Ares in Wonderland

Kitap

Summary:

Summary…

Kitap

Writer's Note:

Writer’s Note….

Kitap

Quotations 1:

“The poster on the wall was of a huge screeching albatross set against a background of graduated purple. At the bottom, where the purple was at its palest, there was the ocean, waves, mist and rocks. It was a technique that served to reinforce the conflict between characters as is taught in Introduction to Writing courses.

“True,” said Light. “True, but you’re a lazy writer. You don’t have the patience or tenacity to bring out the conflict between characters. I mean, what did you do? What would you, for instance?”

The tone of his voice was sharp and cold.

“What did I do?” said Ares. With his long slender fingers on the Vaseline jar on the table…

“You took one of the characters you created, my dear friend… You took one of the types you created aside and gave them the lowdown. You talked through your ideas, the kind of chaos you wanted, you explained that everyone has a little devil inside them, that the devil is just waiting for the green light. I’m fabricating here. I’m aware of that, but I have to talk this way for you to understand what I mean. You see? You were slowly pushing the system towards chaos, but it’s now time you gave the green light to chaos. Boom!”

He put the beer on the table. He waited for the noise to travel around the room to the metal cupboard, the bathrobe on the bed… He stretched out his legs.

“It’s artificial,” said Ares. “I find it artificial. A hand shoots in from outside. Uh-uh… I say we should leave the characters to deal with their troubles themselves. Let them do what they have to, let them destroy what they have to, let them get what they deserve.”

“You’re like a penguin,” said Light. “As myopic as a penguin. We had a writer step in to help just like I am with you. He said, you’re the writer. Now finish the story I’ve pulled apart so far. Put some speed into it or switch track. He even quoted from Heidegger! We’re all guilty to the extent that we fail to translate our potential for being authentic into the way we live. We need to translate our potential for being authentic into the way we live to avoid being blasted with guilt.”

He opened both hands and raised them to chest level. Then:

“Why on earth would he do that?” The words came spilling out. “I mean, when the writer had written who knows how many chapters and wrote them without needing the Cormorants what’s more… I mean, it doesn’t make sense, it seems out of place. Unless he’s doing it just to be contrary… What are you doing?”

“The writer,” said Light, trying to spray anti-perspirant on his testicles. “The writer is seduced by his heroes. The writer is deluded by the likes of us… Assume that’s the case… Set everything up along those lines. See everything from that place. Now take your head out of the water.”

Ares pointed to the poster.

“Ducks are the deepest diving bird, Emus the fastest running bird, Light Selim the furthest flying bird. I’ll call the animal encyclopaedia in a second so they make a note.

“Don’t stop,” said Light. “There’s no theme to what the writer writes. He may be trying to invent a theme. He may have grasped that he won’t pull it off without our help. Because he can’t help lecturing the audience, he may have felt the need for characters that frustrate him, in other words you and me. He may have got stuck. In a word, he doesn’t have the power, let’s say. He may be exhausted by the simplest thing. Or he may want to recognize his limits.”

“What else?”

“What else?” said the other. “Well, this maybe. Like theatre directors, he may not know what to do. When theatre directors don’t know what to do, they recast the actors. And the writer recasts the roles. He goes back to the drawing board, switches track and changes the theme. Like a theatre director.”

Ares raised his eyebrows. His eyes were on the cough syrup on the windowsill. He threw back his shoulders. “Why would I try anything like that? Take you, for example. What needles you to get into that kind of coalition? Let the writer get up to whatever shit he wants. It’s his problem… What’s in it for you?”

His legs were parallel. He put his hands on his hips with easy indifference.

“What needles you?” he said.

“I want to seduce him,” Light began. “I want to seduce him because I want the power. I want the ability to control everything, to oversee everything, to leave out what I want, how I want. If I seduce the writer, the power is mine. That’s the suggestion. The implicit suggestion. I’m free to do whatever I want.”

His torso was erect, his rib cage protruding. He stuck his finger in his belly.

“My dear friend, think of it like, you know,” he continued. “I’m a fictional character. The novelist took me aside one day. Like I’m taking you aside. We went to an out-of-the-way bar where no one would see us. We drank beer. We talked. He listed his suggestions. ‘Want the power,’ he said. ‘Want it and I’ll give it to you. You have enough energy within you to realize what the fabric of you, what your perceptions want.’ He made all kinds of excuses to convince me. That the measure of health was how much energy you draw from the environment and how much of it you release, that if I help him, I’ll absorb energy and grow, that if I help him, he’ll do me favours. I’ll be his prophet, I can throw my weight around. After torching the Aeronautics and Astronautics building he never mentioned the incident again, which was the clearest proof that he wanted help. I guess no one can escape nothingness on their own. He was out of energy…”

Ares wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“The world high jump record’s been equalized tonight,” he said. “I’ll believe in Pegasus now thanks to you.”

“I challenged him just like you. I argued that he was talking about two different worlds. I asked why he was pestering me. Said he was talking bullshit, rambling, that what he was saying didn’t have the slightest bearing on reality.”

“Why did he pick you? OK, leaving aside whether he exists or not, whether he’d associate with us, why did he pick you?”

As soon as he finished, he checked his watch.

“Good question,” he heard the other say.

“Another good question. Sure. He could have picked a final-year business student with a sharp haircut instead of me. But he didn’t. Why was that?””

Kitap

Quotations 2:

The poster on the wall was of a huge screeching albatross set against a background of graduated purple. At the bottom, where the purple was at its palest, there was the ocean, waves, mist and rocks. It was a technique that served to reinforce the conflict between characters as is taught in Introduction to Writing courses.

“True,” said Light. “True, but you’re a lazy writer. You don’t have the patience or tenacity to bring out the conflict between characters. I mean, what did you do? What would you, for instance?”

The tone of his voice was sharp and cold.

“What did I do?” said Ares. With his long slender fingers on the Vaseline jar on the table…

“You took one of the characters you created, my dear friend… You took one of the types you created aside and gave them the lowdown. You talked through your ideas, the kind of chaos you wanted, you explained that everyone has a little devil inside them, that the devil is just waiting for the green light. I’m fabricating here. I’m aware of that, but I have to talk this way for you to understand what I mean. You see? You were slowly pushing the system towards chaos, but it’s now time you gave the green light to chaos. Boom!”

He put the beer on the table. He waited for the noise to travel around the room to the metal cupboard, the bathrobe on the bed… He stretched out his legs.

“It’s artificial,” said Ares. “I find it artificial. A hand shoots in from outside. Uh-uh… I say we should leave the characters to deal with their troubles themselves. Let them do what they have to, let them destroy what they have to, let them get what they deserve.”

“You’re like a penguin,” said Light. “As myopic as a penguin. We had a writer step in to help just like I am with you. He said, you’re the writer. Now finish the story I’ve pulled apart so far. Put some speed into it or switch track. He even quoted from Heidegger! We’re all guilty to the extent that we fail to translate our potential for being authentic into the way we live. We need to translate our potential for being authentic into the way we live to avoid being blasted with guilt.”

He opened both hands and raised them to chest level. Then:

“Why on earth would he do that?” The words came spilling out. “I mean, when the writer had written who knows how many chapters and wrote them without needing the Cormorants what’s more… I mean, it doesn’t make sense, it seems out of place. Unless he’s doing it just to be contrary… What are you doing?”

“The writer,” said Light, trying to spray anti-perspirant on his testicles. “The writer is seduced by his heroes. The writer is deluded by the likes of us… Assume that’s the case… Set everything up along those lines. See everything from that place. Now take your head out of the water.”

Ares pointed to the poster.

Titorelli realized that the besiegers and besieged alike were shackled. As he saw it, the besiegers (like the besieged) were absurd, pathetic, craven figures trapped in a system of dependencies that extended from inside out, from outside in, from top to bottom and bottom to top. And so, based on the story of ‘Albatross’, you used clowns, large and small, in the screenplay’s violent scenes.

The helicopter coming to fly you to hospital took forever to arrive in the car park. During the wait, bright sun-soaked April mornings kept flashing before your eyes. It is no longer hot. Nor is it cold. There are a few white clouds in the sky and you eat oranges; you lie on the ground in the countryside and watch the sky. Just as the helicopter was circling above the car park you died. And as you died, the police were making renewed calls to surrender.

““What do we do now?” said a voice.

Duck was badly wounded in the shoulder and Ostrich placing a damp cloth on Duck’s forehead. His face was green.

“Stay calm,” said Ares. He got up, dipped the long narrow white strip he had cut from his shirt into the aquarium, wrung it out and passed it to Ostrich.

“We’ve got our work cut out,” said Ostrich. “He needs medical attention. It’s a bad wound.”

Duck was writhing in pain on the ground. “Listen,” said Ares. “We’ll demand a vehicle.” He leaned back against the glass of the aquarium. “And in the time it takes to get the vehicle…”

Calls to surrender mingled with Duck’s groans. He wiped off his sweat.

“In the time it takes to get the vehicle, we’ll kill the hostages. One every 20 minutes…”

He fell silent. Short-Winged Grebe had given up on collecting the hostages’ ID cards. Peacock was stroking the Juxtaposition automatic pistol he held in his hand.

“Are we clear?” he continued. And as soon as the words were out, he grabbed Mrs Kuo, who was crying fitfully by the side of the aquarium. He hauled Kuo to her feet, dragged her to the window and hid behind her. He yelled something.

The image of the hostage having her brains blown out in plain sight and then being dangled out of the window was a powerful one. After all, what was being destroyed here was, in fact, one person’s trust in another. What was actually being shattered here was a person’s sense of trust that if they haven’t harmed anyone, they don’t need to fear being attacked or bullied. This sense of trust forms the fabric of our everyday lives and when it was destroyed, the police calls stopped for a while. Then Ares’ voice was heard demanding a vehicle from the police. His voice was loud and clear, but it didn’t have the slightest effect on the movements of the piranhas in the aquarium which smacked of power, self-assurance and complacency: the piranhas carried on swimming around unperturbed. The moment you thought that capturing their powerful, self-assured movements would add something different to the movie, the four-minute black-and-white movie filmed with a Disjunction camera was over: you stopped the camera, swearing to yourself.”