Gil Grachison’s FanTabula Rasa

“People have been known to call it skulking. A group of foxes are called a skulk; a skulk of foxes. I prefer circumvention. I’d prefer a lot of things were put differently.

Circumvention is little more than needful manoeuvring and needful manoeuvring is, intrinsically, little more than a pulmonary pursuit: the trick is to save your breath for when it is most needed. The easiest way of saving your breath is to say as little as possible; then capitalize by doing— as far as humanly possible —next-to-nothing. The two endeavours are compatible and complementary.

This requires a substantial degree of self-discipline but— as you’ll find with most contemporary rigours —the benefits are not insubstantial. Foremost among these is the heightened ability to observe. When you say nothing you effectively are nothing and, having attained non-entity status, you are perceived to be, by not being perceived, both incapable of observation and— a bonus —less-than-worthy of closer scrutiny. With this supposition asserted: opportunities to observe are presented, by default perhaps but with greater frequency nonetheless, to the non-entity. This— to those so inclined —is desirable, an important advantage, and brings with it further benefits.

One who is perceived to be incapable of seeing is simultaneously perceived ineffectual in another regard: they are far-from-likely to do anything should what is not seen project upon its protagonist a less-than-favourable ethical context. What you silently condone; you raucously perpetuate. An unseen act cannot be condemned until the consequences of said act are discovered. Therefore, the act is more likely to happen and the compulsion to act in others is of no consequence to the protagonist while the act happens to be happening. However— and you’ll know where this is heading —it soon becomes apparent, having become a nothing, there isn’t much of anything which lies beyond your capabilities.

This is a nice way to live. It is a very nice way to live if people both find and leave you both nauseous and alone. It is a safe way to live if you find suppression of damaging thoughts, with regard to dénouement in day-to-day discourse, increasingly problematic. I am just such an individual but I am not, nor have I ever been, a violent man: I was neither blessed nor cursed with the requisite physique … and violence— the thought of it, the sight of it, and the threat of it —leaves me nauseous too. I prefer, by far, to find my own resolutions: a different angle of attack.

I do have to initiate a negation of violence as a feasible option in any given circumstance where application of force springs to mind. I am successful in this regard more often than not. I suspect this negation, in some quarters, makes me less of a man. I suspect, too, this means I won’t amount to much more— in the eyes of others — than nothing much … if and when they see me at all. By extension: my needful manoeuvring must —in keener but meaner eyes —assume the malapropos attribution of ‘skulk’.

My eyes see more. They have been trained to see more: I am an artist and I do not skulk; I observe.”

Daniel Cusp stopped typing. This drew to a halt the demented ricochet of his eyes as they danced and darted to pinpoint individual letters on the keyboard. They settled, momentarily— to stare down blankly like two dud light bulbs —before the gaze elevated with a glint to fix on a small ragged hole in the plasterboard partition directly ahead of him. He knew its every detail, in every light, and scanned those details in sequence, as if remembering a favourite walk in the country.

Slowly, with apparent stabs of muscular truculence, he extracted his thin angular torso from the hunch it cast over the keyboard. The tip of his small nose had been barely eight inches from the keys. With a motion— which brought to mind the sound of a ratchet —his back stretched vertically to contrive the apex of an asymmetrical stoop and, just as this point was reached, slumped suddenly with a judder, to nestle finally in the relative comfort of vertebrae more bearably compacted.

The nose-tip now sat twelve inches from the keys.

His hands, throughout this procedure, remained where they rested on the leading edge of the keyboard; each an approximation of a clenched fist, propped by the pinkie-edge, with the spindly index finger and thumb rigidly extended to give the entire extremity the appearance of an oddly-coloured little gun fashioned from skin and bone.

The skin looked unhealthy, and could also have been manufactured: the mâché paste of sick and differently-hued Caucasoid individuals, drawn taut as it cured to a dry speckled husk.

Eight of his fingers terminated in a clean, beautifully-shaped nail; which lent further to their androgyny. The right index finger and its curled companion beneath were soiled, from the first knuckle to the second, with the ingrained stain of a nicotine habit. The index fingernail was tarnished with a similar discolouration and, repulsive as it was, left the impression an attempt had been made— in extremis —to toast the slim digit for a taste-test