An Erasure of "Candide" by Voltaire.

I collaborated with Candide by Voltaire.

Hardly was Candide in his inn when he was attacked

 by a slight illness caused by his fatigue.Since he had an

enormous diamond on his finger and a prodigiously 

heavy strongbox had been observed in his baggage, he 

immediately had at his side two doctors he had not 

called, some intimate friends who did not leave him, and 

two pious ladies heating up his broths.

Martin said: “I remember having been sick in Paris

 too on my first trip; I was very poor, so I had neither

friends, nor pious ladies, nor doctors; and I got well.”

However, by dint of medicines and bloodtettings, Can-

dide’s illness became serious. A neighborhood priest 

came and asked him gently for a note payable to the

bearer in the next world. Candide wanted no part of it;

the pious ladies assured him that it was a new fashion.

Candide replied that he was not a man of fashion. Mar-

tin wanted to throw the priest out the window. The cleric

swore that Candide should not be buried. Martin swore

 that he would bury the cleric if he continued to bother

 them. The quarrel grew heated; Martin took him by the

shoulders and pushed him out roughly, which caused a 

great scandal which led in turn to a legal report. 

thanatopsis

Wellons, Mike. Windmills. Martin, Tenn.: University of Tennessee at Martin, 1976. Print.

Marred Soul, Katie Yook

A prophet came to Marisol this morning. This morning, in the twelfth month, in the first day of the month, her mouth was opened and she was no more dumb. She probably wouldn’t have remembered that today was her anniversary if it wasn’t also her birthday. She lay in bed, eyes still puffy from her fight with Greg the night before. Marisol texted Greg’s roommate, inviting him to a party, and Greg spent the rest of the night yelling at her, according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred. Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me.

Freshly twenty-one years old, staring at her phone, aware of what was supposed to happen. None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him. She thought phony lines she could say to Greg when she called him, but decided to send a lengthy text instead. Her voice wasn’t good at faking affection. She thought of lines from Ezekiel.

She would say, today marks the day—the first full year that I have enjoyed being yours. A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.

 He would like that. Very metaphorical and poetic. Little did he know Ezekiel was a Biblical text about the end of the world, which was fitting, because today Marisol knew it was the end, for her. The mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.

Marisol began the text, but backspaced it all. He can call me first, she thought, and threw the phone onto the bed. This feeling of resentment was not too new. Marisol had been feeling distant since about 2 months into the relationship, each succeeding day realizing another part of her life that had dissolved since she started dating him. Her dreams no longer belonged to herself. Her clothes no longer smelled like her scent. She hadn’t been able to enjoy the introspection of getting high alone and watching birds sing, or getting lost at the Met with headphones providing a soundtrack for her adventure. She couldn’t even remember the last time she painted, or contemplated life, or met someone knew.  Even her damn phone wallpaper was a photo of them. All her multitudes. She tried to be a good girlfriend by not talking to other guys, but since when is that a rule? Slain by the swords.

Marisol—ocean and sun, in Spanish.

Marisol—he marred her soul.

It’s not that she didn’t love him. She just loved herself more and resented anyone who took away her freedom. Her youth was being taken away by someone who didn’t deserve or appreciate it enough.

I will therefore spread out my net over thee and leave thee upon the land. When I put thee out, I will cover the sun with a cloud. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee.

She would start her life on a clean slate. Twenty-one, there was still time. Does thou pass in beauty? She thought as she looked in the mirror. She smoked a joint out of her bathroom window then ate a huge bowl of her favorite cereal. There was a tranquil atmosphere about her and her thoughts were extremely contemplative. After breakfast, she decided to take a walk along the river, alone. Instead of noticing Greg, and losing sight of everything else around her, Marisol would notice everything but Greg—the feeling of a warm breeze, the people walking by, the men giving her smiles, the seagulls dancing in the sky, the reason the sky is blue, whether North Korea would start a nuclear war, why chewing gum wasn’t allowed in middle school.

Her stream of ruminating thoughts was suddenly interrupted when her phone started ringing, which caused her body to jerk. “Greg my boo” came up and she immediately hunched over the railing and spilled out brown Reeses Puffs that matched the color of the Hudson. She quickly pressed a button to make the sound of ringing stop. She couldn’t talk to him, especially when she was high, especially the morning of their anniversary. She quickly thought of possible excuses. Baby I slept in, I was getting you a gift, I dropped my phone in the river, I was hitting up an old crush, I was plotting our break-up.

Her heart rate was slowing now and she sat down, staring at her phone, a sense of panic pushing down on her head. A text immediately followed. “Mar, where are you? Pick up!!! I have a surprise for you. Happy 1 year baby.” Tears started pouring down. It would be hard to let him go but at the same time, she was filled with excitement about life ahead.

Marisol knew what she wanted to do that night, on her twenty-first birthday, on her 1 year anniversary, finally legal to drink, finally legal to live. Go to her favorite rooftop lounge with Chelsea, sip gin and tonics and pretend she was best friends with beautiful strangers and vex the hearts of many people. Every man for his own life. Then shall they know that I am the lord. All of them slain, fallen by the sword. Her kings, and all her princes.

Greg texted again a couple hours later: Where are you? You weren’t at work… are you mad at me? I’m sorry for being a dick last night.

She decided it was time he deserved a response. She had Book of Ezekiel memorized since she was thirteen. Thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations, therefore will I also diminish thee; neither shall mine eye spare, neither will I have any pity. And thou shalt know that I am the lord.

Works Cited

The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: Oxford Edition: 1769; King James Bible

Online, 2008. http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/.

Sherlock Holmes – A Mystery

For my response this week, I decided to 'collaborate' with Sir Arthur Doyle and his work, the first chapter of "A Study in Scarlet."

~ 

Sherlock Holmes – A Mystery

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.

The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a packhorse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.
Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air — or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.
On the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when someone tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Bart’s. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom.
“Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?” he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets. “You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.”
I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.
“Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”
“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”
“That’s a strange thing,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man today that has used that expression to me.”
“And who was the first?” I asked.
“A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.”
“By Jove!” I cried; “if he really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone.”
Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wineglass. “You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,” he said; “ perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.”
“Why, what is there against him?”
“Oh, I didn’t say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas — an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know he is a decent fellow enough.”
“A medical student, I suppose?” said I.
“No — I have no idea what he intends to go in for. I believe he is well up in anatomy, and he is a first-class chemist; but, as far as I know, he has never taken out any systematic medical classes. His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the-way knowledge which would astonish his professors.”
“Did you never ask him what he was going in for?” I asked.
“No; he is not a man that it is easy to draw out, though he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him.”
“I should like to meet him,” I said. “If I am to lodge with anyone, I should prefer a man of studious and quiet habits. I am not strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement. I had enough of both in Afghanistan to last me for the remainder of my natural existence. How could I meet this friend of yours?”
“He is sure to be at the laboratory,” returned my companion. “He either avoids the place for weeks, or else he works there from morning till night. If you like, we will drive round together after luncheon.”
“Certainly,” I answered, and the conversation drifted away into other channels.
As we made our way to the hospital after leaving the Holborn, Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the gentleman whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.
“You mustn’t blame me if you don‘t get on with him,” he said; “I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting him occasionally in the laboratory. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold me responsible.”
“If we don’t get on it will be easy to part company,” I answered. “It seems to me, Stamford,” I added, looking hard at my companion, “that you have some reason for washing your hands of the matter. Is this fellow’s temper so formidable, or what is it? Don‘t be mealymouthed about it.”
“It is not easy to express the inexpressible,” he answered with a laugh. “Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes — it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.”
“Very right too.”
“Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape.”
“Beating the subjects!”
“Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.”
“And yet you say he is not a medical student?”
“No. Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are. But here we are, and you must form your own impressions about him.” As he spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door, which opened into a wing of the great hospital. It was familiar ground to me, and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista of whitewashed wall and dun-coloured doors. Near the farther end a low arched passage branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory.
This was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work. At the sound of our steps he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. “I’ve found it! I‘ve found it,” he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. “I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin, and by nothing else.” Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shone upon his features.
“Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us.
“How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
“How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment.
“Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself. “The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?”
“It is interesting, chemically, no doubt,” I answered, “but practically
“Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood stains? Come over here now!” He seized me by the coat-sleeve in his eagerness, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working. “Let us have some fresh blood,” he said, digging a long bodkin into his finger, and drawing off the resulting drop of blood in a chemical pipette. “Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a litre of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water. The proportion of blood cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however, that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction.” As he spoke, he threw into the vessel a few white crystals, and then added some drops of a transparent fluid. In an instant the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour, and a brownish dust was precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar.
“Ha! ha!” he cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy. “What do you think of that?”
“It seems to be a very delicate test,” I remarked.
“Beautiful! beautiful! The old guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter is valueless if the stains are a few hours old. Now, this appears to act as well whether the blood is old or new. Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes.”
“Indeed!” I murmured.
“Criminal cases are continually hinging upon that one point. A man is suspected of a crime months perhaps after it has been committed. His linen or clothes are examined and brownish stains discovered upon them. Are they blood stains, or mud stains, or rust stains, or fruit stains, or what are they? That is a question which has puzzled many an expert, and why? Because there was no reliable test. Now we have the Sherlock Holmes’s test, and there will no longer be any difficulty.”
His eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination.
“You are to be congratulated,” I remarked, considerably surprised at his enthusiasm.
“There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last year. He would certainly have been hung had this test been in existence. Then there was Mason of Bradford, and the notorious Muller, and Lefevre of Montpellier, and Samson of New Orleans. I could name a score of cases in which it would have been decisive.” _“You seem to be a walking calendar of crime,” said Stamford with a laugh. “You might start a paper on those lines. Call it the ‘Police News of the Past.’”
“Very interesting reading it might be made, too,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, sticking a small piece of plaster over the prick on his finger. “I have to be careful,” he continued, turning to me with a smile, “for I dabble with poisons a good deal.” He held out his hand as he spoke, and I noticed that it was all mottled over with similar pieces of plaster, and discoloured with strong acids.
“We came here on business,” said Stamford, sitting down on a high three-legged stool, and pushing another one in my direction with his foot. “My friend here wants to take diggings; and as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought that I had better bring you together.”
Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?”
“I always smoke ‘ship’s’ myself,” I answered.
“That’s good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?”
“By no means.”
“Let me see — what are my other shortcomings? I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right. What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.”
I laughed at this cross-examination. “I keep a bull pup,” I said, “and I object to rows because my nerves are shaken, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when I’m well, but those are the principal ones at present.”
“Do you include violin playing in your category of rows?” he asked, anxiously.
“It depends on the player,” I answered. “A well-played violin is a treat for the gods — a badly played one —”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he cried, with a merry laugh. “I think we may consider the thing as settled — that is if the rooms are agreeable to you.”
“When shall we see them?”
“Call for me here at noon to-morrow, and we’ll go together and settle everything,” he answered.
“All right — noon exactly,” said I, shaking his hand.
We left him working among his chemicals, and we walked together towards my hotel.
“By the way,” I asked suddenly, stopping and turning upon Stamford, “how the deuce did he know that I had come from Afghanistan?”
My companion smiled an enigmatical smile. “That’s just his little peculiarity,” he said. “A good many people have wanted to know how he finds things out.”
“Oh! a mystery is it?” I cried, rubbing my hands. “This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. ‘The proper study of mankind is man,’ you know.”
“You must study him, then,” Stamford said, as he bade me good-bye. “You’ll find him a knotty problem, though. I‘ll wager he learns more about you than you about him. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I answered, and strolled on to my hotel, considerably interested in my new acquaintance.

Women of Letters: "To the Person I Misjudged"

Going to one reading: a gamble. Going to five readings in one: less of a gamble. Going to five readings in one at Housing Works Cafe and Bookstore: safe bet.

Women of Letters is an Australian organization seeking to revive the lost art of letter-writing while supporting female talent in writing. To do this they give five women writers a recipient, and the writers read the resultant letters to a crowd of people they don't know. On Wednesday (3/27) the organization came to Housing Works in NYC with the prompt of "To the Person I Misjudged". 

The first reading (NAME) was not my favorite, but perfectly illustrated the havoc that an audience can wreak on good writing. The author was nervous about sharing intimate details about a person's life that may or may not know that the details were being revealed to a room full of strangers. She had written the entire letter, and the parts that the audience actually received intact were well written and compelling, but the anxiety of oversharing made her gloss over many of the details and much of the meat of the letter itself. The exercise was, it seemed, therapeutic for the writer, but utterly unsatisfying for the audience. In the end I felt uncomfortable, like I had looked in on something too intimate, despite the fact that I hadn't seen a single thing.

The second reading was much more tell-all. Reminiscing about her college years and specifically about a skeezy ex boyfriend. Her piece was alternately funny and serious, a voice that is very familiar to modern readers. The message, in the end, was that she had needed the anger that he had planted in her to fight her own demons. The delivery was confident, fluid. It was fine. Nothing I would write home about. 

Reading number three was almost the exact opposite of the first. The problem with that reading was she read the exact text of the letter, then proceeded to give too much backstory behind it. The letter itself was simple, compelling, open:

"Dear Babydoll,

Where are you?

Where are you."

I would have preferred to have only the letter. But instead the writer explained the entire story behind it, about a Russian singer who she took to London and then was ripped off by. The story was charming, it made me like this woman, but the letter would have been more powerful without it.

The fourth reading. My lord, the fourth reading. Heartbreaking, beautiful, well written, funny, endearing. Everything. She was writing to her father's alter-ego, a clown named Scruffy that took up space in their life for a few years when she was in school. The embarrassment of a young girl being greeted at school by her father in clown gear moved away from adorable and funny and into haunting as the audience was made aware of the mental illness behind both the clown and the embarrassment. When she calmly and evenly stated that her father killed and burned his own sled-dogs before shooting himself on a lawn-chair in their driveway, an audible gasp circulated the room. That's when you know you've got your audience. In short, she was incredible. It was incredible.

Obviously having more than one incredible reading in one night is a long shot, so I was immediately wishing there were only four when the fifth stood up. Unfortunately my expectations weren't wrong. She began the letter by explaining to us the different ways in which misjudgment occurs, including the cliched "We see the world not as it is, but as we are." Needless to say, by the time she got to the actual person she misjudged, I was feeling preached at and zoned out for most of it. Note to self: don't spend half the piece talking vaguely about the idea before you actually get to anything the audience can sink into.

The entire experience was a positive one, despite the crowding (Housing Works is always crowded but I always forget and get there right when things are starting. Get there early for awesome seats) and the mixed quality. The idea was inspiring, and letters will definitely figure into my work in the future, and the readings themselves taught lessons about how writing and reading aren't always the same, and the best way to present my work.