Free The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

meaning
     
    that we impose upon motion.
Geryon is thinking this answer over as he kneels
     
    beside the bathtub in his hotel room
     
    stirring photographs back and forth in the developing solution. He picks out
     
    one of the prints and pins it
     
    to a clothesline strung between the television and the door. It is a photograph
     
    of some people sitting at desks
     
    in a classroom. The desks look too small for them—but Geryon is not interested
     
    in human comfort. Much truer
     
    is the time that strays into photographs and stops. High on the wall hangs a white
     
    electric clock. It says five minutes to six.
     
    At five minutes after six that evening the philosophers had adjourned the classroom
     
    and made their way to a bar
     
    down the street called Guerra Civil. The yellowbeard rode proudly at the front
     
    like a gaucho leading his infernal band
     
    over the pampas. The gaucho is master of his environment, thought Geryon
     
    clutching his camera and keeping to the rear.
     
    Bar Guerra Civil was a white stucco room with a monk’s table down the middle.
     
    When Geryon arrived the others were
     
    already deep in talk. He slid into a chair across from a man
     
    in round spectacles.
     
    What will you have Lazer?
said someone on the man’s left.
     
    Oh let’s see the cappuccino is good here
     
    I’ll have a cappuccino please lots of cinnamon and
—he pushed up his spectacles—
     
    a plate of olives.
     
    He glanced across the table.
Your name is Lazarus?
said Geryon.
     
    No my name is Lazer. As in laser beam—but
     
    do you wish to order something?
Geryon glanced at the waiter.
Coffee please.
     
    Turned back to Lazer.
Unusual name.
     
    Not really. I am named for my grandfather. Eleazar is a fairly common Jewish
     
    name. But my parents
     
    were atheists so
—he spread his hands—
a slight accommodation.
He smiled.
     
    And you are an atheist too?
said Geryon.
     
    I am a skeptic. You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God
     
    with the good sense to doubt me.
     
    What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God
     
    suspends assent and poof! we disappear.
     
    It happens to me frequently. You disappear? Yes and then come back.
     
    Moments of death I call them. Have an olive,
     
    he added as the waiter’s arm flashed between them with a plate.
     
    Thank you,
said Geryon
     
    and bit into an olive. The pimiento stung his mouth alive like sudden sunset.
     
    He was very hungry and ate seven more,
     
    fast. Smiling a bit Lazer watched him. Y
ou eat like my daughter. With a certain
     
    shall I say lucidity.
     
    How old is your daughter?
asked Geryon.
Four—not quite human. Or perhaps
     
    a little beyond human. It is
     
    because of her I began to notice moments of death. Children make you see distances.
     
    What do you mean “distances”?
     
    Lazer paused and picked an olive from the plate. He spun it slowly on the toothpick.
     
    Well for example this morning
     
    I was sitting at my desk at home looking out on the acacia trees that grow beside
     
    the balcony beautiful trees very tall
     
    and my daughter was there she likes to stand beside me and draw pictures while
     
    I write in my journal. It
     
    was very bright this morning unexpectedly clear like a summer day and I looked up
     
    and saw a shadow of a bird go flashing
     
    across the leaves of the acacia as if on a screen projected and it seemed to me that I
     
    was standing on a hill. I have labored up
     
    to the top of this hill, here I am it has taken about half my life to get here and on
     
    the other side the hill slopes down.
     
    Behind me somewhere if I turned around I could see my daughter beginning to climb
     
    hand over hand like a little gold
     
    animal in the morning sun. That is who we are. Creatures moving on a hill.
     
    At different distances,
said Geryon.
     
    At distances always changing. We cannot help one another or even cry out
—
     
    what would I