FORREST ROTH / NOTEBOOK SELECTIONS FROM ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE AS POTENTIAL INSTRUMENT, DREYFUS LENT, 197X
Steps
Stone, hewn from last boulder left alone in Sonoran Desert, taken down from on high by indifferent wind, no witnesses to act but one who, having seen boulder fall, must carry it to where it belongs next. Simple geometry of steps, likely having distinction of being one completely uniform aspect of architecture spanning and connecting millennia of different cultures that avoided crossing paths until Novice of Steps walked familiar device of assisting protuberances in a foreign land, must lay tired eyes upon fundamental convenience of all humanity. This is not to say building on ground level with no elevation is design for faulty construction, lest ground level construction provides steps that go down only towards basement or other sublevel below sleeping minds of Novice of Steps; in which case, it is preferable to have at least same number, if not more, of levels going up to different floors to flatten out pataphysical deficiency of structure in implying how subconscious directs itself to primal forms such as those of Lascaux or sturm und drang of washing machine I frequently deal with when not painting. Remind myself this is because I own nothing but merely pass through material in all its phases and oscillations, thus I retain orderless entropy from inevitable traps of possession itself, and there I cannot wait upon steps, fearing I will see too well what I am waiting for. Despite its own waiting on steps outside has sad domesticity to it, mangy black cat I have christened Moma sympathizes with prodigal’s inclination towards uneasy repentance. Dignity of steps resides with those beyond their periphery, leading upwards. But if those same steps were built down, still outside, this may lead into excavated area where Novice of Steps sees how they travel beneath flattening of the world, where topmost layer of polluted reason will soon give way. Immediate problems including soil erosion, alluvial displacement, and tectonic mishaps, to name a few, would be a concern, so reinforcement of exposed side arrived at, then, preferably with drainage supplied for cistern beneath area vacated for structure, will be required feature. Otherwise. Better to stand on steps than be stood upon. Regardless, risk stubbornly dawdles unless width of steps is enough to accommodate both entrants and exeunts. Nothing so unfriendly as narrow steps. Benefit of this structure, having to stand to look up above top level to see anything, means not missing anything because of poor angle of visibility from substrata’s interference. Sitting on steps, too, has its self-effacing nobility, one tested by every poet and philosopher imaginable, as act imitates original boulder displaced in accidental manner to become hewn stone by an eventually shifting earth. This act constitutes sort of faith rare in humanity: it does not play games with steps necessary for entrants and exeunts of conventional disposition. Entry or exit not achievable is grossest stain for any building and a fascinating proposition here. Virgil finds his way into and out of Hell easily enough, barring arbitrary assistance. What then? No, we keep to our steps so because, if anything, there will always be steps for their own sake, entailing measure of our more gradual natures. Never can entrant or exeunt gain access by leaps and bounds, hence painful reminder of our limitations, having to look upwards and calculating with reverberating echo of resigned sigh how many steps we must climb or descend before realizing landing will be unobtainable. Whether above or below, it is better to stop, go inside, and cease with steps. This may explain noted obsession in some cultures of traversing many steps as spiritual purification, or in archetypal sublimations resembling modest prize-fighter in training as he anticipates what is certain to be his pyrrhic victory. Corrupted steps have that sort of cheap, popular sentimentality, I quietly lament to Moma, placing chipped saucer of expired milk at his weather-beaten paws, its reach flailing from streets, as we continue to look for our next set of steps. As I am stepping out onto my steps, pitiable Moma, before I leave you to tend to what remains in my wrecked studio, how I am also left to wonder my arrival on these same steps where you now sit and drink and sleep, buried in your relentless waiting for whatever else lies beyond my shadow. A building is where I wait and stay as well, steps to further steps and eventual end, steps unnecessary and never stepped upon. Incalculable, this number of missing steps to achieve required stepping for me and for all, whether to step up or down, as I look down at my feet to see what is lost. I figure, based on your brave scampering across the ragged avenue, there are at least three steps along my usual path waiting to be reclaimed, merged with stairwell inside, unless I also discover missing steps leading down into the center of the building where I suspect a sort of burial mound of accumulated dirt no one has seen since its construction resides, this whole building having sprung up around it by human hands, leaving forgotten earth to be tended by register of silent monologue, I am a mere basement for people to do their dim laundry, place their leaky water pipes, hang their fizzling circuit breakers. Also for spiders to suspend their patient webs and gift this world its swarming children to fear should they all converge at a single place, upon their own steps which cannot be built with missing steps I have found for them.
Façade
Resembling steps, product of another simple geometry. Perhaps less intuitive because it comes from someone else— which is to say, no one worthy of any particular attention— and cannot be followed either methodically or arbitrarily as result. Would I make myself available for commission to design façade (assuming my paintings alone have expressed knowledge as to how to do it), certain questions likely require answering to my satisfaction, starting with whether prospective employer thinks concept of professional architecture is utter scam to bilk city luminaries under pretense of possible metropolitan utopia. Ideal façade should be rendered from same aforementioned stone from which steps are hewn. May require more lonely boulders in another desert to procure. Or, why is façade needed at all? Could building suffice as assemblage of rooms directly exposed to elements and Novice of Façades? Furthermore, could substitute for façade be created in complete absence of any esthetic (e.g., Russian Brutalism) and without providing any contour or outward definition of a building which houses such assemblage? At local public library, I consult with only known expert of façades in walking distance of my vicinity, a strangely timid albeit excitable “old soul,” as they like to say in this state, who claims to be my long-lost brother despite we share no physical resemblance, he has never has so much as visited Canada, and he cannot remember what his mother’s maiden name is. No matter. Before carrying out my usual parcel of neglected books on architecture that are likely decades out favor, I make sure to visit him around closing time so I can ply him with a sandwich at the House of Bison, which constructs them decently with roast beef, fresh prepared horseradish (awaiting confirmation), and a hard, crusty German roll, plus generous pickle wedge for reinforcement. While he will noisily devour two or three of these, I explain my apprehension with façades for this budding project of mine, my fears of having to fall back upon, horrors, usual Gothic cliches, tiresome gargoyles with deadly, leering faces or such, and whether any investment in façade is merely wasted material and suffering. Assuming he holds to form, I can expect him to stop eating, look at me, begin crying, and ask me why I did not visit him during his birthday last year. Usual readymade excuse to bypass this digression is lie about teaching night class, or spice up my cover with giving presentation to conference which many art professors were clamoring for thanks to revived interest in my duplicate canvases. Had to do it (no, I could not care less). My friend has special defense against my polite falsehoods. Slowly parceling away hard edges of the German rolls on his plate as he listens to me, it will be short order before, having anticipated moment, he balls those discarded crusts in his fists, letting fly at me along with those doughy projectiles, “Build your fucking art-bunker with these!” When finished, he promptly storms out. Aggrieved House of Bison staff, how they look on my table with expecting resignation. It is kind they still let me order with him on occasion. Practice of picking the rock salt out of my eyelashes and fennel seeds from my widow’s peak yields what I look for. Inspiration comes, as it does, in such episodes of acquiescing to pure dejection of another: rolled-up excrescence into suggestion of unfulfilled bolus, applied to outside of building, left to harden in the sun. Novel take on ancient hut construction practices. Typical problem of smell. Will it hold up in this city? Perhaps Pol-E-Clear residual coating placed on outside will help maintain its integrity and thwart licking deviants. Worth a try, at least. I sit myself at library desk trying to pen semi-honest Thank You and I Am Sorry missive into completion, courtesy of thoughtful purveyors at EmoBrite who know how to soothe over hurt feelings of any Expert of Façades. No doubt he casts spurious charges about me with other retired academics there, and I am left to pocket unfinished card, devoid of any original sentiment I can add to prepackaged one. In time, I do believe residuum of professional comportment is difficult to efface completely, and it is true this will be restored eventually to renew our acquaintance in good faith over meals I keep paying for. Not-so-legendary House of Bison, evidently held together at stucco seams with crumpled one-dollar bills of blue-collar entrants and slumming white-collar exeunts, does return its clientele with mirthless abandon. They are anchored by single island counter service with single booths and tables around perimeter, wooden seats at counter specially imported from Ohio town that no longer exists, I am told, for added effect of its own prescience, along with collection of things and accoutrements from locations that have never been, photos which fail to prove these locations even could have been in first place, pale, sickly countenance of populace and their own unspoken disavowal of where they supposedly lived, all brought to temporary attention of their soon becoming wallpaper for restaurant they would never eat at, partaking of same atmosphere their image-presence creates for customers who never look at their face, unlike myself. I do feel them staring as other patrons eat without caution for parched throats, cutting their fingers on chipped porcelain plates with celadon rings baked into surface, each chip an exposed trail where regulars of House of Bison once frequented so they could leave this place wishing they could also leave this city, veins and arteries failing to force them along, only to be squeezed out front door, back to work, with faded wooden sign displaying an Indian’s head wishing them well on the path, realizing they have nowhere else to go. “Kill me,” says Lucinda, 70 year-old lifer working behind counter on one diabetic leg, having been trucked in for nearly half of those years by her ex-husband who gives her a ride and back, making sure she is in doorway before he leaves so kids do not jump her for tips they know she hides in her circulation legging, or pull off her other leg, wearing it, baiting her with “Hey look lady, I’m your leg” right before kicking her side and taking off. So goes it on the street. No one else helps, she tells me with ex-husband sitting on other stool replying instead, “Sure, that’s why I divorced you.” Scurrying to door, she searches for the keys in her purse, complaining how she should get better porch light, except house is so goddamn ugly to begin with that her neighbors would shoot out lightbulb. Folks go crazy not to see something, she surmises while reminding herself she would likely die on job within next few years, and wouldn’t that be something if she couldn’t get someone to fill in her shift. “It could happen to you… it could happen to me,” she is prone to sing, then follows patron’s wet belch from corner stool. No tip left, as usual.
Door (Exterior)
For all manner of entrants and exeunts, beautiful, blessed door outside, without which our lives reduce themselves to meaningless stares through façade which invites yet refuses letting us inside. Barbarians we are, even when pretending otherwise, we wink, gesticulate, yell at someone to open door already so, upon gaining entrant status in this case, we may eventually rise to level of exeunt once our unspecified business in building is concluded, a cycle continuing unabated into perpetuity. Ten thousand lifespans to ten thousandth power of passing through doors and helping others pass through doors and watching others walk into doors, as we think, This could be myself, when, in fact, it already has been. Mark of a perfectly crafted exterior door to gain entrance to building one must enter, inclusive of materials other than glass (and truthfully, best door not made of glass has yet to be made, I believe closest approximations may be found on Arabian peninsula and surrounding region), allowing selective limitation of those who may enter not by lock or any other special guarding mechanism but delineated opacity inviting those who are invited, turning away those who need not apply since they only think of exterior door in terms of apparatus anyway, just another form of supplication to them, or deciding which rank odor is least rank— and that is you, stranger. Beating down what can be opened before understanding an exterior door leads to understanding many, albeit only those which come after it, and never before, following last step leading away from entrant who knows little of where things are and what they may be until, upon seeing another exterior door, the entrant discerns leaving what they had already entered for trying to understand the only only a Novice of Doors could open up to thinking themselves, Others have been here too often, I see their steps lessening the dirt, I see fingerprints greasing the surface. These others have leaned upon waiting, listening, considering the only if they leave something of themselves behind other than a nervous dust shaken free from bad conscience pondering, How will I come out of a door into all this stillness and convince myself the door is not there? Exterior door moves, too, swivels on hinge. Shuts cold out. Can I convince Oulibina otherwise that I, too, have been waiting, listening, considering how I will come out of exterior door and be an exeunt into outside of building and, looking up, finding no other doors to enter, nowhere else to turn but to Oulibina, standing beside me, and convince her otherwise that she is not standing beside me but waiting, listening, considering exterior door that someone who did not know anything about doors made, its shoddy craftsmanship, its cheap materiality, dents and scrapes and paint stains accumulated over years of entrants and exeunts coming and going, swivels in hinges assuredly giving out and sending each swing of door into death-creak which everyone on sidewalk can hear, as they think to themselves, The shittiness of this door is unparalleled in the history of architecture, in which case, they know it is working correctly, provided they are fascinated with mundane utility which drowns in ancient koan, How does one enter a building with no door? Ascertaining several impractical answers, potential mental breakdown of Novice of Doors becoming exterior door itself is most humorous and striking, a positively human answer, full of flawed logic yet irrepressible optimism of transformation before no door, no knob, no swiveling. Another: Japanese shōji. Made of paper, sliding exterior door allows light behind it to pass, conferring hesitant welcome to entrant who moves it aside with a gentle, effortless push, rendering any potential transformation completely forgotten once they slide door back to its original, closed position, having placed their hand on place which vanishes at mention of itself entering. Inside, Novice of Doors sleeps on ground for longest time, then never sleeps again. They are lost in shadows moving across their face until it is another person’s, lips moving without their realizing it as they speak, Enter me. In theory advanced by that delightful Gettlesmann fellow, this should all happen quickly. Then again, I do not readily believe in sleep of instantaneous kind. If I dream of exterior door, I will decide to enter it because decision, for once, is entirely my own, and made without hesitation.
Stairwell
In absence of elevator(s) or other costly mechanisms not essential to circulatory workings of building (see “Pipes”), accumulation of steps through progression of floor related to each by only progress itself, a notion easily surmised and dismissed, constitutes auditory advantage only if steps stay in place and do not fall or recede, especially as I put my feet on them walking up or down, their ability to stay in place being primary indicator of their dignity and mine. It is essential for us to trust something that maintains us high above floor. Anything less than that is gross betrayal of order and progress, leaving in its wake terrible wound now existing in a stairwell for Novice of Stairwells to navigate around creakily and wearily, until someone who as of yet has not been designated either entrant or exeunt calls forth repairman to mend offending discrepancy (seldom can it be fully repaired, no, betrayal being far too deep for Novice of Stairwells always remembering that step when they step on eternally, remembering it, and thinking, This time my foot will go though the discrepancy and I will fall below, likely to my death since I dwell so high, dependent on all the steps preceding it) and assures Novice of Stairwells that resumption of normal walking lives may continue— “Just don’t jump on the damn thing, okay?” Because it is not auditory advantage I am explaining. I concede stairwell will pale in comparison to another stairwell in another building in another country far away from where Novice of Stairwells resides, failing to see for themselves beautiful stairwell other than in picture or painting, the latter certainly not coming from my hand. Even then, how many stairwells have been ruined by single nude woman descending it moment by moment, laughing as she does while throng of shocked onlookers, including those who do not actually see her, mumble angrily to themselves about perfectly good stairwell being ruined and how it is no longer stairwell but series of steps mocked and scorned instead? In comes Estophaat, I imagine, putting his proverbial foot in it, reminding those in crowd how stairwells should ennoble us and all must remain still, how we should come to attention in stairwell when doing so, as attention is first gift lost, scattered by wakening of materiality that constitutes our hopeless sense of beauty in this world, that we will be a painting someday or cast out to be a discrepancy in stairwell needing perpetual repair. Vivi stubs her cigarette out on armrest of my well-used sofa, staring at burn mark left, as though she has no idea who would have done such a thing. Falling further into her detachment (I tend to avoid saying anything about state of my furniture, what is the use of it), she sticks her fingers and thumb into divide of cushions adjacent to her, forcing them there until something dark scuttles across them, or so she tells me. Normally she will scream in these instances; however, this time she does not, no doubt unaware she has been— I believe current vernacular is crashing? for a few hours and had already called out to me while I was sleeping in next room. With drink in hand, wrapped in my terrycloth robe with vain octopus on lapel, I have been sitting and waiting for eventual fear that she will permanently lose herself in my sofa. I am fine with this. I gave up painting hands and fingers long ago, of course. It is useless artistic endeavor, which is why I did so up until I was seventeen and understood there was no recourse for it. My accomplishment in this has infuriated her to no end. She complains to dark, scuttling thing in void between my sofa cushions, yelling, “Go ahead and eat my hand off!”, thinking that being maimed further would get another painter to pay more attention and paint her posing. Deeper she digs her hand in. “What a terrible burn, someone take me please take me take my hands but let me live, let me walk, I don’t want to fall, I don’t want to pass my own body,” she prattles, describing said body in less-than-glowing terms of reclamation in attempt to defame me and my association with her. The kettle is on the fire, so to speak, but I keep poking the logs. “I see you have your locket on,” I tell her. Heirloom. Small finger-portrait she keeps around her neck, clasped shut. She raises her hand from the void of the cushions to her clavicle. Yes, by now I expect her instinct must confirm it, ghostly, lithe digit of someone’s lover over a hundred years languishing, perhaps, maybe more. Well have I wondered, but I am so tired writing this again. I stand up to retrieve her coat and scarf at her unknowing signal to escort downstairs. Scarf is very nice, I confess. Thinner kind inappropriate for walking in heavy snow, thus it will intonate while falling on back of neck, Step lightly unless you want my touch to stay forever, provided any variety of winter calls out for that dead-white index finger, being neither raised nor lowered.
Forrest Roth is the author of a novel, Gary Oldman Is A Building You Must Walk Through, and a flash fiction / prose poem collection, Skeletal Lights from Afar, both from What Books Press. “Notebook Selections...” is taken from a novel in progress, with other excerpts having appeared online at Black Sun Lit and Propagule, as well as in the Triple chapbook series (Ravenna Press). Links can be found at www.forrestroth.blogspot.com.