The War is Language: 101 Short Works
By Nath Jones
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About this ebook
The War is Language: 101 Short Works is a disordered compilation that includes absurdest letters to a fake advice columnist.
As a whole, this high-impact panic attack of prose poetry and flash fiction probes identity in experience. The book explores memory and dichotomy by focusing on the impressions of a female soldier in 21st-century America. The book’s letters to a fake advice columnist weave in a sarcastic interaction with an absurd existential authority figure. The book calls into question our post-postmodern establishment of anti-authority conformists.
The War is Language: 101 Short Works is the first in an e-book series, On Impulse, which explores the spectrum of narrative.
About the On Impulse eBook Series:
If you read the tag on a shirt and think, "Man. That's pretty manipulative," these books are for you. The On Impulse series plays with the storytelling impulse: how we create our worlds, mold our minds, set our sights, and shape our legacies. In such a fast-paced culture each of us must be conscious of how words can operate for and against us. The series invites the reader to contemplate how we use language now: online, in full-length books, and with each other.
Nath Jones
Best New American Voices nominee Nath Jones received an MFA in creative writing from Northwestern University. Her publishing credits include PANK Magazine, There Are No Rules, The Battered Suitcase, and Sailing World. Her current e-book series, On Impulse, explores the spectrum of narrative from catharsis to craft. She lives and writes in Chicago.
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The War is Language - Nath Jones
While I was working on this book a friend said Quit it. I said No.
89 — Dead Reckoning with Azimuth
I don’t suppose you would ever believe that this entire book happens in just two minutes, with a clenching chest, sweats, and hives. But it does. It happens right there. Where? Right there in the two minutes that you absolutely must sit down in the shaded sands of North Avenue beach in Chicago. Don’t collapse. That’s ridiculous. And. No. Don’t go over on the bench. Definitely not that bench. Why do you think no one’s on it? There’s something sticky there. Stop! What are you thinking? Where are you going? No. My God. Not by the water. That’s almost fifty yards from here. It’s much too far to cross the beach when this disoriented. Just sit down. Yes, yes, yes. Come on. At least try to be aware of where you are physically. And. So. Fine. There you go. South of Fullerton. North of the quaint brick bathrooms. You know. Quit worrying. And. I already said this whole thing happens in just two minutes. So. For a book that short, what more do you need for a setting? Time and place. That’s it. That’s the requirement. You’re golden. You know. That’s what you want. That’s what you need. To know. Right? So. Good. You know. You’re not on the pavement of the lakeshore path. You’re not down by the water or in anybody’s way. You’re not on the bench with that two-day-old sticky Popsicle residue. It’s not summer but it’s an abnormally hot day in spring or fall. Maybe even one of those completely freakish December days when it hits eighty degrees in the Midwest. There’s a bit of shade, perhaps an opportunity to collect yourself, maybe a friend to call, maybe a few breaths to take, maybe something pleasant to look at: if it’s not December then a volleyball game, a lifeguard walking back and forth with one of those rocket-shaped flotation devices with the harpoon cording, or, you know, whatever: the sky, the gulls preening on the breakwater, the pebbles in the sand, the bikers on the bike path, the joggers, the Mexican families grilling on the lawn, the black guy people-watching from the bench further down, the white guy trudging along getting back in shape after a second heart attack, the Asian woman training for another triathlon, and the parents with strollers. It’s all there. Whatever you want to look at to help just calm the fuck down and stop your mind from racing.
1 — Fragmentation Grenade
It makes no sense. Nothing’s to be done. How can anyone expect a contract to become a riotous nation, or, my God, a happy family?
It’s absurd.
In our marriage there was no way to love anyone. We’d point at each other, or the mirror, or the floor, and, oh yes, we’d make our demands. It is no one’s fault. Our me-materials could not possibly shelter anyone. Who can live huddled together under un-dovetailed illusion and unarticulated expectation? So. Fuck it. I sold the gold for scrap and decided to reassemble an M67 fragmentation grenade.
It will be an elaborate puzzle. I’ll find all the pieces, unbend the mangled distortions, and put disruption back into that handheld metal orb.
Who knows how far the pieces will have gone? The M67 fragmentation grenade has a five-meter kill zone—mainly for people but animals, too—a fifteen-meter casualty radius, and a forty-five-meter blast perimeter. Pieces can be propelled up to 250 meters. But that’s not the only distance those small round-torn-twist pieces can travel. I bet I’ll have to go collecting all over the world. After explosions, after wars, men go home, you know. The pieces move away from detonation in pockets, in caskets, in flesh.
I suppose I could go right to war—where most fragmentation grenades explode. Or maybe the war will come to me. That’d probably be easiest. Either way, I’ll definitely need to be there. Time is always a factor of accuracy. Think about paleontology. It’s a miracle when they can assemble an entire skeleton because so much time has gone by, so many things could have happened to make assembly impossible. So. No. I don’t want any geologic eras passing. Definitely not. I want to be there when it happens so I can just catch all the pieces of a particular fragmentation grenade.
Time is one thing, but distance is quite another problem. War draws men from the farthest reaches of the globe. It never matters how far they have to go. If there is a war, they will be there. They will make a plane, make a boat, take a tank, and go. So to reassemble this particular grenade, if I don’t catch every single piece right away, if other people end up with some—like what happens with candy at a parade, disseminated, you know—then I might have to go really far, understand the motion of front lines, and maybe learn some languages. Or something.
Beyond that I’ll probably have to dig some stuff up. I’ll have to exhume graves to get some of the snarled steel pieces. And that will be a problem, because out of respect I probably won’t be able to dig in people’s graves. It’s likely to become a logistical nightmare, considering how many graves are full of pieces of grenades which would not be part of the particular grenade I’m going to reassemble. I try to block it out though I know we did try to build an us-place. Culling. Sorting. I’m unbending countless pieces of innumerable grenades, too infinite, often finding that, in the end, the piece doesn’t fit anywhere in this one particular M67 fragmentation grenade.
It’s a pity. Even if I can’t be there right when the thing blows up, for obvious reasons related to my later interests in effective curatorship, I can surely go right to where the grenade exploded. If I’m in that five-meter kill zone, in the fifteen-meter casualty radius, in the forty-five-meter blast perimeter that’s all included within the 250-meter-wide circular area where the furthest pieces can fly, I should be able to pick up all the pieces that didn’t kill anyone or anything, which will be lying around. I’ll bet many will be right there in the kill zone. I’m almost sure gravity plays in right from the start.
The diamond won’t sell on consignment. No one can afford clarity with this recession.
So if I can’t go to war, if I can’t get there right away, then it may have been a long time since the grenade blew up. Except for exhuming graves, I might only have to dig a little bit. I am not really sure how deep I’ll need to dig to find every one of the pieces or what to do about how they might have gone off in the tracks of shoes over the years. And. That can get even more confusing because they’ve already gone off, so, it’s like the thing goes off, then the pieces are lying there, then people inadvertently walk over them, something gets lodged in a shoe and disappears.
That’s what I mean. You know?
I don’t know. I think theoretically I should be able to reassemble a particular M67 fragmentation grenade. But I guess it will be pretty hard to know exactly where a particular grenade exploded, even with the GPS these days. That’s a definite issue.
Well, at least I’ll be able to call up all the living people who have pieces of this grenade in them or who had pieces of this grenade in them at one time. Plenty of people were probably in that fifteen-meter casualty radius. I’ll probably start with pieces from them. I should be able to narrow it down from a list from the VA or something. And I’m sure other countries have organizations similar to the VA, so I can just call them all up, or email them or whatever, ask them for a list of people with grenade pieces in them, in case this one particular M67 fragmentation grenade affected people from more than one country.
97 — Rebel
Dear Fake Advice Columnist,
I sat with my mom in the hospital. We waited for my brother’s ankle to get reset. An itinerant biker was there, too. The old-fashioned kind: leather skin, blurry tattoos, raspy voice, and the kind of smile that could bite the head off a starling. He told me he was dying of cancer. Right there next to me. Right in the waiting room. Can you believe it? He said he needed to hold someone's hand. So I talked with him and held his hand. But. Me holding this gross socially-marginalized guy’s hand skeeved my mother out. She took up a half-made prayer shawl, inhaled aggressively, and started counting crochet stitches through trifocals.
Dear Rebel,
I know you did your best to answer this fucking guy in his anxiety and fear, to look him right in the eye, to be present and listen. Fine. Yeah. He probably shouldn’t have to face his mortal fear alone. But your mother was right. Five minutes of hand-holding isn't nothing. You should have asked him for a hundred bucks.
53 — Worth/Worthless
The leftover people, including me, are really noncommittal. Not sticky enough for entire lifetimes. We prefer isolation over intimacy. Don’t take it personally. We have other good qualities. We're just more like graphite than diamond: same chemical makeup, different structure. Not everlasting. Not harder than anything. Not incredibly valuable. Not sparkling despite included clarity. Not perfect