The Blue Plastic Basin

Eric T. Racher

Lying just then on the bed well not bed really not thinking of anything thinking nothing of skin of the heaviness of days of dead starling or grackle not sure which not thinking of the matted old grey longhair who had placed it so lovingly on the welcome mat then scratched lovingly at the door so that he would know what she had done for him how far she would go that he might begin to grasp what the days together truly meant to her, when water poured splashing into the blue plastic basin from the hole in the ceiling, which had started as a dark stain that aged into a crack and finally matured into a pustule of festering plaster, rotten wood and damp, tapering off eventually into a steady drip which, after ten minutes or so, would come to rest in silence. Whenever someone flushed the toilet or ran the water in the apartment upstairs this happened. Not a bed but bed enough perhaps or at least more bed than it might be there was at least an iron frame at the bottom to hold the box spring up off the floor, to give it some semblance of bedness. The sound of falling water and the drip drip drip had endeavored to become such necessary accompaniments to the slow decay of hours and days that there were moments when the endless reiteration of loneliness stood up at attention when alone as always always alone as one is in the openness and hostility and the barrenness of one’s room where no one is home that he would pause suddenly disturbed perhaps and listen like some forest animal that hears a human voice from afar disturbed by an active principle of silence by an unformed thought or half-formed fulcrum of mercilessness wandering about the wilderness among the trees and mosses and diving back beneath the undergrowth suddenly pause and pace his room, counting down the lives of tears and trees and the CSX trains trailing clouds of glory like the great wings of Uriel that used to appear in his dreams, their caustic carbuncle clarity set against the blackness of the night sky while waiting for the neighbors to flush the toilet, only suddenly ever so frantically to undo the dozen or so locks on the door fling it open and rush upstairs to the neighbors, bang on their door and beg them to flush the toilet or run the faucet for just a bit that he would pay their water bill for them that if they refused it would be impossible for him to know what would happen to him in the state he was in impossible to hold him responsible they might be guilty of his death they might be held criminally liable aiding and abetting that they had a duty of care as his neighbors and would be found negligent at the very least if not having acted in bad faith and with intentional malice that they could have prevented all this that he would pay for their water bill or at least a percentage of it a negligible or slight percentage of it but then his needs were slight if anything and the small amount of extra water necessary to satisfy this all-told rather insignificant request was in no way a burden on them that this would alter entirely his understanding of them as perfectly reasonable people and he would not by any means be held accountable for what might happen that if anything it would be they who would be held accountable they who would be found delinquent in their duty and they who would pay, for he simply needed to hear the water pouring down. Nothing more. Nothing less. It was a simple request but they soon stopped answering the door. He knew they were there. When he put his ear to their door he could sometimes hear them moving around inside. He loved them but they were perhaps taken up in a whirlwind for some time later he stopped hearing them walking on the ceiling and stopped hearing their sudden stop and whispering when he knocked. The next were the same. And the ones after them. Remembering is odd because it’s hard to say how many there were before or after but the sound of the water falling in the blue plastic basin was like silences of memory further quietened by the rust and wrack and ruin of chain-link fences swallowing up disintegrating full-service stations mulberry swelling up through cracks in the concrete tufts of dry grass and dandelion of the tracks that crisscrossed the land freight trains passing through to other places coming to rest beneath other skies moving onward to be unloaded in other freight yards the sound of the trains passing at the end of the street every night or at least the idea of the sound of the trains passing at the end of the street every night in that case the train as the first true instrument for defining extension on this continent with of course a parallel in the attribute of thought and its vastness and mercilessness and the barren coolness of its beauty extending to the horizon on that sea of sun and grass like an afterthought before thought itself or the bed springs that crawled their way up digging and clutching and clawing at the mattress like the undead through the cotton matting and the foam and the grime and stains of various sorts just to have a bit of air to breathe or some moment of light or some way to feel less undead after so much time underground after so many years he couldn’t fall asleep without them without that scratch or sound or something though most nights neither was he able to fall asleep with them but there was nothing wrong in that. The bed well not a bed but bed enough perhaps was comfortable or comfortable enough perhaps but that every while one of those stray springs would strike, raising a welt or bringing a drop of red risen to the surface or if he was lucky just a white scrape on that same surface of his skin. He was quite sure that he had tried to lay newspapers beneath the sheets once but it’s hard to remember it may have been twice or three times to this very day he refuses to say thrice it really doesn’t sound like a real word or perhaps he didn’t perhaps he just saw it in a movie or a TV show, but before long the springs dug through unless indeed he did not actually lay the newspapers but if we assume he did in any case he thought it would bring him relief which it did in a sense but in another sense he was, as he believes he has already mentioned, so used to the feeling that it was hard to fall asleep without it assuming of course that indeed he had placed them there and that indeed they had formed an invincible shield against the springs. When the mattress became so soiled with various fluids bodily and not and the years of sebum rubbed off rancid caked between the fibers where the skin lay each night sweating its uncanny pratfalls of sleep fallen ketchup and mayonnaise and nocturnal emissions ethereal and pure that even he detected the smell he wanted to call musty but that would have been just his desensitized impression revolting nasty nauseating repugnant repulsive those are not his words he wanted to stress until one day he hardly noticed at all but then something cleared in his blocked nostrils or something like that and he did smell something that day musty he would say for long exposure had they say desensitized the olfactory or the itching on his skin due to contact for he always slept naked on the naked mattress his skin against the skin the years had cultivated upon the surface that had grown so close and comfortable to him not a second skin of course that would be ridiculous but his senses ever keen perceived a sensation that he imagined was similar to the feeling an infant has when his cheek is gently laid against his mother’s breast, he reluctantly dragged it down the stairs and tossed it in the dumpster and then went out and bought a new one, but even now years later as he lies there every night in another city another city yet the same or still far away and same and far another far away unable to fall asleep, he still finds himself opening the window in the hopes of clasping at some hint of locomotives in the air even though there are no trains there anymore the tracks gone even there removed for iron scrap no need for even the number that passed through in those days dwindled over the years as the steel and rubber and coal tapered off until eventually petering out altogether and shivered eerily whenever he awoke without a scratch. Night crept through the open window next to the bed. The streetlamp outside offered an odd glow to the walls’ horsehair plaster cracked and falling off the laths some bits still stuck held on by a hair’s breadth not figurative and always he came back to those old horror picture shows and Scooby-Doo cartoons with eyes behind the laths and undulations on the surface warped laths beneath and buckling plaster over and the flaking golden faded paint cracked and cracking and chipping off more than flaking but not radiant exactly in the streetlamp glow and yet somehow yes. He sat there not yet fat. Not yet fat but that was then. Feet solid on the floor of matted shaggish once was carpet worn through to unfinished wood in a path to the door but shaggishly matted and stuck to itself and stuck ever so slightly to the soles of the feet that walked upon it. Slumped shoulders. Blades jutting not yet fat nor spine fattened over. There was at least an iron frame at the bottom to hold the box spring. Visible ribs. Risible. Television in the corner antenna-top broken off. Bookcase painted brown rounded corners worn down painted over Stephen King William Burroughs Hemingway Bukowski Gary Indiana Emerson Bhagavad-Gita Khalil Gibran Aleister Crowley Tony Robbins Dale Carnegie. Tan dresser nicked and cigarette stained. Mug stained cigarette nicked dresser. Candles. Papers. GE digital clock radio. Panasonic cassette recorder. It happened whenever someone flushed the toilet or ran the water in the apartment upstairs the water flowed freely in those days unencumbered unbound by pipe or plumbing as unrestrained as the great Mississippi herself. He sat there not yet fat that evening’s night of skin and gristle. Guitar on his lap not yet dead in the strings nor smudged nor slurred slowly as he heard the water falling faintly through the wound perhaps and faintly falling, preparing its crescendo plashing downward through the universe and downward plashing, curdling into the blue plastic basin. Time-worn door frame rubbed paint-through painted over. And over. He pressed record on the tape deck and fingers piled over the not-yet-dead strings as fragments of symbolic gestures each chord position suggesting perpetually mosaic occultations before the eddied beginnings rising ebbing forgotten in darkness everlasting about the flitting shone and clouded ficklenesses. G string slightly flat. High E slightly sharp. And over. He sang. The shopping mall was not his place. Nor was the chain restaurant nor the steakhouse nor any such. Place itself was not his place, it seemed. He sang an old song some ballad or spiritual or work song cribbed from Library of Congress recordings wandering in and out of key artlessly in and out of the melodic line for melody was not his place though he knew not the voice knows until it’s difficult to say the song after so many years he thinks perhaps thought or misthought. Ineffable interrupted by scratch scratch scratch upon the door. Scratch scratch scratch. A sound besmeared with flame and faithfulness in slightly less than stark contrast to the cynicism of the wind and the rightful certainty of that dark purloiner, the night. Scratch scratch scratch. Muffled scratch scratch scratch. Muffled miaow miaow. Pralltriller miaow scratch. Near the door up high on the wall a metal brass perhaps pipe jutted out then right angle upturnedly plugged into an old gas lamp many a year fallow now only clothes hangers with shirts. Stop on the tape deck beckoned, consummated then. Floor of shaggish matted once carpet worn through to unfinished wood was to the door but shaggishly matted in a path self-stuck and stuck slightly ever so slightly stuck to the soles of the feet that walked upon it. He walked upon it kitchenward. Pantryward first he went; that accomplished, refrigeratorward went he. More muffled now miaow. More muffled miaow. More muffled scratch scratch scratch. In the kitchen a stale heel of stale bread. Into a bowl and sour milk poured over it. Back then upon it walked those feet the soles stuck slightly soever slightly stuck and stuck in a path self-matted shaggishly but to the door was wood unfinished through to worn carpet once matted of shaggish floor. But when the doorknob neared his hand as he stood there perfectly still with no change no accident whatsoever motionlessly central in that world as the doorknob neared his hand settling down into the palm and gathering his fingers round itself, his soul was seized by an incontrovertible compulsion to suddenly frantically ever so unspeakably for such beginnings were endings and vice versa once again undo the dozen or so locks on the door fling it open and rush upstairs to this new family of neighbors mother father two young daughters explain to them the problem with the blue plastic basin with the water and the need for respect between neighbors and if they might ever need a cup of sugar would they please just flush the toilet or run the faucet for a few minutes no he had already tried pouring water from a pitcher over the basin himself but agency and its direct deployment it seemed to him destroyed the benefits of the exercise for a certain chance element even if it is only as regards the precise timing of the event which he knows is coming appeared to be an essential ingredient for the success of the whole thing but decided to put the food out for the cat first. Click click clack. Lock after lock. Louder miaow. More insistent scratch scratch scratch. Miaow. But strangely enough the matted old grey longhair when he opened the door was not there was nowhere to be seen and all his calls of kitty kitty kitty and here kitty kitty kitty kitty were absorbed into the unshaded incandescent light of the stairwell and into the ashen walls but drip drip drip he wanted as endless reiterations of loneliness erect and vigilant when alone as always always alone as one is in the openness and hostility and the barrenness of one’s room or even at the entrance of one’s room. But whence miaow and whence scratch scratch scratch if the cat is not here and with the urgency of those ejaculations why would she leave just then as he was opening the door? Strangely, the cat wasn’t at the door. The dead starling or grackle not sure which the matted old grey longhair had placed so lovingly on the welcome mat was. Feathers black and black flesh decaying dark obscene claw stuck up from feathery mass grasping as if perched still singing still but not but still singing still perched as if grasping feathery mass from upstuck claw obscene in dark decaying flesh black and black feathers. He closed the door in the face of the dead, locked it, and turned around. The blue plastic basin there inside round blue light blue but not light enough to be light blue yet blue round nor large nor small yet light enough and neither thin nor thick but large enough or rather wide enough to catch the water except for a splash or two the basin was his twilight and twilight was his basin from reflected light on blue on blue plastic barren as the moon. There was nothing corruptible in the blue plastic basin nothing of this sublunary mutability not the canker nor corrosion nor corruption nor consumption the worm finds it not. The inorganic perfection of plastic ten thousand years or was it a million years in a landfill before it decomposes the perfection of polymers of plastic polymetis the incorruptible body of plastic the beauty of its purity like that of the agent intellect itself the beauty of plastic like the beauty of the movement of the spheres the beauty of the music of the spheres a music become wholly chemistry moved like those spheres by the power of pure thought for reasoning of Love within the mind the body of plastic contains a higher degree of the divine perfection and for this reason is less susceptible to fleshly corruptions is close to that Love that moves the sun and the other stars and closer and more similar to the celestial bodies of the planets closer and more similar to the bodies of the angels empyrean plastic arrayed in all their order but angels form without matter plastic’s matter yes is there but something more a matter organized by mind a matter made for commensurability for the angels do not possess bodies or corporeal being but all the angels of plastic arrayed in all their order ishim keruvim bnei-elohim elohim mal’achim serafim chashmalim er’elim ofanim chayyot all there in the body of plastic he touched like a sacrament with the tip of his forefinger. He stood there not yet fat. Fat yet not there not yet more time than extension. The body of plastic was entangled in the disentangling of the merely suppositional from the actually true for it was clear to him that plastic due to the previously mentioned qualities possessed a body that partook while it seemed absurd impossible of the world of mathematical objects and the beauty of that world a beauty unlike anything imaginable in this world yet pointed to hinted at and suggested in the substance of every plastic thing every empty two-liter soda bottle cigarette packet wrapper six-pack yoke cigarette lighter happy meal toy coffee cup lid VHS cassette pager floppy disk cordless phone steak-knife handle steering wheel cover sandwich baggie shampoo bottle sunglasses red solo cup trashbag traffic cone contact lens toothpaste tube saran wrap scrub brush toothbrush ballpoint pen credit card syringe electrical switch bead disposable plate drinking straw knife fork spork spoon clothes hanger keychain cosmetics bottle shower curtain ruler PVC pipe goggles mat bucket CD case dish drainer wastebasket hulahoop cable tie storage crate skateboard wheel tablecloth clothespin icecube tray picture frame funnel egg slicer bobber crankbait mouthguard disposable razor extension cord plant pot ice cream scoop kitchen stool laundry basket litter box broom pencil box water jug ear bud vase confetti necklace raincoat filefolder makeup compact wristwatch tarpaulin glove kiddie pool luggage shopping bag button board game piece electrical wire speaker box candy wrapper toy car toy doll toy monster toy rabbit toy dog toy cat toy cow toy snake toy fox toy building blocks lego duplo light reflector hood fan blade electrical tape holy holy holy day and night they never stop saying. Everything that is made of plastic is holy. He felt the depth and heft of it in that moment. He looked at the blue plastic basin and imagined the sound of water rushing and trailing off into a few final drops. He was surprised to notice that he had an erection. The worm finds it not nor consumption nor corruption nor corrosion not the canker. He noticed a small cockroach crawling along the lip of the basin as if it were a man walking around the perimeter of an alpine lake deep and clear and cold and full of mountain air and life and health. The antennae moved about it jerked forward an inch or two stopped then once again jerked forward turned toward the water seemed to drink then began a slow glide over the lip of the blue plastic basin in graceful curving lines, softly gliding there and gliding softly about the basin every so often stopping momentarily this little brown thing on blue movement over the surface of the blue smooth movement stirring something moving something down within around that softly gliding form across the platonic beauty of the blue. The cockroach is a world of its own, a language and a form of life. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stood there upon the lip of the blue plastic basin. Though but a point at best there gliding softly over the lip of the basin in graceful curving lines yet while the cockroach earthly lives the queenly personality lives in him and feels her royal rights. The cockroach paused a moment on the lip of the basin, turned its head and moved its antennae about as if to say come come come to me in your lowest form of love and I will kneel and kiss you but at your highest come as mere supernal power and though you launch navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. He tapped the side of the basin and the cockroach fell into the oceanic formless and void like that where the spirit of God sat brooding upon the face of the deep, abyss where every heart is the other heart where every soul is the other soul and every face is the other face where every face is the face of the other and every soul is the soul of the other and every heart is the heart of the other where the heavenly choirs of full-freighted worlds kneel and kiss at the feet of the throne of the queenly personality and the other face is every face and the other soul is every soul and the other heart is every heart. Upon the face of those primordial waters the cockroach dropped from the zenith like a falling star from morn to noon he fell from noon to dewy eve a summer’s day and fell upon the face of the waters back-downwards feet flailing frantically stuck among the dust and ash collected on the surface of the water where it eventually righted itself and struggled to walk on the surface film. As he watched the cockroach’s vain attempts to move across the surface film, his finger slowly extended towards the creature, pressed against its back and pushed it below the surface of the water. The cockroach moved about under the surface of the water, and now stuck below the surface film, it sank slowly down into the water, kicking and jerking, until, after a number of seconds or minutes or millennia, perhaps it stopped moving.