Addendum or Brief Addendum or Long Apposition to a Short Story

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Addendum2 9Because I once had a name, and I was once a man, born in Allentown,Pennsylvania, raised in poverty and dressed in rags. I was a man onboard the whale ship Acushnet, a man who hunted and caught andsliced and diced and salted the meat of the sperm whale; a manwho drank to the cracks and crevices in my skin and smoked tillmy tongue sprouted hair; a man who spent three weeks with cannibalsin the Southern Seas, eating liver to my health; a man who––legsheavy logs and head a candle wick snuffed––returned to the EastCoast, chanced upon a woman, married and spawned, continued todrink and smoke and wander the streets and avenues. Delightful detours,debauchery incarnate; also, I was a man who got to know Melville,never mind how; a man who during conversations with him––bottlesof beer close by––discussed the intricacies of whaling and writing. Iwas asked––‘if it’s not a bother’––to aid him, Merry Melville, in collectingmaterial for a novel he said he would like to write and later didwrite.I aided, and so it was that I became a gatherer, a man whothrough spirituous brain fog started to see patterns solid enough tocarry and rebuild a man. And so it was that I began to grow. Butbefore I blossomed, I died.Such is life, father always said. You die.
Addendum3 9I was still young when I died, and it was a painful death. I coughedblood and pissed kidney; I cramped and saw strange scaly creaturesclinging to the insides of my eyelids. And I prayed to God, my handon my wife’s body of feathers. And my son––small, frail, and blonde––saton the other side of death, gradually growing dimmer.I never got to see God. I was not ushered through the PearlyGates. I was not rowed across the river Styx. I did not see Hades orthe inverted splendor of Gehenna; I was spared the brimstone ofmedieval minds. My imposed departure was not a disappearing actfrom me and my self, such as I was and had become. My departuredid not arrive any specific where. Rather, I––such as I was, hadbecome, and probably forever will be––was transported to a blankwhite space, cut off from Man much like the prisoner is cut off fromeverything but his misdeeds, placed behind tightly spaced bars. Myview of the Living, though––their pretense––was nothing but complete,a bird’s eye view magnified. I saw my funeral. I saw my wife and myson and a few friends. I saw my wife’s absence of grief; she soonre-married, tied the knot to a man whose soul was intact, it waswidely believed. His authority, it was said, was far-reaching.
Page 1: Addendum1 9Call the short story a p
Page 5 and 6: Addendum5 9But then came the day to
Page 7 and 8: Addendum7 9Så blev jag alltså til
Page 9: Addendum9 9Detta var min halvvägs

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