Canaries
A (very) short story
Dear Friends,
I’m always carrying a few books around with me. Lately, the books have been instigating some new short fiction.
— Sal
Canaries
So many things happen in a city that you never understand. Little scenes, played out before your eyes, or flashes like photos from a club at night, one you have never been to.
At first the sheer number of dogs was confounding. In close proximity they barked at each other and circled restlessly. A chance word revealed that they were all on their way too, or from, the blessing of the animals.
“I hope he’s still going,” a woman said, pulling a scruffy animal into her lap, “this one needs it.” I picture the priest, blessing and blessing. Mostly dogs, who can arrive on their own four feet, some cats and rabbits, maybe a lizard or a rat. It seemed each one would receive a hand raised over its head.
I was sitting with Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. The dog people were arguing about god and about what had happened in church last week. I read a story about canaries, but with some difficulty because of one man’s loud and penetrating voice. He seemed angry about almost everything, even as he praised a daughter’s dress for its depictions of fruit.
I already didn’t want to know as much as I knew. I wanted to be at the blessing, though the birdcage I carried would be empty.
When I first read Kawabata at seventeen, the mood of melancholic sexual tension was already familiar. The potter’s cup that seemed to be stained by a woman’s lips. Clothes bleached by being laid out into the snow. I knew very well what it was like to be looked at, and to look.
Meanwhile, I needed to make a list of a hundred nouns and the man with the loud voice had finally left. One of the women spoke of the elephant in the room. Elephant, I wrote. Room.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and your stories.
Yasunari Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories is available from FSG Classics.
Further adventures and new ways of seeing can be found in my book, The Uses of Art.
Artist Sal Randolph’s THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with works of art, inviting readers into new methods of looking that are both liberating and emboldening.
Dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent.
— Michael Cunningham
A joyful, dazzling treasure-box of a book.
— Bonnie Friedman
Here’s a guide, to waking up, over and over again.
— Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara
I imagine you very clearly and that’s just dandy. You’re like a bee on the borage. My friend gave me some dried Scarlet runner beans and I planted a few of them and ate the rest. This year they went crazy in the garden. Tiny red clusters of petals lots of green and these huge pods that somehow remained hidden for most of the season. When the beans are fresh, they are a brilliant dip dyed fuchsia, then they transition into fuchsia with a heart of deep purple speckles, and they end up when they’re dry the color of the hadal zone.
You are so inspiring Sal. Thank you for all your generosity in sharing your writing and everything else you do.
Loooooved this, so many darting directions captured by your structure, the unzipped closures, etc. One Q i had: where are you? are you in the little park on Amsterdam and 110? are you on a bench on CPW? and I question why I want to know so much!