Forgive Us Our Debts (an excerpt)
by Thomas ShadeThis is the act of a desperate man. I'm not certain that the acts of the desperate can ever be entirely Pure, but I offer this as a prayer: a prayer of Purity. Which reminds me of a poem I wrote while I was in the hospital:
Prayer of prayers
Layer of traps
And Loops and loops.
Here they come now!
And how they pray
The prey, that is,
When they get the drift.
Unfortunately, it never appeared in the New Yorker or The Paris Review, but I share it with you now as a show of good faith. I know how good it is. I wrote it.
My plan is to write a book and have someone say of it: "This almost endless, overwhelming work immediately horrified the world," as Maurice Blanchot said of De Sade's Justine. Maybe I can get my friend Jason to say it of this, my Prayer, my little masterpiece. Or: "Any girl who reads a single page of this book will be lost" - Rosseau (not the painter), regarding Justine again. Come on....
* * * * *
Hands tucked in the pockets of my jacket, head down, mustering an ominous urban face, walking quickly past the restaurant I plan to rob as soon as I get my plan tightened up. There is a snap of cold in the air. It is the first week of October and the world is damp and orange, with the last gasps of green peeking through. A man on the radio said this dank, heavy coolness could last all week. I hope it does: it feels like Portland, although I have never been there.
I got home and got high as the moon and took off all my clothes and put on my $200 headphones and listened to the Flaming Lips, and it was like the orbs were lining up and the spheres were howling in the Realm of Light and - there! - a tension and a tug, a quickening in my loins, rising up like the Flag of Iwo Jima, like the very Eye of God, the pulsating, unblinking visage of the Almighty: Behold! Behold! Behold!!!
Which is when I opened my eyes. I don't know how long the stringy Mexican workmen had been standing there. Not long, I'm sure: they wore looks of blind horror and panic, frozen in the heart of a disaster unfolding too quickly to comprehend. There was a clap of thunder in my head and a ringing in my ears. I ripped the headphones off, gasping, sitting up, trying to scream - purple stars in my eyes - and I felt myself lifted out of my body, looking down from above at myself, a white whale on land and two men cowering with Real Fear, clutching a red toolbox....
* * * * *
Roadway exits and highway signs that point away from the truth; the birth and the death of Reason; the history of the world in a slice of pecan pie.
My friend N--- would tell the story of the moth that was trying to fly to the moon. So many candles to be distracted by, so many streetlamps and bonfires - could he ever hope to make it? Where would he summon the determination, the will, the strength? And where will I summon the strength to render this, my prayer, my mission?
With Love, from God; with Heart, with Luck from the devil Chance, with motorboats and shotguns and canteens and caffeine. And telephones and barbed-wire, of course. Of course.
"The doctor will see you now."
And so we must begin, again.
Thomas Shade used to live in Chicago. Now he is always moving, moving, and writing when time permits. This is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, Forgive Us Our Debts, which he plans to sell door to door.