July 23, 2008
Living Dead (Nine)
Every night Cordwainer Smith wished the cycle of total- and self-destruction would finally end. Every morning he would start the cycle up anew. Leonard Cohen’s laconic way of seeing the good in everything from disaster to love wasn’t far from his thinking. There’s a quote from “Master Song” which comes close to Cordwainer’s truth: “He was starving in some deep mystery / Like a man who is sure what is true.” Cordwainer Smith’s trailer was decked out based on another quote. This one from Tim O’Brien’s short story “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” in The Things They Carried: “Across the room a dozen candles were burning on the floor near the open window. The place seemed to echo with a weird deep-wilderness sound — tribal music — bamboo flutes and drums and chimes. But what hit you first, Rat said, was the smell. Two kinds of smell. There was a topmost scent of joss sticks and incense, like the fumes of some exotic smokehouse, but beneath the smoke lay a deeper and much more powerful stench. Impossible to describe, Rat said. It paralyzed your lungs. Thick and numbing, like an animal den, a mix of blood and scorched hair and excrement and the sweet-sour odor of moldering flesh — the stink of the kill. But that wasn’t all. On a post at the rear of the hutch was the decayed head of a large black leopard; strips of yellow-brown skin dangled from the overhead rafters. And bones. Stacks of bones — all kinds. To one side, propped up against the wall, stood a poster with neat black lettering: ASSEMBLE YOUR OWN GOOK!! FREE SAMPLE!! The images came in a swirl, Rat said, and there was no way you could process it all.” Outside of his own trailer Cordwainer Smith stabbed his meatloaf and potatoes nervously, like some kinda hick redneck. One of his favorite writer pals, Thomas M. Disch, (probably best known for Camp Concentration), had just shot himself in the head. It was on Independence Day. Disch was 68. Cordwainer Smith definitely didn’t want to go out like that. It was another Cohen quote that kept him going: “It’s hard to hold the hand for anyone / who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.” Maybe Disch had too many voices in his head? Smith sure as hell knew he had too many GOD DAMN voices kicking around in his head — too many voices, too many DAMN quotes!