Since Last We Spoke

By J. K. Mactavish

Selected works 2015-21. Past prose and poetry to make room for fresh woods and pastures new.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. K. Mactavish
• Release date: Mar 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005016623

J. K. Mactavish

Autobiography, not to mention biography, does not reflect a trusted answer to the question, "Who am I?" ("Who is he?" from your perspective). That's the question, right?However, if I put out for you what my experience of (fill in the word or words) is, then at least you can create your internal experience of some close approximation of what it is like to be me; and in this you will have one response, not answer, to the "picture of his life" question. But, who cares about surface appearances? that I have medical records in six languages? an excess of ex-wives? a beloved dog I take walks with in central Italy? So what, right?Thus in lieu of wasted words here, read me. Start with poetry and then go to the blogs if you must, and then on to the experiment, Paul Eh-em and his story. Given the premise above, you will find big parts of me. If you are not interested in or don't get this writing-is-phenomenology thing, at least you may find some amusement and diversion deep within worlds where I sincerely hope and trust you will find--most importantly--a reflection of . . .

Book preview

PREFACE

Poetry has been about words and spatial edifices composed to gaze upon, decode, inspect, and ponder. Fictional prose has been about imagined worlds presented in allusive and rich language. Not so different one from the other, eh?

Thus my apology for this mixed salad of writings I consider done--because if I don't place each form in so called final copy, I will forever fiddle with it. My second thus is that I would have closure on these imperfect specimens and move to fresh woods and pastures new.

I write to learn, discover, and practice, that is to visit and re-visit what calls or intrigues me, or might after having grappled with the blueprint as well as too many successive drafts of what I am trying to say, that is to uncover. This often makes for mangled thoughts and melanged images as well as contorted text. Despite these flaws, or an inability to do it better, this collection is a sample of what I am willing to set aside at this point and lay bare.

I am sorry for any seeming promise this pile of words may cause, as well again the many and noticeable imperfections in choice and combination. I write for me, and so you may cast away after picking up what at first appeared to suggest but failed to yield greater value. In short, let imperfect understandings suffice and silent applause be thanks if due.

J. K. Mactavish, Petrovice I, Czech Republic, 10.02.22

DEDICATION*

To my son Bret and granddaughter Brenna: If there be any profit in anything I have written here or elsewhere, please milk it to the max.

___

*Several works included in this collection are dedicated to people I also hold dear. That someone dear is not referenced or alluded to does not subtract the affection I have for you, and will always.

FOREWORD

Hell with Socrates*

Humbly I till the garden of letters,

seeds and seeming fruit, some flowers

ripe enough for picking or peering at.

For my re-creation and amusement,

they are my well-intentioned memorials,

my protest against the day's dying light.

And if social stuff's not my call,

or house to house my words and private

thoughts un-shared with un-named others,

I care not, for first I mean: Do not let go.

Thus I tend which words I'll find in ordered rows,

their slow growth and interweaving and interleaving.

This is my past time where todays are spent.

If by chance my son or daughter, another beloved stops by

to see and savor, know that my works

were in truth not for me and not just mine.

They are touchstones against forgetting who we are,

and who I was.

___

*I have lost why I titled this piece as it appears; probably I was moved by something I read about the experience of being in the world. Today it functions as apt foreword to the would-arts that follow.

PROSE

Excerpts from an unfinished novel with the title, Johnnie Passnstyle, A Novel Verbatim.

CONTEXT

Background for excerpts that follow.

1. This is a sketch of an unfinished novel as conceived sometime before 2017.

A young woman's journey to redemption, or to the realization of her true self revealed in part in conversations past and stitched together into a dra-moir. Ostensibly she wishes to fend off painful memories and intimacies as well as prosecution for a crime she believes she has committed. Her wealth, beauty, talents, and fate won't help her. Surrendering to who she is to a cast of other characters along with getting caught will, as will other clandestine acts to overcome a troubled youth, or just to become, mostly, like everyone else, herself, and a precious person.

2. Johnnie can recall conversations verbatim she has had or witnessed. What it is like to be able to do this, to do it, and to compartmentalize via transcriptions to gain psychic distance from the memorable and painful make for a kind of drama-memoir, or novel, as the case may be. She has trouble finding a voice to write the account herself, and so the fragments she keeps in a box with her journals provide an outline of a period in her life when she resolved a problem of undeserved guilt and found an opportunity to embrace a way to help others. She employs other voices, or they show up to complete the narrative and bring her to the life she was preparing to lead.

CHORAL VOICES

Johnnie's trove-box

Papers and notebooks I weighed in my hands,

me against them in life's scale yes 'nd no.

Did one or other sway me in this land?

Then arms held out in praying thus just so,

my detris did not with some wise voice speak

of worth of efforts to forget thus -give.

Silence the undigested lot did eke.

No rest or resolve, nor did Deus say, 'Live.'

I put the bundle back into the box,

a thin female paste board over its mate,

hiding a word surge with no need for locks,

sleeping seeds till daylight and time seals fate

that again would visit me still in rhyme--

I dismissed them and the light of their days.

Out of my hands and ineptitude times

till seasons for blooms blooming in sun's rays.

The stuff on the shelf could rest there in peace:

My work always starting and never done.

Some small good in the world to other's ease--

I need not rush seeing a setting sun.

Preface

She said she didn't, but past mornings and through their mists and border lands when figures floated in and out of focus and onlookers could but vaguely see objects they could project their selves upon and reject or embrace, she did too, covet that is, and found only the self same rebel to fight with between grievance and future states that would never come? could of their own accord never come; and so the young girl's earnest hopes and wishes found their sustenance in literary and bookish things and mere accidents in an impersonal world of arbitrarily named things. Yes, objects she and all became till she cared too much to avoid a fall, indiscretion really, from whence resurrections and fate, and fortunes actually, come.

To the fires first, the first to deceive before you discover in mirrors just exactly whom you have tried to dupe.

This preface is a kind of precis. Johnnie Passnstyle's memoir, call it, teaches her that all that she endured and tried to ensure leads her to her truer self, not so different from who she was at the beginning. Even though one has a troubled early life, stunning looks, wealth and extraordinary luck and opportunities, and the best of intentions, fate, some say fortune, happens. Does that mean the story ends there and happily? Not always, so in this case . . . read on.

Prologue

She and her tapes were as a ruse.

They did not do what Johnnie would,

but brought a caller asking 'bout:

Who was that female Robin Hood?

Before these things can come to pass

we must decide tragedy true?

where such deceit she fells the house.

Or comedy well ends the plot.

We set the stage for New York scenes.

Attend.

The ruse

She plied him and prompted to tape and tell,

to erase suspicion 'gainst him and her.

To police she'd go, a heroine shell.

Mark did not kill her beloved Edgar.

He spilled his each and ev'ry fessing word--

all text and traces, words to slip wholesale.

The tapes cleansed her memory what she heard.

Pity she o'erlooked her own in that gale.

Thus with a careful and concluding step

to exoner, their innocence en-sate.

It fired back on her, soon the subject,

the mistress-mind in danger of a mate.

Enough we've woven now--players have their prompt. So let's proceed with this talk-paced romp.

Johnnie taped Mark to submit transcripts to the police to distract them from Mark and herself as having hands in the death of Edgar, Johnnie's friend and second benefactor. Instead, the suspicious tapes prompted a policeman to her Nevada retreat asking questions, in part about her giving traceable money to Mark and his girlfriend. All intrigue took place in New York City. The policeman, Richard, is conflicted--Johnnie's pleasing appearance versus possible complicity. Johnnie demurs on both counts, unresponsive to Richard's confession of a crush and silent about her hand in Edgar's suicide, a death for which she feels responsible.

Talk-paced romp

Stories stand alone, so they're true but false,

for truth complete all things are affected.

We never get to see or hear defaults.

Thus Johnnie her charms they seem perfected.

That aside and purgatory's over,

she post-fortune those snapshots in her lap

possessed by charms thick in Babu's folder.

Each story, lesson's object, has a gap.

Nothing to do, or take the project on--

there is no other able volunteer

to uncover truths or discern a con.

Yet was that her calling, her true career?

Others pick up where they create new facts.

Death ends intents before perfected acts,

or stop what's doing given such choices.

No motive more than an epiphany,

one and only she would live with.

Thus re-framing for time passeth our understanding

the peace of God. And if you don't know god, what then?

Johnnie tells her story in part by producing conversations recorded verbatim from memory (she has this gift or curse). However, aside from storytelling and the therapeutic value she finds in early life by externalizing what she has in perfect audio-memory, we have but partial