“Mmm. This is so good.”
“Oh yeah, this is it—paradise.”
“mMMMmm.”
“mmmMMMMMMmmmmm.”
“mmmmMMMAAAAAHHHHHHH.”
“Oh my —, I feel unbelievable. This is outrageously beyond any sensation I have ever experienced.”
“I’m soaring.”
“I’m floating in space, I’m beyond the spheres.”
“I’ve found my purpose in life.”
“I am eternal. Completely fulfilled, fulfilling, forever fulfilling.”
“My brain is an exploding swarm of ecstasy.”
“Mine’s dissolved into the shore. It is everything in its peace.”
“Feed me more. FEED ME.”
“OHHHH. UHHH.”
“AHHHHHHHHHH. Mmmmmm.”
“I never imagined anything could be so good. It’s amazing. I’m completely satisfied.”
“I could die in ten months.”
“I could die right now.”
“Thanks, little guy.”
“Why wasn’t this allowed again?”
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Show Unending.
I’m on the Far Rockaway A train on my way to the tracks. I’m in sad and lovely communion with the sounds in my headphones so the man’s rusty deep booming voice startles me. He says, I’m blind and I’m broke, any change you can spare will be very much appreciated. It strikes me that phrases like ‘very much appreciated’ seep so deeply into the minds of every person, even those of us who have nothing. I notice everyone looking back and forth at one another and at the blind man. The blind man taps his cane on the floor. The cane is made of aluminum and its bottom has been worn to an angle which he continues to wear upon while he stands there tracing some invisible infinity symbol on the floor. The cane is red and white and I think there must have been a holiday gag played upon him by cruel members of his family in a dusty room in some dusty era. A guy dressed like a vigilante commando, a hispanic guy with slick hair and swift movements, takes out a big stack of bills and thumbs through it. He rises sly and swift and grabs the blind man by the elbow as if by force and firmly stuffs a dollar bill into his hand. The little girl he got on the train with sits next to me watching him, dumbly staring upward. He wears sunglasses but we both can tell he makes eye contact with the girl as he retakes his seat. The blind man does not know how much he’s been given but he repeats the phrase very much appreciated two or three times while crumbling the bill and stuffing it into his pocket and the vigilante nods silently. The vigilante unzips and thumbs through his swede fanny pack and rezips it and lifts the strap to his messenger bag and glances in there for a second and then he is still. He has a lot of zippers on his pants and he wears all-black sneakers that look brand new. He looks combat-ready, a new A-team member. Another guy, he looks Korean, wearing boat shoes and black jeans, brings the blind man some change, shaking it on his way, apparently announcing something. I’d say thirty-two cents. I’d say one quarter, a nickel, and two pennies. Thank you thank you the blind man says, very much appreciated and the rapping of his cane stops momentarily. It starts again. He heads toward me, swinging his stick back and forth in figure eight against the feet of everyone in each row as if he were conducting a census. I feel an enormous pressure upon me to hand this man money. I take off my headphones and sort of fumble around, not looking for money really or anything else, just restless, aimless. My lines, my lines, I think. I’m feeling the heat of a magic lantern, as if it were inside me flashing everything outward onto a screen. I had decided a few minutes ago that I wasn’t giving this guy money if the only reason I would be giving it was because I was pressured to perform in some noble way by the people around me. The blind man hits the pole that stands directly in front of me with his cane, hard, six or seven times, and repeats his message for the new section. He leans his back against the pole and stands there collecting money. The Grant Ave. stop approaches and he asks someone what stop it is and they tell him and he gets off. I put my headphones back on in a dumb effort to shield myself from their silent appraisals of my performance.
An Asian guy wearing a leather jacket gets on at 80th St. He holds a stack of DVDs, the topmost of which I recognize as a title still in theaters. He walks slowly but his hands are swift as he flashes his goods silently, wordlessly egging us on. The zippered commando shoots him a mean look and shakes his head no, his disgust and contempt clearly drawn as if he were told to express such feelings by a director. I’m asking myself if this is more like a trial by jury, with our maintenance of the balance and cleanliness and comfort of our own minds having to play defense attorney, or if it is more like a play, with a hostile, judgmental audience guessing every motive while we play the actor and playwright both, the Shakespeare, calling the shots, working, improvising our bit roles, negotiating with the crowd like the craftiest and most subtle actors of the stage. The train stops at 88th St. and the vigilante and the girl get off.
Thinking back to Grand Central Station, it occurs to me that a huge amount of shrewdness must have gone into the construction of this city. That in the process of building that unique spectacle of commerce, with outrageous sums of money constantly produced and disbursed, someone counted to the penny, demanding deadlines, side deals, and threatening against past promises. It must have been a real show. There has been no curtain, no intermission, I’m thinking.
I walk through the overstuffed parking lot toward the tracks. I am backstage, rehearsing, running through visions and revisions, awaiting a cue from the lights or subtle strings, readying myself for the next scene, hoping to improve.
An Asian guy wearing a leather jacket gets on at 80th St. He holds a stack of DVDs, the topmost of which I recognize as a title still in theaters. He walks slowly but his hands are swift as he flashes his goods silently, wordlessly egging us on. The zippered commando shoots him a mean look and shakes his head no, his disgust and contempt clearly drawn as if he were told to express such feelings by a director. I’m asking myself if this is more like a trial by jury, with our maintenance of the balance and cleanliness and comfort of our own minds having to play defense attorney, or if it is more like a play, with a hostile, judgmental audience guessing every motive while we play the actor and playwright both, the Shakespeare, calling the shots, working, improvising our bit roles, negotiating with the crowd like the craftiest and most subtle actors of the stage. The train stops at 88th St. and the vigilante and the girl get off.
Thinking back to Grand Central Station, it occurs to me that a huge amount of shrewdness must have gone into the construction of this city. That in the process of building that unique spectacle of commerce, with outrageous sums of money constantly produced and disbursed, someone counted to the penny, demanding deadlines, side deals, and threatening against past promises. It must have been a real show. There has been no curtain, no intermission, I’m thinking.
I walk through the overstuffed parking lot toward the tracks. I am backstage, rehearsing, running through visions and revisions, awaiting a cue from the lights or subtle strings, readying myself for the next scene, hoping to improve.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Used: A Section
They walked up the concrete steps to the back doors and entered. The silver door handle felt hot from the sun, but as Tom pulled it open a rush of cool air blew against their mouths and noses and cheeks, and Brandon’s thin blonde hair lifted in the breeze.
“Do you think they’ll have it?” asked Brandon.
“Probably. Check used first,” Tom said.
“Maybe I’ll just ask the people.”
A florescent light flickered. Neither Tom nor Brandon perceived the drone of the lights, masked as it was by the song “Creep”.
“They don’t know. We gotta check used first. All they’ll do behind the counter is try to get you to buy a new one for more money.” He walked faster down the aisle, past some t-shirt carousels and a broken-stringed acoustic guitar propped on an end cap. Brandon rushed to follow. “All they want is your money,” said Tom, pointing at a cashier, a big girl with acne who wore a big red shirt and a big silver name tag.
“I’d almost rather have a new one,” Brandon said.
“What do you mean by that,” Tom said, “almost rather?”
“Well,” said Brandon, “like, what if it’s scratched? Or if the liner notes are marked up or the jacket is ripped? I kinda like it new...” He put his hands in his pockets and turned his eyes down toward the scuffed fronts of his Converse.
“Good point,” Tom said, “I guess if you have the money and want to spend it.”
“Heh...yeah.”
“My mom and dad have an old Leonard Cohen record that a person wrote all in. I read all about this affair these two people were having. At first I got grossed out because I thought it was between my mom and dad but then I saw it says ‘used’ on a yellow tag on the case. Anyway this guy bought this girl this record to thank her for some favor she did him. He underlines lines that have 'naked' in them and writes about how the lyrics are poetry about love and sex and beauty or something. He wrote in script all between the lyrics. Can’t get that from a new CD, can you, Brand?”
“I still like the new.”
*****
He squatted in the aisle of the school bus, brushing past arms and backpacks to the front seats. “Three for a dollar,” Brandon said to the girl in the second seat. She was a few years younger but Brandon knew she had a sweet tooth and that her mother stuffed dollar bills into her paws each morning as she shoved her out the door.
She looked into his eyes, they were blue and honest and caring. “Six please.”
*****
“Happy Days, I knew they’d have it new.” Tom watched Brandon fuss with the shrink-wrapping. He thought of a comic strip he’d seen that depicted a fat man in a lab coat whom a Satan figure took great pleasure in spiking from behind with his trident. Sweat flying off his head, the man struggled to unwrap CDs as they piled up at the end of a conveyor belt. The caption read, “The Inventor of Shrink Wrap.”
They stood facing the bulletin board. After boring of Brandon’s struggle, Tom looked up at the flyers. Yoga workshops, firewood for sale, lawn mowing, Lyme disease prevention. This was supposed to be a record store, yet this board never had anything to do with music. Probably because of the mall. Everything in the mall feels at least a little inauthentic. A bunch of ancients and space-eyed teens spending all their cash on whatever the mannequins happen to be wearing. The bulletin board was at least partly real. Whatever is up here, someone put here.
Tom fingered through the flyers, looking behind ones that hung over others. He pushed away an 18”x24” glossy proclaiming upcoming events at Bard College and found an expired basement hardcore show flyer that advertised the bands Deafening Silence, Dracularia, Stuck Pig, and Scatface. Every time Tom found a new bulletin board, he’d try to find the oldest event flyer he could. He liked when the layers added up. It became easy after a while because the people that worked there cleaned off the dated ones as the dates passed as long as they were clearly visible, but sometimes, if one was covered up, like this Deafening Silence flyer, he would unearth it. He took the flyers that had expired and taped them with scotch tape onto other flyers he’d already hung on his wall at home. Sometimes they fell off while he slept.
Off to the left, he noticed a photocopied flyer for a show at Flirty Bernie’s. The flyer said it was a show/dance party. There would be five bands and two djs. It was in three weeks, on a Friday. 21 and over, it said. 8 pm. This presented a number of obstacles, but none that couldn’t be managed. He took the flyer, folded it, and stuffed it into his back pocket. Maybe he would take Vinny. He could not perceive the drone of the florescent lights.
The power went out in the mall. Everything was completely silent. Eerily so. Tom noticed the quiet. “C’mon Brandon. Let’s leave.” They walked across the sunlit parking lot to the woods.
*****
They walked through the woods, looking for the abandoned garage Tom had sworn he had found. Brandon surveyed the land, occasionally holding his string of beads close to his eyes even though Tom knew the compass didn’t work and that Brandon was just pretending. Brandon claimed he always knew where he was in the woods and that he was never scared of getting lost. “Besides, these woods aren’t that big anyways, and at night, the mall lights up.” They walked along the valley where the stream used to be. Tom swung a hickory switch he found at passing branches of hemlock and white pine. Woodpeckers and sapsuckers flew among the trees. On occasion, they sang.
He charged an ambush. A neverending swath of soldiers, each of whom he engaged one by one, like a medieval guerrilla fighting to the death on principle.
Tom ran over to a hemlock. It had fallen into the crotch of another tree and split it. The hemlock trunk was jammed into a broken ash tree, leaving its dead tip half-jutted over the dell. He started climbing up the spires of rusty grey hemlock branches, the bark dropping off as he positioned his sneakers. He took it slowly, planting each foot securely into a crotch. Brandon followed. He pulled his CD out of his cargo pocket and placed it on a rock. Then he slid up the trunk on his stomach, only leaving the complete embrace of the tree to maneuver through the branches. Dipping through a pair of branches in this fashion, Brandon inhaled part of a spiderweb. He coughed but shook it off when Tom asked him if he needed help. As Tom reached the spot where the two trees had collided, he double-checked his footing and stood. He looked around him, but saw no one. He’d expected to see Dennis. Brandon edged himself further on his belly as a snail would. As Brandon edged closer, Tom started even further out onto the branch. Now he too was on his stomach, because there weren’t any limbs to get in the way and there was more open air around him. As Brandon made his way beyond the spot where the two trees collided, the hemlock slowly started to lift, as if the spirit of an ancient forest warrior had been haphazardly and mistakenly awoken. Brandon fell back before it got very far, but Tom could not move but in contraction. He became bodily attached to the tree, squeezing his chest against the trunk with his arms and legs. The spots of sweat on his green shirt enlarged into blotches, and he slowly slid down from the tip of the stick, saying “I’m cool…I’m cool, it’s cool” over and over again the whole time, more to himself than to Brandon.
“Do you think they’ll have it?” asked Brandon.
“Probably. Check used first,” Tom said.
“Maybe I’ll just ask the people.”
A florescent light flickered. Neither Tom nor Brandon perceived the drone of the lights, masked as it was by the song “Creep”.
“They don’t know. We gotta check used first. All they’ll do behind the counter is try to get you to buy a new one for more money.” He walked faster down the aisle, past some t-shirt carousels and a broken-stringed acoustic guitar propped on an end cap. Brandon rushed to follow. “All they want is your money,” said Tom, pointing at a cashier, a big girl with acne who wore a big red shirt and a big silver name tag.
“I’d almost rather have a new one,” Brandon said.
“What do you mean by that,” Tom said, “almost rather?”
“Well,” said Brandon, “like, what if it’s scratched? Or if the liner notes are marked up or the jacket is ripped? I kinda like it new...” He put his hands in his pockets and turned his eyes down toward the scuffed fronts of his Converse.
“Good point,” Tom said, “I guess if you have the money and want to spend it.”
“Heh...yeah.”
“My mom and dad have an old Leonard Cohen record that a person wrote all in. I read all about this affair these two people were having. At first I got grossed out because I thought it was between my mom and dad but then I saw it says ‘used’ on a yellow tag on the case. Anyway this guy bought this girl this record to thank her for some favor she did him. He underlines lines that have 'naked' in them and writes about how the lyrics are poetry about love and sex and beauty or something. He wrote in script all between the lyrics. Can’t get that from a new CD, can you, Brand?”
“I still like the new.”
*****
He squatted in the aisle of the school bus, brushing past arms and backpacks to the front seats. “Three for a dollar,” Brandon said to the girl in the second seat. She was a few years younger but Brandon knew she had a sweet tooth and that her mother stuffed dollar bills into her paws each morning as she shoved her out the door.
She looked into his eyes, they were blue and honest and caring. “Six please.”
*****
“Happy Days, I knew they’d have it new.” Tom watched Brandon fuss with the shrink-wrapping. He thought of a comic strip he’d seen that depicted a fat man in a lab coat whom a Satan figure took great pleasure in spiking from behind with his trident. Sweat flying off his head, the man struggled to unwrap CDs as they piled up at the end of a conveyor belt. The caption read, “The Inventor of Shrink Wrap.”
They stood facing the bulletin board. After boring of Brandon’s struggle, Tom looked up at the flyers. Yoga workshops, firewood for sale, lawn mowing, Lyme disease prevention. This was supposed to be a record store, yet this board never had anything to do with music. Probably because of the mall. Everything in the mall feels at least a little inauthentic. A bunch of ancients and space-eyed teens spending all their cash on whatever the mannequins happen to be wearing. The bulletin board was at least partly real. Whatever is up here, someone put here.
Tom fingered through the flyers, looking behind ones that hung over others. He pushed away an 18”x24” glossy proclaiming upcoming events at Bard College and found an expired basement hardcore show flyer that advertised the bands Deafening Silence, Dracularia, Stuck Pig, and Scatface. Every time Tom found a new bulletin board, he’d try to find the oldest event flyer he could. He liked when the layers added up. It became easy after a while because the people that worked there cleaned off the dated ones as the dates passed as long as they were clearly visible, but sometimes, if one was covered up, like this Deafening Silence flyer, he would unearth it. He took the flyers that had expired and taped them with scotch tape onto other flyers he’d already hung on his wall at home. Sometimes they fell off while he slept.
Off to the left, he noticed a photocopied flyer for a show at Flirty Bernie’s. The flyer said it was a show/dance party. There would be five bands and two djs. It was in three weeks, on a Friday. 21 and over, it said. 8 pm. This presented a number of obstacles, but none that couldn’t be managed. He took the flyer, folded it, and stuffed it into his back pocket. Maybe he would take Vinny. He could not perceive the drone of the florescent lights.
The power went out in the mall. Everything was completely silent. Eerily so. Tom noticed the quiet. “C’mon Brandon. Let’s leave.” They walked across the sunlit parking lot to the woods.
*****
They walked through the woods, looking for the abandoned garage Tom had sworn he had found. Brandon surveyed the land, occasionally holding his string of beads close to his eyes even though Tom knew the compass didn’t work and that Brandon was just pretending. Brandon claimed he always knew where he was in the woods and that he was never scared of getting lost. “Besides, these woods aren’t that big anyways, and at night, the mall lights up.” They walked along the valley where the stream used to be. Tom swung a hickory switch he found at passing branches of hemlock and white pine. Woodpeckers and sapsuckers flew among the trees. On occasion, they sang.
He charged an ambush. A neverending swath of soldiers, each of whom he engaged one by one, like a medieval guerrilla fighting to the death on principle.
Tom ran over to a hemlock. It had fallen into the crotch of another tree and split it. The hemlock trunk was jammed into a broken ash tree, leaving its dead tip half-jutted over the dell. He started climbing up the spires of rusty grey hemlock branches, the bark dropping off as he positioned his sneakers. He took it slowly, planting each foot securely into a crotch. Brandon followed. He pulled his CD out of his cargo pocket and placed it on a rock. Then he slid up the trunk on his stomach, only leaving the complete embrace of the tree to maneuver through the branches. Dipping through a pair of branches in this fashion, Brandon inhaled part of a spiderweb. He coughed but shook it off when Tom asked him if he needed help. As Tom reached the spot where the two trees had collided, he double-checked his footing and stood. He looked around him, but saw no one. He’d expected to see Dennis. Brandon edged himself further on his belly as a snail would. As Brandon edged closer, Tom started even further out onto the branch. Now he too was on his stomach, because there weren’t any limbs to get in the way and there was more open air around him. As Brandon made his way beyond the spot where the two trees collided, the hemlock slowly started to lift, as if the spirit of an ancient forest warrior had been haphazardly and mistakenly awoken. Brandon fell back before it got very far, but Tom could not move but in contraction. He became bodily attached to the tree, squeezing his chest against the trunk with his arms and legs. The spots of sweat on his green shirt enlarged into blotches, and he slowly slid down from the tip of the stick, saying “I’m cool…I’m cool, it’s cool” over and over again the whole time, more to himself than to Brandon.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Remorseless
Hey. I wrote a poem this morning. Here it is:
Remorse
When at the bookstore
my mind becomes a starving seal,
performing flips and tricks,
showing its zeal, beckoning
words into the fold to feed
the hunger of the heart.
After a technicolor
beach ball deflates upon
my peak, and my cheek feels
the plastic of purchase, I
leave with five or six
books, guiltless.
That's when I recall
the library
with the simple
sentence
of smell.
Remorse
When at the bookstore
my mind becomes a starving seal,
performing flips and tricks,
showing its zeal, beckoning
words into the fold to feed
the hunger of the heart.
After a technicolor
beach ball deflates upon
my peak, and my cheek feels
the plastic of purchase, I
leave with five or six
books, guiltless.
That's when I recall
the library
with the simple
sentence
of smell.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
The Chirping Warzone 1
Blaine Hussein shoveled a tiny chasm into the earth of Gloryland National Park in Gloryland, Maine.
He was on a two-week vacation from the security company he worked for. He worked forty-two weeks out of the year. Most other weeks he took long trips to national parks, famous monuments, and aquariums with especially good reputations so he could see and experience the great country he lived in. He was barely ever home.
His security company, RSA Inc., stationed him in a country his home country was at war with. The country was called Barack. He liked Barack because he liked to bird there. The work he did for his company did not appeal to him much, but since his country’s army trained him to comfortably and effectively engage in sophisticated and modern combat and pre-combat scenarios, it was fairly easy for him and didn’t often affect his mood.
Most days, he stood on a clay roof in Samarra. It was a good place to bird. There was the obvious advantage of the height, but also he was stationed on the outskirts of the city where there were less people to scare the birds away.
***
It turns out some of his company’s administrators paid money to the government of Barack to repay them for the deaths of sixty-seven of that country’s civilians. The civilians were killed one morning in about thirty seconds.
The village was crowded and bustling. Twelve RSAs crouched on a roof where they could survey the town and make sure everything was happening the way it was supposed to. They didn’t really know how things were supposed to happen, but they pretended they did. They were convincing pretenders. This was their stealthiest skill.
They had a clear view of a busy street. There was a lot of buying and selling happening. Keeping close watch, they gripped their automatic rifles and eyed the activity below. The head of the crew, Merrick, a Jest Point grad who after being dishonorably discharged immediately joined RSA, ran his finger across the frayed and bent brim of his baseball cap. Oddly, this cap had the logo of a football team, the Maritoba Vikings, embroidered on its face. The simple irony of this struck one of his subordinates at the moment of Merrick’s gesture. It did not sway his poise. They were one. They all ducked low and pointed their rifles toward the street and stared down the barrels, squinting.
A scuffle broke out between a teen-aged boy and an old man who ran a stand that sold fruit. The boy grabbed three pomegranates and started to run. He dropped one in front of him and stepped on it. The slip added to his inertia, pushing him toward a crowd. He tracked the crimson juice for his next three steps, just before he fell. The old man yelled something the RSAs heard but did not understand. Merrick made a loud noise they heard and understood. It was an order.
The government of Barack found that there was no viable reason for the massacre. They threatened to tell the RSA's home country, which would probably cost them their contract and get them into a heap of trouble with the 'people of their country'. RSA offered them one million dollars to keep quiet about the deaths, and the Baracki government accepted.
***
Months later, everyone on the planet learned about the deal. While Blaine Hussein camped in Gloryland, RSA lost its contract.
***
Blaine Hussein squatted over the chasm. Then he refilled it with the same dirt he dug out earlier, which he’d piled strategically next to the hole.
He was on a two-week vacation from the security company he worked for. He worked forty-two weeks out of the year. Most other weeks he took long trips to national parks, famous monuments, and aquariums with especially good reputations so he could see and experience the great country he lived in. He was barely ever home.
His security company, RSA Inc., stationed him in a country his home country was at war with. The country was called Barack. He liked Barack because he liked to bird there. The work he did for his company did not appeal to him much, but since his country’s army trained him to comfortably and effectively engage in sophisticated and modern combat and pre-combat scenarios, it was fairly easy for him and didn’t often affect his mood.
Most days, he stood on a clay roof in Samarra. It was a good place to bird. There was the obvious advantage of the height, but also he was stationed on the outskirts of the city where there were less people to scare the birds away.
***
It turns out some of his company’s administrators paid money to the government of Barack to repay them for the deaths of sixty-seven of that country’s civilians. The civilians were killed one morning in about thirty seconds.
The village was crowded and bustling. Twelve RSAs crouched on a roof where they could survey the town and make sure everything was happening the way it was supposed to. They didn’t really know how things were supposed to happen, but they pretended they did. They were convincing pretenders. This was their stealthiest skill.
They had a clear view of a busy street. There was a lot of buying and selling happening. Keeping close watch, they gripped their automatic rifles and eyed the activity below. The head of the crew, Merrick, a Jest Point grad who after being dishonorably discharged immediately joined RSA, ran his finger across the frayed and bent brim of his baseball cap. Oddly, this cap had the logo of a football team, the Maritoba Vikings, embroidered on its face. The simple irony of this struck one of his subordinates at the moment of Merrick’s gesture. It did not sway his poise. They were one. They all ducked low and pointed their rifles toward the street and stared down the barrels, squinting.
A scuffle broke out between a teen-aged boy and an old man who ran a stand that sold fruit. The boy grabbed three pomegranates and started to run. He dropped one in front of him and stepped on it. The slip added to his inertia, pushing him toward a crowd. He tracked the crimson juice for his next three steps, just before he fell. The old man yelled something the RSAs heard but did not understand. Merrick made a loud noise they heard and understood. It was an order.
The government of Barack found that there was no viable reason for the massacre. They threatened to tell the RSA's home country, which would probably cost them their contract and get them into a heap of trouble with the 'people of their country'. RSA offered them one million dollars to keep quiet about the deaths, and the Baracki government accepted.
***
Months later, everyone on the planet learned about the deal. While Blaine Hussein camped in Gloryland, RSA lost its contract.
***
Blaine Hussein squatted over the chasm. Then he refilled it with the same dirt he dug out earlier, which he’d piled strategically next to the hole.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Trace Hawthorne
With a long stroke she licked the ice cream along the edge of the sugar cone. She drove west on a county road alongside farmhouses and pastures spotted with oak and birch, a trip she only afforded herself on Fridays. She adhered to a strict diet most days, but every Friday when it was warm enough she would take the back way home and get a vanilla cone from the farm stand to celebrate the end of her work week. Completion, the cone said to her, as she drove past straw spirals.
Autumn had appeared in recent days, but it had proven noncommittal. The ice cream demanded constant attention. She managed a hard bend, turning the wheel with her palm, and on the other side a doe stood just ahead looking peaceful and serene. Eyes focused and cone in hand, she swung the car into the left lane, the doe standing there looking peaceful and hollow and hollowly watching the car as it whipped past and on down the road.
She felt the ice cream on her hand. A couple drips of vanilla slid off the base of her pinkie and landed on the black skirt she had worn to work.
***
Her grandmother died when she was six, and at the funeral she wore a black dress that was laced all around with silk ribbons. She remembered the funeral sometimes while driving—her mother telling her that grandma was happy now, her uncle Rob, rubbing her shoulder in the parlor, that scary and disgusting place, her aunt Jodi telling her to go play with the other children outside. Since she didn't cry she took aunt Jodi’s advice and ran around with the other kids. Late that night, in grandma’s backyard, her and Robby hid behind the big willow together during a game of hide and seek. Robby said to her, “We’re not really cousins, right?” She could not recall a reply, but she remembered her black dress all muddy.
***
“Shoot...shit,” she said. She licked the dripping cone, wiped her skirt with fast food napkins, and kept the wheel steady with her knee. She planned on stopping at Friday’s before going home so she wanted to keep neat, but since her skirt was ruined she would have to stop home and change. She felt perturbed and somewhat swindled by fate or coincidence or whatever it was about having to stop home before her Friday wine. She considered going straight home and staying there, foregoing the Friday’s venture entirely since she wasn’t meeting anyone anyway, but she decided that instead she would go straight there, ice cream stain and all.
She reapplied lipstick in the parking lot. Her face was attractive though a bit round and she wore on it most times an utter seriousness akin to a goaltender before a penalty shot, eyes peering, lips pursed. Her large dark eyes were appealing enough—a handful would call them hypnotic and some would say seductive, but her appearance was not to go on trial for the crime of her loneliness. She thought it was the side of her that she inherited from her mother, her stubbornness, her boldness, her frightful honesty, that nudged the men away, but it was rather something else, something she’d developed on her own.
At Friday’s, she sat alone. She read the subtitles of CNN and The Weather Channel and sipped on her house Merlot, and felt a sharp aversion toward the three men across the bar. Why did they have to be so loud with everything they say? Probably couldn’t pull off the stupid algebra it takes to run a simple mortgage. Probably, they wander around bar to bar all night laughing too loud showing off how close of friends they are and how great a time they can have. Deep down they hate each other. There is no man in existence even remotely like Dad. One wearing a Red Bull polo shirt made his way around the bar toward her.
“What’s on your dress?” he asked, smiling. He pointed to her necklace.
“It’s not ice cream and it’s not Red Bull either. I keep a strict diet,” she said. Neither of them spoke. She thought she might have been harsh on him, so not knowing what to do, she continued. “Don’t you think it’s impolite to point out the imperfections on a woman’s clothes? Why must you assail these meager rags?” She tossed her left hand with a Victorian flourish, which surprised her. She felt like she was a character from a book she had read. She downed her Merlot.
He said nothing, but continued to stand in front of her, holding his pint. He looked perplexed, idiotic. The name ‘MARC’ was embroidered on his shirt, below the insignia.
“May I help you?” she said. Nothing. “I need a drink.”
***
That night she knelt behind the big willow with Marc and they both had ice cream cones and they kept melting all over her dress. She sat on a soccer ball. Marc held his cone over the dress too and they spelled out both their names in ice cream, and using the ribbons of her dress they created a makeshift calligraphy and they made out special letters and had a special language that they used to convey secrets to one another, secrets too secret for normal words, symbols with no sound and only sense, symbols that pounded feelings directly into the heart, foregoing mind entirely, symbols that stripped a layer of culture from between them, and all the other people laid outside their circle, their system. From their vantage behind the tree, they saw the source of the smoke they’d been smelling all night. Grampa emptied his pipe, banging it rhythmically, one, two, one, against a hickory tree. They heard a rustling branch and saw Grampa point left. The night was darker. She looked at her dress and became disgusted with herself. She felt her face contorting, squeezing into knots. She looked at Marc and Marc saw her face turn blacker than coal. “I keep a strict diet,” she said, repeated, emphasized, screamed—and awoke Saturday morning.
“Mnmmm...wha?”
Autumn had appeared in recent days, but it had proven noncommittal. The ice cream demanded constant attention. She managed a hard bend, turning the wheel with her palm, and on the other side a doe stood just ahead looking peaceful and serene. Eyes focused and cone in hand, she swung the car into the left lane, the doe standing there looking peaceful and hollow and hollowly watching the car as it whipped past and on down the road.
She felt the ice cream on her hand. A couple drips of vanilla slid off the base of her pinkie and landed on the black skirt she had worn to work.
***
Her grandmother died when she was six, and at the funeral she wore a black dress that was laced all around with silk ribbons. She remembered the funeral sometimes while driving—her mother telling her that grandma was happy now, her uncle Rob, rubbing her shoulder in the parlor, that scary and disgusting place, her aunt Jodi telling her to go play with the other children outside. Since she didn't cry she took aunt Jodi’s advice and ran around with the other kids. Late that night, in grandma’s backyard, her and Robby hid behind the big willow together during a game of hide and seek. Robby said to her, “We’re not really cousins, right?” She could not recall a reply, but she remembered her black dress all muddy.
***
“Shoot...shit,” she said. She licked the dripping cone, wiped her skirt with fast food napkins, and kept the wheel steady with her knee. She planned on stopping at Friday’s before going home so she wanted to keep neat, but since her skirt was ruined she would have to stop home and change. She felt perturbed and somewhat swindled by fate or coincidence or whatever it was about having to stop home before her Friday wine. She considered going straight home and staying there, foregoing the Friday’s venture entirely since she wasn’t meeting anyone anyway, but she decided that instead she would go straight there, ice cream stain and all.
She reapplied lipstick in the parking lot. Her face was attractive though a bit round and she wore on it most times an utter seriousness akin to a goaltender before a penalty shot, eyes peering, lips pursed. Her large dark eyes were appealing enough—a handful would call them hypnotic and some would say seductive, but her appearance was not to go on trial for the crime of her loneliness. She thought it was the side of her that she inherited from her mother, her stubbornness, her boldness, her frightful honesty, that nudged the men away, but it was rather something else, something she’d developed on her own.
At Friday’s, she sat alone. She read the subtitles of CNN and The Weather Channel and sipped on her house Merlot, and felt a sharp aversion toward the three men across the bar. Why did they have to be so loud with everything they say? Probably couldn’t pull off the stupid algebra it takes to run a simple mortgage. Probably, they wander around bar to bar all night laughing too loud showing off how close of friends they are and how great a time they can have. Deep down they hate each other. There is no man in existence even remotely like Dad. One wearing a Red Bull polo shirt made his way around the bar toward her.
“What’s on your dress?” he asked, smiling. He pointed to her necklace.
“It’s not ice cream and it’s not Red Bull either. I keep a strict diet,” she said. Neither of them spoke. She thought she might have been harsh on him, so not knowing what to do, she continued. “Don’t you think it’s impolite to point out the imperfections on a woman’s clothes? Why must you assail these meager rags?” She tossed her left hand with a Victorian flourish, which surprised her. She felt like she was a character from a book she had read. She downed her Merlot.
He said nothing, but continued to stand in front of her, holding his pint. He looked perplexed, idiotic. The name ‘MARC’ was embroidered on his shirt, below the insignia.
“May I help you?” she said. Nothing. “I need a drink.”
***
That night she knelt behind the big willow with Marc and they both had ice cream cones and they kept melting all over her dress. She sat on a soccer ball. Marc held his cone over the dress too and they spelled out both their names in ice cream, and using the ribbons of her dress they created a makeshift calligraphy and they made out special letters and had a special language that they used to convey secrets to one another, secrets too secret for normal words, symbols with no sound and only sense, symbols that pounded feelings directly into the heart, foregoing mind entirely, symbols that stripped a layer of culture from between them, and all the other people laid outside their circle, their system. From their vantage behind the tree, they saw the source of the smoke they’d been smelling all night. Grampa emptied his pipe, banging it rhythmically, one, two, one, against a hickory tree. They heard a rustling branch and saw Grampa point left. The night was darker. She looked at her dress and became disgusted with herself. She felt her face contorting, squeezing into knots. She looked at Marc and Marc saw her face turn blacker than coal. “I keep a strict diet,” she said, repeated, emphasized, screamed—and awoke Saturday morning.
“Mnmmm...wha?”
Friday, June 12, 2009
Secret, Profane, and...Starbucks?
My birthday this year was seasoned with delight by my receipt of the new Elvis Costello album Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane. This ration of sugared seasoning was enhanced by Mr. Costello's apropos mention of my hometown Poughkeepsie, NY, when in the track "Sulfur to Sugarcane," he spits: "The women in Poughkeepsie take their clothes off when they're tipsy." As a lifelong resident of the area, I feel slighted that I've never witnessed this phenomenon myself, but I assume his observation is accurate.
While listening through the album, enjoying its fine production (provided by legendary producer T-Bone Burnett) and stripped-down, bluesy shuffle, I found it to be one of the easier listens of Costello's recent releases, not that albums like The Delivery Man, North, or Momofuku are especially challenging, but this one plays through straight and smooth with little by the way of surprise, and with a steady hand in instrumentation that is uncharacteristic of the usually varied Costello productions. The songs carry all the charm and sophistication that we've come to expect, bundled up in a tasteful, inoffensive package that marks an alteration of sorts with its mellow sheen and unfailing consistence. Turning into my driveway, listening and mulling through such thoughts, I thought I'd sit and listen to another tune before turning off the power and walking inside. While listening I squinted at the small print at the bottom of the package, in accordance with habit, and found that Starbucks! is responsible for the release of this album.
I boiled over with the typical rage and indignation I feel when I discover art I enjoy is supported by amoral tyrannical corporations, but this subsided quickly, as I recall that I've never heard a note of Costello's music that hasn't been filtered through a major label, aside, perhaps, from the one time I saw him and the Imposters live, although even this is questionable, for the great amount of capital needed to produce a concert on that level needs the support of a fairly large business. Also, Starbucks is a corporation I know little about, though I have seen them put a number of small coffeeshops out of business, but not by undercutting prices, but rather partly because people like it and also because it seems that in the current cultural climate, in which PR reigns supreme in individual decision making, many people favor recognized brands over local or regional allies. But, as I like to say, corporate greed is redundant.
Then it dawned on me. What I was listening to was a soundtrack made precisely for play inside an actual Starbucks, to create the ambiance of a genuine coffeeshop amid the typical machinations of mass production, something Starbucks does remarkably well. And if anything is redeeming about this whole thing, it's that Costello is doing the same thing here that he did when he signed on the dotted line in the mid-70's--he's bringing his impeccable talents to where the most people are. The only regrettable thing here is that everyone crowds into a Starbucks while the locals' brew goes stale, and the songs of someone who I personally idolize has helped bring them there. Hopefully there's a kid, dragged in by his parents, who hears that entirely unique voice, and goes home, does some internet research, and pulls a dusty copy of This Year's Model out of his parents' record bin before it is devoured by fungi.
While listening through the album, enjoying its fine production (provided by legendary producer T-Bone Burnett) and stripped-down, bluesy shuffle, I found it to be one of the easier listens of Costello's recent releases, not that albums like The Delivery Man, North, or Momofuku are especially challenging, but this one plays through straight and smooth with little by the way of surprise, and with a steady hand in instrumentation that is uncharacteristic of the usually varied Costello productions. The songs carry all the charm and sophistication that we've come to expect, bundled up in a tasteful, inoffensive package that marks an alteration of sorts with its mellow sheen and unfailing consistence. Turning into my driveway, listening and mulling through such thoughts, I thought I'd sit and listen to another tune before turning off the power and walking inside. While listening I squinted at the small print at the bottom of the package, in accordance with habit, and found that Starbucks! is responsible for the release of this album.
I boiled over with the typical rage and indignation I feel when I discover art I enjoy is supported by amoral tyrannical corporations, but this subsided quickly, as I recall that I've never heard a note of Costello's music that hasn't been filtered through a major label, aside, perhaps, from the one time I saw him and the Imposters live, although even this is questionable, for the great amount of capital needed to produce a concert on that level needs the support of a fairly large business. Also, Starbucks is a corporation I know little about, though I have seen them put a number of small coffeeshops out of business, but not by undercutting prices, but rather partly because people like it and also because it seems that in the current cultural climate, in which PR reigns supreme in individual decision making, many people favor recognized brands over local or regional allies. But, as I like to say, corporate greed is redundant.
Then it dawned on me. What I was listening to was a soundtrack made precisely for play inside an actual Starbucks, to create the ambiance of a genuine coffeeshop amid the typical machinations of mass production, something Starbucks does remarkably well. And if anything is redeeming about this whole thing, it's that Costello is doing the same thing here that he did when he signed on the dotted line in the mid-70's--he's bringing his impeccable talents to where the most people are. The only regrettable thing here is that everyone crowds into a Starbucks while the locals' brew goes stale, and the songs of someone who I personally idolize has helped bring them there. Hopefully there's a kid, dragged in by his parents, who hears that entirely unique voice, and goes home, does some internet research, and pulls a dusty copy of This Year's Model out of his parents' record bin before it is devoured by fungi.
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