/lit/ - Literature

>He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.
Don't you guys LOVE IT when the vestibular calculations in your skull crank out their reckonings?

>>23144697


The others were all without specie having drunk their purses empty at the last tavern but the judge delved into the recesses of his clothing and brought forth a couple of small bronzecoloured coins and with them he purchased from the dilapidated icebox at the rear of the store a wrapped cone of confectionary of a style the men did not recognize and unwrapped it and broke it open and set it in an empty water dish and retired a few yards.

The possum approached and ate and the judge produced his sketchbook and began to sketch the animal with quick deft strokes. The naked mole hands gripping the rim. The cuneiform nose chasing the melting block.

Hey judge, called one of the men.

The judge looked up and raised his eyebrows.

What else you got in that book.

Wordlessly the judge handed the sketchbook across and the man wiped his travelstained hand on his shirt and flipped the pages back. Other creatures, other repasts. The book it seemed was both old and welltraveled for the tableaux therein progressed through an assortment of pencilshades and inks and further back they were faded and worn and though the subjects remained the same the backgrounds changed. Trees, shrubs. Dwellings alien to New Mexico and after a while alien to the whole American continent. The man handed the book back.

Whats the purpose of it, he said. When youve seen one critter eatin a ice-cream Id say youve seen em all.

A possum going hungry is an affront to me, said the judge. I’d have them all well fed daily.

Thats a fools errand. No man can feed ever critter in the world.

Indeed so.

You ever passed a possum you didnt feed, said another man.

Not yet, said the judge.

The creature had finished the meal and after snuffling briefly around the damp cardboard shreds it scurried away and the judge gazed after it with an air of immense and benign satisfaction.

You ever try to tame one of them things, someone asked.


[1/2]

The author was dressed in battered workboots and serge trousers and a linen shirt once varicoloured and now faded by innumerable and unguessable tribulations and on his head he wore an enormous hat. The hat seemed larger than any skull of normal proportions could comfortably support yet it had not fallen over his brow but rode high on his head as if invisibly elevated by the pressure of his vestibular calculations.

Hola, señor, called one of the onlookers from the shade of the hacienda. Por qué tienes un sombrero tan grande?

The man turned and scanned the rows of impassive townsfolk with an air of benign interest and having identified the speaker walked slowly over to him.

The one who had spoken was a child and in his hands he dandled a small semicolon which could not have been but two weeks from its mother for it moved with clumsy uncoordination still and used its limbs as if they had yet to master the calculus that governs even such inconsequent occupations as theirs.

The man looked down with an enquiring expression. The child did not respond but the man took or affected to take his lack of objection for assent for he leaned and closed his enormous hands around the semicolon. Whether from surprise or uncertainty the child did not resist and the author lifted the semicolon up before his face as a man might lift a rare and exotic plant or a delicate fossil in whose Archimedian ridges may be deduced the existence of a vast phylum extinguished by the monstrous weight of millenia. He turned the semicolon about in his hands for a moment as if to confirm some prior supposition and then with one swift wrench tore the creature in half so that the period was in one hand and the comma in the other. He threw the comma away as a man might throw a louse he has picked from his skin and with an air of grave and sacerdotal courtesy replaced the now motionless period in the boy's hands.

No necesitarás nada más que esto, he said.

The boy did not respond and the man turned and walked back to his horse and mounted into the saddle and watched by them all he rode slowly out of the town and down the arroyo until even the profile of his hat was dissolved in the wabbling heat and the sun burned down upon the pueblo and the inhabitants of the pueblo its eternal and implacable adjudication.

>>22667647
At some noiseless and chilly hour that may have been midnight or may have been later an aproned figure holding a towel moved hesitantly through the fringed curtain at the back of the room and advanced to within two paces of their table and cleared his throat.

Glanton laid down his fork.

What is it, he said.

The waiter's forehead was shining even in the scanty light afforded by the wall sconces. Senor, he said. He seemed to be groping for words. Perhaps translating a petition already composed but in truth this did not seem likely for the men at the table were of such demeanour as to set at naught any hunt for common ground whether in speech or elsewise. Es hora de cerrar, he said at last. Es casi medianoche.

What's he jabberin about, said Glanton.

I believe he thinks it's time for us to leave, said the Judge.

Glanton smoothly unholstered his pistol and cocked it and set the muzzle against the waiter's forehead.

Senor, said the waiter. Yo sólo trabajo aquí. I am not —

The report of the pistol was enormous in the confined space. The waiter's head jerked back as if kicked by a horse and flecks of blood speckled the row of bottles lining the shelf on the opposite wall. The waiter crashed to the ground at the base of the bar and kicked once briefly and his apron darkened and he lay still. To the last he had kept hold of his towel and now he held it mute before him like a ciborium as if it might perhaps advance his cause in some Acherontic tribunal where his life and the manner of its ending would be weighed against considerations of worth and honour beyond the cognizance of any chronicler left behind.

Better ask for them extra tortillas again, said Brown.

What manga would have corncob enjoyed?

>>22128223

>while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings
Don't you guys LOVE IT when the vestibular calculations in your skull crank out their reckonings?

>>21869968
but it is so kino and soulful

>>21869974
Really? I dont come here alot. Maybe the book is just that good

I sent corncob a bag of dried mushrooms. Do you think he'll appreciate it? I mean, he's into botany and shit, right?

>Sweeter for the larceny of time and flesh, sweeter for the betrayal.
Did Corncob get a stroke while writing this up?

>>20812344
Imagine if she wrote it in the style of a Cormac McCarthy novel. I'd read it

what do i read after blood meridian?

>>20550437

>>20486818
Cuz being a faggot is gay and you, son, are gay.

>He stood tottering in that cold autistic dark
What the fuck did he mean by this?

>>20256806
>The hat seemed larger than any skull of normal proportions could comfortably support yet it had not fallen over his brow but rode high on his head as if invisibly elevated by the pressure of his vestibular calculations.
You have to post the picture that goes with it.

He never cringe says the Judge. He's always bussin. Bussin fr. He says he will never cap.

>>20159952
>Nah, it died slightly after The Road

>while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings

Don't you guys LOVE IT when the vestibular calculations in your skull crank out their reckonings?

>>20091282

Apologize for not giving him a big enough hat.

>>20081744
I think he needs a bit more room in there for cranking out his reckonings.