Tidbits of Nothingness: Volume 2

By David Trussell

This second volume from Trussell contains more than poetry in the modern sense. There are travels and tales documented as well as tidbits of nothingness. These pieces range widely in form: poems to journal entries; lyrics to prose; made on recordings and furniture as well as pages analogue and digital. The words resting between these covers have come home from being sung in bars, whispered on pillows, composed to strangers in squats, inked on tables and walls, hammered on typewriter ribbon and thumbed on phones. Readying them to reawaken from the page has been a difficult delight. Finding the hidden forms in the aesthetic of reality demands no less…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Firchlis Ltd
• Release date: Jan 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781916872080

Book preview

Preface

There is this pervasive ideal that all literature is only linear. As if the story that needs to be told runs from beginning to end, with character development and exposition in tow. I am not sorry; life does not work that way. While the years pass one to another, a person’s story inside that time is full of circles, straights, peaks, and valleys. None of which are attached to a formula of finality. When the idea of crafting stories started for me, it started with one of life’s greatest tools, a lie.

I was a child. My loving mother had me in a daycare owned by a refugee of the Prague Spring. Dosta Glass married an American soldier from south Mississippi while living in England. When she relocated to his hometown of Gautier, she started the business. It was only in her nature to take care of children.

One day I was sitting next to her while she held an infant and sang a lullaby to it in her native tongue. When she was done, she looked up and into the past. I watched her face change. The brightness that was her dulled, and the pain of somewhere else took hold. The wrinkles around her eyes got hard and shadows appeared between their peaks. I asked her what was wrong.

I regret I never taught my kids how to speak Czech she said. I didn’t know then that the first step to the loss of one’s heritage is the loss of one’s language. While I didn’t understand why she was sad, I did know what sadness was. I will never forget her face that day.

I can’t say this was the reason for my first crafted story (or lie) but I think it taught me well enough our histories can be stripped from us regardless of circumstance. Also, that sometimes a good story will distract those going through such loss to forget, even for just a moment, their own lies. Still needed to get them through the hell their life once was. So. This is the lie I told.

I was crying at the end of recess, simply to draw attention. One of the younger women watching over us came to me and asked what was wrong. I said I could only tell Mrs. Glass. In her office I ‘confided’ that my name was not David… That it was, actually, Scott.

What do you mean? Mrs. Glass asked.

This is when I really stepped up the craft to sell the story. Sobbingly I continued,

My mom witnessed a murder when we lived in Chicago, so we had to be put into witness protection.

Don’t say another word, you poor boy. Just calm down and when you can, go back and play with the other kids like nothing is wrong said Mrs Glass. She had the young woman get a wet rag to put on my face. Then Dosta Glass held me like I was the refugee who’d had my history stolen.

When my mother came to pick me up after her work at the shipyard, she was pulled into the office immediately by the young woman privy to the story, who went off to fetch Mrs. Glass. Within a few moments Mrs. Glass entered, showing all the patience and resolve of someone that had survived a horror and would never let anyone else’s secret go. My mother asked what was going on and if I was ok.

David or ‘Scott’ told us what happened, and we will never tell anyone your secret… said Mrs. Glass

Scott? What did David tell you? my mother demanded. Mrs. Glass recounted the saga I had given her so convincingly. My mother was beside