Post on 12-Mar-2016
description
ARRHYTHMIA: A Plague of Helicopters
for Kathleen Eastwood
by Angelo Colavita
When it happened, she’d come on like angels through a tunnel. Buried and
floating over London in the morning, beneath his feet and through the soul of a
man running. Legs become a penniless bargain with Mr. Brownstone on the
worst of the drynights, in circles, beating the air until the blood in the elevator
returns to his penthouse in the city. Submarine voices pilot jet-engines at eyelevel
without a weldingmask, snowblind, deaf to all but his heartbeat.
When your diamond lips melt, finally, and the frost is shaken from curly locks of
hair (you devil), you will take to your feet and you will head for the hills and you
will hide among the trees, you will. They will never find you in the trees. They
would hover above until just enough fuel to get back, they would. Be patient.
Hold tight until they’re gone.
When they were far enough to be gone, his sight would return and he’d stare
through the forest as the sounds of wind and animals play rasp-and-chisel to his
delusive visions of redwoods and redheads and red waxed bags intended for coin-
collecting. Half-red ribbon left the other half black, with his hat and slacks and
specs and matching leathers. Heart and soul, sold separately, complete the set
together, for afterall, accessories do truly make the attire. Lord knows one
wouldn’t be caught dead with small holes in slacklaps or white rings around the
brim. Lord knows it’s sure cold out there.
When he least expects it, or when he most; when it goes undetected, or when it
boasts; when it coasts at fiftyfour, sure, you better bet your money he’ll’ve
dropped to his knees before twohundred-and-twenty. He comes-to with his head
to the ground, brought to reverence like a pilgrim on the path of gnosis from
Knossos to Jerusalem. Axe in hand, he swung for steel vultures and bought
himself another day. But the day would come when, broke and dying, he’d watch
the birds be torn to shreds by their own propellers. Until that day, may he be
plagued by helicopters.
When the concrete has abandoned you in empty wilderness, his lungs will
collapse. When his cochlea betray him for the wind of ghosts, you will lapse into
neuralgia. On the eve of transmission, may you wake together and breathe
eachother’s exhaled exaltations of life and of love and of living love until it
eventually kills you. He feels her breath in his mouth, in his throat.
When she wakes, may she continue from where she left off. On a tangent for
several score when he ran in the middle on running from the helicopters. With or
without her, they will come looking. He will be found running, or hiding, with his
arms on the ground and his head at his stomach.
When she is here, he is in the clear, until she sleeps. She sleeps until he is
vulnerable.
When he is vulnerable, a signal is sent. With the signal sent, the ants make fallen
branches of his fallen arms and he falls into the arms of a lover; a pure heart, the
purest heroine to save and destroy him. The air is made of glass. Against the glass
tap the blades beat against the air inside his chest among the trees, both above
and below. What cyclical plot has developed. My, how the propellers spin ‘round.
How the hawks rise like a breathing chest, heart beating.
Response 1: “Thine Own Self” or “Portrait of a Shit Heart”
by Kyle Shuebrook
I first met Angelo Colavita about ten years ago at the home of a mutual friend.
He was sitting on a couch and scribbling into a black notebook when I entered
the room. At the time, I had my own aspirations of being a writer; aspirations
which faded as I became more and more interested in pursuing other careers.
While my interests were fluctuating, Angelo was writing. When I was first
becoming obsessed with Psychology, especially Jung, Angelo was writing. When I
was reading Oliver Sacks and beginning to gain an interest in neuroscience,
Angelo was writing. When I was just beginning to explore my fascination with
religion, Angelo was writing. And now, as I’m working towards a career which
will hopefully encompass all three of my scattered interests, Angelo continues to
write. Over the years I have met many people who write, and who speak of
writing, but Angelo Colavita is one of the very few true “Writers” that I have ever
known. Under normal circumstances, most people take very little notice of the
many complex processes which are continually at work all around them. When
we check our email, we rarely take pause or find ourselves in awe of the countless
invisible operations necessary in order to open that email. We pay little attention
to the inner workings of our phones when we place a call. When we flip a light
switch, we are not surprised by the near instantaneous illumination, nor are we
fascinated by the ability of our own eyes to perceive objects within the well-lit
room. However, we do tend to take notice of these processes when they fail to
work as expected. “Fifty dollars a month and the shit doesn’t even work?” we
mumble to ourselves when a video won’t buffer, or when a call is dropped.
Inconveniences such as these are annoying, but we tend to get over them quickly.
Bodily functions however, are different. If you awoke one morning and found
yourself to be intermittently blind in one eye, it’s unlikely that you’d say “Meh, it’s
just one of those things, I’m sure my vision will come back on later”. And then if
after seeing a doctor, we you were told that your vision would be intermittent and
unpredictable from now on, how do you think you would be affected? Would
your perception of familiar surroundings change? Would your appreciation of,
and subjective associations to the sense of sight change? Would you change?
These are just a few of the questions raised in Colavita’s “ARRHYTHMIA: A
Plague of Helicopters”, a work which deals with the experience of not only living
with a serious heart condition, but also of being healed and learning to live
without a serious heart condition. Living with any disease or affliction is not
simply about dealing with the physical symptoms. There are also the
psychological effects of prolonged illness. After a while, the sufferer no longer
perceives their affliction as simply being some transitory external force. When we
catch a cold, we say, “I have a cold”. If after a few years, that cold did not go away,
we might eventually start referring to it as this cold, and eventually, my cold,
instead of just a cold. The sufferer’s perceptions of an illness can often evolve to a
point where the sufferer actually identifies his or herself with the illness. Not only
is the illness theirs “to be carried with them” (as in “my cold”), but it also
becomes theirs in the sense that it becomes a “part” of them, similar to the way
that their arms, legs, or even their personalities are a part of them. The
variability of differing perceptions of long term afflictions is likely infinite, with
each sufferer having their own unique experience. This notion is clearly
illustrated in ARRHYTHMIA. His illness, a sinus arrhythmia, is manifested in a
number of different ways. Describing the onset of an attack, his arrhythmia is
likened to the speed and grace of an angel. The heart palpitations become the
harrowing sound of helicopter propellers, an auditory reminder of the body’s
fragility. The last paragraph of his story seems to depict a process of healing
(heart surgery), while at the same time depicting loss ( the loss of the
arrhythmia). The notion of this type of loss is one I can readily relate to. I have
been a stutterer for most of my life. So when I speak of identification with an
affliction, I speak from experience. As a child, I would have done anything to be
rid of my speech impediment. I would routinely have these little hypothetical
bargaining sessions with God, where I would offer my hand or some other limb as
payment for a miraculous cure. That desperation did not last for long however,
and I have largely accepted by disability. My stutter is a part of me, it has shaped
me in countless different ways. And if a cure were to come along, I would surely
not hesitate to take advantage. Yet, I must wonder how I would deal with the loss
of something which has become such a big part of me, my stutter, my own
helicopter.
Response 2: Negative Space
by Anastasia Renzetti
There is something sacred about the written word. Paragraphs contain
multitudes and even the single sentence can endure, carving itself into the mind
and remaining forever. Great writing can make you feel like you know a secret,
like you are the only witness to a mysterious world. That being said, a great
author often acts as our guide, ushering us through the microcosm they have
created. Swept up in the majesty of a story, we often forget that the world we are
marveling at is in fact our own- that there is no secret society, that in truth, there
is no special world being revealed to us, but rather we are being reminded of
ourselves.
Angelo Colavita makes an immediate connection through his title ‘Arrhythmia’
by infusing a connection with the reader through a physical problem. He is
instantly creating an experience to unite the audience with the story itself rather
than strengthen the author/reader relationship. He writes in a way that
constantly grounds you back into the story: each paragraph opens with the same
word, creating a swooping propeller effect that gives the narrative a palpable
sense of urgency while maintaining the infrastructure of the story.
Colavita uses symbols that are not present in the story but are alluded to or
described: elevators, jet engines, London, typewriters, someone is talking. Who is
talking? Maybe you are talking. He uses “negative space” associations – feelings
evoked by imagery belie any surface ambiguity. The obtuse physical and sensory
disturbances suggest drug use and a physical heart problem but these are not
singular suggestions: they are meant to construct the feeling of panic. The story
has an ending without any reconciliation, and the reader is faced with yet another
impending swoop.
The author is exploring fear and despair, two themes that are often ignored in our
society which is so focused on itself. There is no societal mirror in this work of art
but instead the specificity of pain, panic, and anxiety. This story is the stuff of raw
emotion and the themes that are explored therein are not metaphors for any
societal polemic (as the locus of contemporary art often is) but rather expose
human suffering in a profoundly personal, yet universal way.