The Ancient Shark Of Despair's blog

Wednesday, January 14th 2009

@groombridge asked me a question about my problems today. We've got into this pattern. He tells me about his problems, which are mostly about his kids and school and money and everything, then I tell him mine, which are mostly about how the landlord isn't on my side any more. It's a good system. Between the two of us, we solve a lot of problems.

So today he asked why I can't just move in with the landlord and Celene when they go to Greyton. There are lots of reasons why I can't do that. I wouldn't like it there. Everybody is old and there isn't anything cool around. I bet they don't even have the internet. The city is where things happen. I don't think I could ever be away from that.

When the landlord came round later on today, I asked him about Greyton. He said that they were still looking at houses.
“How many rooms are in the houses?” I asked.
“Two bedrooms,” he said.
“One for you and Celene and one for the grocery kid?”
“That's right. We want two bathrooms too, but that's harder to find.”
“What about for me?”
“Shark -”
“What if I want to live with you?”
“Shark, you're welcome to come visit any time you like, you know you are, but you wouldn't like it in Greyton. It's very wide-open, it's not like Mowbray.” he said. “And it's full of old farts like me,” he added with a smile.
“Yeah, that doesn't sound so great,” I said.
“No,” he said. He shook his head as he said it.
“Can you take the burgular bars off my window, quick?”
“Why do you want me to do that?”
“I just don't want them on there any more.” He walked over to the window to inspect the bars.
“Yes, but why do you want me to take them off?”
“Fine, forget it.” I said and I went back to my websites.
“You can't have them off,” he said, looking down into the courtyard. “It's not safe.”

Wednesday, January 21st 2009

On Sunday the grocery kid brought round all the masking tape I asked for. That was pretty cool of him, I thought.

Maybe the invisible war is over and we can hang out again just like old times. He could help me with the television company I'm going to set up. He could be the secretary or the P.A – the one who doesn't get much credit but is really holding the whole thing together while all this crazy stuff keeps happening around him. He's always making lists and figuring stuff out. That's a big part of why he's the grocery kid. He was probably a better landlord than the real landlord is. I think the place was happier / cleaner when he was doing it. I thought all of this and I nearly thought about asking him to stay for a little bit but then he said,
“That's a lot of masking tape you made me carry.” Yeah, I know. “What are you going to do with it all?”
“I'm going to make something. Something important,” I said.
“Are you going to make a mask?”
“What?”
“To hide your face.”
“Why?”
“Out of the -masking- tape!” He was angry that I wasn't getting it. I turned my body against him, I stopped talking and then I didn't look at him until he left. He was trying to joke with me, but he was also trying to make me feel small and like I wasn't quick or clever enough for him. That's one of his attacks. There are lots more.

So I've been working on my statue since Sunday. Monday was all planning and visualizing – I'm going to start with the feet – and I started laying the tape down on Tuesday evening at exactly twenty five past six. I've nearly done the base and I'm starting on the feet. When the landlord came in earlier today, he seemed to really like it, even though he doesn't know what it is yet.
“Nice to see you're painting again,” he said.
“This isn't a painting, this is sculpture,” I said.
“Oh, I thought you were just priming the board, creating like a texture.” He was wrong. He doesn't know much about the creative process. I was always the creative one.
He told me that he's been talking to my son (Michael) on the telephone. He said this very deliberately. He was building up to something. He was priming the board, creating a texture.
“I spoke to Henrietta too,” he said.
“Oh, how is she?” I said. I didn't really care how she was.
“Have you said anything about me recently on your computer?”
“No, I don't talk about you so much,” I said.
“Okay then,” he said, then he moved his arms around a few times and got them in a comfortable position again. “I should read your writing, I bet you're making all sorts of comments and observations,” he said. He smiled and shook his head. I didn't say anything. I worked on the foot I was making until he made dinner.

Friday, January 23rd 2009

I heard some people come very quickly up the steps. There was laughter. Not many people come up the stairs like that. I held my breath and waited. They knocked on my door. I didn't want them to be developers. But it was okay.
“Sharky!”
“Sharky!”
It was Sarah and her friend, Nicole (from Plett.) I let them in.
“Hello,” I said as I did this.
“Sharky, we ran into your landlord on the way up here and shame, he's so sweet. He remembered my name and asked how I was and everything. The way you talk about him, it's like he's some kind of monster.” I don't think I talk about him like this. Besides, Sarah and the landlord have met a lot of times. Probably what really happened was that she saw the landlord in the corridor and he looked so sad and she wanted to feel sorry for him and decided to turn that sorriness into a scolding for me. I've got people down pretty well.

“So this is where Sarah spends all of her time!” Nicole (Nikky) said this. She was running about the place, poking her head around doors and generally being energetic.
“Not -all- of her time,” I said, truthfully and I tried to wink but I don't think anyone saw because it's hard to see both of my eyes at once. “In fact, she could spend a bit more time here!”
“Don't be greedy, Sharky!” said Sarah. She wasn't angry. We were just playing. “I'll be here all the time when I start my work experience.”
“When will that happen?” I asked.
“Jeez, don't pressure me. I've got a lot going on right now. Nikky's staying with me.” Nikki smiled, but Nikky smiling isn't news!
“My parents are away,” she said. I thought about asking Nikki to stay here, with me, instead. I'd be cool with sleeping on the kitchen floor. But if there's one thing I know about people it's that you can't give them the big emotions first or else they get suspicious and think it's a trap.
“Whatever,” I said. They lost interest in the subject. Nikky started making a roll-up cigarette. I couldn't stop watching her while she did it. It's great that we live in a world where you can roll your own cigarettes if you want to, like if you're feeling independent and don't want to do it the way everyone else does it. I wish I could roll my own cigarettes but it looks too difficult for me. She made me one and we sat by the window and we smoked them. She started asking me questions, all sorts of questions. She asked them very quickly and when I got into it, I was answering them quickly, too. It was like a game show about my life. I got every question right. I must have won over a thousand dollars in game show money. Most of the questions were about my pad.
“How long have you stayed here?”
“About forty – fifty years,”
“Where did you live before you lived here?”
“My house,”
“Where was that?”
“Right here. The courtyard was my old garden.”
“Who was the first girl you kissed?” That was a different kind of question. I was nearly stumped by it but then I remembered.
“The landlord's mother,” I said.
“Ooh la la!” said Sarah, suddenly. “Sharky – you were a bit of a player, hey?” I grinned and I'm pretty sure I was blushing.
“We were young,” I said.

The questions stopped after a while so I showed them both some websites I'd bookmarked and this game I've been playing on the computer. It's on a website and I found it. You're a robot (in the game) and you run around building towers that shoot at and kill all these other robots that are trying to kill your tree. You can beat the other robots up too, if you feel like it. It's currently my favourite game, but I keep dying when all the flying guys come out. Sarah said that the fame was going really slow compared to how these games usually go, but I pointed out that this was a different game and she probably hadn't seen it before.
“Is this what you do, you play games all day?” said Nikki. I winked again but I made sure she could see it this time and she laughed. Then I took them into the kitchen and showed them the statue I was making out of masking tape. “Is it a mask?” said Nikki, but she smiled when she said it and it wasn't mean, like when the grocery kid did it. The grocery kid just isn't very good with jokes, I think. He can't see what the other person is seeing.
I had to explain that it was a statue because all it is right now is a bit of foot and base.
“What is it a statue of? Or who?” asked Sarah. I told her it was of the landlord.
“Aw! You do love him!” she said and we all smiled. My smile was wild. I couldn't keep it under me. It rose up to the top like a bubble and exploded all over my face. It was like she'd found out my secret.
“I love everybody!” I said and it was true. I looked at Nikky but she looked away.

Wednesday, January 28th 2009

On TV, everyone is good at jokes and no one smokes. They smoke in movies, but they never smoke roll-ups. I don't think this is very realistic. Lots of people smoke roll-ups in the world today.

I think Ric, in my sitcom, should smoke roll-ups. That would be something that people haven't seen before in a sitcom. It'll be fresh. There can be a joke about how he rolls up a cigarette at the start of every episode when he's on his own and things are quiet and insightful and he's got his guava juice all poured out there and he's just about to smoke it but he doesn't get a chance to because of all this crazy stuff happening and it only lets up at the end of the episode when everything's resolved and Ric's done a good job and he finally sits down and gets out the roll-up that he made and he's going to enjoy smoking it so much and there's a look on his face that tells us that he can't wait for this to happen and the audience sees his face and laughs and then we laugh and then maybe something funny could happen like a gust of wind blows the roll-up away or a dog eats it. The look on Ric's face! We'd freeze the shot on his face and that's when the credits would come up.

I'm going to ask the grocery kid to buy me some roll-up materials on the next shop he does. I'm going to practice my technique. I've got it all memorized. I was watching Nicole very closely.

Friday, January 30th 2009

So hey – my statue's coming along pretty well. I'm entirely done with the one foot now - I just need to put some laces on the shoe. I'll need to glue the laces on because it's not a working shoe.

I like to imagine what people will say about the statue when it's finished. The landlord will say nice things about it because it's of him, even if he doesn't know what the statue is all about and what it's for. He'll probably want to spray-paint it because he learned spray-painting in the Navy and it's the one thing he does that's artistic even though it isn't really. I don't want him to spray-paint this statue. I want it to remain pure.

Sarah will like it. She'll say it's good work and that it's beautiful and she'll understand it and what it means and will come to mean. Nikky will like it too – she won't just be copying Sarah – and she might even hug me to show me that this is true. She won't 'get' it as much as Sarah will, she'll look at it and she'll smile and say it's cool but her eyes will go back in her head for a hundred miles. At the end of the tunnel into her eyes there will be a note pinned to the back of her skull but it won't be gross. There's no blood. I will see the note. It will say, “Teach me, Shark.” I'll be on the other side of the room and my stare will be hard, hard in a way that shows that I mean what I'm about to say. What I say will be, “Yes.”

When the statue goes outside, all kinds of people will see it and I'll watch and listen to their reactions and discussions from my window. Mr. Roberts from downstairs will be one of the first to see it. He'll be so sorry. He had no idea that a shark could make something so beautiful and meaningful. Then someone will tell him that the very same shark saved us all from the developers and then I'm pretty sure he'll realise how wrong he was about sharks and will apologise right then and there. It will be just a murmur under his breath but I'll hear it. Thank you for your apology, Mr. Roberts, but we've got to move it along. There are more people who want to see the statue. We mustn't keep them waiting.

Clar won't understand it at all. She probably doesn't even know what a developer is. She'll just look at it with her mouth open, making an “uuuhhhh” noise. She'll stay like that forever, her mind in an infinite loop of dull incomprehension. People will wonder if she's a statue too because she will look so realistic. But I'll know. Some day I'll free her, and she will have to live with her world all shattered and bare, but not yet. Not for a while.

When that new pizza punk comes by to bring me pizza, he will be almost literally blown away by what a real shark can do. Fake sharks can't make statues. All they do is confuse you and lie and try to hurt good people. Their pizza doesn't taste as nice as it did when Moe brought it.

And here's the man himself right now, coming to check out this awesome statue that everyone in the hood has been talking about even though he knows exactly what he's going to find. He'll look up at it with his hands playing in his pockets and he'll lean back on his heels and whistle. He'll whistle a tune he heard in the old days, back before people could say anything other than what they meant. Every second of his suffering will run through his Ashkenazi brain and out through his lips while he whistles and the suffering will sharpen his thoughts as it passes over them. The tune went like this:
“Shark, Shark, that's nice work what you've done but when are you going to make -my- statue?”
And I'll stand there, hidden behind the curtain, hearing everything, and I'll smile and whisper,
“Why, it'll be the very next thing I do.”