pillow

The economy was a roaring beast – a gorilla, beating his chest, standing on the rising crest of modernity.  It was a new era and everyone was getting ahead, leapfrogging and sprinting to the top.  But of course, great gain means great loss in a universe defined by balance. 

I took my time reading the paper.  There was crime.  And lots of it.  After a spate of violent robberies, it had become the policy of tellers to simply hand over the money; defiance was strongly discouraged.  For what did it gain a man to sneak a finger to a panic button while risking life or limb for the effort?  It’s one thing to jump brazenly in front of the woman you love.  Deflect arrows and insults and for your bravado an unrequited love becomes a wounded embrace.  But it was something else (and lesser at that) to unnecessarily aggravate a criminal who’d just as quickly leave everyone alone.  Ask no questions and do as you’re told.  So the article summed.

I nursed grogginess over rye toast and hazelnut coffee.  Sitting shirtless at the window’s ledge, it was damp and the breeze was more a concept, less a sensation.  Below, the buses were full and on-time; the people, equally frenetic and tired.  Yet, I was simply the latter.  For the first time in my life, I had expectations with nobody to expect me.  I had life and little living.  I had grand dreams and a common view of the city.  I had cereal and no milk.  So, the day’s itinerary was to walk the dog, scan the classifieds and make phone calls.  I mulled it over on my way to the kitchen.  Bare-footed and unsteady, I scratched my belly. 

As I scratched, I sang:

  I don’t mind your company every now and then
  But when I get home from work baby
  I can’t get into the house
  The kitchen
  The bathroom
  And I can’t get into my own damned bed

Decisively, I turned off the radio.  And leaning against the kitchen counter, I was inspired.  I would write her a letter.

I spent the remainder of the morning sitting at my desk, scribbling furiously.   And with every draft, my newborn project turned from twenty pages to fifteen to ten and eventually, one.  How do you boil something down to its essence?  What started out as a letter soon turned into a statement turned declaration.  Quality over quantity, you know?  The more sound, the less meaning.  By the time I was finished, it was well into the afternoon.  As I wrote and rewrote, I was increasingly consumed by the sound of my breathing.

In.  Out.  Scribble, scribble.

Pull.  Push.  Scribble, scribble.

Take.  Give.

“…”   Scribble, scribble.

One afternoon months back, I went to an office supply store.  I walked down each aisle and spent the bulk of a weekend morning choosing the appropriate shade of Post-it note.  Perhaps I should have been thinking of the solution to world hunger or an equitable answer to the immigration debate.  True, I may not be the necessary genius to handle all of that.  But if we all coordinated to sit at a given hour and think of great ripostes to life’s challenges, wouldn’t the weight of that sort of pondering be enough to make something happen?  A universal, collective flexing?  In the parking lot, I thought about it as I examined my new canary yellow stickies.  The color was eye-catching!

At any rate, that afternoon was long ago.  So I folded my day’s work with elementary precision.  It was now a yellow rectangle.  Folded again, a square.

I was tired and in response, I slept.  Throughout the night, nonplussed by my soft breathing, the note sat ready to go on my dresser. 

The Note read:
   Give me money now.

Walking past the delicatessen the next morning, I sang:

  And you may ask yourself
  How do I work this?
  And you may ask yourself
  Where is that large automobile?
  And you may tell yourself
  This is not my beautiful house!
  And you may tell yourself
  This is not my beautiful wife!

I ended up in a stale, marble tiled building.  Hands in my pockets, I waited as I looked at bemused eyes that belied uncertainty.  But that was all I needed and in the time it took to look at my watch, the floor, the wall clock and her oval face three times in succession, she was already filling the bag with shaky piano hands.  I affected a stern look that inadvertently broke into a hint of apology as I took its possession.  She was flustered, almost blushing.  Apparently, I put her in a state of shock.  It was new for both us.  My intentions had made me a criminal.  She had never been addressed so directly, so succinctly.  No irony, no sarcasm, no fluff, my actions left her lost in an unstructured sea. 

Then, sharply aware of the cold linoleum floor, the geraniums nestled in each corner, the ostensibly well-heeled customers waiting patiently, and the overweight teller watching me leave, I said good afternoon to the security guard.  I was not overwhelmed by the moment.  In fact, I walked out of the building, broad-shouldered like a rich man.  Because I was.

Leaving the freshness of the air-conditioned lobby, I didn’t run.  In no hurry, I walked casually for two blocks and feeling aimless, walked into a diner.  I determined I was hungry and ordered a tuna sandwich and soup.  The bread was toasted and there was too much mayonnaise.  I only ate a little and bagged the rest for my dog.  Outside, I saw a moped zip by.  At that specific moment, I really really wanted a moped. 

On the way home, I wondered what it would be like to drive a moped.  Snaking my way through  foreign traffic, I would wear big aviator goggles and a scarf.  The scarf would whip in the wind.  I would look at the drivers around me and grin. I would wear gloves with the fingers cut out.  But something seemed missing from the idea as I walked.

So I sang:

  And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
  And you may find yourself in another part of the world
  And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
  And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
  Wife
  And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

When I got home that afternoon, my dog was asleep and barely lifted his head.  But not the world around me.  Rather, it was pulsating with a life beautiful, scary and unstoppable.  Markets were both opening and closing according to the sun.  Bedouins were laughing in the midst of sandstorms.  The oil hidden deep beneath their feet was sloshing and calling for action.  Everyone was going somewhere, moving and shaking.  A million eyes were fixed on the rippling lines of interest rates.  Boards released esoteric puzzles and thousands scrambled to piece the words together.  It was an accelerated expansion.  The senses of the world were ablaze.  And somewhere moped dealers were making a killing, selling quick wheeled wonders to dreamers and cute actresses.  

I made toast.  I ran a bath.  For an hour, I rested my head against the warm tiles of my bathroom wall.  I listened to the shampoo fizzle in my hair and I watched the soap bubble on my arms.  I thought about an equitable solution to the immigration debate.  I came up short.  I considered ways to end man’s wanton desire for death and destruction.  Nada.  I weighed the merits of shampoo blended with conditioner.  A perfect invention because it saves a lot of time.  And the green bottle is eye-catching!  I nodded off.

I dreamed I was walking on a Stockholm stage, the next Nobel laureate.  I regaled the audience with the story of one "kickass" weekend reef diving in Guam.  "And dude, after my last dive, I was crazy jonesin' for a chili dog & Pabst combo when -BAM!- the theory of sub-sub-sub-atomic particle equilibria hit me."   The unending applause was deafening and hitting me in waves when -BAM!- a better, cheaper, more efficient schematic for ocean desalination was birthed.  "And dude, after my last Nobel Prize acceptance speech, I was crazy jonesin' for..."

They rapped on the door with heavy flashlights.  I was naked and pruned, bubbles fizzling on my skin as I tried to climb out of the bathroom window.  But it was pointless and only humorous filler for Thursday’s police blotter.  Soap notwithstanding, I wasn’t going to slip away so easy.  The dog yapping, the neighbors peeking, I was handcuffed with nothing but loosely wrapped terry cloth for pride.  But I was just fine as we walked down the dimly lit, pocked hallways of the building.  Watching through barely open doors, I was alternately laughed at and feared.  Look!  The emperor has a towel.

  bubble  fizzle

The economy was a gorilla sitting where he pleased.  I’ll eat a banana here.  No, on second thought… there.  And I'll take some palm fronds.  Outside my apartment window, the night was cool and the street lamps glowed warmly.  Around the halo of one light, there was a soft comfort.   And the concentric softness reached out to me in fading circles.  Eyes fixed to it, I felt my eyes droop heavy. 

Sleeping clean in a black and white cab, head against the grilled barrier, I dreamed myself rich on a moped, steady piano hands holding my waist for soft comfort.  An oval face resting a cheek on my right shoulder, my scarf dancing around her, we zipped at quick speed and were keenly aware of our breathing.

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REVIEW - Gnarls Barkley
                    Track - Crazy

waribashi

people of indigenous cultures

broken flowers

bovine freedom

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Currently Listening Leaders of the Free World By Elbow see related

cellar door

Yawning, we wait for the old grey bus to Capistrano.  Kicking our feet, taking in the freshness of our surroundings, we are casually engulfed by large and steady habits, the movement of nuns.  From a distance, they are but an amorphous black haze, made jellylike by the rising summer shimmer.  A miracle in the desert, they are but soulful illusions, the possibility of camaraderie in a shared waiting.

They shuffle their feet and congregate as a gaggle, noting the time.  Helplessly, we eavesdrop on their innocent chatter, topics spilling otherworldliness.  There must be over twenty of them, each woman hidden by shapeless religious wear.  Their faces but means to expression, we imagine the gaunt ones are severe and the pudgy ones joyful.  For their habits, all attention is drawn to their cheeks, mouths, eyes and noses.  Enough to fill ten rows, we wonder if there will be room for us on the diesel-fueled miles ahead.  But time of arrival need not correlate with one’s place in line and far be it from us to break their fellowship.   We hold hands and it is a beautiful day.

Feeling lively, we wait for the bus to Capistrano and it arrives with commotion.  We let the sisters walk ahead and they climb metal steps gingerly.  They file into empty spaces and even so, we manage to find seats.  And we are on our way.  The ocean on one side and brown cliffs on the other, we find that one step closer to heaven has the scent of mothballs and cedar blocks, taking in the musty smell of women with little need for perfume, deodorant or fancy shampoo.  Gears adjusting for the rolling hills, the bus follows the contours of the landscape and we passengers sway together with every swerve and dip.  Though we lack their habits, we can’t help but mimic their movement as we edge closer to our destination, their home.  Strange how it makes us feel new.

The bus to Capistrano halts gently and we exit to the sound of theological discourse or the clanging of mementos.  In linen bags, they carry pennywise souvenirs from a day spent sightseeing the city.  Our touring ahead, it is an ironic coincidence.

Walking across a nicely kept lawn, we see a bell and we imagine the fun of ringing all that iron.  With mirth and aplomb, a portly monk in burlap drives a John Deere around tree roots and adobe walls.  A slight friar soars to the ether, caught by the music of spheres, counting reverberating seconds per the hour, holding a rope tightly.  Those are the images that keep us laughing and open to everything.  So if we were once like clenched fists, we are momentarily open palms, grin-happy like the gulls above.

We are cognizant of an observed silence as we make our way into the sanctuary.  We sit in the front pew.  Blessed with commitment and a working convenience, we wait for the feeling.  We’re still waiting as we make our way to the gift shop where we flip through a pictorial timeline of the mission’s birth to present day.  From passion to hysteria to somewhere in-between, we agree that everything is a fine line.

It’s beautiful.  Everything is beautiful.  But beauty is a sinkhole, a complete mess of an idea.  God is beautiful.  All God’s work is a beautiful creation.  Your smile is beautiful too.  But combined together, layered one thought upon another, what does it mean in the end?  Because even in sleep, when I close my eyes, you’re still there, pretty.  And when you’re gone – and that time will be here shortly – having stormed out of the building for some tantrum, you’ll still be beautiful to someone. 

Two individuals completely accustomed to aloneness can collide in any chapel.  Our perfectionism, our idealism, our utter subjectivity turn our friendship into sport.  It was the fly on her shoulder, not the shapeliness of her dress that had me looking.  The conviviality of our hand-holding evolves quickly into a hurtful hand-wringing.  You walk out the door and stomp through a perfect square of ebullient green.  I’m embarrassed and angry but even then, yes, it’s beautiful.  Hume believed that a thing was beautiful inasmuch as its related sensations pleased us because of nature, custom, culture, caprice.  For fleeting moments, we are cruel in what pleases us.

Apparently, you go home without me because I refuse to give chase in this place of heavenly purpose.  Instead, hands in my pockets, I pass by the former gaggle of nuns, now lining up for choir practice.  The struggling sopranos will work to hit the high notes and the altos will smirk because the low notes are easy.  I alternately muse and fume with a heavy emphasis on the latter.  I’m tired now.  Perhaps I’ll become a monk, a path with all the devotion minus the scandal, everyday the same as the one before.  Meeting the searching docent, I take the tour alone.   

Later, on the way home, I’ll realize that vulnerability is a core element of what’s beautiful.  Everything is vulnerable, each moment completely malleable to choice and emotion.  And what isn’t subject to time?  Even the sun.  Even Galileo stood before the Catholic tribunal, no longer at the center of the universe.   

The distance between us ebbs and flows.  In every sense, our connection is a marvel.  I may not know it yet but in the hours ahead, I will mull over questions of faith, be bowled over by the path of history, and fall in love again.  With the sun melting day, the attractiveness of Southern California at dusk sublimates into an essence of bright orange, purple, feminine pink and a fiery masculine red.  The afternoon shadows touch and spill past the mission arches.

To my surprise, you are sitting on a bench, reading a brochure and a bus schedule ten times over, folded and unfolded with every latent emotion.

Over a hundred years ago, an Italian immigrant was asked to note the most beautiful word in the English language.  Cellar door was his answer.  Cellar door.  Cellar door.  Cellar door!  You are my cellar door.  What we have – the collective whole of it – is cellar door.  One may enjoy a bowl of sauerkraut as much as another may relish a spoonful of caviar – the pleasure one and the same, regardless of class.  Because most things are better for the waiting.  

On a Capistrano hillside, overlooking the Pacific, we wait for the bus again, this time empty & quiet for lack of habits and chatter.  There are fine and distant lines between earth and sky, certainty and faith, we agree.  No, we feel.

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          the poor man's store (john peto)
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Currently Listening Origin of Symmetry By Muse see related

Rogaine

The maple syrup has a conniption as it
Works its way through golden pores and
Fluffy layers of carbohydrate goodness
While I eat content with a wholly empty mind…
Because who really gives a rat’s ass
During the moments emptied by forty minutes
Of sweet maceration and who would not hope
To multiply this (times one thousand!)
Until the only words remaining were fat,
Old, grey and retracted because recession is inevitable.

Nancy, come to the window... I think the kids are here.

I am a good man.
He was a good man.
I was a good man.

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The Accuser
                                  

Currently Playing Kasabian By Kasabian see related

Near

fwwp fwwp fwwp fwwp

On the sill, between two portraits, she landed.  She was white like stone and as she cooed, she pecked on crumbs of dirty bread.  Humming, tying knots, and repairing backpack wicker baskets, I was caught off guard by her sudden arrival.  As my neighbors knew, I had been waiting for some time, worried about the myriad of flak – multiplied a hundredfold in her case – that might’ve clipped a wing and sent her tumbling in a burst of feathers.  See, earlier in the morning, I woke startled by a dream of an eagle tearing in her direction where she was just content and unaware, proud of her courage and our friendship.  And though it hasn’t lately been in my nature, I couldn’t hide my good feeling: I’m glad you made it.

fwwp fwwp fwwp fwwp

I was happy to see her and I quickly ran to the window.  Her coo was sweet and it was like the comforting drone of a feline purr, or a mollifying motor.  The sun was clean and long-reaching as it bounced off her wings; it was pretty and it was a reminder that she had traveled far.  Miles away she had begun her descent and through cloudy wisps, she made her way past the steeple.  Trenet was on the radio and douce France! we were together again.

I brought her inside and her prickly feet danced on callused hands.  My uniform was in disarray as she picked at shredded cuffs that wore like burlap, olive-grey and drab, nag-nag-nag.  It was Sunday and while most were off at chapel, I was long removed from that whole way of thinking.  Even for all their weekly debauchery and wildness, I understood that the tail end of a weekend could bring a fresh anchoring.  Was it hypocrisy?  Maybe… but I wouldn’t judge it.  And perhaps it is a bit too self-aware to qualify as irony, but I’d go so far as to say I was tempted to join them in the pews.  But it is a cold march to the chapel and I could do without God’s winter stare.  The bulk of life’s decisions are visceral and that fact alone is enough to overcome any personal (and probably misguided) theology.  I checked to see if she was injured and in turn, cooed words of praise.

Faith was a cornerstone, that integral piece of life’s narrative that worked to make sense out of both the tragic and mundane, sometimes one and the same.  Was I proud of letting these things go?  Maybe for a time because it was a secret, a glimmer in my mind’s eye even in the midst of chaplain conversations and church pastries.  Working through the hymnal, competing for every listening ear, devolving into the sound of my neighbor’s cracking voice, I had a growing knowledge, a secret.  I learned recently that secrets are a source of some perverse strength.  The waiter who spits in a rude patron’s food, the student who knows more than his teacher, the wife who knows of a cheater’s ways, the quiet boy who scored higher than the talker, or the man who learns there is no God or none like the one he worships, each finds varying degrees of pleasure in the knowing.  The rightness of these secrets matters little; what matters is that they're hidden.  And as I mentioned, it can be seen as perverse.

As expected, on her leg was a message from a neighboring unit where they were still lobbing shells and angry words at each other.  It was urgent so my day would now begin.  They were in need of supplies – water, food, medicine and gasoline.  Still cooing, I placed her in her cage and scrambled out the door.  I would go to the chapel after all. 

Nearer my God to thee, they were singing and the commander sang like a true martinet.  The creases in his face were deeply set like a man in constant worry or maybe, constipation, but today it was supplication.  I leaned in his direction and cupped my hand to his lambchop burns.  Back out in the lobby, we could hear the organ straining and the sound of cockney voices lifted heavenward or at least in the direction of the pretty Sunday school teachers.  I would make my way to the supply train by way of bicycle and requisition their demands.  With a salute and clap of boots, I was eagerly on my way.

I ran upstairs and grabbed my pack and I brought her along for company.  It had rained just a day earlier and the muddy roads were dried in awkward dimensions.  Imagine riding a crooked bicycle on the backside of a granite prune and you might gain a sense of the related bruising.  Two miles yet to go, I remembered that the supply clerk yet owed me a bottle of spirits – bourbon or whiskey, it didn’t matter.  He took a bet and lost a gamble on a fortuitous pair of aces.  What were the chances?

fwwp fwwp fwwp fwwp

Having laughed over this story as she flapped to gain balance in her cage, we moved to a discussion of Rilke.  Wasn’t he wrong?  Solitude was not always difficult and sometimes, exactly what you wanted.  Embrace your solitude because solitude is difficult, is what he said.  The beauty of faith is that you are never alone so this aloneness may have been uniquely mine. 

Then, there was an explosion.  We were in the rear so I was confused.  It must’ve been the work of saboteurs or then again, a stupid accident.  Regardless, one boom was followed by another and in the distance, I saw a large plume of dark smoke but in my hard thinking, I became another Absalom and I ran straight into a low hanging branch – smack! – straight on the nose.  The bicycle continued forward but that’s where I remained, if only for a wavering moment.  Like that, I was on the ground, my face alternately throbbing and numb and there was blood everywhere.  Henceforth, I would have a boxer’s nose without the boxing. 

I came to my senses and sat up to see more smoke and the distant sound of sirens.  And then came heartbreak, as I noticed the flattened wicker behind me.  I gingerly opened the basket to find her struggling to move.  I picked her up slowly and found she had a broken wing.  As she flapped, she span in circles.  It was a pitiful moment; a brave spirit dodges the shots of hunters, bored soldiers and is wounded only under the weight of my rump.  She was calm but occasionally panicked as I held her in my palms. 

If faith is a gift, it is born in quiet moments where light bounces off a windowsill or where a dog’s bark makes one laugh just as the doorbell rings.  Faith might be a matter of coincidence.  But it’s born in an instant and leaves you just the same.  That morning, I left the bike on the side of the road and I walked my way toward the fuel fire.  Though in pain, we shared our disarray and I kept her in my coat pocket.  Douce France! I sang.

Even when hurting, to walk in peace and quiet, away from barking instructions and the degradations (though not the responsibilities) of rank was nice.  Everything would be fine and surprisingly, even the fire left only two injured.  The supplies made their way to the front and for me, despite the expected madness, it would be a strangely lasting memory.  This was grace too.

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Somme 6 (Max Pechstein )

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Currently Playing Solid Guild By Joggers see related