The Glockenspiel
Snarling, I’d come to think of them as teeth. Each note on the glockenspiel corresponding. Dragging the hammer over them… wrong order again. I felt it in my teeth. There aren’t many left but they’re mine. I must get them back in order. My mouth must be in order for me to speak. My glockenspiel… it must be set right.
I took the silver bars from their wooden cradles, set them upon the tabletop. Running a fingertip across one, enamel dully glimmers, I wonder what feeling is dead in my fingertips. The tips I used to have. Once aligned the bars looked like coffins, a state funeral… war… another memory but… I remember, I mustn’t yet, how the sun glinted on our medals, won for what? This is why you mustn’t remember, not yet, the pain when you reach the end… it must be set in order first, then we’ll know where to go next.
I picked up one that had long been my favourite. All identical but for weight, thickness, length, occasionally… but the same really, but I did like this one really. It tasted black in my mouth. I must refrain from licking them though, the house is damp and they shall grow stains. Life will grow over them and no more will they sparkle, no more sing… I’ll put you on first blacky. Now you always do this and you haven’t got it right yet have you? Oh dear. But the heart wants…
Which next? This one’s long and light. I put it on without thinking and now a short one. Now three. Stop it, you’re rushing. You shan’t get them on right if you just throw them. Oh but what’s the use? You’ll never remember the order… persistence! When she finally gave in to me… who was she? See! Agony again! But the sweet curve of her back and my hand beneath it, translucent blonde hairs across her body. She had been younger. How much? I’d grow a moustache and joke about being a paedophile. Or was that a different girl? Or was that a dream? No. There had been something – I’ll put this one next.
Part of me wants to upset this table. Let them fly across the room, under the dresser, the couch, all the useless furniture, that stuff I never use, dusty… and then I’ll never be able to bend down and find them and then you never find them all do you? One will be gone for good and the glockenspiel will never be whole. How I long to do that. Can’t let myself. But then, when the hammer runs along them, all the tingling and all in the wrong order… oh, then I could throw them down. Yes indeed I could. Once I even kicked that table right over. Problem was, they were all on the glockenspiel so… silly me straining to lift the table again. That was one wasn’t it? I can put that one on the end. Then the time that they came in. Two. Spotty one was, could tell even behind the mask, or was it tights? The things they took… they took order. Took order from my glockenspiel, mangled it on the ground.
There is less agony in this memory. I know that this is why the glockenspiel is this way now. I also know that the table I kicked over must have been after that. I can put these two at the end surely? Unless there is more, and there always is more. But these line up just the same, and I feel like the end is now in the future and not lost back there somewhere. Once I get this thing straight again then I can do things like this all day. All the different tunes to play. Line up all the memories and we’ll know where we are won’t we? Plan out a nice little moral, nice meaning and songs and dances and lessons follow… what a say it will be for us. We’ll know then! I’ll put on another one, for luck.
History. History. I remember jobs… the concept at least. The years that all had a certain chair in them. Clicking… was that a typewriter? But what did I do? Many things? One special calling? Ooh this is giving me toothache now… but! I remember training, young and the typewriters then had wood upon their sides. Now I must have retired. Pensioned? Perhaps. In a home? A nurse wouldn’t stand for this glockenspiel would she? Cruel mistresses the young. The blonde young. Although delicious. We’re off subject… For I have retired and will not taste between the legs of a young blonde again. For I have done you know! I know that much. I’ll put another on.
How many years? For what? I’m here now and not at work – this might be my work – don’t be foolish, they wouldn’t buy this – was I a salesman? I remember training and the clicking… stop or you’ll be on young blondes again… but that’s it, the young and the old, where is the middle bit? The working bit. The giving back bit? Giving… I remember the dole. Maybe long years of dole but, more rightly, the acuteness of poverty, that’s dragging it out. I was in a room, embarrassed. Must have been middle class I reckon, or maybe just a clerk… I can’t remember a shirt or collar. Hrm. But I was embarrassed as I couldn’t tell the room about myself as they were all of a muchness, a sameness and similarity. I was something else and I knew it. But what? Nothing comes. I ache. That was worth two more. That will ease my pain for now.
How many left then? Six, eight, twelve? Well there’s two here and three here, so that makes five and then two more. But I’ve counted this one with this two and this three… so that makes it eight, ten, thirteen? Then what? Then take one away. Then one goes on the glockenspiel. But aren’t they all part of a glockenspiel, the glockenspiel, this one here? Or then is it not one until they’re on? And then if it’s wrong? That’s not doing what a glockenspiel is supposed to do, so it’s not a glockenspiel. Oh dear, I shall not be happy if by the end of this I haven’t got the thing I’ve been working on all this time. Not happy one bit.
This time there might come another one. One with a railway engine, the Stevenson’s Rocket, the Mallard all blue and in the distance. Then there were giant goldfish and frogs that popped when you threw them beneath the farmer’s horses. I guess this must be children’s thoughts. Children do such things I remember and I’m a big boy, practically grown and don’t do such stupid things. There was a waterfall by a rock and the rock was called the summerhouse and they had a picture of it and I never could tell when it was taken. There must have been a fire, a storm, a bomb. There were the dead people and our medals in the sun wasn’t there? Too fast. I’m going too fast. I’ll have to put two more on… but then there was the butterfly, dragonfly, elderflower cordial, marijuana and we’re back in Egypt now and back to the girl with the blonde and no, no, too fast, please slow down with the black car racing through the night, this was a story, the Great Gatsby, and we read it in my life, somewhere in my life, and she did, blonde, which one? And another piece has to go in but that’s going to be the badger that followed me home, the stork the heron the dragonfly that followed me home… night and day they followed me home…
They call them Mayflies because they live for one day in May and that was my birthday and every birthday there would be thousands of flies lying dead across the entire country. Lucky things. That’s a useful memory actually, isn’t it? Has a fact in it. That can have one all its own.
But I’ve rushed. How I’ve rushed. They are almost all in. Was there no more to it all than that? Even if I lined that up then there’s not much there. Could I make anything out of that? Maybe new things will come? Still… is this all a life? How could it be? But so much is the same every day. How long is a life? Maybe it’s all been spent doing this? Waiting to see what the point will be. I’d like to have made someone happy. At some point. Well, perhaps I could play them all a song when I’m done. When I’m done then they can use it for themselves too, I don’t mind sharing. I’ll let them all have a go.
But I don’t know. It’s getting late. Let me put a last one in. What shall it be? Hrm. My mother? A father? Some dead people? All of the people who I did some little wrongs or little rights? Something trivial or maybe a serious event that I’ve repressed all the time and now it’s so obvious… You know. I think I might just… this once, you know, not again, just once… I might just be greedy and have this one all for myself. Me. Yes, just me. But what am I then, exactly? All of this stuff? None of it? I don’t know. Maybe when it’s done I’ll know. Maybe when the glockenspiel’s back in order…
It might be in order right now…
Maybe.
I lift the hammer. Tremble. Feel my teeth tingle, oh anticipation!
I drag it along and it hammers out a mess of notes – not a bit of order to them. Argh! I feel it in my teeth! Argh! I feel it in my rage! Rage! RAGE!
Oh great, now the bloody table’s on the floor again…
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I took the silver bars from their wooden cradles, set them upon the tabletop. Running a fingertip across one, enamel dully glimmers, I wonder what feeling is dead in my fingertips. The tips I used to have. Once aligned the bars looked like coffins, a state funeral… war… another memory but… I remember, I mustn’t yet, how the sun glinted on our medals, won for what? This is why you mustn’t remember, not yet, the pain when you reach the end… it must be set in order first, then we’ll know where to go next.
I picked up one that had long been my favourite. All identical but for weight, thickness, length, occasionally… but the same really, but I did like this one really. It tasted black in my mouth. I must refrain from licking them though, the house is damp and they shall grow stains. Life will grow over them and no more will they sparkle, no more sing… I’ll put you on first blacky. Now you always do this and you haven’t got it right yet have you? Oh dear. But the heart wants…
Which next? This one’s long and light. I put it on without thinking and now a short one. Now three. Stop it, you’re rushing. You shan’t get them on right if you just throw them. Oh but what’s the use? You’ll never remember the order… persistence! When she finally gave in to me… who was she? See! Agony again! But the sweet curve of her back and my hand beneath it, translucent blonde hairs across her body. She had been younger. How much? I’d grow a moustache and joke about being a paedophile. Or was that a different girl? Or was that a dream? No. There had been something – I’ll put this one next.
Part of me wants to upset this table. Let them fly across the room, under the dresser, the couch, all the useless furniture, that stuff I never use, dusty… and then I’ll never be able to bend down and find them and then you never find them all do you? One will be gone for good and the glockenspiel will never be whole. How I long to do that. Can’t let myself. But then, when the hammer runs along them, all the tingling and all in the wrong order… oh, then I could throw them down. Yes indeed I could. Once I even kicked that table right over. Problem was, they were all on the glockenspiel so… silly me straining to lift the table again. That was one wasn’t it? I can put that one on the end. Then the time that they came in. Two. Spotty one was, could tell even behind the mask, or was it tights? The things they took… they took order. Took order from my glockenspiel, mangled it on the ground.
There is less agony in this memory. I know that this is why the glockenspiel is this way now. I also know that the table I kicked over must have been after that. I can put these two at the end surely? Unless there is more, and there always is more. But these line up just the same, and I feel like the end is now in the future and not lost back there somewhere. Once I get this thing straight again then I can do things like this all day. All the different tunes to play. Line up all the memories and we’ll know where we are won’t we? Plan out a nice little moral, nice meaning and songs and dances and lessons follow… what a say it will be for us. We’ll know then! I’ll put on another one, for luck.
History. History. I remember jobs… the concept at least. The years that all had a certain chair in them. Clicking… was that a typewriter? But what did I do? Many things? One special calling? Ooh this is giving me toothache now… but! I remember training, young and the typewriters then had wood upon their sides. Now I must have retired. Pensioned? Perhaps. In a home? A nurse wouldn’t stand for this glockenspiel would she? Cruel mistresses the young. The blonde young. Although delicious. We’re off subject… For I have retired and will not taste between the legs of a young blonde again. For I have done you know! I know that much. I’ll put another on.
How many years? For what? I’m here now and not at work – this might be my work – don’t be foolish, they wouldn’t buy this – was I a salesman? I remember training and the clicking… stop or you’ll be on young blondes again… but that’s it, the young and the old, where is the middle bit? The working bit. The giving back bit? Giving… I remember the dole. Maybe long years of dole but, more rightly, the acuteness of poverty, that’s dragging it out. I was in a room, embarrassed. Must have been middle class I reckon, or maybe just a clerk… I can’t remember a shirt or collar. Hrm. But I was embarrassed as I couldn’t tell the room about myself as they were all of a muchness, a sameness and similarity. I was something else and I knew it. But what? Nothing comes. I ache. That was worth two more. That will ease my pain for now.
How many left then? Six, eight, twelve? Well there’s two here and three here, so that makes five and then two more. But I’ve counted this one with this two and this three… so that makes it eight, ten, thirteen? Then what? Then take one away. Then one goes on the glockenspiel. But aren’t they all part of a glockenspiel, the glockenspiel, this one here? Or then is it not one until they’re on? And then if it’s wrong? That’s not doing what a glockenspiel is supposed to do, so it’s not a glockenspiel. Oh dear, I shall not be happy if by the end of this I haven’t got the thing I’ve been working on all this time. Not happy one bit.
This time there might come another one. One with a railway engine, the Stevenson’s Rocket, the Mallard all blue and in the distance. Then there were giant goldfish and frogs that popped when you threw them beneath the farmer’s horses. I guess this must be children’s thoughts. Children do such things I remember and I’m a big boy, practically grown and don’t do such stupid things. There was a waterfall by a rock and the rock was called the summerhouse and they had a picture of it and I never could tell when it was taken. There must have been a fire, a storm, a bomb. There were the dead people and our medals in the sun wasn’t there? Too fast. I’m going too fast. I’ll have to put two more on… but then there was the butterfly, dragonfly, elderflower cordial, marijuana and we’re back in Egypt now and back to the girl with the blonde and no, no, too fast, please slow down with the black car racing through the night, this was a story, the Great Gatsby, and we read it in my life, somewhere in my life, and she did, blonde, which one? And another piece has to go in but that’s going to be the badger that followed me home, the stork the heron the dragonfly that followed me home… night and day they followed me home…
They call them Mayflies because they live for one day in May and that was my birthday and every birthday there would be thousands of flies lying dead across the entire country. Lucky things. That’s a useful memory actually, isn’t it? Has a fact in it. That can have one all its own.
But I’ve rushed. How I’ve rushed. They are almost all in. Was there no more to it all than that? Even if I lined that up then there’s not much there. Could I make anything out of that? Maybe new things will come? Still… is this all a life? How could it be? But so much is the same every day. How long is a life? Maybe it’s all been spent doing this? Waiting to see what the point will be. I’d like to have made someone happy. At some point. Well, perhaps I could play them all a song when I’m done. When I’m done then they can use it for themselves too, I don’t mind sharing. I’ll let them all have a go.
But I don’t know. It’s getting late. Let me put a last one in. What shall it be? Hrm. My mother? A father? Some dead people? All of the people who I did some little wrongs or little rights? Something trivial or maybe a serious event that I’ve repressed all the time and now it’s so obvious… You know. I think I might just… this once, you know, not again, just once… I might just be greedy and have this one all for myself. Me. Yes, just me. But what am I then, exactly? All of this stuff? None of it? I don’t know. Maybe when it’s done I’ll know. Maybe when the glockenspiel’s back in order…
It might be in order right now…
Maybe.
I lift the hammer. Tremble. Feel my teeth tingle, oh anticipation!
I drag it along and it hammers out a mess of notes – not a bit of order to them. Argh! I feel it in my teeth! Argh! I feel it in my rage! Rage! RAGE!
Oh great, now the bloody table’s on the floor again…
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