a home for homeless literature
Here's a piece that died long ago, but which perhaps might find new life in this context:
Everyday, without fail, I smell what the city has eaten. My regular commute winds its way past the region’s sewage treatment facility, and though disgusting, the stench is also weirdly soothing. There exists a unity in that smell that isn’t present anywhere else among the people in this city. This morning’s dominant odour was asparagus. The implication, for me, is clear: the city shared asparagus today.
I’m not stupid. I know the city didn’t sit down at a massive community table, each contributing to an impossibly big cornucopia filled to brimming with asparagus located centrally between them all. I just can’t help picturing exactly that kind of scene every time I smell the city’s collective shit. Maybe this makes me weird. Maybe you should stop being so judgmental.
I don’t mean to be defensive. I’m a returns counter clerk. It’s just my job. It was always my dream to be a returns counter clerk, and now I’m doing it. When the other kids at school were wearing home made space suits and stethoscopes and race car driver helmets I was reciting that most holy of mantras: “Do you have your receipt with you today?” I would make my sister play the role of the disgruntled customer over and over again, changing the product or source of concern that was or seemed deficient, and varying the degree of authenticity of the complaint. My favourite scenarios had to do with customers who had broken whatever they were returning themselves, and were trying to hide their guilt. I never let them get away with it. I knew their tricks.
That might shed a little light on why I look for harmony in shit; I can’t find it at work.
What I can find at work is evidence. Evidence, that is, of the duplicity of people. My first customer today, for instance, wanted to return a case of bottled water. Two bottles were already opened and half-empty. She maintained that the water was “funny.” When asked to elaborate, she said it wasn’t something she could specify, that it was just a general feeling she got from the water. I explained that we couldn’t possibly refund her for a case of water from which two bottles were already opened and partly consumed. I thought that was reasonably understandable, but she seemed not to agree. She even tried to convince me that we could combine the contents of the two half-empty bottles, and then subtract from her refund the cost of one bottle.
(Oh, and on another note, if you guys have links you want to suggest for the sidebar, just let me know)
Everyday, without fail, I smell what the city has eaten. My regular commute winds its way past the region’s sewage treatment facility, and though disgusting, the stench is also weirdly soothing. There exists a unity in that smell that isn’t present anywhere else among the people in this city. This morning’s dominant odour was asparagus. The implication, for me, is clear: the city shared asparagus today.
I’m not stupid. I know the city didn’t sit down at a massive community table, each contributing to an impossibly big cornucopia filled to brimming with asparagus located centrally between them all. I just can’t help picturing exactly that kind of scene every time I smell the city’s collective shit. Maybe this makes me weird. Maybe you should stop being so judgmental.
I don’t mean to be defensive. I’m a returns counter clerk. It’s just my job. It was always my dream to be a returns counter clerk, and now I’m doing it. When the other kids at school were wearing home made space suits and stethoscopes and race car driver helmets I was reciting that most holy of mantras: “Do you have your receipt with you today?” I would make my sister play the role of the disgruntled customer over and over again, changing the product or source of concern that was or seemed deficient, and varying the degree of authenticity of the complaint. My favourite scenarios had to do with customers who had broken whatever they were returning themselves, and were trying to hide their guilt. I never let them get away with it. I knew their tricks.
That might shed a little light on why I look for harmony in shit; I can’t find it at work.
What I can find at work is evidence. Evidence, that is, of the duplicity of people. My first customer today, for instance, wanted to return a case of bottled water. Two bottles were already opened and half-empty. She maintained that the water was “funny.” When asked to elaborate, she said it wasn’t something she could specify, that it was just a general feeling she got from the water. I explained that we couldn’t possibly refund her for a case of water from which two bottles were already opened and partly consumed. I thought that was reasonably understandable, but she seemed not to agree. She even tried to convince me that we could combine the contents of the two half-empty bottles, and then subtract from her refund the cost of one bottle.
(Oh, and on another note, if you guys have links you want to suggest for the sidebar, just let me know)
3 Responses to “unloading the corpses”
Leave a Reply
previous posts
links
RSS feed
ATOM 0.3
Like waiting against the gymnasium wall at a grade school dance.
I think water reclaimation plants are facinating. Just the title of them even. When I first started reading this I felt the the whole "I smell what the city has eaten" was a bit of a stretch and perhaps too euphamistic for the large pools of soupy human shit that you're actually referencing. What was more interesting to me was that combinatory scent that is distinctly human in the end (no pun intended). Whether it be a specific food or just an unnamable stench (which might be less of a stretch). In a piece that is so scent related though, I don't smell anything. The interesting thing about smell is its relation to taste which you tease at a bit with the idea of asperagus. I have a hard time "being-in" the smell.
The details of the character's obsession with such a typically mundane and suburban block-mall occupation are interesting and unique. Though there's not enough justification for this desire maybe. What's the draw? What about this character makes that job ideal? I'm missing the "tick" i think.
Also, some of the lines boil down to tidy jokes that read too much like Sunday one liners in the comics section: "That might shed a little light on why I look for harmony in shit; I can’t find it at work." Bah-dum-ching!
Obviously, based on the title, I'm missing a whole lot of this story. I'd like to see where it goes and how you develope this character further. He does need to be more rounded and the connection between him, the job, and the smell of human shit needs to be sussed out some more. So yes, another dollup of this story would be great.
I used to actually right next to a sewage plant (well six houses down) in Vernon before I moved to the equally stank cowfields of Lavington so sewage plants will always have a soft spot in my heart.
As for the piece I think t is much too short to really do much of anything at this time although I see the way that the cahracter is set up and even the city itself. I think I'm honestly more interested in the city itself and the landscape than I am the character after reading this, so maybe if I was going to expand it I'd focus o nthe city as a sort of character and make the anrrator a sort of observor, a piece of landscape himself, and make clear the whole connection thing between smells/sights/returns clerks (as Jenny so aptly put above). Like the start, needs to find some momentum somewhere.
I once saw someone try to return a $1 water bottle at the dollar store and she was livid when she found out it was exchange only. I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!!