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COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime

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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1481 » by hermes » Mon May 7, 2012 6:43 pm

you need to get a couple more people

4 players at once is crazy
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1482 » by hermes » Mon May 7, 2012 6:44 pm

miggs has a lot to say, we should all listen to him


as long as he keeps the word count to a manageable level
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1483 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 6:46 pm

Aw, tell me where my easy rider's gone.
Tell me where my easy rider's gone.
Well, (anywhere these) women always in the wrong.

Your easy rider died on the road.
Man, the easy rider died on the road.
I'm a poor boy here and ain't got nowhere to go.

There's gonna be the time that a woman don't need no man.
Well it's gonna be a time (that) a woman don't need no man.
Say, baby, shut your mouth and don't be raisin' sand.

Train I ride don't bum no coal at all.
Train I ride don't bum no coal at all.
The coal I bum everybody say is the cannonball.

I went to the depot,
I mean I went to the depot, sat my suitcase down.
The blues overtake me and the tears co me rollin' down.

Woman I love, she must be out of town.
Woman I love, man, she's outta town.
She left me this momin' with her face in a terrible frown.

I got a gal across town, she crochets all the time.
I got a gal across town, crochetin' all the time.
Sugar, you don't quit crochetin' , you're gonna lose your mind.

Say fair brown, what's the matter now?
Say fair brown, what's the matter now?
You're tryin' your best to quit me, woman, and you don't know how.
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1484 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 6:47 pm

hermes wrote:you need to get a couple more people

4 players at once is crazy



4 players at once?!?! :o :o :o :o
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1485 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 6:47 pm

hermes wrote:miggs has a lot to say, we should all listen to him


as long as he keeps the word count to a manageable level



word count :lol: that's funny
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1486 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 6:49 pm

Got three womens
Yellow, brown and black
I got three womens
Yellow, brown and black

It'll take the Governor of Georgia
To judge one of these women I like

One for in the morning
One for late at night
One for in the morning
One for late at night

I got one for noontime
To treat your old daddy right
These blues at midnight
They don't leave me till day
These blues at midnight
They don't leave me till day

I didn't have none of my three women
To drive these blues away

One is a Memphis yellow
The other is a Savannah brown
One is a Memphis yellow
The other is a Savannah brown

One is a Statesboro dark skin
She'll really turn your damper down

Now if I had listen
To what my three women said
Now if I had listen
To what my three women said

I'd been home sleeping
In a doggone feather bed
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1487 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 6:50 pm

Thanks to Blind Willie McTell for helping us reach 100 pages! Whoo! :lol:
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1488 » by Jetset » Mon May 7, 2012 7:04 pm

ib4tl
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1489 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:05 pm

cool beans, the mods have yet to get here and lock this. I know Snaq will pick up the scent of the 100th page like a shark picking up blood in the water.


In the meantime however, a cool video!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1UtsY0uZVk[/youtube]
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1490 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:06 pm

No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sink into the sacred mud, but in a few days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man came from the South and that his home had been one of those numberless villages upstream in the deeply cleft side of the mountain, where the Zend language has not been contaminated by Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. What is certain is that the grey man kissed the mud, climbed up the bank with pushing aside (probably, without feeling) the blades which were lacerating his flesh, and crawled, nauseated and bloodstained, up to the circular enclosure crowned with a stone tiger or horse, which sometimes was the color of flame and now was that of ashes. This circle was a temple which had been devoured by ancient fires, profaned by the miasmal jungle, and whose god no longer received the homage of men. The stranger stretched himself out beneath the pedestal. He was awakened by the sun high overhead. He was not astonished to find that his wounds had healed; he closed his pallid eyes and slept, not through weakness of flesh but through determination of will. He knew that this temple was the place required for his invincible intent; he knew that the incessant trees had not succeeded in strangling the ruins of another propitious temple downstream which had once belonged to gods now burned and dead; he knew that his immediate obligation was to dream. Toward midnight he was awakened by the inconsolable shriek of a bird. Tracks of bare feet, some figs and a jug warned him that the men of the region had been spying respectfully on his sleep, soliciting his protection or afraid of his magic. He felt a chill of fear, and sought out a sepulchral niche in the dilapidated wall where he concealed himself among unfamiliar leaves.

The purpose which guided him was not impossible, though supernatural. He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him in minute entirety and impose him on reality. This magic project had exhausted the entire expanse of his mind; if someone had asked him his name or to relate some event of his former life, he would not have been able to give an answer. This uninhabited, ruined temple suited him, for it is contained a minimum of visible world; the proximity of the workmen also suited him, for they took it upon themselves to provide for his frugal needs. The rice and fruit they brought him were nourishment enough for his body, which was consecrated to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.

At first, his dreams were chaotic; then in a short while they became dialectic in nature. The stranger dreamed that he was in the center of a circular amphitheater which was more or less the burnt temple; clouds of taciturn students filled the tiers of seats; the faces of the farthest ones hung at a distance of many centuries and as high as the stars, but their features were completely precise. The man lectured his pupils on anatomy, cosmography, and magic: the faces listened anxiously and tried to answer understandingly, as if they guessed the importance of that examination which would redeem one of them from his condition of empty illusion and interpolate him into the real world. Asleep or awake, the man thought over the answers of his phantoms, did not allow himself to be deceived by imposters, and in certain perplexities he sensed a growing intelligence. He was seeking a soul worthy of participating in the universe.

After nine or ten nights he understood with a certain bitterness that he could expect nothing from those pupils who accepted his doctrine passively, but that he could expect something from those who occasionally dared to oppose him. The former group, although worthy of love and affection, could not ascend to the level of individuals; the latter pre-existed to a slightly greater degree. One afternoon (now afternoons were also given over to sleep, now he was only awake for a couple hours at daybreak) he dismissed the vast illusory student body for good and kept only one pupil. He was a taciturn, sallow boy, at times intractable, and whose sharp features resembled of those of his dreamer. The brusque elimination of his fellow students did not disconcert him for long; after a few private lessons, his progress was enough to astound the teacher. Nevertheless, a catastrophe took place. One day, the man emerged from his sleep as if from a viscous desert, looked at the useless afternoon light which he immediately confused with the dawn, and understood that he had not dreamed. All that night and all day long, the intolerable lucidity of insomnia fell upon him. He tried exploring the forest, to lose his strength; among the hemlock he barely succeeded in experiencing several short snatchs of sleep, veined with fleeting, rudimentary visions that were useless. He tried to assemble the student body but scarcely had he articulated a few brief words of exhortation when it became deformed and was then erased. In his almost perpetual vigil, tears of anger burned his old eyes.

He understood that modeling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task that a man could undertake, even though he should penetrate all the enigmas of a superior and inferior order; much more difficult than weaving a rope out of sand or coining the faceless wind. He swore he would forget the enormous hallucination which had thrown him off at first, and he sought another method of work. Before putting it into execution, he spent a month recovering his strength, which had been squandered by his delirium. He abandoned all premeditation of dreaming and almost immediately succeeded in sleeping a reasonable part of each day. The few times that he had dreams during this period, he paid no attention to them. Before resuming his task, he waited until the moon's disk was perfect. Then, in the afternoon, he purified himself in the waters of the river, worshiped the planetary gods, pronounced the prescribed syllables of a mighty name, and went to sleep. He dreamed almost immediately, with his heart throbbing.

He dreamed that it was warm, secret, about the size of a clenched fist, and of a garnet color within the penumbra of a human body as yet without face or sex; during fourteen lucid nights he dreampt of it with meticulous love. Every night he perceived it more clearly. He did not touch it; he only permitted himself to witness it, to observe it, and occasionally to rectify it with a glance. He perceived it and lived it from all angles and distances. On the fourteenth night he lightly touched the pulmonary artery with his index finger, then the whole heart, outside and inside. He was satisfied with the examination. He deliberately did not dream for a night; he took up the heart again, invoked the name of a planet, and undertook the vision of another of the principle organs. Within a year he had come to the skeleton and the eyelids. The innumerable hair was perhaps the most difficult task. He dreamed an entire man--a young man, but who did not sit up or talk, who was unable to open his eyes. Night after night, the man dreamt him asleep.

In the Gnostic cosmosgonies, demiurges fashion a red Adam who cannot stand; as a clumsy, crude and elemental as this Adam of dust was the Adam of dreams forged by the wizard's nights. One afternoon, the man almost destroyed his entire work, but then changed his mind. (It would have been better had he destroyed it.) When he had exhausted all supplications to the deities of earth, he threw himself at the feet of the effigy which was perhaps a tiger or perhaps a colt and implored its unknown help. That evening, at twilight, he dreamt of the statue. He dreamt it was alive, tremulous: it was not an atrocious bastard of a tiger and a colt, but at the same time these two firey creatures and also a bull, a rose, and a storm. This multiple god revealed to him that his earthly name was Fire, and that in this circular temple (and in others like it) people had once made sacrifices to him and worshiped him, and that he would magically animate the dreamed phantom, in such a way that all creatures, except Fire itself and the dreamer, would believe to be a man of flesh and blood. He commanded that once this man had been instructed in all the rites, he should be sent to the other ruined temple whose pyramids were still standing downstream, so that some voice would glorify him in that deserted edifice. In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke.

The wizard carried out the orders he had been given. He devoted a certain length of time (which finally proved to be two years) to instructing him in the mysteries of the universe and the cult of fire. Secretly, he was pained at the idea of being separated from him. On the pretext of pedagogical necessity, each day he increased the number of hours dedicated to dreaming. He also remade the right shoulder, which was somewhat defective. At times, he was disturbed by the impression that all this had already happened . . . In general, his days were happy; when he closed his eyes, he thought: Now I will be with my son. Or, more rarely: The son I have engendered is waiting for me and will not exist if I do not go to him.

Gradually, he began accustoming him to reality. Once he ordered him to place a flag on a faraway peak. The next day the flag was fluttering on the peak. He tried other analogous experiments, each time more audacious. With a certain bitterness, he understood that his son was ready to be born--and perhaps impatient. That night he kissed him for the first time and sent him off to the other temple whose remains were turning white downstream, across many miles of inextricable jungle and marshes. Before doing this (and so that his son should never know that he was a phantom, so that he should think himself a man like any other) he destroyed in him all memory of his years of apprenticeship.

His victory and peace became blurred with boredom. In the twilight times of dusk and dawn, he would prostrate himself before the stone figure, perhaps imagining his unreal son carrying out identical rites in other circular ruins downstream; at night he no longer dreamed, or dreamed as any man does. His perceptions of the sounds and forms of the universe became somewhat pallid: his absent son was being nourished by these diminution of his soul. The purpose of his life had been fulfilled; the man remained in a kind of ecstasy. After a certain time, which some chronicles prefer to compute in years and others in decades, two oarsmen awoke him at midnight; he could not see their faces, but they spoke to him of a charmed man in a temple of the North, capable of walking on fire without burning himself. The wizard suddenly remembered the words of the god. He remembered that of all the creatures that people the earth, Fire was the only one who knew his son to be a phantom. This memory, which at first calmed him, ended by tormenting him. He feared lest his son should meditate on this abnormal privilege and by some means find out he was a mere simulacrum. Not to be a man, to be a projection of another man's dreams--what an incomparable humiliation, what madness! Any father is interested in the sons he has procreated (or permitted) out of the mere confusion of happiness; it was natural that the wizard should fear for the future of that son whom he had thought out entrail by entrail, feature by feature, in a thousand and one secret nights.

His misgivings ended abruptly, but not without certain forewarnings. First (after a long drought) a remote cloud, as light as a bird, appeared on a hill; then, toward the South, the sky took on the rose color of leopard's gums; then came clouds of smoke which rusted the metal of the nights; afterwards came the panic-stricken flight of wild animals. For what had happened many centuries before was repeating itself. The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of Fire was destroyed by fire. In a dawn without birds, the wizard saw the concentric fire licking the walls. For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the water, but then he understood that death was coming to crown his old age and absolve him from his labors. He walked toward the sheets of flame. They did not bite his flesh, they caressed him and flooded him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.
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2016: Ingram / Zubac
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1491 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:06 pm

^^^^ I highly suggest everyone reads that story. Awesome short story by an awesome author, Borges! :D
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1492 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:07 pm

"El Hijo"
Horacio Quiroga



It is a powerful summer day in Misiones with all the sun, heat, and calm the season can offer. The wilderness, fully open, feels satisfied with itself.

Like the sun, the heat, and the calm of the environment, the father also opens his heart to the wilderness.

"Be careful, chiquito," he says to his son, abbreviating in this sentence all his observations, which his son understands perfectly.

"Yes, father," the child responds, while reaching for his shotgun and slipping his cartridges into the pocket of his shirt, which he closes carefully.

"Return at lunchtime," says the father, still observing.

"Yes, father," repeats the boy.

He balances the shotgun on his hand, smiles at his father, kisses him on the head and leaves.

His father follows him with his eyes for a while and then returns to his task of the day, happy with the happiness of his little one.

He knows that his son, educated from his tender infancy in the habit and precaution of danger, can manage a rifle and hunt anything; it doesn't matter what it is. Even though he is very tall for his age, he is only thirteen years old. And it would seem like he is younger, judging by the purity of his blue eyes, still fresh with childlike surprise.

It isn't necessary for the father to raise his eyes from his work to follow the path of his son with his mind: he has crossed the red trail and walks directly to the jungle across the clearing in the forest.

To hunt in the jungle - to hunt furred game - requires more patience than what the son has. After crossing the jungle's island, his son will go around the cactus boundary and to the valley in search of doves, toucans, or perhaps a pair of herons, like the ones his friend Juan had discovered some days ago.

Alone now, the father smiles at the memory of the hunting passion of the two children. They sometimes hunt a raven, a quetzal, even, and return triumphant, Juan to his ranch with the nine millimeter rifle that he had given him, and his son to the plateau with the great Saint-Etienne shotgun, of caliber 16, quadruple lock and white gunpowder.

He was the same. At thirteen years he would have given his life to possess a shotgun. His son, at that age, possesses one now; - and the father smiles.

It isn't easy, however, for a widowed father, without other faith nor hope invested in the life of his son, to educate him like he has done, free in will, sure of the small feet and hands he has had since four years of age, conscious of the immensity of certain dangers and the weakness of his own strengths.

This father had to fight strongly against what he considered his egoism. It is so easy for a small child to miscalculate, set a foot into the emptiness, and result in the loss of a son!

Danger is always present for a man no matter his age; but the threat diminishes if, from early on, he is accustomed to his own strengths.

In this way, the father has educated his son. And to succeed, he had to resist not only his heart, but also his mental torments; because this father, of weak stomach and weak eyes, suffers, starting from some time ago, hallucinations.

He has seen, concrete in his sickness' illusions, memories of a happiness that should not spring anymore from the nothingness in which it has isolated itself. The image of his own son has not escaped this torment. He has seen him one time, rolling, covered in blood, when his son was struck by a bullet in the workshop because he smoothed the buckle of his hunting belt.

Horrible things... But today, with the shining and vivid summer day, the father, whose love for his son knows no bounds, feels happy, tranquil, and sure of the future.

At that instant, not very far away, sounds a gunshot.

"The Saint-Etienne . . ." muses the father at recognizing the detonation. "At least two doves in the jungle..."

Without paying more attention to this insignificant event, the man abstracts himself anew into his chore.

The sun, already very high, continues ascending. Wherever it wants to look - the rocks, the earth, the trees, - the air, pulsing as if in an oven, vibrates with heat. A profound buzz that fills the entire being and infuses the environment as far as the eye can see concentrates all tropical life on this hour.

The father takes a quick look at his wrist: 12 o'clock. And he lifts his eyes to the jungle.

His son should already be back. In the mutual trust that they have with each other - the father of gray hair and the child of thirteen years, - they never trick one another. When his son responds: "Yes, father," he will do as he says. He said that he would return before twelve o'clock, and his father smiled at seeing him leave.

And he hasn't returned.

The man turns to his work, exerting great effort in concentrating on his chore. It is so easy, so easy to lose your notion of time in the jungle, and to sit for awhile on the ground while you rest immobile...

Suddenly, the midday light, the tropical buzz, and the father's heart stop at what his mind had just touched upon: his son resting immobile...

Time has passed; it is 12:30. The father leaves his workshop, and supporting his hand on the mechanic bench, the memory of the crash of the bullet surfaces from his inner recollections, and instantly, for the first time in three consecutive hours, he realizes that after the boom of the Saint-Etienne, he has heard nothing more. His son has not returned, and the wilderness is waiting at the border of the forest, waiting for him...

Oh! A temperate character and a blind confidence in his son's education aren't enough to escape the specter of fatality that his father, of ailing vision, sees rising from the line of the jungle. Distraction, forgetfulness, fortuitous delay: none of these insignificant motives that could slow the arrival of his son succeed in entering the father's thoughts.

One shot, only one shot has sounded, and a good while ago. After it the father has not heard a sound, hasn't seen a bird, and one sole person has not crossed the clearing to announce that upon crossing a wire, a great calamity...

Head bare and without an axe, the father goes. He rushes to the clearing in the forest, enters the jungle, skirts the line of cacti without seeing a single sign of his son.

But the wilderness continues endlessly. And after the father has traveled to the well-known hunting trails and has explored the valley in vain, he perceives the dreaded assurance that, with each step he puts forward, he brings, fatal and inexorable, the cadaver of his son.

There is no reproach, lamentably. Only the cold reality, terrible and consuming: His son has died upon crossing a...

But where, and in which part! There are so many wires there, and the jungle is so, so unclean! ...Oh, so dirty! ...It is such a small act, that he is not careful when crossing the threads with a shotgun in his hand...

The father suffocates a shout. He has seen rising into the air...Oh, it is not his son, no!... And he turns to the other side, and to the other and to the other...

Nothing can compare with the color of the complexion and anguish in his eyes. The man still has not called to his son. Even though his heart clamors for him to shout, his mouth continues to be mute. He knows well that the sole act of pronouncing the name, of calling to his son in a loud voice, will be the confession of a death...

"Chiquito!" suddenly escapes from him. And if the voice of a man of character is capable of crying, then mercifully cover your ears against the piercing anguish that resonates in that voice.

No one and nothing has responded. By the red light of the sun, grown older by ten years, the father goes looking for his son, who has just died.

"Son of mine!... Chiquito mío!..." he calls in a small voice that echoes from his core.

Already before, in plenty of happiness and peace, this father has suffered the hallucination of his son, rolling, with his forehead split open by a chromium-nickel bullet. Now, in each dark corner of the forest he sees the brilliant reflections of wire; and at the foot of a post, with a discharged shotgun at his side, he sees his...

"Chiquito!... My son!..."

The strength that can enter a poor hallucinating father at the worst nightmare also has a limit. And we feel that his hallucinations escape when he suddenly sees them flowing into a side path towards his son.

For a boy thirteen years old, it is enough to see, from fifty meters away, the expression of his father without an axe inside the jungle, quickening his pace with wet eyes.

"Chiquito..." murmurs the man. And, exhausted, he lets himself fall seated in the white sand and gathers his son's legs into his arms.

The child, embraced as such, remains standing, and upon understanding the pain in his father, he caresses the bowed head slowly:

"Poor papa..."

In the end, time has passed. It is already three o'clock. Together, now, the father and the son begin their return to the house.

"Why didn't you look at the sun to figure out the time?..." murmurs the first.

"I did, father... But when I started to return home I saw Juan's herons and I followed them..."

"What you put me through, chiquito!..."

"Papi..." the boy also murmurs.

After a long silence:

"And the herons, did you kill them?" asks the father.

"No..."

An unimportant detail, after everything. Under the sky and the hot air, the soft light in the clearing of the forest, the man returns to the house with his son, whose shoulders, almost as tall as his, carry the happy arm of his father. He returns drenched in sweat, and even though his body and his soul cry out in sorrow, he smiles of happiness...

--------

He smiles of a hallucinatory happiness... Well the father goes alone. He found no one, and his arm is supported by emptiness. Because behind him, at the foot of the post and with legs up high, tangled in barbed wire, his beloved son lies before the sun, dead since ten in the morning.
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1493 » by Wavy Q » Mon May 7, 2012 7:08 pm

wtf Miggs
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1494 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:11 pm

Stephano wrote:wtf Miggs



I just wanted to reach 100 pages and I did. Now I just posted two short stories I read in my Latin American classes over the years, both great stories, truly thought provoking :D
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1495 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:11 pm

Image
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1496 » by Jetset » Mon May 7, 2012 7:12 pm

mods, miggs is posting stephen kings novels in the comm thread again
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1497 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:13 pm

Jetset wrote:mods, miggs is posting stephen kings novels in the comm thread again



Stephen King's??? ugh no dude
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1498 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:13 pm

Jetset wrote:mods, miggs is posting stephen kings novels in the comm thread again



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCYr_PTnyEQ[/youtube]
2014: Randle / Clarkson
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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1499 » by Wavy Q » Mon May 7, 2012 7:14 pm

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Re: COMMUNITY THREAD: Past Their Prime 

Post#1500 » by miggs » Mon May 7, 2012 7:14 pm

The Decapitated Chicken, by Horacio Quiroga

All day long the four idiot sons of the couple Mazzini-Ferraz sat on a bench in the patio. Their tongues protruded from between their lips; their eyes were dull; their mouths hung open as they turned their heads.

The patio had an earthen floor and was closed to the west by a brick wall. The bench was five feet from the wall, parallel to it, and there they sat, motionless, their gaze fastened on the bricks. As the sun went down, disappearing behind the wall, the idiots rejoiced. The blinding light was always what first gained their attention; little by little by little their eyes lighted up; finally, they would laugh uproariously, each infected by the same uneasy hilarity, staring at the sun with bestial joy, as if it were something to eat.

Other times, lined up on the bench, they hummed for hours on end, imitating the sound of the trolley. Loud noises, too, shook them from their inertia, and at those times they ran around the patio, biting their tongues and mewing. But almost always they were sunk in the somber lethargy of idiocy, passing the entire day seated on their bench, their legs hanging motionless, dampening their pants with slobber.

The oldest was twelve and the youngest eight. Their dirty and slovenly appearance was testimony to the total lack of maternal care.

These four idiots, nevertheless, had once been the joy of their parents' lives. When they had been married three months, Mazzini and Berta had oriented the self-centered love of man and wife, wife and husband, toward a more vital future: a son. What greater happiness for two people in love than that blessed consecration of an affection liberated from the vile egotism of purposeless love and -what is worse for love itself- love without any possible hope of renewal?

So thought Mazzini and Berta, and, when after fourteen months of matrimony their son arrived, they felt happiness complete. The child prospered, beautiful, radiant, for a year and a half. But one night in his twentieth month he was racked by terrible convulsions, and the following morning he no longer recognized his parents. The doctor examined him with the kind of professional attention that obviously seeks to find the cause of the illness in the infirmities of the parents.

After a few days the child's paralyzed limbs recovered their movement, but the soul, the intelligence, even instinct, were gone forever. He lay on his mother's lap, an idiot, driveling, limp, to all purposes dead.

"Son, my dearest son!" the mother sobbed over the frightful ruin of her first-born.
The father, desolate, accompanied the doctor outside.
"I can say it to you; I think it is a hopeless case. He might improve, be educated to the degree his idiocy permits, but nothing more."
"Yes! Yes...!" Mazzini assented. "But tell me: do you think it is heredity, that...?"
"As far as the paternal heredity is concerned, I told you what I thought when I saw your son. As for the mother's, there's a lung there that doesn't sound too good. I don't see anything else, but her breathing is slightly ragged. Have her thoroughly examined."

With his soul tormented by remorse, Mazzini redoubled his love for his son, the idiot child who was paying for the excesses of his grandfather. At the same time he had to console, to ceaselessly sustain Berta, who was wounded to the depths of her being by the failure of her young motherhood.

As is only natural, the couple put all their love into the hopes for another son. A son was born, and his health and the clarity of his laughter rekindled their extinguished hopes. But at eighteen months the convulsions of the first-born were repeated, and on the following morning the second son awoke an idiot.

This time the parents fell into complete despair. So it was their blood, their love, that was cursed. Especially their love. He, twenty-eight; she, twenty-two; and all their passionate tenderness had not succeeded in creating one atom of normal life. They no longer asked for beauty and intelligence as for the first born -only a son, a son like any other!

From the second disaster burst forth new flames of aching love, a mad desire to redeem once and for all the sanctity of their tenderness. Twins were born; and step by step the history of the two older brothers was repeated.

Even so, beyond the immense bitterness, Mazzini and Berta maintained great compassion for their four sons. They must wrest from the limbo of deepest animality, not their souls, lost now, but instinct itself. The boys could not swallow, move about or even sit up. They learned, finally, to walk, but they bumped into things because they took no notice of obstacles. When they were washed, they mewed and gurgled until their faces were flushed. They were animated only by food or when they saw brilliant colors or heard thunder. Then they laughed, radiant with bestial frenzy, pushing out their tongues and spewing rivers of slaver. On the other hand, they possessed a certain imitative faculty, but nothing more.

The terrifying line of descent seemed to have been ended with the twins. But with the passage of three years Mazzini and Berta once again ardently desired another child, trusting that the long interim would have appeased their destiny.

Their hopes were not satisfied. And because of this burning desire and exasperation from its lack of fulfillment, the husband and wife grew bitter. Until this time each had taken his own share of responsibility for the misery their children had caused, but hopelessness for the redemption of the four animals born to them finally created that imperious necessity to blame others that is the specific patrimony of inferior hearts.

It began with a change of pronouns: your sons. And since they intended to trap, as well as insult each other, the atmosphere became charged.

"It seems to me," Mazzini, who had just come in and was washing his hands, said to Berta, "that you could keep the boys cleaner."
As if she hadn't heard him, Berta continued reading.
"It's the first time," she replied after a pause, "I've seen you concerned about the condition of your sons."
Mazzini turned his head toward her with a forced smile.
"Our sons, I think."
"All right, our sons. Is that the way you like it?" She raised her eyes.
This time Mazzini expressed himself clearly.
"Surely you're not going to say I'm to blame, are you?"
"Oh, no!" Berta smiled to herself, very pale. "But neither am I, I imagine! That's all I needed...," she murmured.
"What? What's all you needed?"
"Well, if anyone's to blame, it isn't me, just remember that! That's what I meant."
Her husband looked at her for a moment with a brutal desire to wound her.
"Let's drop it!" he said finally, drying his hands.
"As you wish, but if you mean..."
"Berta!"
"As you wish!"

This was the first clash, and other followed. But, in the inevitable reconciliations, their souls were united in redoubled rapture and eagerness for another child.

So a daughter was born. Mazzini and Berta lived for two years with anguish as their constant companion, always expecting another disaster. It did not occur, however, and the parents focused all their contentment on their daughter, who took advantage of their indulgence to become spoiled and very badly behaved.

Although even in the later years Berta had continued to care for the four boys, after Bertita's birth she virtually ignored the other children. The very thought of them horrified her, like the memory of something atrocious she had been forced to perform. The same thing happened to Mazzini, though to a lesser degree.

Nevertheless, their souls had not found peace. Their daughter's least indisposition now unleashed -because of the terror of losing her- the bitterness created by their unsound progeny. Bile had accumulated for so long that the distended viscera spilled venom at the slightest touch. From the moment of the first poisonous quarrel Mazzini and Berta had lost respect for one another, and if there is anything to which man feels himself drawn with cruel fulfillment it is, once begun, the complete humiliation of another person. Formerly they had been restrained by their mutual failure; now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons the other had forced him to create.

With such emotions there was no longer any possibility of affection for the four boys. The servant dressed them, fed them, put them to bed, with gross brutality. She almost never bathed them. They spent most of the day facing the wall deprived of anything resembling a caress.

So Bertita celebrated her fourth birthday, and that night, as a result of the sweets her parents were incapable of denying her, the child had a slight chill and fever. And the fear of seeing her die or become an idiot opened once again the ever-present wound.

For three hours they did not speak to each other, and, as usual, Mazzini's swift pacing served as a motive.

"My God! Can't you walk more slowly? How many times...?"
"All right, I just forget. I'll stop. I don't do it on purpose."
She smiled, disdainful.
"No, no, of course I don't think that of you!"
"And I would never had believed that of you...you consumptive!"
"What! What did you say?"
"Nothing!"
"Oh, yes, I heard you say something! Look, I don't know what you said, but I swear I'd prefer anything to having a father like yours!"
Mazzini turned pale.
"At last!" he muttered between clenched teeth. "At last, viper, you've said what you've been wanting to!"
"Yes, a viper, yes! But I had healthy parents, you hear? Healthy! My father didn't die in delirium! I could have had sons like anybody else's! Those are your sons, those four!"
Mazzini exploded in his turn.
"Consumptive viper! That's what I called you, what I want to tell you! Ask him, ask the doctor who's to blame for your sons' meningitis: my father or your rotten lung? Yes, viper!"

They continued with increasing violence, until a moan from Bertita instantly sealed their lips. By one o'clock in the morning the child's light indigestion had disappeared, and, as it inevitably happens with all young married couples who have loved intensely, even for a while, they effected a reconciliation, all the more effusive for the infamy of the offenses.
A splendid day dawned, and as Berta arose she spit up blood. Her emotion and the terrible night were, without any doubt, primarily responsible. Mazzini held her in his embrace for a long while, and she cried hopelessly, but neither of them dared to say a word.

At ten, they decided that after lunch they would go out. They were pressed for time so they ordered the servant to kill a hen.

The brilliant day had drawn the idiots from their bench. So while the servant was cutting off the head of the chicken in the kitchen, bleeding it parsimoniously (Berta had learned from her mother this effective method of conserving the freshness of the meat), she thought she sensed something like breathing behind her. She turned and saw the four idiots, standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the operation with stupefaction. Red...Red...

"Senora! The boys are here in the kitchen."

Berta came in immediately; she never wanted them to set foot in the kitchen. Not even during these hours of full pardon, forgetfulness, and regained happiness could she avoid this horrible slight! Because, naturally, the more intense her raptures of love for her husband and daughter, the greater her loathing for the monsters.

"Get them out of here, Maria!" Throw them out! Throw them out, I tell you!"

The four poor little beasts, shaken and brutally shoved, went back to their bench.

After lunch, everyone went out; the servant to Buenos Aires and the couple and child for a walk among the country houses. They returned as the sun was sinking, but Berta wanted to talk for a while with her neighbors across the way. Her daughter quickly ran into the house.
In the meantime, the idiots had not moved from their bench the whole day. The sun had crossed the wall now, beginning to sink behind it, while they continued to stare at the bricks, more sluggish than ever.

Suddenly, something came between their line of vision and the wall. Their sister, tired of five hours with her parents, wanted to look around a bit on her own. She paused at the base of the wall and looked thoughtfully at its summit. She wanted to climb it; this could not be doubted. Finally she decided on a chair with the seat missing, but still she couldn't reach the top. Then she picked up a kerosene tin, and, with a fine sense of relative space, placed it upright on the chair -with which she triumphed.

The four idiots, their gaze indifferent, watched how their sister succeeded patiently in gaining her equilibrium and how, on tiptoe, she rested her neck against the top of the wall between her straining hands. They watched her search everywhere for a toehold to climb up higher.

The idiots' gaze became animated; the same insistent light fixed in all their pupils. Their eyes were fixed on their sister, as the growing sensation of bestial gluttony changed every line of their faces. Slowly they advanced toward the wall. The little girl, having succeeded in finding a toehold and about to straddle the wall and surely fall off the other side, felt herself seized by one leg. Below her, the eight eyes staring into hers frightened her.

"Let loose! Let me go!" she cried, shaking her leg, but she was captive.
"Mama! Oh, Mama! Mama, Papa!" she cried imperiously. She tried still to cling to the top of the wall but she felt herself pulled, and she fell.
"Mama, oh, Ma-----" She could cry no more. One of the boys squeezed her neck, parting her curls as if they were feathers, and the other three dragged her by one leg toward the kitchen where that morning the chicken had been bled, holding her tightly, drawing the life out of her second by second.

Mazzini, in the house across the way, thought he heard his daughter's voice.

"I think she's calling you," he said to Berta.

They listened, uneasy, but heard nothing more. Even so, a moment later they said good-by, and, while Berta went to put up her hat, Mazzini went into the patio.

"Bertita!"
No one answered.
"Bertita! He raised his already altered voice.
The silence was so funeral to his eternally terrified heart that a chill of horrible presentiment ran to his spine.
"My daughter, my daughter!" He ran frantically toward the back of the house. But as he passed by the kitchen he saw a sea of blood on the floor. he violently pushed open the half-closed door and uttered a cry of horror. Berta, who had already started running when she heard Mazzini's anguished call, cried out too. But as she rushed toward the kitchen, Mazzini, livid as death, stood in her way, holding her back.
"Don't go in. Don't go in!"

But Berta had seen the blood-covered floor. She could only utter a hoarse cry, throw her arms above her head, and, leaning against her husband, sink slowly to the floor.
2014: Randle / Clarkson
2015: Russell / Nance
2016: Ingram / Zubac
2017: Top 3 Pick? :nod: Fultz, Ball or Bust

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