By Grant Maierhofer.
In the first months directly following the shifts to life in response to COVID, I decided it might be time to write something I’d long hoped to write. I’ve long been interested in the possibilities of writing under different restrictions. When everything is possible, due to the internet, or every other book, limiting your possibilities seems sensible. Ernest Vincent Wright did “e”. So did Georges Perec. I couldn’t do “e,” then. But I needed something frequently used in English. Something I relied on. So I picked the other vowel.
I’d write while out doing things. On my phone, in quick notes to myself. I’d write in the evening to verify the things I’d written, then write more. This process took weeks. Slowly this world emerged. Ben, this figure, in his town, with his friends, living, trying to do something, trying to let his life be something. Then, this house, this home where kids lived, kids like in The Wild Boys, kids like in 300,000,000 fucking off out of life, their wont. Sure, try it. See where it goes. Where did it go? Into the ground. They dug into the dirt. Ben worked in this shop. Renting out films, or TV shows. Ben drove without going somewhere. Just driving. This kind of thing.
So would there be some point to this kind of thing? Sure. You limit yourself. You cut something off like one perspective. You force yourself to do something else. You cut your world so the future bleeds in. Did this work? It’s not right there to know. Cutting other things. Sure. I cut other things I used frequently. This got the text somewhere. Tedium, some tedium. There is tedium in Ebb, no question. Lots of tedium. But something else? One hopes. One seriously hopes there’s something else. Story? No, no stories, no more stories. Sure, story, fine, some story. Simple things crept out of the omissioning. The plot. The simple plot. The thing I tended to elide, the plot, coming out of it somehow. More? Possibly more. Life. People, presented there. OuLiPo? No, I’m not invited. I don’t know them. I don’t know these people. I didn’t ingest every single book. Just some. Wright’s, Perec’s, sure.
Why write the book? Good question. Possibly to try something out. To see where something brings you, then the things beyond this something. People write things. Sure, of course they do. People write things frequently. I write things, hm, since I like to figure the writing out. I bring problems on myself, then figure some route out of the box. The box? Stupid. Out of the box, outside the box? So stupid. Then how would you put it? The problem could be this cell, this thing you built surrounding your work. The problem could be the cell, then your working through it could be the tunneling out. This is nice. This is the thing, sure.
Why should someone consider getting it? I don’t know. I don’t know honestly. In my thinking someone getting it then thinking they’d like to try something else, this would be the thing. Someone getting the book then thinking, hm, I will write without looking, or I will write with quotes from Project Gutenberg only. Or I will write in numbers, or something else. Will this help things? Will this get us people somewhere? I don’t know. I don’t know how to respond to something like this. I only know the process proved fulfilling to me. This seems like something sufficient to continue in trying something. To let the process be fulfilling. Kernpunkt being kind enough to run it. People being kind enough to check it out. People being kind enough to interview me. These things, they’re wonderful. They’re beyond wonderful. The thing, though, right there in the guts of the thing. This is the benefit. The dog keeps climbing up the steps. It’s in the morning. I’m in my house. I’m trying to think of some method to give the work to somebody. This seemed like one method, sure.
Limiting yourself is oddly opening. Limiting your view of things, like stopping yourself from doing something, brings this sense of bliss when you do some close thing to this. This feeling like you’re freed up from thinking one style. This feeling like you’re freed up from being bogged down in your every moment mind. The mind of every moment is too open to every flitting possibility. The mind with one limit put on it knows where it might like to go. To run even. This mind brings out something new in you. Like Wittgenstein’s brother. The composer. The piece written for just one of his sets of fingers. The possibility there. Tehching Hsieh’s work, opening himself to the possibilities in limiting himself for long stretches. The possibility opening up from this kind of thing. I only wish to tell someone to consider it. The possibility even in just considering it. This might be enough. Cut yourself off from something. Limit yourself. See the things which creep out from the sides of the thing you’ve skipped. You’ve stopped yourself from something, now something else opens up there. This is incredible. Simply incredible. The most wonderful thing which could’ve occurred.
I only wish to tell someone to think of it. To look to the work to see the things you might elide. Dogme 95, sure. OuLiPo, sure. But you, this is the thing, the very thing to think of. We live in this world of possibilities in every room, every stitch of living. People put their thinking to every single thing. This is fine. The person should think. The person should of course be thinking. But something else. Possibly something else. Entering into the future people need to think of something else. Sure. Is this the thing then? No, possibly not, but it’s something to try out. If you’re open to everything, putting your voice into it proves difficult. Sit with it then, in the office, writing to yourself simply on your phone, limiting yourself, to see the things which might unfold. Sure.
***
The Opening of Ebb
In the second, in the second second second.
– Gertrude Stein
Ben ebbed. Where he went, who he met, he ebbed or flowed, the person sort of being like the river, sort of. Sure, why not? The ebb then Ben, little shit, little ebb.
He lived in Illinois. He studied in Illinois. He went to school in Illinois. He supported his schools in terms of their sports. He liked to sit there enjoying sports. Something in it brought him joy, this sense of community or this sense of joining up. So Ben ebbed, with women he ebbed, never flowed, he found endless opportunities to ebb, even when witnessing the sports. He took women to the events, he tried to commune with them on why he loved the sports, it never went very simply, he often felt depressed.
Little Ben ebbed, since he lived young since he lived in his childhood home, he found endless possibilities to ebb. How did he ebb? It’s like the word itself, how we use it, ebb or flow, flow or ebb, the flow being the mellow time, the nice time, the ebb being the rougher time, the even violent time, here Ben existed, most consistently.
Ben worked in the shop which rented films to the people. They turned it into this Co-op, wherein the people spent the set fee month to month, then with this they could rent X number of the films, if they wound up desiring more, if possibly they desired some TV series, then they’d go into their purses, to spend just one bit more to support the Co-op in its entirety.
In Illinois the people were sort of mellow. His mother, his pop, his sister, his two brothers, they lived close by. His pop grew up in Springfield, his mother grew up in Rockford. Their elders in turn were close. They didn’t like much difference, though they weren’t bigoted. They were citizens of the like ilk to Lincoln, possibly, where the spirit of being guided their steps, but they didn’t veer off much if ever. There could’ve been some bit of void to their living, this notion in the middle of it of this emptiness, this dried up center to their lives which they couldn’t precisely express.
Ben went to school, worked in the Co-op, tried to write some but liked to be close with his friends. His friends comprised this kind of collective, this unity of spirit. Ben studied history. His friends studied too, some music, some writing, some science. They didn’t hope to extend their lives beyond this though, which left them odd. People who study, who hope to write, who hope to sing, who hope to push something through of their spirit, they often wish to flee, to go to New York, somewhere more, somewhere living, somewhere electric. These friends though they’d decided to let this be enough, their little communion with themselves, their communion of the work, which Ben enjoyed endlessly.
Tonight this person hoped to rent this violent film. This film documenting some violence inflicted upon some people somewhere. Ben mentioned it might be worth considering something to let them chuckle. They didn’t like to chuckle to films. They hoped to be pushed, forced to reckon with the horrors of people. Ben understood but included this funny film with their copy of the violent film, then put his grip briefly on their shoulder to show how things were fine.
Ben felt lucky his mom never divorced his pop. Some of his friends’ mothers were divorced, they lived with one or the other but mostly the mothers. There existed this misery in the center of things these people seemed to sort of swirl into like this sewer, the town seemed to hold them in its grip to this worrisome degree, but none of them hoped to flee either, which felt like some integrity.
In Ben’s younger life he never ebbed. In Ben’s younger life he loved to fish. He still loves to fish, but in his younger life he felt obsessed. School, home, friends, these were never quite so close to him like fishing. Sometimes in high school he’d go out in the night. They lived close to this sort of reservoir. Illinois stocked it once in spring with this big truck. Ben liked to go see when they stocked it, with every fish pouring out of this complex engineering. The first stretch once they stocked it let every person fishing bring home more fish without punishment or fines.
So Ben never much ebbed in his younger life. Doubly true his mother never divorced his pop so the motive for his ebbing since kept elusive. Something grew in the roots of his skull, this being fed up, this desire to elude his life, his responsibilities, to pursue something within the community to let him yell just this little bit louder. He felt joyful his friends were holding this show the coming weekend.
The bodies in the home were moving, which on its own felt nicer to Ben letting his ebbing flow off out into the evening. There were boys or girls or people there for whom it didn’t right off register but to Ben they were every one of them his friends. Ben’s friend Mike stood performing in this busy living room in this home sitting on the end of this long drive which in turn settled pretty removed from where they lived or often spent their time. Mike’s cheeks were dyed with some sort of yellowish stuff which bled over into his billowy chops. He performed with this device which put sounds out into the room where people moved so for thirty minutes or more Ben stood next to Mike listening while looking into the eyes of people there inside the room.
These were the people he’d solidified himself next to since they seemed to every one of them hold his desire for lives deeply bound to this notion of devoting oneself to the work. They helped others to form their work. They formed their work together. They spent time locked in their rooms together forming their projects. They were moving how he would move. They were singing with Mike. They were writing things down, trying to register something, to form something from this scene.
No stories. No more stories. There ought not be this story stitching the little shit together. Ben the little shit doesn’t need stitching together. Where is he? Where is Ben now? He worked in the Co-op since it let him think over the films he’d seen. He went to school since it let him hide under the bookshelves ingesting their symbols or he went to the show where his friends were. This night then or then the night when his friends were huddled there pushing responding to their living. The little moments there etched like little symbols there. The room shone in red light. The kitchen shone in bright light. The music Mike presented sounded like vomiting dogs. One dog on top of the next dog vomiting on it then vomiting over over over until there just existed this smelly mess. Little shit. Little ebbing little sniveling shit. The point must’ve been to form something. To give form to something. Like the college Ben looked into some time hence. People were living, communing, forming works, listening, being or becoming friends with one or every one of them there. The rooms elsewhere in the home shone in different lights. Ben wended his route through them one by one until he found the girl he loved so much. There she stood vomiting into this bucket. One of Ben’s best friends held the bucket but Ben took over. For Ben the night proceeded there to where he just held the girl while giving her this thing to puke or singing her these songs his mom would sing to him when he couldn’t sleep. It existed there, then, the little rot of the people there. The little ones or ones of them or most of them slowly sliding down the lights until they slept in forms upon the floor.
Where then do you put the little superfluous bit on the novel, the little superfluity? Here, I guess. The thing being dying there. Oh Christ, it isn’t dying. This sort of stupid bloody entity wouldn’t die. It might be better if it did. In some sense possibly punk should die. How do you let the little entity die then? Remove your tools? Remove your self? Remove your presence? The porous little piece of bullshit there. The little thing withering on the floor there, with Ben to survey things. So Ben, how now would you put the survey? Living there, the little mouth there, the little show with the little punks with their puny skulls or their puny everything else. Oh, I beg, oh I beg you to put one more written work into the world, sniveling little shit. I implore you to erect this little piece of shit. I implore you to form the sentences, the sounds there, the voice of the she who’s on your shoulder, or you’re on hers. The writer the bigger writer the impossible godly writer there. Oh Christ, give it its rest, put it to sleep. Little shit Ben write your thesis on it. Go to bed next to it. Die within it you little shit.
Oh too who in the hell is the me who’s here writing this thing now? Goodness, god. Jesus, Christ. Nothing to put. No thing to put here now. There’s nothing up to the thing I could express, nothing to undo the mess of it. The person put to give the little history of the town, of Ben, of their works, possibly. I don’t know. I don’t know if I desire to know. I know only there’s this, or there’s everything else, so here we find ourselves.
The story of the thing is the little thing there right running through the stupid middle of the thing. This is the story of the thing. This is the performed thing. This right here is the thing rendered here. The story of the thing is the thing itself. This thing itself is there sitting there on the floor on the other side of the room weeping it is the thing right there. Don’t write different titles for Tender Buttons. Is Tender Buttons the book the book there within this thing here? It seems impossible to know for sure, but it’s likely.
Let things occur. Let the world occur there Ben. Ben needs to live. Holding the puke bucket felt like plenty of living to Ben. Ben ebbed not even one bit in this night. Ben flowed, or just went, or sort of wended. Ben wended. When Ben went home then went up to his room where he slept, then entered the thing to find things just how they’d been. It brought light to him, the room done there. The room brought light to him. The consistency brought light to him. There his bed plopped on the floor there so he went to it then opened the computer he used to ingest some television. He loved television. Everybody he knew loved television. Everybody on the continent loved television. He opened up the show he’d been following then opened this thing where people spoke on the shows they followed then wrote some on the episode he’d opened, with some too on his night with the puke bucket for the girl he loved so Ben felt free, blissful even, Ben felt whole. He fell to sleep moments on into the night with the light of the television billowing out into the room there with its lights or its depths or its sounds. This mellow veneer of light or sound billowing to him then beyond him, truly powerful or sleepy, the power of his entire life winnowing down into these points of light before he left the world of conscious such or suchlike to rest.
Beyond Mike, for Ben, there were others in the town in Illinois he felt were friends. There’s Elton, his friend from childhood who worked for this insurer the citizens there used; there’s Michelle who Ben’s sister knew first then Ben got close with Michelle, they were together for some time, they developed this project together so when they broke up they kept close to continue the work—Ben’s sister’s Jen, his brother’s Ted, Eric— there’s Kevin, whose life before grew then kept mysterious when he stopped in town with his group before letting them set off without him, he’d gone to school somewhere, he’d shown these degrees to Ben but lived mostly from this trust his mother left him: there’s Julie there’s Jess, this couple who’d been wed in New York before moving home to Jess’s mother’s, then opening this shop where they sold coffee, morning food, the news; there’s Milton, possibly the best thinker of this lot, who spent much of his time looking up things with the forged university ID he’d put together from his older brother’s old one.
There were more of them who’d mostly too been there for the event in the house. The town lived off of these figures but too from elderly couples who retired there, people in the university, people born there, returning there, setting down their lives there. I don’t know how to further put down the things occurring there. There’s only to continue on I guess.
Ben ebbed, little rotshit Ben. Little dot little wen of Ben, misery-mouthed Ben, the little figure there. The little living figure there, he’s here right close to me there. The full giving of the whole of his life there, his upbringing there. To return them to this point of rot dotted on the wen of Ben’s little sketch of the town there, the little weeping town. It continues this to persist on the mind’s little ebbing tendrils.
So the town with its swirl or its whorl of life progressed there in its stupid little tendency. Ben wept like pulp or wept like the flowing, omitting the ebb. These were common godly people. These were people of god. The following evening Ben needed to fish. Joyful to be going out to fish Ben whistle his song. He went out further, further until he’d gone beyond where he often went to find his dock with its three set benches bolted down to the dock. He put on some music in his device then settled in there to his fishing thinking over the previous night with the girl he loved while she puked into the bucket he held. He felt weepy just to this minor extent. He’d been on his own for some time. The girl who puked could’ve possibly been the girl who he could live with. This fish then pulled on the Ugly Stick he’d been using recently. He pulled the fish in. He took his time pulling the fish in. It took some time to pull it in. The night up there so filled with lights in the deep quiet of night. It felt so mellow, so quiet. He welcomed the night in while he pulled in the fish slowly. When the fish got close he looked on the fish with his light. He’d never seen this kind of fish. It looked like some fishes he’d seen in pictures but without the common whiskers they’d worn. The fish looked covered in this sort of stuff, furry possibly. The fish looked terribly violent. Ben didn’t like the prospect of holding the thing in the night how it hung there. Ben put the rod, line, fish, hook into the reservoir then, jerking this direction or some other direction until the thing removed itself from his line. Even though Ben felt terrified in the night, looking upon this fish, the night felt good on his bones so he felt joy to see the fish return to the reservoir, plus the joy to hook something on this night.
Where they lived there too existed this house nobody liked to visit unless they were pursuing something verily hellish. This guy lived there. I don’t know whether I could write how he went. It’s difficult to discuss. This home, where young people went, led to numerous people dying. This is how they figured it. Nobody would testify. Nobody spoke. The house where Ben went to the show, they weren’t close. This house, the one of the murders, the possible murders, held evil. Every little community in the U.S. seems to possess one. This figure, the one on the title, held evil. Everywhere he posed this worry, this horror for the mothers in this town. Ben tried to ignore it. Ben liked his friends, the ones who did things, the ones who lived highly keyed in. Some of them went there, though. Some of Ben’s friends went to the house, the house possessing some weird evil. Ben went there twice, two months between. The first time he went there they showed him this gun. The house stunk of piss. The house stunk of feces. The house stunk of spit or dying. He entered, they showed him this gun, they pulled him to the lower level, they pulled this cover from this rotting cow, they suggested he use the gun. He lifted it but didn’t fire. They whined until he let go of the gun. It dropped to the floor then misfired once into the leg of the cow. Ben thought, oh Christ. Ben thought, let me go. Ben thought, I need to exit. They were cheered enough, though, by the wounding to the cow, so Ben went up to the ground level with them to drink or smoke some meth. Ben didn’t love drugs. They brought this ugliness from him. These swirling thoughts, joyless or empty. He took them the first time he went to the house, but the second he vowed he wouldn’t. The first night then he took the drugs. The girl he loved entered in the night. She didn’t puke. Ben listened to her question her boyfriend’s stupid life. Her boyfriend didn’t go to the house with her, the stupid evil house. He left her to go on her own. Ben listened but didn’t compound her questioning. He knew it would only push her from him, oddly.
The second time Ben went to the house, the one holding evil, he witnessed stuff he swore not to bring up ever. These people were murderous. He knew it but seeing it unfold right in front of him felt impossible. They didn’t kill in front of him, not while he stood there, but he felt confident when he left they finished things up. He entered to this even fouler smell there, just horrid ugly rot. This boy who’d been locked up stood in the middle of the room while they flicked lit sticks to him, burning him while others hit him on the neck or spine with bits from the surrounding house. They were convinced he’d spoken to the cops of the house, things done there. It didn’t seem like they were truly worried though, they just needed their object for the evening. Ben tried going out to the porch to smoke. He tried to spend time with others there. Slowly though, they went inside to torture. Ben left, inside telling himself he’d never return there. He never did, but the town still spoke in hushed tones most evenings when the house lit up.
When he finished his fishing Ben went to move throughout the town, looking into buildings or crossing in odd little sequences the streets unlit now. He liked the town. Ben felt wed to the town. His mother, his pop sometimes hoped he’d go off, do something bigger, something else, but he’d told them often how living here felt bigger, felt risky, when weighed opposite the things people of his moment often did. There existed this respect for people getting out. There existed this respect for people putting their home, their mothers behind them. Joyce to Trieste. Robbe-Grillet to New York. Ben didn’t like it though, this need to find some bigger home. Ben loved Illinois, his little town there, his little life there. Moving this night throughout the town he felt entirely whole, deeply content with his lot. Ben ebbed, sure, but Ben did much else. The town lived, the town projected out. The people there were complex, different, wild. The people there held whole lives in their guts, which Ben hoped to know. Ben wed the town, rested there, the little womb. Ben looked into the houses, the people either sleeping, or looking into their phones, or their TVs, they were his people. He looked off to the house of its evil, it hurt his guts. The people there didn’t seem to hope to join the community. Ben respected this, to its extent, but he’d been inside, he’d known the evil there, the disgust for people. Ben often felt disgust for people, but he took it out to meet the people with him, to be proven wrong. The figures in the evil house didn’t go outside, seemingly ever, just existed in there in opposition to the world. Possibly it’s heroic, Ben didn’t know. It seemed odd, just odd.
Ebb is available from Kernpunkt Press, Asterism, and Amazon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grant Maierhofer is the author of several books, most recently Ebb, Shame (FC2) and others. His book on writing, Sentence-Making, is forthcoming from Feral Dove Books in 2023.
