Nemonymous
08-04-2008, 10:42 AM
Written today and first published here.
Mind The Gap
by DF Lewis
Snap!
When a photograph was taken of the puppet it seemed fleetingly to become a natural human being as it posed for posterity. Before and after this split second gap of secondhand time during which the puppet was thus exposed, it had strutted stiltedly upon its strings proud of its own potential ability or eventual achievement to fool a camera with a real human gap between two puppet minds.
Hadrian loved his puppet. He had been told by his Mum that it was much older than him. It felt to him better than any imaginary friend even though imaginary friends were often more flexible in what you could do with them than toys (such as puppets) were. But Hadrian’s puppet was not really a toy. It was an antique that, if auctioned, would likely prove to be quite valuable.
Only Hadrian was still young enough to recognise a puppet in two, even three, minds. It was when eager cousins jealous of his puppet or other grown-ups with axes to grind took photographs of it that its strings disappeared and its china face chimed with an expression so human you knew it was human. It was almost as if it enjoyed being catalogued. It knew it was a fine specimen of puppetry. And it must have known that to possess (if fleetingly) the ability to discard its own puppet essence was intrinsic to being a perfect puppet in the first place.
One cousin – by the name of Geraldine – grew up quicker than Hadrian, even though they both started at roughly the same time as human beings.
“Girls mature quicker than boys,” said Hadrian’s Mum, as if that explained the mystery of the universe and why puppets were passed down the ages between shuttling turns of children rather than retained by one’s own eventually grown-up self.
“Do boys ma-chewer in slo-mo, then?” asked Hadrian, having once watched a laboured replay of a soccer goal on TV to see if it had been a goal at all.
Eventually, it was Geraldine – lately aware of her own sexuality quite beyond the reach of Hadrian’s – who kept the TV as a running thought: “The Antiques Roadshow is coming next week – why don’t we take it along to see how valuable it is?”
She did not say the puppet’s name, Hadrian assumed, in case it heard her. The girl’s eyes abruptly blinked as if to take in the whole room in one abortive childish gulp. But Geraldine had lost the art of childishness. She did not even approach Hadrian’s sensitiveness in dreading the negative exposure of his puppet for more than just a moment...
Hadrian dreamt that night of maturing toys. It was a cruel experience of uglification and be-hairing.
When he grew up he became a photo-journalist. He once took the now famous photograph of a foreign peasant child as it was being tortured by enemy forces. And he never really forgave himself for not personally intervening earlier – the split second that may have proved the difference between life and death. But he failed to gauge the length otherwise of the child’s pain or through which narrow channels such pain might always have been destined to pass, had things been different.
This might have been a long story of love and achievement. Not about Hadrian, but about that peasant child. Or I might one day venture the story of Geraldine's life, but someone needs to tell me it first. I hope she was at least happier than Hadrian ever was.
Hadrian, indeed, was the one who suffered the most pain, a pain that the strings he managed to conjure up from the sky could scarcely relieve. He felt them tease ... and tense or ease ... then tangle...
His imaginary friends were ever upon stilts along the surrounding misty horizons of his encroaching death. And all his cousins were already dead.
Mind The Gap
by DF Lewis
Snap!
When a photograph was taken of the puppet it seemed fleetingly to become a natural human being as it posed for posterity. Before and after this split second gap of secondhand time during which the puppet was thus exposed, it had strutted stiltedly upon its strings proud of its own potential ability or eventual achievement to fool a camera with a real human gap between two puppet minds.
Hadrian loved his puppet. He had been told by his Mum that it was much older than him. It felt to him better than any imaginary friend even though imaginary friends were often more flexible in what you could do with them than toys (such as puppets) were. But Hadrian’s puppet was not really a toy. It was an antique that, if auctioned, would likely prove to be quite valuable.
Only Hadrian was still young enough to recognise a puppet in two, even three, minds. It was when eager cousins jealous of his puppet or other grown-ups with axes to grind took photographs of it that its strings disappeared and its china face chimed with an expression so human you knew it was human. It was almost as if it enjoyed being catalogued. It knew it was a fine specimen of puppetry. And it must have known that to possess (if fleetingly) the ability to discard its own puppet essence was intrinsic to being a perfect puppet in the first place.
One cousin – by the name of Geraldine – grew up quicker than Hadrian, even though they both started at roughly the same time as human beings.
“Girls mature quicker than boys,” said Hadrian’s Mum, as if that explained the mystery of the universe and why puppets were passed down the ages between shuttling turns of children rather than retained by one’s own eventually grown-up self.
“Do boys ma-chewer in slo-mo, then?” asked Hadrian, having once watched a laboured replay of a soccer goal on TV to see if it had been a goal at all.
Eventually, it was Geraldine – lately aware of her own sexuality quite beyond the reach of Hadrian’s – who kept the TV as a running thought: “The Antiques Roadshow is coming next week – why don’t we take it along to see how valuable it is?”
She did not say the puppet’s name, Hadrian assumed, in case it heard her. The girl’s eyes abruptly blinked as if to take in the whole room in one abortive childish gulp. But Geraldine had lost the art of childishness. She did not even approach Hadrian’s sensitiveness in dreading the negative exposure of his puppet for more than just a moment...
Hadrian dreamt that night of maturing toys. It was a cruel experience of uglification and be-hairing.
When he grew up he became a photo-journalist. He once took the now famous photograph of a foreign peasant child as it was being tortured by enemy forces. And he never really forgave himself for not personally intervening earlier – the split second that may have proved the difference between life and death. But he failed to gauge the length otherwise of the child’s pain or through which narrow channels such pain might always have been destined to pass, had things been different.
This might have been a long story of love and achievement. Not about Hadrian, but about that peasant child. Or I might one day venture the story of Geraldine's life, but someone needs to tell me it first. I hope she was at least happier than Hadrian ever was.
Hadrian, indeed, was the one who suffered the most pain, a pain that the strings he managed to conjure up from the sky could scarcely relieve. He felt them tease ... and tense or ease ... then tangle...
His imaginary friends were ever upon stilts along the surrounding misty horizons of his encroaching death. And all his cousins were already dead.