BOCA
"Nature abhors a vacuum", theorists of both philosophy and
politics assure us.
What's more, the phenomena is not confined to mere
physical science given the nature of human opportunism.
Glance a map of central Europe for further insights. One
side always replaced the other when a "common," enemy
expired.
Boca might well have studied such eventualities.
Boca was a writer. More accurately, a "touch-dancer" with
the written phrase, deftly painting the catchy one-liner with
effortless ease and grace. Boca knew his craft, be it the
arena of story, poem, drama, (it didn't matter the genre).
Unfortunately, his oeuvre remained fixed and static. Boca
never progressed beyond titles.
"A right, jolly good thing, too", said Boca in his own
defense.
The short burst counted most, whether in thought, sport or
field of battle. The utterance of a single breath. That was
it! It all lay in the aside, the pun, a retort, the récit. If this
were all to the story, there would be no doubt whatsoever;
Boca excelled.
"In the briefest expression, perhaps", said the critics. But,
as they were quick to point out, it didn't lead "anywhere".
"Where is the larger, more important fruit? His finished
verbal passion?", intoned one.
Still, this chance fortune led to the inspiration (and success)
of unusually vivid titles.
But ... titles? Just "titles", said others nervously? Yes,
proclaimed Boca. Titles. Not epithets, or rejoinders,
cat-calls even repartee.
Not even wit in the normal understanding of the term. Just
mere titles. Bushel-baskets of them. Worried looks crept
onto the onlookers' faces.
Encyclopaedic came the flowering. Ad factories should
have tapped such a larder. Any creative department could
have done worse than with Boca's dripping imagery and gift
for the keynote phrase.
"There is majesty here", said one, "and more than a little
Blake. I am reminded of the great symbolists."
"One has to be practical", cautioned still another. "What's
here is hardly epigrammatic or even purely an aphorism in
any truer sense of the word."
"I'm simply perplexed", said the man finally to his
colleague and both left without further ado or thought to
Boca's work.
Indeed Boca loved his words, tinkering with the very
essence of language.
"A great beginning", cheered a rare voice. "Let's hope one
without premature end."
Boca continued to conceive titles by the hundreds. He
didn't merely dream up a few, in snatches, he proliferated
them in vaster and vaster quantities. It was if a salmon left
to spawn could endanger a sea shelf or river bed under the
sheer quantity of her seed.
"A one-man explosion at the typewriter", chortled an
onlooker, happening to see the quantity of Boca's largesse.
That was before he stopped to inquire of the nature of
Boca's work. Then perturbed, this same man hurried away
to the utter indifference of Boca who kept a steady
pounding in spite of the interruption.
On they came. More and more titles. By the hundreds--
for scripts, larger dramas, treatises, epistles, monologues.
All. And all without a scarce concern for their ultimate use.
Are we to believe each one came to naught as the sceptics
predicted? After all, in this practical world who has use for
dreamers? We already know Boca was stymied at the title
level. Nothing ever graced his newborn creation beyond
that first utterance. It was like sending a baby into the
world without proper bedding or clothes.
One nastier commentator even alluded to Boca's work as
the equivalent of premature ejaculation. All buildup with
no satisfaction. "The promise", he chuckled, "without the
delivery".
And that is what came to pass.
Each of Boca's titles, true to prediction, came to "naught"
or, rather, nothing much. Blank. A zero. With each "title"
one ran aground on the larger abyss of its central problem.
That being, as Boca had been warned by his legion of
critics, "one of size".
What good are titles without textual description, chapters,
scenes, the "overview?" said one literary agent gruffly.
Boca, taking a respite from his typewriter, had had the
temerity to approach one such man in the comfort of his
office with reams of suggestions.
Indeed.
People shook their heads at Boca always scribbling
furiously. Always working but apparently accomplishing
precious next to nothing. "Something" was evidently being
done in the strictest sense of the word, but what? What?
"Could his ... well, problem be explained?" one vocal
opponent of Boca urged.
"What the hell is he up to?"
Strangely enough, for the seemingly longest time this did
not deter Boca. He was his own universe. His feet were
on solid ground. The air about him teemed with ideas. He
was too busy fishing for the "mot juste", he explained in
a moment of clarification.
"One man in the right is a majority", proclaimed Boca,
remembering a snippet of John Stuart Mill.
Too busy was Boca replanning the structure of the
Colosseum so it might better accommodate his label, his
notion, his re-christened version of the ideal verbal escort
to accompany that ancient edifice.
And write Boca did. Titles fell increasingly from his pen.
"The Barking Tree."
"The Leaking River."
These were but two. Boca thought he would improve on
Tolkein's efforts, at least in the direction of title. After all,
to send a work into the reader's lap without proper
introduction was like trying to get acquainted without the
proper introduction.
Maybe Boca had a point.
"Assembly without Hope" and "Nirvana without End"
touched on his mystical stage. He dropped this and
proceeded into the area of historiography. And afterwards,
dry epistemology would see him concentrate his efforts.
These forums were indeed worthy of his attention. Too
long had they been neglected. All were in need of good,
metaphoric dusting by title.
At last word, Boca was inching toward Kant's, "Critique of
Pure Reason".
"That one, in particular, has a poor ring", he was heard to
say.
On they came. Precise. Hard-hitting, or so he thought.
They made the mind's eye swell with the promise of more
and more. Indeed, that "eye" could get bloodshot reading
all of Boca's interception.
But the "more" in the sense of the follow-up, the "delivery"
or accompaniment of pages never came.
Nowhere was there to be found the Hemingway to follow
the "Moveable Feast".
Or "The Edible Woman".
Even the promise of thrillers for a scary submarine epic like
"Three Eggs on my Plate" never materialized.
Nothing. Just titles. More, then more and increasingly
more of them. Annoyingly so. Scraps of paper decorating
a table without an intended victim ever coming close.
It was as if so many salesgirls had left price tags off
matching merchandise. That's all that remained. Just the
stickers forlornly, white and detached, staring up from their
adhesiveness.
More than just a little tacky.
A woman given to comparison confronted Boca.
"Imagine a zoo where the curators had all the animal
names, but they were not paired with their owners. That's
your stuff. Everything in a weird isolation."
Boca could not be Borca and not even Carl Sagan could
rescue him. No large bottles floating in formaldehyde with
the decapitated heads from Belle Epoque sailors were
possible here.
Boca was more obscure than Gaspirilla Island. More so.
And a final verdict, if there is need for one, can be seen in
Boca's last will and testimony.
He let it be known of his intention to chisel the "ultimate"
one-liner. One to grace his own tombstone. On this he set
to work with a last burst of frenzy.
"To mirror my tragic-comic fate", as he would have said.
Perhaps Boca is still at work, either on the snappy final
wording ("the right elasticity") or in the mechanics of the
engraving itself.
Only a stone-cutter could estimate the probable expenditure
in time for the latter.
Novelists in dire need of fresh insights should enlist Boca.
He's definitely available, if difficult to reach.
Boca might have rescued many a masterpiece from the
dustbin, if not the Box Office, had his specialty been
known.
I look at Boca and hear fire bells. His plight remains the
very stuff of tragedy. By epic standards, how many Bocas
are there worthy of a balladeer and myth maker? Credible
Boca may be, but understandable?
Boca, the metaphoric equivalent of a Sisyphus chained to
his rock of obsession.
"This horrible rock", (or pebble depending on your
viewpoint), wailed Boca.
"I've become my own obstacle, my work is the
personification of my own limitation."
Worse, imprisoned in an inescapable logic and the narrow
confines of a blink of talent.
[76]
WORK IN PROGRESS
Two Chinese fellows approached me in a London suburb.
They were eager for talk.
"Karl Marx's tomb," they implored, "directions to the tomb,
please." They were pronouncing "tomb" as if it rhymed with home.
Suited up in their Mao jackets and identically dressed
without hint to rank or station, they struck me as strangely
odd even on the thoroughfares of a metropolitan city. I had
noticed they wore no green armband common to other
Communist dignitaries.
The smaller of the two became insistent.
I nodded and smiled at the mention of Marx's name for it
was Highgate and, yes, he was interred in the rambling
cemetery near by. Yes, I had visited the grave but was no
means clear it was a grave they had come all this way to
visit.
They were shy but puzzled at my redirection of their query.
I pointed out there was no "home" as they were
pronouncing it, but, only a "grave".
It was then that their enunciation and the silent murder of
the letter "T" came back to me. Like the Cockney unable
to say "h" in elocution class, their confusion was furthered
by knowing only one word for "final resting place." My
own use of grave was causing them grave concern.
They were looking curiously at one another. I doubt if they
had ever heard North American accented English. I might
have been their first authentic "American," short of a
simulated war games exercise. Certainly, though all cities
are polyglots, I had never seen two so authentically attired
citizens of "The People's Republic."
It was an amusing moment, life with the sang-froid
of the unspoken.
I gave them their dues. They had their directions. They
pranced off smartly and melted into the morning traffic.
And I thought of trying to explain that Marx, at least
in unofficial circles here, is not considered with their same
deference.
"I'm sorry if this jars with what you've been told, Wu."
"And no, this is not counter-revolutionary lies. The truth is,
Mr. Han, Marx was ... a chiseler. He died owing nearly
every wage earner in The Village."
Talk of irony and final verdicts. How one who numbers
among the age's savants could so brazenly ignore such hard
economic fact seemed incredible to me. Skulduggery aside,
such a thing, even if only partially true, would be scant
tribute to the fabled man. I thought of the British
Museum's collection of his writings, then remembered it
mentioned nothing of this fact. Glowing tributes, of course,
but no unofficial flack.
And I thought of the possibility of a third world war being,
in part, based on this development. Marx's embitterment,
that is his inability to pay even the most modest debt
through his writing. And should there ever come another
global catastrophe, I imagined how Marx would extend his
wrath.
At the doctrine of dialectic materialism's doorstep. Between
the incompatibility of work and her governing classes.
Exportable revolution. The decadent bourgeoisie struggling
to maintain their stranglehold on comfort. The Gospel
completely according to Karl.
That would be without considering the question of Marx's
alleged incest with his daughter. But, then, most everything
in the Marx story is "alleged." The alleged politics of
confrontation. The alleged incompatibility of those who toil
with their rulers. The alleged inertia of labourers even to
the degree of their exploitation. And, yes, the alleged
superiority of any one system over another.
Of course reference would be made to the irony of Marx
being buried and remaining interred throughout the years in
one of the most class conscious nations on earth.
Where every accent and syllable decrees one's station in
life.
Where every utterance labels the speaker according to rank
and social standing by rigid calling.
I thought of myself discussing such things with the
perturbed, yet unmovable ideologues of the People's
Democratic Republic of China.
Did they know Marx's friend and colleague, Engels, kept a
mistress? Did they care that Marx disapproved?
Imagine using the word "grave" in the same breath as
"grave offence" to discuss incest. Glib moralizing, the
trumpet of the bourgeoisie! I seem to remember Lenin's
disdainful "no omelettes with first cracking the eggs."
Perhaps all communication is claptrap.
All these fellows wanted were directions.
Their minds were made up.
They were attending a secular church, walking in
the footsteps of an earthbound saint. No amount of revisionist
thinking could deflect, in their eyes, Marxian achievement.
And you had to give Marx certain dues. That before people
are capable of aspiring to work, they must first be fed. And
all contacts, within life, must inevitably come through and
be restricted by, how one has chosen to make that daily
bread. Or, in Marx's words, how one is prevented from
advancing by artificial class barriers. Precisely.
Poles apart. Worlds away.
The two Chinese chaps and I were living proof of that.
I wondered if they would have been interested in seeing the
Dicken's plaque nearby. The novelist, too, had stayed only
a street away. Little Dorritt would have been pleased even
if the jury is still out on which thinker alerted the world
most to the evils of uncontrolled profit.
I for one, care little for the revolutionary proletariat or
repudiated communist dogma but I do like to eat. Marx
made his point.
[84]
HARDCASES
I dreamed my toenails
were ivory
and elephants came to trade for tusks
... Then went conveniently off to die
("shed this mortal coil") in a
cutter-shed stacked high
like firewood.
II
I dreamed Landover, Maryland
was the site near the
Pentagon. People got wind of
the scheme and grew intrigued.
Twigs shattered in the moonlight
as curious onlookers tried
to peek-a-boo into the shed.
III
Raisins were left out
to dry as
token offerings.
IV
Mafioso members and other hardcases
wanted to elbow in
but stiff military types
eminently incorruptible, said
"no dice" made, naturally,
of ivory turned a
deadly nightshade of
twilight toenail blue.
V
Umber became my colour
(and trademark) along with the mandatory ebony.
VI
Out-of-work seasonal elves,
dwarfs and the occasional
circus midget shoe-horned in.
VII
Nothing remained of the earlier raisins as
a variety of greedy misfits
pocketed the tributes.
VIII
The North Pole beckoned,
heightened consciousness and
sensitivity groups against
demeaning and negative stereotypes
routed the Barnum and Baileys'
dwarfs and midgets.
IX
A pile of cinders and
grey-glow embers
paused to remain
after boycotting
exposed the great
toe-nail giveaway sham.
X
Reportedly, the Devil has a toe-nail
chair in Hell.
This common, medieval belief
lingers into macumba, voodoo and
loa-spirit trees.
XI
Who wants,
after all,
discarded body parts
brought to such an ignoble
end? The intriguing thing
is in the witchery, smoke 'n mirrors
world of Obeah, toenails are
prized much like the greying
Information Age values
organ transplants for an
aging population.
XII
Medieval really.
Nothing the body profuses
is really evil,
only our intent.
XIII
Should a fly symbolizing
havoc, despair and filth
fall into Holy Water,
the detested fly not
does pollute the sacred vessel.
XIV
Modern fitness buffs full-circle
with gleaming sweat-stained temples
"glistening" with, what else,
moisture.
[88]