Quinn's Passage by Kazim Ali Book Preview

7/31/2019 Quinn's Passage by Kazim Ali Book Preview

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Quinns Passage

a novel

Kazim Ali

BlazeVox [books]

Buffalo, New York


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Quinn's Passage by Kazim AliCopyright 2004

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced without the publishers written permission,

except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Geoffrey Gatza

First Edition

ISBN 13 978-0-9759227-7-4

ISBN 10 0-9759227-7-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004116046

BlazeVOX [books]

14 Tremaine Ave

Kenmore, NY 14217

[email protected]

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]

blazevox.org

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Quinns Passagea novel


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1

He concentrates so carefully on the horizon. At thismoment the sea seems to evaporate into the sky.

Holds his hand out to frame the view and cannot findany horizon.

At some point, as they near the cape, a slash of land willappear.

To save him.

Then the veiled corona of the lighthouse seen acrossthe harbor.

Then the town will emerge from mist and distance.


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2

The passenger next to him is explaining what all this

has to do with the way the hull of boat is skippingacross the surface of the water.

Its the physics of light and motion, you see

But Quinns not listening.


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3

He has seen photographs of himself on these same

beaches last year by Ianartfully, in black and white.

Hes dismayedand pleasedby how fragile he looks.Sharp collarbones. Crazy tufts of hair. Lifting his chinand looking directly into the camera. How perfectlydefiant.

And fragile.

These are the things I tried to tell you, he beginswriting in his notebook.

As he watches the sun, as it sets across the bay, hethinks, What kind of music does the sun make as itslides across the water into the dark?

How could I sing along with it?

And then:

Why did I come here?


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4

Waiting until the sun is nearly dropped.

The orangest of lights stretching across the plot ofwater.

Quinn thinks how beautiful it would be to walk outinto the orange light.

How beautiful to walk out into the waves.


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7

Hes given the same attic apartment hed had six years

ago. His first day that summer he had taped up a scrapof paper with a small poem written on it.

He wonders if the poem is still there.

And if not, was it torn down for practicality, for love,

or inconsequentially, with the brittle age of the cellotape?

Twilight is not the time of true darkening, rather thechance for incredible light.

Quinn has left everything. And has brought: pajamabottoms, two tank tops, one white t-shirt (heswearing), one pair of jeans (wearing), a gray sweater,one pair of sandals (wearing).

One book: The Waves by Virginia Woolf.

A framed, untreated, linen canvas.

A notebook.

A pen.


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8

Theres no agenda.

Hes come to the ocean before.

And before.

To wash himself in it.

To be brave, perhaps.

To see what comes up to the surface.

To hear music.

Maybe to dance the ocean dance.

Which he choreographs under his breath.


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9

Ian had scolded him when he left home to come,

describing him as compulsive, but Quinn thinks thisdescription is exactly opposite of his nature.

Rather he very nearly doesnt care about anything.

He wants to answer for the reckless way hes treated

people.

Wants some explanation for the purely surgical way hewalks out on his life and everyone in it.

Over and over again.

He came all this way to sit at the ocean-edge and watchthe water thunder in rollsin helices reallycloser andcloser and rake their storm-hands down into the beach.

Then that excessive moment: he doesnt know if thewater is rushing out or in.

Is the sand clinging to the beach or hurling itselfhorizonward hand in hand with the water?


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10

He wants to pretend he has never been responsible forcausing anyone pain.

He would like the duration of this music to be withoutpast or context.

For the moment hes taking himself sadly

(hes only brought five articles of clothingplus thesweater)

to the beach.

He wants to stare the ocean straight in the eye.

See what it has to say for itself.


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11

Later, climbing down the ladder from his attic room,Quinn feels like hes been here the whole time

marked, remembered.


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13

October 4

evening

Ive arrived. Three days late but am forgiven.

Given the same attic room I stayed in when I was here for a

week in 1998.

Against the far wallunbelievablyso faded, faint, butthere: the scrap of paper, traces of my own handwriting.

The poem.

First you dont know what youre supposed to be doing

then you think: Ill wait & see what happens

or you start coming up with a bunch of wild plans andconcepts

The fan makes a big racket when its on the floor so you have

to put it on the tablesomeone came up to tell me

mostly I wish I could remember where I read that quote:Who thinks of form at the ocean?


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14

There was a crazy collage of graffiti and posters and paintingsand ugly pictures wheat-pasted all over the bathroom walls ofthe common room the last time I was here thats been paintedover completely

one night I am going to sneak in there with paint thinner anda brush


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15

At night his old instincts come back.

Exhaustion.

And wanting to go out into the streets to collect trash.Figures and statues in debris. Perfect hunting near theocean. What will wash up, unremembered. What is

drowned that comes back.

A sound painting outside his windows he cant begin toseparate.

Strands of insects, frogs, a flutter of voices.

Even the flowers seem to thin the air with a chorus.

And he imagines, slow and underneath it all, the bassline of the ocean.

There is, he reminds himself, a common thread.

Where pilgrimsspiritually devouredor devouringthemselvesalways go: mountains, oceans, sites ofvision and martyrdom.


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16

Hes no different: starving, manic: wanting so badly to

wake, to be afraid, to start eating again, to startspeaking again, to save his own life.


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17

October 5

This is the anniversary of the day I learned that months turn:that life has phases: that though things perennially repeat,things also begin and end:

When I was seven years old in the first grade we were keeping

classroom journals.

On each day we drew a picture for the season:

a tree whose leaves were turning colorsa bushel of applesa cup of hot chocolate

a turkeya pilgrims hat

I didnt know that months ended

On September 33rd

I drew a pumpkin-making machine. Theywent in one end orange, virginal, came out the other endcarved Jack-o-lanterns.

I cant remember September 34th, but on September 35

thI was

caught by the teacher, made to tear out the pages and beginagain from October 1

st.

Had to work fast to catch up.

Havent caught up.


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19

The first thing he notices is how the light feels on hisskin.

Hes reading a magazine: Diamanda Galas seeking tomake music that is not so much heard by the ears as it is feltthrough the skin.

And that there is so much of it and so bright.

The buildings are all low and the town is perched atthe very end of the cape, flung out into the wild,surrounded on three sides by water.

Hes filled with it, remembering a dream he once hadabout the body after death: that underground, the bodyslowly begins turning into lightno, thats not righteither: the body is slowly consumedbut not by the earth,rather another element: air, or light.

Now, music: morning. Sounds of people coming intothe shop, speaking to each other, the grinding of beans,the steam and hiss of machines.

He drinks his coffee black and very very slowly.

The owner of the coffee shop takes his money silently.

Quinns seen him chatting with all the other customers,figures the man mistrusts silence, is madeuncomfortable by Quinns habit of staring off intospace.


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20

Quinn looks at the back of his hands, sees the bluerivers.

Folds his tongue back in his mouth.

Decides not to notice

nor to speak

even if spoken to.


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21

In the corner the wind the window Quinn.

In other times Quinn might have left, walked on hisown into the street. Wouldnt have minded the people.

Now Quinn has an idea that he wants to watch.

Wants to listen.

And so starts to wonder if he does, after all, want to befound.

If hes come here, after all, not to drown but to not-

drown.


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22

At the counter, a young man with bright red hair,

beautiful dark eyes, and strong hands serves coffee.

Quinn looks at him as a sculpture, watches his bodymove kinetically. Tim. Hes called Tim.

Tim smiles very easily, looks directly into everyones

eyes when he speaks with them. Looks right at Quinn,even though Quinn looks out the window, or down athis hands.

Quinn thinks that a body moving through space issculpture. But also dance.

If sculpture is like dance, Quinn wonders, whatkind of dance is trash-sculpture?


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25

Reading the titles alone is a pleasure. Quinn hasnt got

any money in his pocket anyhow.

These types of bookstores are best: used books, dark,old furniture, musty.

The pages of this bookLectures in America by Gertrude

Steinare damp under his fingers, and rough, andyellowing.

They make a soft music when he turns them: the hissof the coffee machines, or the sound of static when theTV station has gone off the air for the night. Soundsthat dont exist any more. Kinds of silence that no

longer exist.

What is poetry and if you know what poetry is what isprose

He becomes distracted by a movement by his side.

Someone else reading the titles. Different than lookingfor a particular book.

A young man: Tim, the boy who works at the coffeeshop.

Suddenly Quinn, who for nearly two years hasnt givena serious thought to being touched, runs his handthrough his rudely cut hair.


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Wishes he hadnt cut off all the shining curls.

He can hear Tim breathing. Stealing glances sideways.

He feels badly dressed, too skinny, ugly, unprepared.

So he recites Emily Dickinson: We dont cryTim and

I

We are far too grand

Tim smiles

but Quinn doesnt know the rest of the poem.

Instead looks right into Tims eyes and drifts intosilence.

(There is no use in telling more than you know no not even ifyou do not know it)


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27

They are walking along the rock jetty to the beach.

So you make sculptures out of trash. And came hereto make art.

Shouldnt have come, says Quinn. Dumpster divingis better in New York.

Tim doesnt say anything.

Quinn feels like a ghost in an abandoned city.

So why did you come here then?

Now Quinn is silent. He looks away across the bay.

Not so far from them, the mainland.

Because of the peculiar quality of light here, he realizeshe still cannot discern the place where sky and seameet.


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28

They pick their way through the dune grasses.

Following the trail.

At high tide, Tim tells him, All this is underwater.

Black irises. Deep flowers.

Im underwater, Quinn thinks.


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29

At the beach, Quinn puts a little distance between

himself and Tim.

But watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Tim is young. Like a boy. But acts like a man. Movesphysically like a man.

When I was nineteen, thinks Quinn, I couldnt even look atanother man in the eyes, let alone talk to strangers inbookstores.

Hes looking savagely into the storm.

Wanting to be the storm.

Wanting Tims rain-lashed hands on his skin.

And roughly.


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30

Tim doesnt mind being left behind.

Watches Quinns little figure up ahead. Black,flickering. A shadow. But of what?

The winds getting stronger, he tries to say. ButQuinn doesnt hear.

Quinns thinking:

No driftwood

Rockssmall, polished in the water

The rubblesmashed bones, crab claws, little bodies

Hes hoping to see the ghost-skin of a jellyfish spreadacross the ground.

Doesnt even know if there are jellyfish in this area.


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31

Thinking:

Portuguese Man of War.

The whiteness of Tims shirt.

The broadness of his shoulders.

He is beautiful.

I am alone.


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32

They walk shoulder to shoulder. Quinns not sure if heslowed down or if Tim caught up.

They still do not speak.

Still.

Quinn recites a poem he heard once:

After the storm blew inShattered the windows

Cried the doors openWe found the wound, there, deep,And where its always been

Quinn, separated from the only world by acres andacres of water:

Im here, not-here, mine, and empty


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They stay until they cant see the ocean anymore. The

sand becomes darker and darker until the grains dissolveinto each other.

Quinn thinks, Im tired, in trouble.

Whats next?

Tims looking at Quinn, thinking, His eyes when helooks off into space. At nothing.

Living a past life?

His mouth always closes completely when hes notspeaking.

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Quinn's Passage by Kazim Ali Book Preview