#cormacmccarthyfashionweek

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And here among the stone and grass stood living statues. Mourners in form only, clad in black and clotted together with the interred and decaying, observing the rites and rituals of death, but where one would expect to see them bawling raging against the cruel and avaricious shears of Death, writhing in some obscene gesture begging like heat crazed alley cats and offering their souls and bodies for some cosmic justice or reprieve from such pain of the spirit there was nothing; blank faces stony as the corpse they lowered into the frozen earth. They rejected him not with anger but with simple dereliction of duty in that they were the only ones that could be expected to care and they did not. Where they should have lamented the passing of one of gods children they defied custom, defiled his memory by only bearing witness.

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She peeked through a crack in the old wooden slats - cracked and warped by time and slowly become derelict - the dark of the forest surrounded her so the dim flickering lamplight cast only a sliver of orange into her eyes. There they floated in the black night, two perfect ivory orbs, unblinking, fixing their gaze upon that celebration of flesh the two young lovers thought they had hidden so well from the world.

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The sky above was a tepid gray - smog clouding all light delivered so many endless leagues away - and the din of man’s achievements tore through the land surrounding, threatening to encroach upon them, but for a moment the world and worlds beyond were cast aside as those who upon their own shoulders and achievements rose up against Olympian obstacles to walk in royal colors and claim their rightly earned titles as kings, queens, and champions of a new world; one of their making and imagining. The press of their supplicants flashbulbs created a new sun to illuminate their glory. The skies above them were bright with perfect blues from their storybook homeland. The sound that blanketed the night were ululations and cries of adoration. Tonight Wakanda walked on earth and paid those who would conspire against them no heed, for they were assured victory and accolades in the annals of history.

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Under the roiling surface the silt and gravel of the riverbed looked like some striated musculature of the earth lying hidden from the view and meddling hands of man. Straight lines leading the current toward some unknown and distant end, some still and quiet place where the hurtling raging waters may rest and pass the rest of time in peace, some heaven. What is a man but the river made flesh? Water comprises them both, and both long for the moment when they are allowed respite from their constant struggle.

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The sun played on the salt, glimmering and shining across the flat land ahead. This barren lifeless expanse ostentatiously flaunting its inhospitable nature like a peacock was a stark reminder that death, in all its forms, has its beauty.

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He would have walked straight atop it if it weren’t for the mangy dog he had leashed on that long length of cord. It went straight for it like a magnet and started nosing and rustling through the loose stones kicking dust and rock in the air as it dug. He walked up confused and wary but lost all of that upon finding what the dog was so eager to unearth. Her face stared out at the stars like a heartbroken suitor, wishing that the cosmos would deliver some better fate or that she could escape from her heartbreak. Neither were coming to her now as she lay, pallid and frozen in her shallow grave.

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It had the look of purgatory. Fog cut through with bright white light, burning away the moisture in the air near the caldera, creating a crown of wetness and airy muck around that arid deathly pit of obsidian rock bubbling hot with magma. Here on the grey and barren rim one could so easily imagine they were stuck between salvation and the pit, walking in endless circles never seeing the entirety of the landscape, only wishing allowance to ascend or fall, but afraid to ever dedicate ones self to the choice.

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There is no thing so great as to blot out the light of the sun in its entirety except our own eyelids. Only we can coat ourselves in blind darkness and turn away the world.

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When people think of blood they think of that pure and vibrant red that screams of life and vigor, not the blood that is left behind or stained into dirt, seeping through clothes and dried to a crust. That blood is a whole other creature. It is a brown and pathetic thing, mumbling of death and rot and those wonderful dreams of youth forgotten and thrown to the wayside by those who have seen the dark half of the soul of the world. That is the blood that waters the fields of this nation.

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He talked of the day his garrison was captured by government soldiers. It wasn’t with the somber and reflective tone so many who have lived through tragedy often take, it was almost as if he were telling a tall tale, something nobody could believe, but he had been there and he had seen all the cruelty and nihilistic depths of the human condition. They kept the men locked in the arms lockers for days on end, taking each out for questioning in periodic shifts. They would sit them under a small faucet and drip the water onto their heads as they asked the questions. Once the skin was puckered and soft from the stream they would cut slowly into that thin skullcap and peel it away from the head. At first it just felt like pressure, but once the skin dried the pain was unbearable. Everyone in his platoon talked, they sang, and when they were freed it was as if a legion of bald-headed clowns poured from the garrison, screaming mad and cackling at the ridiculous appearances of their brothers.

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She could imagine some abbot stalking the halls at night, his bare calloused feet slowly wearing grooves into the stone floors over the countless years, and then after him another and another penitent soul would stand guard over this ancient monument to their lord. They wandered through the building yet as did she, but the only difference being that now she felt not like some pure devotee who has given themselves to endless vigil until death, she felt like like Janus, two-faced and deceitful. She knew, even as her body wore down the stone as many had before, that it would be better when the evidence of her touch was smoothed from these walls.

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On starless nights a river runs black and empty like a bottomless crevasse, a wound in the flesh of the earth, a thoroughfare for Charon and his raft of bone. With no starlight to fill that depth the water, lifeblood of the planet, reflects only what shines on the surface of the world, and lacking such light we only provide it with pure darkness.

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They waited under the branches of a burnt out willow and watched the gravel road that ran behind them nothing marring it save the hoof prints of their horses, but even so they knew it was a busy enough road and someone was sure to come along in near enough time. They ate the sandwiches they’d made and leaned against that dead husk as the sun made its slow pace across the sky. John kept his eyes on the horizon, squinting against the western sun, until a speck appeared in the distance. He leapt to his feet and kicked his dozing compatriot awake. “Here she comes, hell if you can’t tell who she is even from here.” They stood and watched in anticipation as they imagined the woman bearing down upon them and wondered at what she would make of them in their tatters.

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The room was covered in old daguerrotypes, the silver fading into a brown tar like color on the edges. Pictures of long dead family members, sitting stoic and unmoving were the lot, but there was one that had life to it, one that felt like those pictured were more than the delicate workings of a morticians tools. No rigored bodies here. Here was life and love for living. She brushed her hand along the frame as though hoping to reach in and touch such vigor even for a moment, but she moved on and looked at the dust on the tips of her fingers knowing that the subjects were long dead and the memory long forgotten.

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The buck hung in the heat slowly by the grace of God turning into jerk and eventually something edible. Cookfires were impossible on that rocky steppe as there wasn’t a damned thing left to burn lest you could, like Moses, draw some holy miracle from the stones. But two days prior they’d found the poor wandering creature and shot it dead, and now it would keep them alive at least long enough to meander their way free of this endless waste. The striations of the muscle looked something wonderful in the sunlight, lines of glistening cord and blood slowly losing their sheen as they dried, but the makings of a body in all its simple and impossibly complex beauty.

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It wasn’t till near January until the snow started to trickle down and the ground started to harden. The hot southern wind made sure of that much. They would often leave the house before sunrise and wander down the riverbanks watching the water crystalize and form into endless unique evanescent shapes, and as the sun rose they would watch the selfsame ice melt away and once again become the river.

I figure it aint too different than what becomes a man. He said.

Preacher says ashes to ashes, but man don’t become more’n worm shit when he’s done.

In the distance a heron called into the redding dawn and threw itself into the sky, also gone from their lives as so much and so many had before.