Tungsten & Zoetrope.

Tungsten

One: *, two: ten minutes to spare, three: Jenny McIntyre. And that’s ultimately how I got the scar, the one just beneath my left eye. It was just an accident. Most people don’t even notice- this one guy from down St. Wolfgang‘s street, I’d known him for years, fucking ages, and he only noticed then. When he asked he said, ‘Is that a scar?’. It was. For you see I have a scar running along a crease just below my left eye.
Sometimes you feel obliged to tell a more interesting story than the truth and scars are a good example of something people feel really ought to have a good story to tell. So it can’t really count as bad lying, it’s too utilitarian, I reckon. I had no intention of lying but I lied regardless. Even as I started lying I thought I’d lie pretty small lies, the prettier the better though. And before I knew it I’d gone and told the biggest fabrication I could’ve with a limited amount of raw materials- Jenny McIntyre was still present (all lies have a grain of truth in them, it makes them more believable) but this time round it was set in peril or a forest or somewhere (I was slightly ambiguous so that he helped make the lie with me- a rearrangement of responsibility if you will). At that point the scene was set for the climactic unravelling, the reason the scar was worth having. Only I couldn’t think, a huge scaffold of yarn flimsily resting on the real foundation of…

[panthers, villains, rapists, lasers. No. pistols, scalpels, shards of glass. No. and this is taking too long. splinters of wood, sheets of iron, frames of tungsten…]

‘Tungsten’ I said.
What a lie. It was the biggest lie I’ve ever told. Though not the one with the most consequences.
But it serves him right for not noticing after all these years.


Zoetrope.

He didn’t have a zoetrope.
He had the something that had been invented a few years earlier.
It did him fine.
He drew a series of pictures (in a circle):
Of a man watching a zoetrope.
Then, when he span the circle and watched just one part of it the pictures appeared to come to life.
(He continued, perhaps it improved the quality of life.)

Olden

I see that you’re bitter with your sense and your youth, and here I am, child, crazy old coot, I’m laughing. I wear sandals and I tear my toes on brambles. And so? And so they bleed; I spit on them, laughing. I spend my money on whisky and tobacco, just like you. Me? I smoke a pipe and when I cough, I laugh. I sip my whisky, evenings in the rocking chair. And? It’s good stuff. I like it, there on the shelf, pour yourself a glass. Not too much. I haven’t had my tea. I have these albums of photographs, hundreds of them, just like you. I look through them, crying and laughing. I don’t expect you’ll be fascinated by them, but wait till I tell you a story. I have fruit cake that never goes stale. I have phonograph records that take a donkey to play them. I had a wife and she’s buried in the graveyard, in the village. I have three sons and a daughter, see them sometimes. At the very least they send letters, they telephone. Yes, I have a telephone. I go walking in the woods, I always come back, I bring berries, whatever fruits are in season. When it snows, I throw snowballs at cows. I think they’re glad of the company. Have you read that poem? The long one? It’s a bit turgid, of course, I don’t care greatly for the tone, but it’s evocative nonetheless. I don’t remember how it goes. I’m too young to remember the Crimean War anyway. What was it that that Florence Nightingale invented? No, neither do I. I heard a lot about her, though, like what she invented. You’d be surprised. Now, where was I? Ah, yes, I have… nine grandchildren. And you’re the youngest one.