TRAINED TWOFOLD

This is an exercise in brevity. It is also an exercise in clarity. Clarity perceived is clarity achieved. This exercise's aim is lucidity. The exercise might also be about acerbity. This last is largely a matter of tone. It is also a matter of attitude. Acerbity cannot yet be adduced from the results of the exercise. The exercise has begun. The exercise is in progress. This is not a preamble. It is part of the exercise. But it is like a preamble. It has no emotional center. It has no heart. It only has eyes looking over outcroppings of verbiage. It only has a gaze directed at a guessed distance.

Now this exercise is beginning to be an exercise in redundancy. This exercise is not an exercise in resemblance.

The introduction continues. This exercise is a formal one. The writer is to follow only one edict. It is an edict. It is not a suggestion. It is a rule. The writer is to write only subject-predicate sentences. No dependant clauses are allowed. No digressions are permissible. A full stop must separate each thought. Commas are to be shunned. This naturally limits the use of adjectives and adverbs. Qualifications are ornaments. The ornament may contain a crucial idea. Therefore the ornament deserves to become a subject. The ornament merits a sentence all its own. This is an exercise in egalitarianism. Each sentence is to be an entired statement. Both the passive and active voice may be entertained. Writers may write declarative sentences. Questions are encouraged. (They will also perforce be scarce.) Exclamations are less encouraged. Inserts are forbidden. Double-backing is prohibited. Some lines will wriggle off. Some logic will be truncated. Some good will only trill. Some will only quaver. Many circles will remain unclosed. These are not subsidiary rules. These are suggestions. They are also anticipated difficulties. So the suggestions are preemptive rebuttals. That is whatever.

Paragraphs may be of any length. Paragraph breaks fall wholly at the exerciser's discretion.

This is not a simple exercise. Record how you think if you are coerced to think differently. Then you find that that is really how you think. Confronted by your own discontinuity. Writing with no
continuity is not writing.

Now the writer hits the thick of it. The writer grows more and more deaf with each repetition. Or the writer can hear only the buzz of internal strain. The regulated pump of adrenalin dulls the ear. The writer yanks himself into habit. The writer pulls a noun. The writer cleanly jerks a verb. The writer hoists a direct object. Actions are not for their own sake. Actions fulfill. Each sentence is nonetheless a flex. Preening smirks behind each completed sentence. Transition becomes meaningless.

There is no argument. Thus there is no forward momentum. Thus there is only the prescribed form. Variation is soon exhausted. Anaphora is embedded. Or anaphora makes itself surreptitious in the restriction. This was not foreseen. Give up transition. Give up linkages. The momentum chases itself. It can never catch up with itself. Each point revisits the previous point. Each point also predicts its succeeding point. Each sentence is perfectly divided. Each sentence opposes itself. Each sentence denies the sentences bracketing it. Each adds to each's power. Each sentence is a bulb in a blinking neon marquee. The writer groans. The writer climbs. The writer does not open the exercise's cloak. Only ache or sating will signal the exercise's end. But Beckett died of starvation. (Do not go so fast.) Anything seems easy until you attempt it.

No. The athletic analogy is mistaken. Freedom in sequence? Form triumphs only with formalism's death. This exercise builds nothing. This exercise quickens no reflex. This exercise wastes. This exercise withers. What is inexhaustible cannot be purged. This is not exercise. It is meditation. It is privation. The rule is a chant. The chant rises and falls. The chant admits an infinity of sounds. Diction is refraction. Falling to pieces is beautiful. The curtain crumbles like a chalk cliff during an earthquake. The nature of the chant lies in its pattern. The chant is therefore similar to a wall. The individual stones of the wall are interchangeable. Only crucial is the means by which the wall's bricks cohere. The writer is not behind the wall. The writer is within the wall. The reader may want to penetrate the wall. The reader may believe that they are to breach the wall. The reader may believe the writer asks this of them. The reader may desire to get to the other side of the wall. That reader does not understand. Demolish the wall? Destroy the writer. Functionality is always banal. Banality is always the writer's best camouflage.

The writer awakes within the wall. The writer is surprised by darkness. The writer tastes plaster dust. The writer smells stone. The writer's scalp is slick with sweat. The writer can breathe. Each breath in confinement is more hot than the last. The writer had believed he could pass through the wall. The writer has misjudged his own contemplation. The writer has indeed grown thin. The writer is not that thin. Nor is the writer porous. The writer's atoms only mingle so much. The writer takes up his pen. The writer begins to scratch at the wall. One specific stroke suffices for a while. The writer's aim is to escape. To escape the writer cannot die in the effort. The writer can hardly afford to be injured in the attempt. Fatigue is the enemy. The writer must try many different strokes. Otherwise the writer will remain trapped. Otherwise the writer will be smashed to pieces. The wrecking ball canters back. The wrecking ball retains force. The wrecking ball is swinging. The readers are taking a running start. The pen is blunt. The fingernails crack apart. They swallow too much dirt. Scabs peel. The voice is muffled. There is no room here for another writer.

The exercise does not kill endurance. The exercise is the end of strength.

by Joe Milazzo