hour

And eon

Of my words,

"The darkness is gathered ‘round this night."

Pause.

Exhale, a sip of whiskey.

"And the stars are dim in the city."

I look them, meet gazes,

Curiosity, hostility,

Expect the unavoidable words

I am the inextricable fabric of the brewers’ hour.

Come on and say it.

Feigning nonchalance.

I know the tale I wrote for myself.

Clearly you got a story, fella, says the proprietor, fulfilling his obligation.

With your poetry and your whathow.

The first shock of the Wanderer is that though articulate, none would think him eloquent. He tells a story that doesn’t matter if it’s an obscure first-class lounge in an empty airport or an auto-workers’ dive. They know themselves bound to him and are of discomfort. The Wanderer holds a finger to his lips, and only now is the place quiet. He has them, and his words dissolve their distance.

You know how none of the stories, none of the movies every really told you the truth about love? They grasp the momentary illusion that this is a love story. It is the love story.

And maybe I feed off their reactions, maybe my needs and desires are in a mess.

"I figured. I’m not even telling a story. I might just help you remember."

At that moment, I feel an arm

Hook though mine

Blanche internally

Yet have I the safety of the story

And a body that doesn’t shiver no more.

"Start like this.

Start with feelings in your heart and confusion.

There’s the way you’re meant to be and there’s something deeper.

You can’t ignore it.

Some of us, I, embraced it, we let it take over, gave it gladly power over our selves.

Few speak of it. Few can. Everyone lives it."

For in every lie, every false façade, that is put up by will or not, there is a reality more tangible than the glass that you’re holding and the beer you’re drinking.

The Wanderer swirls his scotch idly in the glass. Yes, he has them now. But for what purpose? What does his gain from this giving of himself, feeding on predictable yet far from stereotypical reactions? He has built a life around telling the story that drove him to the road, to the darkness, that even the least experience thereof chokes him and leaves him dissociated, begging for catatonia. It is a trade-off. Each time he speaks these words, they become more solid, each time, more distant.

"So I have my specifics, my incarnation of the love that we all know.

It has taken me a long road and a continuing journey to understand how to express this properly."

And so I prepare to go back to the start

Not that I could ever

Go there.

I haven’t passed