Kirk VanDyke's Figures on a Beach
Kirk is an author and poet who grew up in Texas and now lives in Wyoming. His work, including his short mystery in Death on a Cold Night, his poems in hatred of one's fascination with an idea of wilderness (soon to be distributed by Elm), and Figures on a Beach deal with the implications of schizophrenia, trying to sort out the fact and fiction of one's own senses. Kirk self-published Figures on a Beach in 2008 and we are really proud to be distributing it. Elm Books has a commitment to diversity in its offerings and this includes the world of disabilities, disability memoirs and well-informed disability fiction. Figures on a Beach is loosely based on Kirk's own experiences and captures life as a schizophrenic. Told from the first person perspective of John Jones, we get to feel what it is like to live on a beach in an old van with a random group of strangers, make do on a couple of dollars a day, and be yelled at by the random figures of one's imagination.
Figures can be found at Goodreads at:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17377103-figures-on-a-beach
and is also available as a part of a free giveaway that ends March 31:
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/45179-figures-on-a-beach
Excerpt:
I
try to take a drink of coffee but find only an empty cup. I throw
off the blanket and grab my jacket for a walk on the beach. I walk
toward the surf and then wander down the beach, passing wood, trash
and clam holes. I step around the tar balls that dot the brown sand.
A plover darts back and forth with the tide, busily looking for
food. I was beginning to feel sorry for myself, for my situation.
The sorrow was turning to anger and it was becoming pointless. I
could turn round and round in self destructive mental gymnastics, but
what good would it do? Exhaust me. I walk the beach quickly, but as
the surf changes my mood, my pace slows. I like walking along the
National Seashore better, but this state beach is also nice. It
seems a bit more crowded, though.
"You
where an idiot to trust that old couple from Colorado. You should
have known from the beginning that something was up. Remember the
bad feeling you got from them the moment you met them? You didn't
trust yourself and you never can because you are a fuck up. Now
look. What are you going to do now? You can't trust any of these
people on the beach to help you. Are you going to run back to your
family?" Ben is back and he is as annoying as ever.
The
hell with you, Ben. But maybe he is right. He is probably right. I
walk faster again and feel lost. I was feeling better but now I am
completely confused. I stop. Slowly and purposefully, as in a
ritual, I remove a can of Copenhagen and forcefully pack it. I take
a pinch and place it between my cheek and gum. I walk. I stop. I
turn and begin walking back. What does a suburban business man know
about life on the road? Why does he have to vacation with me? The
hell with him. He is probably right, though. Four pelicans glide
over the water with effortless motion. I want to be like a pelican
but I feel more like a plover, running back and forth. At least the
damn plover is accomplishing something. I don't seem to accomplish
anything. God, I am worthless. I would pray but I don't believe
that any absolute being or activity would give a shit about my
neurotic rambling. Why would it? Why should any other human, for
that matter?
My
perceptions have become increasingly disjointed so that fluidity no
longer exists between multiple experiences. I don’t know when it
began, a gradual process that leaves me looking at the world as
though I were inside a pinball machine. But the pinball player- not
me, I’m the ball- I think the pinball player is on acid, a perverse
omnipotence that rearranges my thoughts and all input. Like I said,
it was gradual, so that life now seems normal this way. Sometimes
there are breaks in the disjointed nature of my experiences, but
these breaks constitute a swing of experiences to the opposite of the
fluidity continuum. During these breaks, experience flows like a
salty wave that leaves me paranoid about the exact nature of reality.
It leaves me swimming in a fishbowl of phenomena, peering at the
world through thick, contoured glass.
Comments
Post a Comment