Table One: Joseph Suglia

If you would like to see and listen to a video in which I read my entire novel Table 41, go here

* * * * *

TABLE 41 by Joseph Suglia

Table One

 

You are on the beach, watching the swaying of the waves.  The waves sweep across the steeps like a flock of stampeding sheep speeding over the steppes, the snaking waves hissing over the driftwood steeped in the sandy wrack.

A squadron of gulls lifts uneasily into the air and then dissipates against the grey sky.  You look meaningly at the gulls.  They hover, the flurry of gulls.  The gulls lull heavily in the air, squealing their dull squeals.

You incline your head downward and stare at the inrushing waves, each one a hungry-mouthed sheep, coming toward you ravenously.  The water is deliquescent twenty feet from the shore.  Beyond the shoal, the surface seems lacquered, solid, unbreachable, enameled, brackish, thick, as if it were a spreading mass of viscous aquatic jelly.  From the shore, you cannot fathom, through the spume lid, the pelagic fathoms.  The lake’s lid is swarming with wavelets, each one undulant and alive—afroth, the lake’s lip, frosting wisps.

You listen to the shifting of the water and the sifting of the silt.  You watch the interleaving waves and the tempest of gulls.

The shadows of the gulls couple and uncouple, dancing on the drowning deluge, dancing on the shallows.

When the water rushes, it whishes; when it draws back, it seethes.  The waves comb; the water-spasm draws close, then subsides, receding into the lush foam.

A woman, around thirty, is thirty feet to your right, recumbent on her beach blanket.  She is violently shy and teething a toothsome nectarine.  She has with her a nectarine grinder and a bag of nectarines.  She grinds the fruit to pulp, pulping to the beat of a soundless music.

The water sluices into torrents.  They rush to your feet.

You raise yourself and shake off the sand.  You walk along the shore, looking at the water as you walk.  A beard of kelp dances beneath the thin film, the eiderdown of sea-grass.  A crab scuttles over the slickenside of a sea-rock.

You see a gull on a bulkhead, devouring a fleshless mollusk.  The gull pulls out the gut and swallows the unchewed meat.

The gull squawks.

You see loping teenagers in the distance.  A hipster is strumming his guitar on a beach blanket.  Beside him, skintart girlfriend is chewing chewing gum with her mouth open.  Her head resembles the head of a grouper.

There, an old man eating his soup.  He looks like a duck dunking its bill into a bucket of muck.

You are drifting toward the pier.  You hear the crackling of shells and the cackling of gulls.  Combers comb the surface of the lake and strike the shore.

Spreading frostiness.  The frothing is spreading over the sand.

See the motorboat sharking through the waves.  The boat splits the foam, leaving a frothy trail in its wake.  Tire tracks furrow the sand.  There, bottle caps and crabs’ claws.  A mass of striped shells, an exotic tapestry.

You step into the blue water.  The water is cool.  Tendrils of kelp envelop your feet.

Flows come in from the hazy juncture of water and sky, fluxes of light and spume.  It becomes easy to imagine that the white waves are manitous, coming to claim your soul.  Spangles scintillate on the surface of the beach, light refracted from the fragments of beached beer bottles.  Bespangled beach-desert.

A feather is dancing in the air.  It arcs, spirals, and whirls, sailing around in an anxiety of movement.  The feather is confused.  It cannot decide if it wants to move upward or downward or to waft away, buffeted by the breeze.

A pair of gulls trots across the sand, strutting in zigzagging formations, traversing your meandering shadows.  In the aquatic waste, a thin gull roosts, propped on a buoy.  Above you flutters a hurricane of gulls, screeching and cawing.

The platoon of gulls hovers, then dissipates.

The lake is blackening.  You step out of the water.

Shaped like ovaries, shaped like melting hippopotami, black clouds unfurl across the sky, trained by ethereal forces, at supersonic speeds.  One flocculent mass after another, they flop about on the aerial stage; the autodynamism of clouds, self-moving vehicles, entrances you.  They are weighty with the pendency of rain.

Now the waves are bursting violently against the shoreline, and a thickening layer of water is covering the expanse of sand.

Towering above you now, the crests are white with angry foam.  They are ramming the shore, spraying your eyes.  The sand is invisible, only the waves leaping into the air and colliding.  As tentacles, As lampreys, they embrace one another, seething liquid tubes.  It seems as if you were encased in a glass tank slowly filling with bubbling gelatin.  The black waves are engulfing everything.

The maw of the lake surging toward you, you step backward.

The sky darkens soundlessly.  You are watching the broken sky, walking backwards, crab-like, across the sandy waste.  You feel a chill and shiver at the emergence of something terrible foaming in the firmament.

Above is madness.  A whorl of clouds, a raging maelstrom, the flashings of a celestial chandelier.  The clouds are black and oily and spreading apart; they are floating over you, wagging their cilia menacingly.

The sand is spongy and moist.  You are sinking, your clothes heavy with rain.

You fall to the sand, curbing your knees.

From the waves comes a sea-child with kelp in his golden hair.  It is a boy.  You can see his shape in the lunar semidarkness.

He is coming out of the water.  What does the boy look like?  Is it even a boy?  Yes, it is a boy or something like a boy, something or someone that looks like a boy.

Who is this nautical angel who comes from the lake?  Who or what is this aquatic messenger?  A shiny white boy, his nacreous skin glistening.

The boy has no eyes.  You can see this as he walks slowly toward you through the gusts and the thrashes.  He has no eyes and is gazing at you eyelessly.  No, he has eyes, but his eyes have no pupils.  Oviform pupil-less eye-globes.

His eyes are wholly white, and he is gazing at you whitely.  Or is he sightlessly unaware of your presence?  He wafts past you now.

The storm grows ever-more truculent and is pounding you with its violence.  You are alone.  The sea-boy vanishes into the city of Chicago.

 

Copyright 2019 by Joseph Suglia

If you would like to see and listen to a video in which I read my entire novel Table 41, go here.

 

246 thoughts on “Table One: Joseph Suglia”

  3. WOW! That was a real mental adventure! Your imagery is fantastic. It really took me to another world. The words you use are very alluring and lovely. You have an amazing vocabulary. Very precise.

    “Celestial chandelier” caught my attention. Loved the expression.

    The found this part funny:
    “There, an old man eating his soup. He looks like a duck dunking its bill into a bucket of muck.”

    Haha. It’s interesting how it goes from very beautiful imagery to a sudden ugliness. And then it slowly devolves into total ugliness and devastation. Pretty interesting tale.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. It’s amazing how you take mundane things and activities and elevate them to a surreal plane. Everything is fluid and seamless, yet one can focus on specific scenes in this kaleidoscope of experiences. Who would have thought that all this would take one to Chicago now that one’s feet are back on solid ground? Just finished reading the first part of Table 41. Very interesting, intoxicating to the reader.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. You’re welcome. The appeal in your writing is that it has many layers – you peel away at one, and there’s another. That fascinates me. I’ll keep reading.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. You have me intrigued already with this one chapter. What a wonderful vocabulary you have, and a very entertaining imagination! Lord willing, I will definitely be back to read the rest! God loves you!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Your writing is so engaging, atmospheric…it has a surreal sense that’s captivating, so enticing…your rich descriptions are lush to say the least…so substantial, but not at all heavy as your words waltz across an opulent grand stage–grand and sweeping, waves of intrigue swoop the the reader of her/his feet (these are my initial thoughts…spontaneous). You write so beautifully. Congratulations on your admirable accomplishment 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. Wow, that would be very nice. I am always in awe of the process a novelist endures to flesh out characters and everything else that goes with it. I was just saying that recently to another novelist friend I have here on WP. Kudos to you for your diligence!

        Liked by 1 person

  12. That was marvelously strange! What an exercise in pushing the boundaries of literature. Did I read a story, or a poem? Or maybe even a dream? The imagery was crisp, but almost painting like, delightfully absurd at times. Whatever this was, it was great, and I’d definitely take a peak at more of these down the line.

    – Joker

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. Hi Dr. Suglia, I like how you describe what is happening and how you engage your audience by using the second person. I felt like I am inside a hypnotism clinic, listening to a therapist. Table One is interesting.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  14. I have read Table One a few times. I love its’powerful images and your absurdist tone. The descriptions are eloquent but with a unique twist that makes every one unique. You keep connecting the sea back to the land, and then the boy appears… Great beginning!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you, Genevieve (great name, by the way) for your lovely remarks. You might have read that I am giving away forty-one copies of the novel, once it is finally published, to the first forty-one Amazon reviewers of the book. If you are among these reviewers, I would be pleased to send you a copy, if you would like one.

      Joseph

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  15. Placing verbs to equivalent nouns ( eg “chewing her chewing gum” ) is just not allowed! No no no. Go stand in the corner, rule-breaker! Actually, I’m just being petulant. I loved reading this for its swelling power and escalating oddity. Thanks for sharing this with us!

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. Thank you, sir. If you would like a free copy of the novel when it is finally published, please let me know of this. My only condition is that you are one of the first forty-one Amazon reviewers of the book. I am underwater, at the moment, laboring over a book on Nietzsche and Shakespeare.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. I hear midnight oil burning and the popping of caffiene supplements. Happy writing ( and thanks by the way for your like on the Nuff Said blog for ‘Beyond Falcon’s Reach Prologue ) I’ll buy a copy of your book above when published. ‘Watch Out’ also seems very interesting but sounds like something to read prior to eating! 🙂 Chris ( Jay Northearn )

        Like

  17. Pingback: Your Art in the Spotlight – The Strix

  23. I am inept at accurately expressing my appreciation. Thank you for a well painted interesting journey. The emotions invoked feel relatable and actually brought surreal reprive to this tortured soul. You have a gift that can heal. I will now leave this feeling far more grounded.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  25. Pingback: Table of Contents for TABLE 41: A Novel by Joseph Suglia – Table 41: A Novel by Joseph Suglia
  26. Pingback: My novel TABLE 41 is now available in physical form. – Table 41: A Novel by Joseph Suglia

      1. Thank you for suggesting it to me! 🙂 Unfortunately I’m a complete amateur with Amazon & writing book reviews, but I’ll certainly recommend it on to different people if that helps?

        Liked by 1 person

      1. If you perhaps had some extra spare time, I’d be ever so grateful if you might check out the first few chapters of my historical story ‘Slumdog Soldier’. I’m currently looking for some helpful feedback readers might have 🙂

        Like

  30. Pingback: Would you like a free physical copy of my masterpiece TABLE 41? | Selected Essays and Squibs by Joseph Suglia
  31. Pingback: Would you like a free physical copy of my masterpiece TABLE 41? – Table 41: A Novel by Joseph Suglia

  33. Your “corrections” are incorrect. You are ignorant of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century literature and therefore believe that a literary text must contain a linear narrative. “Squadron” is the subject and is singular; “gulls” is the object of the preposition “of” and is not the subject. Thus, the squadron dissipates. The subject-verb agreement is correct. Do not be confused by words that come after the subject. If the subject is singular, so must the verb be: Such is the fundamental law of Standard Written English Grammar. Yes, the gulls in my text do trot. I know what I am doing; you, by contrast, do not know what I am doing.

    Joseph Suglia, Ph.D.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  36. Pingback: My novel TABLE 41 is now available in physical form. – Table 41: A Novel by Joseph Suglia
  37. Pingback: Table of Contents for TABLE 41: A Novel by Joseph Suglia – Table 41: A Novel by Joseph Suglia

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s