Noir Photo Quotes

Shouldering the duffel bag with the Marine Corps bulldog, Old Man knocked Jan's photo off the bed table. He turned to stone staring down at the photo. His face then splintered into hurt. Tears seeped into his eyes. He grappled for the nearest bedpost and slumped forward on extended arms. His shoulders jerked and head sagged a little while his heart broke. Old Man cried the mute cry of men of his generation.

Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living? You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy… You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any. And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering… …Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more. So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself. And hoping.

La rive bleue Dans la chambre parmi les journaux venus de régions lointaines doux animal homme merveilleux tu t'aimes assis sur le bord du lit les mains sur les genoux ou encore libéré de naître et de mourir tu caresses ta joue de pierre ponce jusqu'à ce que le soleil passe de l'autre côté près de la radieuse photo du gosse qui fait pipi sur une rive bleue Alors tout revient tout se regroupe comme en un brouillard de feu où se refont les choses parmi les obscures plantations du hasard Tandis que tout près de là une femme étend avec soin les vêtements de son amant noyé et leur parle celle-là même qui te cherche dans les ossements noirs des vanesses Et pendant que tu erres dans les brumes d'une forte virilité près des avirons oubliés sur la taupinière fraîche ou que tu regardes osciller les deux pieux fichés dans la berge ou qu'allongé sur le sol tu sens le vent couvrir ton visage de chardons venu on ne sait d'où une grande tristesse ramène le paysage lunaire de ses épaules lasses il n'y a plus de mots ses murmures se posent partout remplissent le silence déchiré par le cri du train ils sont l'eau qui demeure dans l'empreinte des pas depuis la dernière averse mais il suffit d'un bruit de clé dans la serrure pour te faire entendre le temps couler sans hâte le long de tes chaussettes humides ou la pesante respiration des racines et tu recommences à rêver à la rive bleue du bout du fleuve sur laquelle nous ruminons notre délaissement féerique (p. 17 et 19)

The shimmering tarmac of the deserted basketball court, a line of industrial-sized garbage cans, and beyond the electrified perimeter fence a vista that twangs a country and western chord of self-pity in me. For a brief moment, when I first arrived, I thought of putting a photo of Alex - Laughing Alpha Male at Roulette Wheel - next to my computer, alongside my family collection: Late Mother Squinting Into Sun on Pebbled Beach, Brother Pierre with Postpartum Wife and Male Twins, and Compos Mentis Father Fighting Daily Telegraph Crossword. But I stopped myself. Why give myself a daily reminder of what I have in every other way laid to rest? Besides, there would be curiosity from colleagues, and my responses to their questions would seem either morbid or tasteless or brutal depending on the pitch and role of my mood. Memories of my past existence, and the future that came with it, can start as benign, Vaselined nostalgia vignettes. But they’ll quickly ghost train into Malevolent noir shorts backlit by that great worst enemy of all victims of circumstance, hindsight. So for the sake of my own sanity, I apologize silently to Alex before burying him in the desk alongside my emergency bottle of Lauphroaig and a little homemade flower press given to me by a former patient who hanged himself with a clothesline. The happy drawer.

Men don’t lie to whores. I once had a lover who had been MI5. He was gentle, though, and sometimes cried after he fucked me. The man who killed me was rough and never cried. He kept two fierce Alsatians in his bathtub. That’s the trouble with Hong Kong flats—too small for dogs, especially large ones, but some people insist on having them. This man, an English police inspector, he was vice. Those dogs were hungry the night they ripped me apart and almost tore his left hand off in the process. He still has the scar. The photo in the newspaper caught it when he put up his hand to cover his face the day he was arrested, although that happened years later, long after I was gone. Jail ended his career, but he just went to the mercenaries. There’s always a place in the world for the rough ones. About my death, though, that was an accident. He lost control of his hounds and they savaged my jugular and feasted on my flesh until he muzzled them. Afterward he hid my corpse because what else could he do? First, however, he cleanly sliced off my hands and feet to be found with no canine teeth marks, separated from the rest of me.

Te voici Sujette à la Mort Etale ton Bien sur le Sol Poches, lettres, photos, paroles, Te voici Sujet en ta Mort. Te voici Corps perdant tout Corps Perdant tes lèvres, tes paroles, Chevelure noire du sol Au bord d'une Mort sans rebord. Ici le présent retenu Que tu ne tiendras pas, que tu Laisses continuer sa cible. Là ma mémoire sans projet Sans impossibles, sans possibles, Dont ta Mort est l'autre Sujet.