MADMENS CALLING: pRoSe

The ghost’s shadow

Man sits behind a table front stage left, cigar in in right hand, Manischewitz wine to his right, ashtray in the center. He has been sitting there for sometime listening closely to the little things that one expects you not to hear. His face responding just a bit to these things, his body language is totally involved, and yet unmoved like some sort of monk in an agitated meditation. His entire truth is that this is not peace, but it’s the closest thing to it until he gets to tell his side.

HIM: (after about twenty or so seconds of nodding in honest understanding he clears his throat and speaks.) You know what? I agree with you, I absolutely do, and I want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to see your truth so eloquently conveyed… Just watching the way you arrived at your conclusions and the musical nature of your voice and body language… Utterly hypnotizing- wait a minute now, wait-wait-wait a minute now, I gave you yours now let me just get a little bit of mine. That’s all I need, I don’t even want it all, you know, I just want a little bit of mine for me. Is that alright. (laughing sharing a brief reckoning stare with the person.)
Alright now, (reaching into his pocket) I had prepared something for you, it took me a long time to really go through and edit it and all, and (he pulls out a block of folded paper and giggles at it) and as you can see this really better serves as something you maybe go on vacation with and sit somewhere and just (makes a face of utter intrigue at the block of folded papers) and I’ll be honest I was thoroughly intent on reading the whole thing to you right now, I mean hell I even rehearsed… But after hearing that…. That so eloquently put (searching) truth- I was looking for something less redundant but that’s really what it is- your truth. Your absolute uncensored, just absolutely free- I mean artistically free, beautiful- I mean if Tennesse would have been so lucky to witness such- Hold on now, I ain’t being sarcastic, I’m serious, I mean I’m so serious its terrifying (shook by his revelation) I mean I’m moved. I feel it all up in here, like right before the ghost touch you, you know what I mean. (searches) Nah, (shaking his head) you ain’t neva caught hold to the ghost hey? You ain’t neva bumped into the ghost by chance and held it close… Close like, you ain’t got nothing else to hold on to.
Shiiiit, you know it’s like what James and them was saying about the meeting at the job this morning “Even when it looks like somebody’s listening and even when they can repeat it all verbatim, that don’t mean they hearing you, that don‘t mean much a shit other than they can memorize a couple things good enough to shut you up.” you know what I mean. I mean seriously, I was listening to you, all of you, everything… I went there with you. I mean, I sat all my shit aside, all my stress, all my vanity, all my blame and all that and I just listened you know. I mean I really listened and you know what I heard? You know what I heard underneath all that and all up in that? Is that you’ve developed a warped idea or understanding of me. And you know, I used to believe that was your fault. I really did. I mean, I really believed you just wasn’t listening to me, all of me. And it really used to kill me, you know. But now I know, from listening to you just now, that it wasn’t your fault. It was mine… I was telling it wrong. I was just telling one side. I was too caught up in the semantics of it. But now- now I feel that ghost. Finally today I see, and I don’t necessarily know why it just happen it is this very day, but right now I know I see it better, feel stronger and know it better than any other days. But I’ll tell you what, that ghost look just like me, hell it even act just like me. Even feel just like me or at least it feel like it’s mine. And all I want to do is take a minute of your time and tell you about that ghost. Because everything else I’ve ever revealed to you ain’t been nothing but the ghost’s shadow.
(He takes a long drag from his cigar and reflects on the circular developments of smoke.)
Now look here, that ghost is a hell of a ghost. It grew up way back when a ghost could grow up and be a better ghost. It was nurtured, it lived, it ached, it was wounded, it healed. Now that ghost is grown and it’s so full of it’s ghostness that it’s ready to take form. Follow me now… That old ghost used to creep around and scare me to death to no end, but that’s only because everyone told me to be afraid of it on account that it’s always only up to no good. It’s a lost soul looking for a body… And I believed them, instead of it. Even though one day I sat with a old time woman- one of them ones that‘s old as wisdom itself- back when I was with my family down in Georgia on spring break from the University… (drifts into the past and stays there a minute)
Man, I was down in Buckhead feeling fine and drinking FUNK WINE! Yes child, I was on that land my family purchased in the nineteenth century and worked well into the 20th century and somehow let it all go to waist in the 21st. Something about them degrees do something to me. (laughs)
But anyway, I went to see aunt Nell and she made it ever so clear to me. She threw that cayenne pepper on that blood mud and read it how it laid. She said many things about my path and past, and then she got all wild with nerves, (imitates her wild glare and deep accent) “Boy you gots a ghost. Got eyes on ya. Eyes to jump on and get to riding soon as you get tired and jumps off to get a sip of some shade. And I sees you been fighting that day for some times, fighting ya tiredness and all, even though ya working so damn hard. But listen here, one of these days ya fight gone fail. And you gone tie that mule tight to you, as tight as you and that mule can stand and then when alls well and perfectly secure, you gone drift off to a peace, and you gone dreams all sorts of dreams of all sorts of places… And when you wakes, that mule gone be gone, but the knot ain’t gone be broke. So be careful.” That was four years ago, and I ain’t rested since. And my mind ain’t rested once in regards to trying to figure out what she was talking ‘bout.
But see now I get it, now I understand. Shiiiiiit, I see it now. I did my best to keep you close, call my self protecting you. But hell, you don’t want to be protected, who and in gods good hell really wants to be protected…(loud wild laughing) I mean, who and the hell really wants to be protected? Protected from what exactly even? From the swamps, from the jungles, from captain Jack, from the serpents and all, from the floods?
Shiiit, I had told you all the stories, but what goods a story, if you can’t witness it. What goods a story ,when you more about translating it than being translated by it. I used to play you the blues then play you gospel, trying to make it plain. How plain can it really ever be? And is it truly so complex and complicated? Well, maybe it is, but that’s the Manischewitz speaking, maybe… (stares deep into the audience searching then into the bottle.)
You know why I drink… That ain’t a question! You know why. You know you do, but now, the knowing makes you not want to know. Makes you wish you never would have asked me my name… Makes you wish you never got to know me and all, you know what I mean.
I mean it’s really simple isn’t it… Ain’t it? Ain’t it so damn simple… (laughs hard about something he’ll never mention) Shiiiit I mean, a man picks up a guitar right? For the millionth time and sings and plays something for the millionth time with a certain feeling... A certain fading feeling. Then one day, he picks up a guitar and something new comes out, something he ain’t even know was in there. It’s coming out and the whole time, he ain’t gotta clue when it begin or when it’s gone end, all he know is he got to hold on to it, while it’s there. And he goes deep, you know what I mean? He goes deep with that ghost. ( reflecting on just how deep he goes.)
Ain’t no time no more, just all those times, that led to that little moment… Shit, a million years can pass and the cat won‘t even mind it. But it don’t, or do it…. Nah it don’t. And you know why it don’t? Because the mind is a vicious relentless sorcerer operating in a time when ghost wasn’t called ghost, and when time had no application. Case in point, it comes down to how you deal with your mind, do you focus on the strike outs or the homeruns?… But see, the mutha fucka is: did you really ever even hit any homeruns, and if so was them bases loaded, was it bottom of the ninth or top of the third, you know what I mean, did it win the game or did it just add to your stats.
See what I realized while I was listening to you… Is that you more concerned- obsessed really (and he grabs the sides of table as if to turn it over. Restrains himself, laughs and picks the table up and as it hovers, everything falling off of it. He slams it on the floor after each word) DID (slam) YOU (slam) JUST (slam) HIT (slam) HOME(slam) RUNS (slam) AND (slam) NOT (slam) BRING (slam) NOBODY (slam) HOME! (then he sets the table down transfixed, seeing something in the distance, something that warns him.)
Did you hit homeruns but never, never ever in your entire god giving life win the game. I mean… Oh Yeah, Hell yeah, you a hell of a slugger but you ain’t never won no games. Ya team is weak and you take solace in the fact that you strong, that if you just had a better team…. (wild laughter) awe shit man, if you just had a stronger team- strong like you strong- you’d win at least one… (wild drunk laugh!) Man shiiiiiiit, you ain’t never gone get a better team, not ever, cuz ain’t but one team chose you in the draft! Plus even if you got a better team-thought you got a better team- hell them team’s got team players nothing but team players on all of them, nothing else. A full on dedicated, unified constructive team dedicated to and focused solely on constructing wins by utilizing everyone’s strength… You know what that’s called? Do you? It’s called accountability! And I don’t even give a shit about sports but it’s pertinent none the less thanks to your father and his branding you a fucking baseball fanatic from birth…
I mean, okay, yeah, fine in your mind you a slugger, the only slugger in your mind right. You a slugger of historic proportions and ambitions, I mean shit man you give autographs, and I’m just a scrappy shit shoveling son of a bitch tagging along praying I just get on base, so you can bring me home- ain’t that a bitch! (and he slams the table again and peers wildly into the audience and starts laughing after a while.)
It’s funny though, because even as I say that, I don’t believe that. I mean, after hearing you signify like you did, I know… I know now. Now, I too am inspired by my quiet strength to do as I must. I mean, I know now, I ain’t no slouch ass player. I just ain’t been playing my best game and I could say that’s because I been to busy worrying about your ability to bring me home, but the truth is... The truth is, that ghost, that ghost I was always afraid to believe in, even though the fact that it bared a shadow made it true! Now you see, that ghost…(laughing) that ghost done spoke and I’m listening. I can’t be worried about you and what you doing, whether you a slugger or not, whether you gone get up this inning. I got to bring myself home, I got be a slugger and I swear to god, before I’m dead (uniting with the ghost now, in a sanctified position.) I’ma bring me home and if I happen to strike out trying at least I know, I have faith that, that ghost will take care of the rest.
But now of what origin has this ghost arisen! (looks around and behind him) lord I wish I had I mirror… (searching) and I guess I do, for a very peculiar vision of me lives in you. And once again I thank you, even though I know you’ll be leaving, and won’t be around to see the change, I beg of you one last thing… (Becoming very peaceful finally) Every now and then come around and check out the game, and when you sit out there in the bleachers, be prepared with your mitt, cuz I swear to god, from now on when I walk up to the plate I’ma get more than a simple hit. (and testifying now) I SWEAR TO GOD I’M SWINGING FOR THE FENCE!

LIGHTS OUT.

Williamstown

He held her loosely, the heat from their bodies dissipating; not warmed by the thin polar fleece or the dying embers of the evening’s fire, but not cold, despite the altitude and the Berkshire’s morning dew. She had invited him to her family’s summer home for the weekend, and in a few hours he would board a flight back to the Midwest, ending their fling somewhere over Pennsylvania. He knew it was wrong to have kept her in the lean-to the entire night. They should have gone back to the main house, back to their respective beds, hours ago. They knew that her parents and brothers would be awake by now, watching as they stumbled through Queen Anne’s lace, past the tennis courts, with only enough time for a cup of coffee. He knew that he would not be able to face her father over pancakes, and in his head he had already begun to plan his exit strategy: sneaking into the guesthouse to snatch up his things, and then to await her at the garage, hoping Father would still be on his morning walk before they took off for Albany International Airport.
And so he resolved to simply enjoy these final moments. He felt the curve of her denim clad buttocks press against the grease that still lathered his groin. Their silence hushed the sun, causing it to tiptoe over Mount Greylock. Even the winter finches revered them in their whisper as the plastic mattress touched his ribs, where minutes before she had reached beneath his shirt and violently dragged her fingernails.
Their relationship had begun days after prom and was expected to end when college would hurl her toward the other side of the country. But at this moment, with his bicep supporting her head, he had neither the foresight nor the sense to board his flight and forget her. It was during moments like these, he would eventually discover, that one is most impetuous. With thoughts of being forever hers, of visiting The Whitney and Ground Zero together, he would change his course and rethink his matriculation. Blinded by the fantasy of picnics in Central Park and wintry carriage rides, he knew nothing of her eventual cocaine addiction and how it would cause him to suffer. He’d failed to visualize how thoroughly her depression might consume her. As he lie there, his hand tucked gently under her jacket, his middle and forefingers caressing the flesh just above her navel, he had no idea that in a little less than three years, on the weekend of her twenty-first birthday, she might check into a rehabilitation clinic and proceed to swiftly break his heart. He hadn’t yet the ability to anticipate her lying in the arms of another man, much like he held her just then.

The Jerk

The year George Serrano was born, his mother purchased a bleeding edge prototype of a portable computer: seventeen pounds of steel and glass, six-inch cathode ray tube and a wrap-around vinyl keyboard that clipped through the Bakelite handle with a snap button. On his eleventh birthday, after years of begging, George’s mother finally gave in and bought him a computer of his own. The magic that had developed since the days of her IBM portable came in the form of a telephone line that tethered his machine to his bedroom wall, giving him access to, as one would later put it, “the sum of all human knowledge.” The double entendre was probably not intended, but it seems an unspoken truth that where technology blossoms, pornography (and in this case, the ability to know Jenna Jameson as well as one might know calculus or economics), quickly follows. In fact, as far back as western civilization is recorded, porn seems to be at the heels of all human advancement. Photography, for example, was developed in the first half of the nineteenth century and it wasn’t long before aristocrats were coveting Daguerreotypes of other men’s wives and daughters. And while there is no evidence to support such a blasphemous claim, it would not be impossible to imagine Gutenberg drooling over his invention, as passages like Judges 5:30 and Genesis 38:2 spat from the press in crisp, licentious, ligatures. What is the Internet, if not a culmination of Daguerre’s and Gutenberg’s hard work made digital and brought to small terminals for private home use? Adequate for paying bills, and buying shoes, and writing papers—but perfectly designed for satiating our most base and wanton desires.
Three things happened the year George Serrano turned eleven. Number one: he acquired a clandestine method for viewing digital reproductions of the female anatomy. Number two: approximately six hours after he first launched America Online at fifty-six kilobytes per second, George realized that by rubbing and shifting in a particular way, he could stir up what appeared to be a fast-acting growth hormone in his pants. After about two weeks, and at least twelve late-night chafing spells, number three: George’s maternal grandmother, Mamá, the woman who had all but taken over his rearing after his father left, died.
* * *
When the Spanish Crown conquered the islands of the West Indies, their native Pagan gods began to blend with Catholicism’s host of Saints. With transcontinental slave trade, the Conquistadors also brought Nigerian and Congolese tribal rituals that would eventually weave into a South American religious tradition known as La Regla de Lukumi, or simply: Santería.
On Saturday evenings George would take the bus with Mamá, first to the local church where he would sit in the pews and wait while she made her weekly confession to Padre Córdoba, then to the Santeria shop to buy a prayer candle and whatever other accoutrements needed to pay penance and sacrifice for her week’s sins. They did this every week, year-round for most of his childhood. In this way, she took over his spiritual education, having him sit in on her prayer sessions and, occasionally, séances. George was comfortable, early on, with the idea of death and a spirit world. Although he was never particularly inclined to take his grandmother’s supernatural traditions to heart, he respected them because of the joy that they seemed to bring her.
Late into his childhood, Mamá started visiting the island more and more frequently, to see her doctors and to be with George’s aunts and uncles, spending one month at a time, then three and six. By the time she died, she had been away from George for nearly a year. As he had just started to make new discoveries about the physical nature of a certain appendage, his newly pubescent mind couldn’t help but conflate the physical development with his grandmother’s death.
This wasn’t George’s first encounter with death. When he was six-and-a-half his best friend in first grade was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She passed within six months. He cried at her funeral. Confusing as it may have been for his latent psyche, he was more curious toward life’s end than melancholy—but never so curious that it obstructed his routine of Saturday morning cartoons over cinnamon rolls and tall glasses of whole milk. He would indulge in this routine for three more years before a computer and the Internet would launch him into a new routine.
* * *
Because of Mamá, the entire family, including George, was inclined toward clairvoyance. His younger sister had particularly strong sensibilities. On three different occasions, for example, she began role-playing with her dolls, using names of family members and friends who had died recently. Recently, as in, later that day they would receive a phone call saying that so-and-so had passed that morning. A common occurrence. Mamá was a medium, which is to say, she practiced the art of channeling the spirit world. As a result, no one in the family was particularly afraid of ghosts.
For the two weeks leading up to the night that Mamá died, George had developed an astonishing talent for excusing himself for bed. At the expense of his homework and time with his family, George was devising new and more covert ways to cover up his recently acquired habit. He didn’t know why exactly, but instinct told him that what he was doing was somehow morally wrong. He learned how to strategically hide explicit application windows behind word processing documents and Internet browsers displaying encyclopedic content. In the direst situations, the power button on his monitor became a safety precaution. And in a Code Red (that is, when his mother barged through the door to alert him that supper was ready) he could easily kick the surge protector switch under his desk and attribute the thick blanket on his lap to a sudden draft.
The night Mamá died, before his parents broke the news, George was finding it particularly difficult to get situated in that evening’s routine. Every time he sat in front of his computer and began opening his favorite sites, he felt an eerie presence that, didn’t scare him, per se, but caused him to think twice about the ethics of the task at hand. Annoyed with his sudden case of Puritanism, he decided to step out of his room (rare these days) for a drink of water. As he approached the kitchen, he found Pete, his mom’s boyfriend, sitting quietly at the dining table. After a flush and the sound of cool water, his mother entered the room, and, upon seeing him, wiped her swollen, glistening eyes, and scooped him into a hug.
“What’s going on?” George murmured.
“I have some bad news, baby.”
They fell silent. Pete, a recent addition to the family, if that, was surely not in a position to say much. And in any event, George was too frustrated with his own situation to deal with the idiocies that tended to come out of the mouths of his mother’s boyfriends.
“Mamá just died.”
George was able to hold the look of shock just long enough to bury his face in her chest. As he adjusted to her quiver, the connection began to occur to him between that evening’s shortcomings and his grandmother’s demise. She’d foiled him. How could this be? How could something that felt so good, be so horrible that his dear Mamá needed to sacrifice her life in order to stop him.
“Mom?”
“Yeah,” she choked.
“Where will Mamá go now that she’s, uh, not here anymore? Will she go to heaven?”
“Yes, baby,” She sobbed. “She’s in heaven...”
Thank God!
“…Watching over you… forever.”

The Crosstown Bus

The liberal camps were doused in a thin veneer of euphoria. It had been two days since we’d elected our first black president; a man who claimed the audacity to hope. On election day, I spent the afternoon with a fellow Buddhist, knowing that between partnered insight meditation, deep introspection and moderately high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, we would be centered and ready to be at peace with whatever decision America was about to make. The election came and went and, for about a week, everyone I ran into seemed to be talking about nothing else. The air was dusted with that annoying optimism, like the feeling one gets after the climax of a potent stimulant. The feeling, where, through clenched teeth and gaping eyes, one thinks to himself Yow! Only he knows the come-down is approaching and he’s kicking himself for remembering too late why he stopped messing around with this stuff in the first place. Anyway, I’m lucky enough to live in New York, where optimism is infrequent and has a tendency to disappear much faster than it materializes. And that’s when I met her: just two days after the election. The optimism hadn’t yet reached its peak.
I was on the corner of 23rd Street and Second Avenue, boarding the somewhat crowded M23 crosstown bus due west, headed to the Chelsea galleries. Scooting my way toward the back, I spotted an empty seat next to this cute girl and, well, as male instinct dictates, I sharked over to it. No expectations—just a habit. Or a game, maybe, as in: “Let’s see if I can strike up a conversation and use the right set of words in the right order to earn myself a blowjob.” A male fantasy which, with the exception of my friend, Carmine (who manages somehow to get those words in the right order every time), is just that: a fantasy. In any event, I was trying to read a report before getting off at Tenth Avenue, so I didn’t have the time, to say nothing of the energy, for cracking the word-choice-order-blowjob puzzle. That, and I’d like to think I’m centered enough in my practice to live my life without being controlled by the mere fantasy of a random hookup.
And then I heard it: as I sat there, reading my report, minding my own business, the cilia above my temples stood at attention and I heard her pupils, like a Morse ticker bombarding my eardrums. I turned to look at her and nearly suffered whiplash from how quickly she turned away, pretending to be engrossed in her book. I turned to the table of contents. A few seconds, then there it was again, tick, tick, tick... I looked over, this time cautious of the whiplash I knew was coming. It did. A little awkward. Whatever. I turned to page one. In breach of strict New York City Anti-Public-Acknowledgment laws, my balls dropped and out came a stifled “hey.” She giggled, a heartwarming giggle: “Hi.” I pulled a tin of Altoids Tangerine Sours from my bag and offered her one. She took two and the slight crimson that became her blush was adorable—embarrassed but unapologetic. She thanked me, as I smirked and put the tin away, before continuing my attempts to read.
The first sentence on page one seemed like it would never end. I tried to focus, reassuring myself that this little exchange didn’t mean anything. I intended to go on with my life. I’ve had too many fruitless run-ins with girls like her to fall for the delusion that we’d see each other again after this bus ran its course. I know her type: the girl who makes a game of her cuteness. “Let’s see if I can get him to think he’s got a chance... Maybe he’ll buy me a drink, a diamond, a car, a fur, a penthouse, a jet, an island.” Guys, will we ever learn? Tick, tick.
“What are you reading?” She asked. At that moment I wished to God that it had been anything else—a paper on quantum mechanics, a theory on the mating habits of Australian water bugs, an article on how the governor of Alaska would have been a competent vice president. Anything. What I was reading was not the kind of thing anyone would find attractive in any way. What I was reading carried subtle notes of “holy crap, this dude’s got baggage.” I was reading the investigative report on my friend’s suicide. She’d died of a drug overdose a year ago, and, being fully aware that she’d dabbled in the particular substance that caused her demise, we all just assumed it was accidental. To make a long, story short, my late friend’s parents had the investigation reopened and asked me to confirm my recollection of the details leading up to her death. A lengthy explanation, which, under the circumstances, would not facilitate my immediate intentions with this girl.
So, I gave her a brief synopsis as I stashed the report away, hoping she’d think nothing of it and change the conversation. She frowned, and mumbled a half-assed “sorry.” The kind of “sorry,” as in “I’m sorry I left my seat open for you. Sorry I didn’t sit in a single seat. Sorry the space between us just became the thickest, most awkward volume of air ever to circulate the planet.” She seemed unaware that the only comfort I wanted was hidden in her warm, moist lips (preferably the ones below her belt), my fingers running through her loose black and umber curls (see previous parenthetical). The fantasy, while overwhelming, is always under control, I assure you. Hell, I’ve been dealing with it on a daily basis for the past twenty-odd years. Ask any guy and he will recount, in vivid detail, his first erection. Mine was when I was four. I was watching MTV’s Miami Beach Spring Break ’91 swimsuit competition with my cousin. I had to stand behind the couch, using it as a fig leaf, realizing for the first time, like Adam, that I was naked. Some might describe this as a premature decent from latency, but what can I say, I was precocious. It’s since been a downward spiral, the bane of every guy’s existence for the majority of his life. It’s a little embarrassing to think that, for all the advances in science and philosophy and art, the male specimen remains primarily and perpetually motivated by his copulatory instinct. I can’t say I’m above it, despite all the introspection, which, if anything, only serves to exacerbate the problem.
I reciprocated her frown and raised her a shrug, giving a similarly half-assed “Yeah, no big deal.” What else do you say to someone who apologizes for your dead friend? And why am I reading this on the bus in the first place? Who does that? Note to self: read this kind of stuff in the comfort of your own home—not where cute girls (who might otherwise be interested in boning you) will come to immediate conclusions about your issues and attachments and fixations. Not that there exists a person who lacks issues and attachments and fixations (says Freud, anyway); but here I am, wearing them right on my sleeve. While I’m well aware that the chances of her wanting to do the squelchy with me (even without those Freudian problems out on display) are slim to none, being prepared never hurts.
Before I could ask what she was reading (not that I cared at this point; anything would have been a better social lubricant than “The Death of So-and-so,” the thought of which is about as stimulating as the hemi-section of a sandpaper-swathed broomstick and a porcupine’s parched twat mid-coition), she put her book away. And we sat in silence. Groundless. I blew it.
But let’s try this one more time. “So, where are you headed?” I’d given in. This was my attempt to figure out where she was getting off, so I could gauge how much time I had to lay down some game. “Park Avenue,” she chirped. Shit, only a few more minutes. The God of crosstown rush-hour traffic, however, was pouring his blessings on me—we were bumper to bumper the whole way. Apparently, Rachael Ray (with whom her ten-year-old brother has a mild obsession) was signing books at Barnes and Noble in Union Square. She was meeting her other brother to take pictures to send back to the little one. Interesting. We went from her Art History and Political Science Majors at Hunter, to her novel passion for Da Vinci, to her unfortunate antipathy of modern art, to her Israeli and Puerto Rican ethnic background, to her Ashtanga practice, in what felt like a matter of seconds. I was beginning to enjoy the conversation. She was the first girl I’d met in a long time who’d managed to bust through the fantasy barrier in just a few minutes. That is to say, in as little time as it takes to get from Second to Park, she had succeeded, where so many had failed (okay, not that many), in going from mere masturbatory tool, to respectable human-being. Weird. I’d forgotten what that felt like. I’m sure I’m not a misogynist but at this moment, I realized that my respect for women, in light of this one, had all but disappeared. Something about her made me want to know this girl, in much more than the biblical sense. The feelings became eerie and unfamiliar and as I continued to watch her lips move, something strange began to happen. Right around now, five minutes into meeting a girl, I’d usually still be caught up in what she’s like in bed. But I have to admit my subconscious was making serious rapid-fire interruptions in what is typically an experience that belongs to the flesh. A feeling so foreign it may as well have happened lifetimes ago, my mind wandered to what our children might look like. Suffice it to say, my thoughts disturbed me. So much so that, difficult as it was to suppress them, I sensed a tinge of nostalgia for memories that I had not yet developed with her. I mused on what her first name would sound like next to my last—a thought that would require rigorous testing, filling entire notebooks with the combination, in infinite variations of color, script, and media. (And, for an art student, who has access to enough tools to spend a lifetime tethering our names together, bordered in endless chains of hearts and flower petals, this could be potentially hazardous.) I’d met her a mere six minutes prior and already she was becoming an obsession that can only be described as Zahir-like. I wondered what my mom and dad, friends, siblings, roommates, dogs and cat would think of her. Aren’t these thoughts one leaves behind in high school? This is the stuff of schoolyard drama, and there I was, nearing the end of my undergraduate career, experiencing notions I thought I’d long since drowned in ethanol. They were primal thoughts, as real at that moment as they had been a decade ago, discovering the enchanting nature of female flesh with complete disregard for its capacity to reach into ones chest and set his heart ablaze. Thoughts of the Mesolithic type, but emotional, as if the sole purpose of abandoning hunting and gathering in lieu of agriculture and surplus, was to allow for more time and energy to make seemingly-infinite amounts of love. Or at least spend that extra time and energy fucking, if making love is not your particular cup of tea.
Still focused on her moving lips, and having begun to dread this moment for the past few minutes, the bus driver interrupted: “Park Avenue South.” She smiled, a meek, enchanting smile; a smile that was, at once, warmly inviting, and at the same time disquietingly aggressive. I’d known her for seven minutes and this was the first time I’d seen this smile. When was she planning on telling me about this smile, hmmm? The smile that says “okay, nice to meet you, now please get the fuck out of my way, you ass hat, this is my stop, and I do have pepper spray.”
So I moved. And there, in a moment of panic, fearing I might lose her, the girl who’d just given me more hope in five minutes than the president-elect could ever have the audacity to unleash, (for, despite all my work to resist temptation, I had failed to recognize her for the caramel coated Hemlock that she very well may have been—how easily we develop issues and attachments and fixations), I reached into my back pocket, and in one fell swoop, handed her an old business card that still had my cell number on it. No, I’m not an Art Director at that ad agency anymore (actually, to tell the truth, I was more like a creative intern, but the cards were outsourced so I tweaked the title while no one was looking). Yes I am in between jobs and “focusing on my school work for a bit.” No, I’m not a jobless loser. Ok, maybe a little bit. I’d like to think that handing her that card was a smooth move, but a little voice at the back of my brainstem screamed “you fucking tool!” I recommended that she call if she was in the mood for joining me at the galleries after her exhilarating romp with Rachael Ray. She smiled (again, that smile) and placed her feet firmly on the sidewalk. The doors shut behind her. The bus pulled away. I looked at her through the fogged window. She looked back. That smile. And then she disappeared into the subway.

Grandma’s House
What they eat:
Oh, they hardly ever stop eating once they get to Grandma’s house. Homemade ranch dressing to drown the garden salads in. Fresh Chex Mix, still warm from the oven. Church Window cookies, rolled up and sliced, revealing multi-colored marshmallows all sticky and sweet. Stove-popped popcorn seasoned with cheddar cheese and salt. Pecan pie, thick as molasses in the middle, on special occasions. Salty oyster crackers for Campbell’s tomato soup. Mmm, mmm, mmm.


Grandpa makes her laugh so hard that milk comes out her nose and squirts all over her grilled cheese sandwich. Grandma makes her eat it anyway. “Susanne you are not leaving this table until you finish your meal!” Susanne cries and cries as she gums down a soggy sandwich. The grandkids eat at five; the adults at seven, always while watching Wheel of Fortune. The bar is adjacent to the kitchen, and is always stocked. Kids are given champagne flutes to toast at Thanksgiving. When her brother was four, he brought the glass down too hard and shattered the stem. He was sent to bed without dessert.


What they do:
Grandma makes sure that they have plenty to do. Cardboard boxes become sleds down the steep hill of the local high school; old couch cushions are saved for fort building. The living room has a real arcade pinball machine, and it is free! They go swimming in the summer, swinging on the rope swing and avoiding snakes at Bull Creek when the water is high enough. Grandma takes Susanne and her brother ice skating at the mall until Susie slices her forehead open and has to get eight stitches.


She and her brother share a bedroom with two twin beds. They aren’t far apart in age and stay awake at night, hitting each other, delivering wet willy’s, jumping on the bed. Grandpa comes in to make sure they are quiet. “Time for bed.” Grandpa sits on the edge of her bed. She buries her face in her pillow as he fondles her buttocks. I don’t understand. What do I do? She rolls over on her side and feels foreign fingers on her prepubescent chest, on her private’s. What did I do? She is only six years old. All she can hear is Grandpa’s chuckle. She doesn’t understand.


Who is there:
Susie lives with her brother and mother and father in Wichita Falls; Grandma lives in Austin. Uncle Denny and Aunt Donna live in Oklahoma and only come down for Christmas. They have three children: Patrick, Reagan, and Erin. Uncle Mike lives down the street from Grandma. He has two dogs, Paint and Badger. Uncle Bobby lived in Austin too but was found dead in his apartment two years ago. She remembers crying at the funeral but only because she needed to use the bathroom so badly. The cause of death was sleep apnea. Gi-Gi and Pappy live on a farm outside of South Padre and keep a condo in the summer.


Boy, the summer at South Padre. She spends the summertime on the beach, riding waves, building sand castles, catching sand dollars and star fishes. Throw the star fish back; keep the sand dollar for good luck. Diving contests at the pool and the adults are drunk by 1 o’clock. She gets her first period down at the beach. Grandma tells everyone that she can’t go swimming and the cousins start calling her “period girl.” She lies awake at night, afraid of staining the sheets, and she cries, cries, cries.


Where they live:
Her father always tells her that he made sure she was born in Texas, the greatest state in the union. She grows up believing in this until puberty. Dad is in the army and part of a longstanding tradition of military officers in his family. Grandpa was a lieutenant colonel; Daddy is a major. They live on Fort Hood in Texas, Tripler Army Base in Honolulu, Fort Dix in New Jersey. Once her dad leaves active duty, her mom becomes a nurse in the Air Force. They move back to Texas to Shepherd Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Wright Patt AFB in Dayton, Ohio. She gets used to moving every two years and never makes any significant lifelong friends. She comes to rely on this quick fix—any problem can be solved by moving. She transfers schools, jobs, and friends on a regular basis. Grandma has lived in the same ranch style home on North Hills Drive in Austin since Susanne was born, and her dad makes them spend every holiday here.


Christmas is always magical at Grandma’s house. Her father and Uncle Mike dress up like women and sing “Sisters” from the movie White Christmas. She didn’t understand what was funny about this but would laugh and laugh just the same. The green tree is as tall as the ceiling and decorated with candy canes and bubble lights. She can’t go to sleep without Christmas Bear so she tip-toes out of bed and into the living room to look for her stuffed animal. The living room is empty except for Grandpa. “Come sit on my lap.” She squirms and squeezes her eyes shut tight until Christmas Bear is released to her and she can go back to bed. She has not spent Christmas at Grandma’s since her dad died. He never knew.


How she remembers:
Her dad dies when she is fifteen and the rest of the family tree erodes over the next ten years. After her father’s death, Susanne never goes back to Texas, never goes to the funerals, and never returns the calls. She realizes that at the end of the day, the end of her life, her dad will have been dead more years than she knew him alive. She remembers him every time she looks in the mirror and sees the same piercing brown eyes staring back. She remembers him and their time together when she hears the opening bars of the theme song from M.A.S.H. She always thought her dad was just as handsome and funny as Hawkeye. She fiercely chokes back the lump in her throat that threatens to erupt every time she hears James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” She feels his absence in her bones when she gets her first car, when she graduates from high school, college. She’ll remember him again when she gets married and has children; she’ll remember that her children will never know their grandfather. She knows that her father could never have done what his father did to her. She’ll remember when her children have children and she becomes a Grandma and sets to making her home a magical place. And she’ll put the grandkids to bed herself, remembering faintly what had happened to her so many years before.

And eventually, she’ll forget.

How she lives:
She always doubts herself, her worth, her purpose. She feels deceived by her memories, cheated by her past. Her uncle dies of the drink first, then her dad, then Grandpa, then Grandma. She has not been back to Grandma’s in twenty years.

She finally confides in her mother what she could remember about the abuse during a nervous breakdown at age nineteen. Her mother is obviously upset for her daughter, but is not shocked. Mother never really trusts Grandpa since the time he exposed himself to her one afternoon. Mother tells her of a time while her father was stationed overseas and they stayed at Grandma’s house. One afternoon when Grandma was out, Grandpa walked into her mother’s room in his underwear.
“What are you doing?” Mother asked. He did not answer but walked further into the room. He walked to the bed and sat down. She and her brother were babies and asleep in a different room. Grandpa motioned for Mother to join him on the bed. She shook her head and fled the room. Mother was so scared; she locked herself and the children in the bathroom until Grandma got home but never spoke of the incident.
“What a dirty old man.”

How she dies:
Susanne goes to the cemetery to look for their graves. She has made a long trip to get here. She navigates the sterile rows of tombstones, stooping down every now and then to check a name, date. She finds what she is looking for and stares intently at the inscription: “Loving father, faithful husband, devoted grandfather.” She throws the flowers that she is carrying to the ground, turns away, then back. In a rage, she kicks the pathetic daisies at the grave. She walks a few steps further to another headstone and sinks to her knees, sobbing with her head in her hands.

She gasps an apology, an explanation, a prayer, but her words are swept away by the chilly wind. It is cold in San Antonio and a few flurries escape from the low lying clouds and dance to the earth. They do not stick to the hard unforgiving ground. The grass remains unnaturally green and stiff in the cemetery. She reaches out and traces the letters of the epitaph with her finger. The grave she is crying at is her father’s. His family did not consult her before choosing this, any of this—the cemetery, the headstone, the inscription. No one ever consults her. She never asks for this life. Before she pulls out the flask she has stashed in the pocket of her black pea coat, she lies down and rests her head against the cold granite. She has dressed for this occasion. Her sobs become quiet as she brings the metal flask to her lips and feels the fiery liquid burning in her mouth, then down her throat. She wipes her face with the back of her hand and hiccups softly, closing her eyes and picturing her father. They are dancing in the living room of Grandma’s house. She’s standing on the tops of his feet, and he’s singing their favorite song.

Public Bath, Enka, and Pure Memory

“His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him on every occasion.”
-Jorge Luis Borges, Funes, the Memorious

As my grayish blue hands fumble with the plastic token, I greet Koji with a slightly reserved smile. He smiles back with a sheepish smirk. His small rectangle-framed glasses and massive cigarette-stained teeth glint weakly in the sallow light of the dressing room.
“Konbanwa,” I intone cheerfully.
“Irasshhhhhai!” Koji replies in a deep, inexpressively goofy voice. He takes my token and continues smiling as he hands me a piece of soap about the size of a communion wafer as well as a freshly laundered handkerchief for a towel.
I enter the dressing room. A partition separates the men’s room from the women’s room, but it ends at the front of the hall where Koji sits perched with his usual accoutrements: a full pack of Mild Seven cigarettes, a rusty ashtray that resembles a tiny tin of chewing tobacco, a half-finished can of Boss Coffee, and a blanket over his legs. Koji has a stocky frame, his large shoulders and arms forcing him to slouch in his stool. He has a toucan’s beak of a nose, a big mop of straight black hair that hangs over his ears, and small eyes that are all pupils behind the aforementioned glasses. His oily, olive complexion bears a few small moles and one can always spot an alarmingly large pimple somewhere on or around his nose. Without fail, he is wearing the same blue t-shirt whenever I see him. I have a feeling that he wears it even on the days that I don't run into him. Although he has on four or so layers of coats, sweaters, and thermal underwear on this frigid January evening, I am sure that his first layer is the same shirt that he wears to work out in at the gym on the stickiest days in July.
His girlfriend Megumi, who also wears oddly shaped glasses and suffers from poor dental hygiene, grins at me through her rusty smile. One may consider me a bit oafish to describe someone with such caustic vocabulary, but upon meeting Megumi for the first time I couldn’t help but remember days from my childhood when our neighbor Bobby would take a bite from a Jell-O pudding pop and squeeze the melted chocolate and vanilla pudding through his teeth.
The first time I came into this place, Megumi was here talking with Koji while I unknowingly undressed right in front of her. In my nervousness at trying out this little hole in the earth of a public bath, I hadn’t noticed that the men’s and women’s rooms were conjoined, and that the mirror-lined wall separating the two dressing rooms ended before the room did. I turned around with nothing on after arriving from a long workout. My pinkish skin steaming in the cold, stale air, I put my underwear in the locker and closed it shut. Looking up, I met four eyes glaring unabashedly at my exposed ventral side. I thought Megumi would look away and perhaps feign some sort of modesty in the situation, but I was wrong. She and Koji proceeded to stare at me until I entered the bath, their eyes following my shadow as the frosted glass door slid heavily behind me.
Life is full of sudden exposures like this one, instances in which one finds oneself naked and being watched by someone who will not avert their gaze. I am not just talking about dreams (I admit that I have had plenty of those dreams wherein I have lost my pants and every girl I have ever had a crush on is staring at me while giggling). I shouldn’t get worked up over Megumi staring at me, but then again I probably would stare at her. Does that make me black inside? No. But I also smoke.
The next step in my routine after disrobing under the watchful eyes of Koji and company and then shivering my way to the bath area, is to nudge a stool made for a baby chihuahua underneath one of the shower nozzles. Given the choice, I would prefer to stand while showering off before I get into the tub, but seeing as the shower nozzles are below knee level, I must make a tremendous effort in order to get myself into a position to wash off. Strains of an old man singing enka from the speakers in the dressing room resonate through the glass doors and join the other sounds of the room: showers running, droplets of cold condensation falling from the high ceiling and hitting the floor with cute, whimsical plops, men coughing, women chattering from the other side of the partition, the rumble of the jets in the massage tub, and now the close sound of the razor making crackling-smooth crepitations across my warm cheeks.
As I place my right foot in the tub, a bolt of lightning shoots up my leg. I put the other foot in too, feeling the same sensation of disorienting pleasure. I wade in gradually until I am up to my neck in this heavenly cauldron. The hot water laps against my clean-shaven neck and chin while the soporific lines of that old man’s quavering, elegant lament about love lost and the irreversible flow of time still drifts through the walls. I could sink deeper into the tub, put my head in it and drown my sorrows in this comfort—the hot water like a womb around my body, the old man’s voice calling from some distant, unknown place and arriving at my shore like a message from home. I sit alone in the hottest section of the tub, while a short, boney man with a ratty nose, a few rodent-like whiskers, and circular glasses huddles surreptitiously in the tepid water at the opposite end of the tub. He never speaks to anyone. His presence in the bath breaks me out of my spell. I now notice the lights built into the tub’s wall beaming against my pale torso and become self- conscious once again.
Again thoughts return to this body of mine. My chest wrapped in the silverish, neon glow of the underwater lights exposes that painful cycle by which I am gradually inured to the act of concealing myself, only to be wrenched back unexpectedly into my aloneness. Looking at my shark-white belly, soapy-clean and smooth and now collecting swirling bubbles in the sparsely grown moss of body hair, I observe the perplexing apparition that is my body.
The crouching man with a speech impediment at the other end of the bathtub reminds me of something. He sits there in an upright fetal position, mumbling to himself the things he has seen during the day. He spends his days alone, buys groceries at the local market, walks down to the video store to return an adult film, cooks lunch for himself and his homebound mother, and then hoses off the already spotless garage before coming to the onsen around this time every day. How would I know all of these random personal details without being a stalker or some prolific polymath of the mundane and inconsequent? No, everyday I too go about my own business, and yet I have been cursed with a memory that compounds images of peoples’ lives like a sieve collecting dryer lint. For some reason, I know what this guy will be doing at noon this Saturday. He hasn’t disclosed this information, nor do I presume any extra-sensory ability, but I just know, that’s all…
That is to say, I have been cursed with an unconventional way of seeing things. I am an observer who records his observations everywhere only to leave these impressions unattended in some dark, dank storehouse of the mind—a place to which I have long ago lost the keys and into which I must sneak in via the windows of other minds, other faces, other hands. In some ways, I liken myself to the tragic fate that Borges’s Funes once faced, except that somewhere in my heart of hearts I believe in platonic generalities, in a common fate and feature that informs every moment of every life and by which we are able to live a life that is more than just a bubble rising to a surface in order to expire. A body wholly body, yes. The image that never fails is the only truth.
Two old men enter the bath. The elder of the two, missing most of his teeth and walking with such trepidation of the limbs so as to give his form the likeness of an old leafless maple beset by a gentle breeze, sits down and begins to talk about the weather to his companion in a familiar Kansai drawl.
“Samui ya ne! Kotoshi wa tokuni samui!”
“So yanen.”
“Mada mikan ga nokotteiru yakedo, kotoshi no mikan ha sukunakatta. Mo, shanai ya kedo naa!”
“Shanai ne…”∗
The conversation ensues about how cold it is, the small yield of mandarins this year, the aches and pains of getting old, and all of the commonplace topics of conversation that are reserved for this public sanctum of warmth and rejuvenation. Why would one want to talk about anything else inside a steaming hot tub of water on a freezing cold night? What would you talk about?
The reserved man with the boney frame and circular glasses gets out and scurries carefully over the wet floor. I too am feeling a bit drained in my replenishment and start to get up out of the tub. As I stand, my eyes turn black. I pause a few seconds before I move one foot in front of the other. It is coming back to me—walking—and I am reentering the world in baby steps, as if it were really a womb from which I have just pulled myself free. The sliding door opens with a whoosh of steam being sucked into the frigid, smoky vacuum of the dressing room.
I dry off as well as I can with my now sopping wet washcloth, but still my clean and dry clothes stick to me like strips of papier-mâché. Underwear, pants, belt, socks, shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, and shoes all go on, and with my gloves in hand I light up a cigarette after plopping light-headed and refreshed onto the coffee-black patent leather couch. The wood paneling on all four walls has been peeling for years. A community service award bestowed on the proprietors of Ota Onsen sometime in the Showa era hangs over the front door. There are also other placards and signs hanging up on the walls, made after the War, which haven’t been touched, let alone dusted, for decades now. I sit and smoke my cigarette, not listening to Koji and Megumi’s lighthearted, whispered conversation.
The enka song now playing is a woman’s ballad, a slow dirge about the loneliness of a woman waiting by a warm hearth while her husband remains out somewhere in the cold (or perhaps in a warm, smoky bar attended to by young supple-skinned hostesses whose hearts have been frozen by the coldness of their small, small world). I think to myself, this is the best cigarette I have ever had. The woman’s drawn-out vowels rise and fall like a raggedy kite.
Here I am, out on the branches of the world, far away from home and homeland, listening to a woman singing in a language I can barely understand about the loneliness of living a life devoted to her one and only beloved.
Koji smiles at me, for I have been staring up into space for some time with my cigarette in hand with mouth agape, canned coffee unopened on the small desk in front of me, and bearing a look in my eyes that he cannot read. I want to tell him:
I’ve seen this place before, Koji. I’ve heard this song, been that old man with the shriveled balls in the bathtub right now, have smoked this cigarette and heard what you are about to say. I know that this life doesn’t last very long, that in it our pleasures are short-lived, like the one week each year during which the cherry blossoms open fully before falling. You smile, perched here content like a hen roosting over her eggs, and yet I am always wandering from place to place, looking for a signpost to point me homeward. We cannot stay here, or else we will become at best another picture on the wall.
Despite my concentrated efforts at telepathically communicating my profound insights to Koji, he doesn’t seem to get any of it. Megumi chortles abrasively at something Koji says under his breath and I tamp out my cigarette with a single press and twist. I put on my gloves and greet the two lovebirds once again.
“Arigato! Mata ne.” Koji blurts perfunctorily, or nervously. I can’t tell.
“Oyasumi.” I find no eloquence within me tonight.
I slip on my shoes over my warm feet, now coursing with freshly circulating blood. I can feel the flat, ninety-degree rightness of the concrete steps move across my heels, arches, and off of the tips of my toes. I stand in the parking lot, huffing out plumes of white mist. My body now full of warmth, like a baked potato wrapped in tin foil, I shudder under this plenary sense of being. I am warm again, here in this dark parking lot, away from home, away from strangers, away from everything. I snap open the lock, straddle my short, hefty, gearless bicycle, and pedal off across the train tracks.
On the ride home, I cannot remember a single thing about my life. From somewhere out of the impermeable darkness, a cold wind brushes gently— Ah! Beloved! —across my still warm cheeks.

the heart is the prey
“owwweee, fair brown, you’re killing me!”
robert johnson


The workday was pretty much over. He had finished his daily deliveries around the city, avoiding gypsy taxies and pungent bicycle couriers. Now, he was at his chalk white desk shutting down his computer. In his mind he was contemplating what he would do when he was free from his chains of capitalism. Walk around the lake, and listen to a new a jazz mix he had made was on the top of the short list. As, his screen saver of Eric Dolphy faded away his chubby white boss with a baby face stumbled to his desk, and shot a letter at him.
“You mind running this letter upstairs before driving the truck back to the MOMA parking lot?”
He took the letter, shrugged his shoulders, and headed for the elevator. He exited on the third floor, and made a right, entered the office and there she was walking out.
Tall, brown, curly hair with freckles. Without permission from his brain his mouth and tounge said.
“What up?”
She responded with. “Hey.”
She continued walking, but his legs had stopped. Who was that? His mind ran laps around his soul until his heart called a time out. He looked back, and caught a glimpse of her slender silhouette turning the corner.
‘I should run and catch her. Tap her on the shoulder remove my cap, take a bow and introduce myself, and free-style a sonnet off the top of my dome. No that’ll take too long-what about a haiku?
moon -lit days (r) (u)
lovers souls (r) like rainbows
(u) (r) my treasure
But, he didn’t. Instead he handed the letter to the snobby Korean receptionist, and headed for the elevator with her in his mind.
Inside, the mail van he popped in a cassette tap. Black Sheep’s first album. “The Choice Is Yours, “ boomed inside the black van as he drove. Driving down New Montgomery, he spotted her flying. He thought about beeping the horn and getting gangsta with her. You know pulling alongside of her, rolling down the window, system still thumping and calling her over.
‘Say girl, come here for a sec, let a thug holla at you! What’s yo name? Yo got a nigga?! It don’t matter cuzz he shouldn’t be letting yo fine ass be walking round all these wack mutha fuckas with ties on, and all these broads compared to you is like a plate of seven day old sushi next to some hot water cornbread, greens, mac cheese, neck bones, and a glass of cherry Kool Aid. Know what I’m saying, soul food baby? Say, Pecan Pie, I’m a straight up Pimp, ya need to get on my team cuzz I’m making moves like a crack head in need of a hit. Ya feel me?’
But, he didn’t. He laughed at the absurdity of his imagination and besides if she did go for that jibber jabber would he want her anyways? Probably not. So instead he drove passed her and watched her walk towards him until she vanished in his rear view. When he could no longer see her there. He searched for her in his side mirrors.
He parked the van, ejected the tape, took a deep breath and jumped out the van. Walking on New Montgomery Street, he thought about going into the 180 building where he guessed she was, but decided not because he had to return the van key and catch his train. Why was he worried about catching a train? What was the rush? He knew what he would do when he entered his desolate home. Feed his cat. Remove his clothes. Drink a brew. Write, something insignificant, and stare out the window and talk to that leaf he had been conversing with for the past 4 months. That once green leaf was now a brownish orange, it will soon fall and die. He hated thinking about the leaf detaching from the branch and floating to her death. Yes, her, he had name it, Leaf Anne, not creative, but he had told Leaf Anne of all his dreams and nightmares. Yes, he will make the 4:58 Pittsburgh Bay Point train.
Back in the office he picked up his satchel, coat and headed out. He gave his annoying co-workers the peace sign and walked up the stairs to the dock.
There she was across the street! Why was she there?! Was she really there?! He watched her. She was in deep thought. Something was on her mind. He didn’t blink- from across the street he tried to count the freckles on her face that looked like constellations. He made a step to cross the street, however she turned and begin to walk.
‘Fuck! Well, she’s walking my way. I’m not going to walk fast, and catch up to her. I’m going home and she just happens to be going my way. What will be will be.’ He said to the wind.
She walked down the underground bart station. So did he. She had a ticket already paid. So did he.
She took the escalator. So did he. Inside his head he said.
‘So what, but she aint going to the east bay. She lives in the city. A woman like that lives in San Fran or is just visiting from some place like Boston or Africa.’
No! She took the train he took. She walked to the end of the train and found a seat. He thought about following her, but his mind said no, but some how his legs involuntary moved. There he was standing beside his seated temptress.
“Haven’t I seen you before?” She said.
“Yeah, on the third floor.” He said.
He didn’t move closer. He was still a few feet away from her.
“What are you majoring in?” He said
“Fashion.”
“What’s your style?”
“I dig the Harlem Renaissance thing.”
Huh!!! His legs involuntary moved him closer to her. This was his era. He had drunk plenty of bottles of Carlos Rossi, and smoked plenty of blunts with his boy Malik, yapping about what they would of done if they were blessed to live in N.Y.C. in that golden black time period. He imagined himself calling up a tall, brown, curly hair girl with freckles and asking her to roll with them to hear Billie Holiday, and after seeing Billie, he would walk out the night club into the cool November, Harlem night, and hail a cab. Langston Hughes, would ask him to come with him to a café because he wanted to hear about his new novel. But, he would point at his tall brown curly hair girl with freckles, and Lang, would understand. Inside the cab they would cuddle close while sharing a reefer he had bought from Malcolm Little, till they made it to the rent party, where he was asked to accompany Abby Lincoln on piano. After the playing, drinking, laughing, and dancing, he would take his tall brown curly hair lady with freckles back to his loft, they would listen to blues records while he shot heroine into his vein. Yes, he was an addict. He had to keep it real, but with her love he would eventually kick the habit, write a book of poetry all about her that would win him the Pulitzer, and be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. They would live happily in racist America. Later divorcing when she discovered he had a wife in Paris.
“You dig Jazz?” He said.
“ I like Bep Bop. Late 50’s- Charlie Parker.”
What?! She knows Jazz and the time line of the music! He could of dropped to his knees and asked for her hand right there-making the ring out of his bart ticket.
They continued the convo until the West Oakland, stop came. She stood up, and he walked her to the door, he thought about opening the door, but the doors open automatically. She gave him a white business card. The design had her name, and a tree, but instead of leaves, there were guns on the branches.
“ You see trees, and leaves give life, but I flipped it, guns take life.”
They exchanged fair wells. His final words to her were.
“What train is this?”
She looked puzzled and said.
“I don’t know, but this is my stop.” And she walked away. The train doors closed on him, but another one had opened up. Another one had opened up-automatically. As the train entered the tunnel he thought.
‘Trees and leaves give life, but she had replaced leaves with guns. Damn, arrows take lives, but when Cupid draws his bow and aims at your heart. He’s giving life. Yeah, baby place a target on my heart, and let that fat chubby baby face white boy who resembles my boss man kill me.’

Summer, Sometime Ago

Above the treetops
far away
fireworks explode.
Masaoka Shiki

As my body fell upon the mattress, my senses became pleasingly inert, like that anticipatory numbness one experiences upon sticking freezing cold hands under a tap of hot water. I lay there for about fifteen or so minutes, trying to get some rest. As usual, I couldn’t force myself to fall asleep. Though I was tired, my eyes remained open, and despite letting out some roaring, grizzly bear-like yawns, whose size and length in turn produced a few thin tears at the corners of my eyes, my thoughts remained uncannily clear. I thought about my life on that bed, a bed on which I had slept with women, smoked countless packs of cigarettes, read countless books, hated and loved my life, gotten up to pee in the chilling hours of winter nights, resisted time after time the need to get up for work (and had repeatedly given in), and above all perceived my life: how it reaches out at every moment to something beyond time. Things rushed inside my head like a giant wave crashing with uncontrolled force against a seacoast. Unlike the rocks, however, memories seem to erode at such a faster rate and are mysteriously able to resurrect themselves ever more vividly out of the depths of dissolution. In the process of trying to fall asleep at mid-afternoon, I came into contact with something that I am always not quite in touch with. How can I say it? [Long pause] Some beatific and numinous guarantee that life is ultimately worth it all. Anyways, forget the actual utterance. It is immaterial. My apartment had become tragically silent during the course of my short nap. A sedate influx of sunlight glowed on the thin, yellow wallpaper, warming everything in the room. I wanted to open the window.
In the dream, I was eating lunch: a turkey sandwich with avocado on whole wheat and one of those fizzy Italian sodas. It was tamarind-flavored with a lemon. As I ate my sandwich and listened to her voice (let’s call her S, for she is not a real friend, nor a real person, but just a dream), I noticed how bright everything was. An auburn light suffused everything—our faces, the table, the food, the sky; it suffused the wide, wide world. When I looked at my watch, the time was 2:00am. I looked into S’s eyes and she smiled at me—a look that told me I too was smiling. I recognized her from somewhere and had a feeling like that of remembering that I had wanted to get to this moment at this table for a really long time. The waiter came and took our plates away. We spoke more and more, then ordered coffee. After coffee, I had to use the toilet. As I was coming back, I noticed a newspaper left on an empty table, dated February 28, 2028. I looked up and saw the scene of the same café on the corner, but something had changed. Same place, different time. S was nowhere to be found. I looked at my hands, which had turned wrinkled and hairy. I stood there looking around, unable to move or speak. In the corner of this unfamiliar café, a small boy played with a toy that I too had when I was a child. It made different sounds depending on which button you pressed—various honks, squeaks, pings, screeches, gongs, and what not. The boy was whacking away haphazardly at the toy, his chubby, cheeky smile beaming gleefully in the same pervasive light as that prior to my bathroom break. Hypnotized by the atonal sounds of the toy, I stared at the little boy’s happy expression.
The telephone rang approximately three and a half seconds after I had managed to doze off. The ring of the phone was like an inverted lullaby, carrying me from the peaceful land of Hypnos to this created world of evenly counted seconds and relatively short bathroom breaks.
“Hello…?” I mumbled half awake, my eyes blurry as though I had been staring at something for too long.
“Hey Joe!” the voice greeted me in a familiar tone, “It’s been a long time. How’ve you been?” I didn’t recognize her voice. I knew that I knew her voice, but still could not gather the name from the abysmal darkness of acquaintances long past. It was part of what Bergson would call “pure memory”—something which I remember, which is part of my ongoing movement in this world, but which I no longer need in the daily chain of habits and functions.
“Alright…how are you?” not wanting to betray the fact that I couldn’t remember her name. Maybe it started with S. Maybe that is wishing too much.
“Pretty good. I was just calling cause we haven’t talked in so long and I wanted to know if you were going to go Nate’s get together tonight.” I had forgotten about that engagement, along with other details whose extent I couldn’t imagine, and now the immediate present and the distant past merged together into a formless, wordless expanse. Nate’s name surged through my head with memories, feelings, and faces—a sudden power passed over my thoughts like an earthquake, or like meeting someone for the first time.
“Yeah, I think I am.”
“You better go! It’s been like, what, seven or eight years since we last saw each other, right?”
“Man, it’s been that long!” I said dumbfounded and with a cloud of nostalgic images exhumed from the muddy sediment of things long interred in the past. “It’ll be a trip to see everyone, won’t it?”
“A trip, yeah! I can’t even imagine I’d ever see some of these people again,” she noted in a slightly naïve, haughty tone. After a few more perfunctory exchanges with S, I pressed the power button on the white, plastic cordless phone and tossed it on the floor. Half an hour had passed since the phone woke me up, but I couldn’t remember having talked about anything for such a length of time. Sitting upright, I could see the yellow meringue sunshine glimmering through a small opening in the pines and cypresses which lined the hillside facing the bay. Underneath a vast stretch of murky gray rain clouds, the thin shining disc of the sun sank like the precipitate separating and settling at the bottom of a solution. I turned on the room lamp, which had three separate sixty-watt incandescent bulbs. I had lost or broken the bubble-shaped glass lampshades that used to cover them, so my room was illuminated in a sallow, greenish-yellow tincture. Yes, I live in an uncleaned fish tank. I flicked on the stereo and pressed play, not remembering what c.d. I had listened to last. As I looked for my wallet, my cigarettes, and the other essentials that I ritually gather upon entering the world, the title track of Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” album crept into the space of the room like a cat coming to sit in your lap. I glanced at the old wooden wall clock and noticed that it was exactly forty-five minutes since I drifted off to sleep—6:00pm exactly. After the second song on the album ended, “Place To Be,” I decided to go out to the local pizza spot down the street. I flicked the stereo off, locked the door with another single, decisive click, and walked down the stairs. Something disturbed me about the afternoon’s silence—no dogs barking across the street, no cars, no stereos or voices carrying out from open windows into the open spaces of neighborhood yards. I hopped into my old Toyota sedan, turned the ignition, fastened my seatbelt, and drove away.

By the time I left for Nate’s get together, it was already pretty dark. The sky was a freshly washed indigo curtain hanging from the thin line of black cirrus clouds at the top of the sky. A myriad stars clung to surface of the sky like glitter scattered over the curtain. I had two slices of gorgonzola cheese, pine nut, and garlic pizza with a bottle of Red Hook ESB while I waited for the sky to fully darken. Sitting there with my second slice, I wished for something I had never thought about for years. After all, tonight was a night for reunion, not just with people but also with parts of myself I had left behind like a kid dropped off for school. Those parts were still growing, still real. As Keats said, they “never pass into nothingness.” That which has been gone for sometime has the infinite power of something that has been. Whereas the present moment always resembles the water at the edge of a waterfall plummeting forward into open space, the past has the depth and clarity, the hidden power of a bottomless pool—things collected and saved, things everlasting.
A few college girls walked by in their respective university sweats gossiping about inanities that I failed to follow. It was like French, or more accurately, some secret code language that only initiates could understand or want to understand. Following them down the sidewalk, or following God knows what, a homeless man I had encountered many times before sauntered along with a crooked, dejected gait. His beard had patches of gray, like different shades of moss on riverbank stones that have sat by the same shady culvert for years. His face had a russet, oily complexion like liquefied chocolate. His eyes were bloodshot at the edges, but the pupils glinted like black diamonds under the orange streetlight. We had met before somewhere on this street, although he didn’t seem to remember me. He must see thousands of people everyday, like one of those meters laid down on the road to count traffic. When I thought about it, our paths had crossed countless times. I had seen him so many times that although he was a perfect stranger, I had observed the crescence of his days. As I was dwelling on this man, he stopped and turned around. He looked right at me, perhaps through me. He looked at someone else.
“Brother, couldjasparesomechange…” he sighed, dejectedly blurting out the words without much effect.
“No, sorry.” I made the same quick reply as I always do when I have no change, or no courage to change how I react towards uncomfortably situations. I walked back to my car with a small knot in my throat. The sky was now quite dark and still as the half moon rose over the eastern hills. A bus roared by and the light changed. I crossed the street and got into my car, preoccupied with the sudden appearance of a friend I had avoided so many times. The engine turned over and hummed weakly. I put the car into reverse, checked the mirror, and pulled out of the parking spot. Once in drive on the road, I realized that the car had driven off automatically. It was no longer something I was doing, but just act, a performance of some habit in which I lost myself for the sake of convenience. Just like my reply to the man on the street, so was this act one that had no conscious beginning, no reason for which to carry it out.
One usually cannot presage intense periods of nostalgia. They tend to blindside one like someone pulling out of a driveway without checking the rearview mirror. The experience is certainly frightening at first. But with the passage of time, this burning pathos that one feels for a home long gone slowly cools off into ossified relic; the relic then turns into something that itself will one day be missed. And so it is with my life, from experience to memory to experience, in the truth springing from a lie, a beginning from the end…ever so indiscriminately onward…

That is what I thought to myself as I fought the urge to doze off in the passenger’s seat of my own car. I realized I was leaving Nate’s house. This road I had traveled many nights before, long ago when it was a welcome scene of things first discovered and first forgotten.
When I first got to the party, I joined the ever-excruciating game of mingling with faces and voices that all looked and sounded different from anyone I could remember. There was Josh, the frisbee fanatic, mediocre thespian, and overly-suave socialite, who now worked at a local sporting goods store, dreaming of forest preservation, directing his semi-autobiographical play, and hooking up with some of the few girls he never realized he liked until years later. Or there was Benjamin, who had an easy-going nature that people found pleasant but a bit uninspiring. Other friends gathered at Nate’s, but I am afraid their life stories would have to be included in my forthcoming memoir. Names and faces amassed in the past and projected to me here and now in the strange and unfamiliar present. Someone had asked me in the course of the night, “What are you up to?” I wanted to answer to some degree of truth, but couldn’t.
“Not much. Just hanging out. Writing, reading, thinking. You?”
She said something about teaching out on the East Coast. There is a different world out there, one beyond this one I have grown to know so well that it has become a strange and mysterious place. Sarah had not changed all that much. Surely there were great physical changes. Her eyes had become deeper, a tint of cynicism in them. Her chin, nose, ears and mouth all seemed a bit restive in the process of aging, as if they were trying to hold on to their perfect state of youthful comeliness. Her hair was styled the same way but longer. Her way of dressing was ostensibly different, with the change brought by moving across coasts, jobs, and time to different peers, orientations, obligations, hopes, and fears. Yet underneath all of these outward signs was the same person I knew. I didn’t notice that at all when we spoke. In fact, I had been mildly upset by seeing her, and kept the conversation going by asking her about her job.
Before long I was drunk. That probably goes without saying at such an occasion. I kept a drink in my hand throughout the whole night, and no I wasn’t babysitting these drinks with tender love and care. By the time it was too late to turn back, I had already conceded to let Sarah drive me home. I could get my car in the morning, with ample time to reflect on all my aberrant behavior from the night before. The moon was shining clearly in the sky and the air was cool as the universe is wide. Sarah’s car cruised down through the winding hillside road and neither of us said much. As we reached the bottom of the hill, down a narrow corner, we came by and old park with a giant rock from the top of which one could view the Bay. As we passed by here I remembered a summer day spent on this rock in between our junior and senior year.
It must have been around the fourth of July then. We had talked about how well we would be able to see the fireworks from the top. There were lots of friends gathered there. The sky’s immediate blue reached higher than the mind could or heart could follow. We were eating sandwiches and sodas bought at a local deli. The conversation was banal, but our mood was inexpressibly good. The world seemed like a perfect coincidence, an inimitable and sudden explosion of some will or some presence from wherever it was the sky led to. You could see the water’s gleaming surface, like the dress of some Muse that has lived there for years in serene solitude. The cars passed through streets like a droplets of water on the leaves of a tree. They all went in separate but similar directions, guided along by the same law of motion. Sarah was there too that afternoon. She was wearing a burgundy colored tank top and faded blue jeans. The sun on her skin gave off a dreamlike refulgence. I took part in the lives of these people at a time when retrospect was something that could only be envisioned, not lived. We didn’t know that our roads are inevitably led back countless times to this same afternoon, even if it is at an increasing—no, impassable—distance. The further we get from it, the more it seems like a dream, like something that is only intimated by our vaguest notion of what life really is. It becomes a tune; indefinite notes sound out through time and remind us of some place we have never been to before. When we make that return, there is always a new time in which we find ourselves. The date has changed, and the people too.
As we drove along in the car, Sarah didn’t even glace towards the rock. She was listening to the air, driving smoothly along in the hushed streets of our childhood neighborhood. I looked at her for a second, and realized how far I had grown apart from her and all my friends. And yet when I got out of her car, dazed and half awake, I couldn’t prevent a certain joy from flooding my heart when I felt her cheek graze mine as she hugged me good by, nor could I resist remembering the fireworks that summer—remembering all the dreams that I haven’t yet forgotten, haven’t yet dreamt.

Later in the afternoon, Mirabelle was giving a singing recital in Central Park. The weather was the kind that always made me game to do something outdoors, the part where spring becomes truly warm and burns all the flowers slightly and the scent makes you madder.
Being in this mood, we were game to do anything and drank beer out of paper-sacked cans and laughed and sauntered our way to the concert area damp and willing now to be really moved by something so we could continue this season like the intoxicated down thistle we were, letting the breeze carry us until we needed planting again.
It was very pleasant, sitting down, pretending to be fooled by that idiot’s sense of carelessness: until the music began. At first the drunkenness did not want me to feel what happened in my gut, but that mute apparition of ease upon my face instinctually tucked itself away for a different delirious moment, while the smile turned to a phrase of disgust. We would have left and purged the disappointment sooner had Petri not looked at Mirabelle, who was her friend, so sympathetically and then glanced at us to make it known that we would have to leave her behind if we hated it so, but we didn’t want to leave Petri, even if it was of her doing that the breeze had stopped.
Me, I could look at the sky and not be there, so I did that, and if the sound of the concert interrupted, I would just listen to something else I could hear I guess in my head, and just pull up another song I know, as I recall all the ones I recall. Then, if I found I was forgetting one, I would really have to apply my memory to the recalling of it. On a separate plane of the time being, I had a couple of sentences scripting themselves for what I would say later, the most prominent of which began:
“You have a lovely voice, very melodic. And obviously a repertoire you enjoy singing, because Petri told me you arranged these songs. Why can’t you sing them? Why, then, do you pick them? You sound like a seamstress trying to pour concrete…”
I didn’t want to say this because I was angry and I was angry because it didn’t feel so nice anymore, but I was used to that and so I garnered my attentions for more vital occasions and ignored that whole event, except for writing this and I wrote this because that burnt flower mood just got at me now.

The things that changed changed the night I lost my nametag, and I will try to narrate to you how the events came about.
It began with the fact the museum was open late, and it was raining; separate but important aspects of the atmosphere in which I lost or misplaced the laminate identification card that gets me in and out of work with ease. My job, which I had begun one month earlier, resembled that of a secretary stripped of their most useful responsibilities. I did all the things twenty people could’ve accomplished in five minutes apiece, but that I had to fill eight hours a day doing because there is only one of me, and only one each of the two other people who have my same job— that is stacking brochures, sharpening pencils, refilling pen cups, etc.
That night, being a Thursday night, was the night the museum is open late, and my boss, being the kind of person he is, clocked out early and put me in charge. Being the kind of person I am, I wanted to complete every task very diligently and with precision, for a lesson I had already learned one month in was that some part of me is silently annoyed to distraction when the simplest of duties are done sloppily, as they usually were. So busied by my supervisory position was I that I might have left the laminate on the main office desk. That was one inconsequential possibility.
I left and it was black outside and wet, but no longer raining. Earlier that day, as I did not have to arrive at work until noon, I had bought a felt skirt that would last me through winter, but had slightly strained my budget. When I talked to Joe, he asked me if I wanted to see a jazz show, which meant he was going to a jazz show. That felt skirt had limited my funds, however, and so I told him I’d see him at home. Besides I was feeling sticky. We got off the telephone, and I walked over to a liquor store on Lexington to see if I felt like having wine, and I didn’t. Beer seemed better. As I left, I reached into my bag, out of habit I suppose. It is an action often initiated by my trying to figure out what I want to do next.
When I reached into my bag then, I thought about my laminate, which I always kept in there. I can tell you part of why I was unfond of leaving it in the office drawer overnight the way everyone else did: unlike my co-workers, I enjoy going to museums, even on my days off, and my name tag verified that I worked at a museum which got me free admission to any other museum I’d like. The other part of the reason why, I do not know—a fear of loss was certainly not it.
In any case, as quick as the thought of my laminate arose, it disappeared, for my fingers alighted upon a BBQ chip. Earlier, while I had been eating a bag of chips for lunch, I had taken an overly greedy handful and the chips I had grabbed sprung out of my hand, but only one had fallen on the ground, and I was sure that there had been more than that on the way to my mouth. Though I sifted through my bag, I had not found the other chip(s), but now, on the way home, trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, it was discovered and I tossed it into a puddle. Inexplicably, the thought occurred to me that my laminate, if I had chanced to forget it, could also be lying in a puddle.
I unzipped the compartment in my bag where I usually kept it, and discovered it was not there. Now I had something to dedicate myself to, if only briefly, and it bears to be said right here that I do not lose things, ever, and when I do, it is so rare that I always have to point out that I never lose things. When I do lose things, however, they are most often useful things, such as an umbrella when it is raining, or an identification card. On this particular occasion, I had my umbrella (though it had ceased raining), and I had lost my nametag laminate, and the thought of it lying in a puddle aggravated me. In the main, that is, because it had my picture on it.
I checked every section of my purse (finding another BBQ chip, incidentally) and then my jacket pockets, and then my pants pockets, and then there was nowhere else to check. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I began retracing my steps. If it had been any other night, I would have paused and considered the likelihood of losing my nametag, and, confident as I am in my never losing of things, I would have in all probability discounted the notion, and then perhaps my nonchalance would have caused it to turn up without much ado. But this was a night when things were meant to change, and I believe that because they did.
Walking back towards the liquor store where I remembered being last, I kept one-third of my attention on the sidewalk and another third on the sensation of my fingers scrambling through my bag, and then another third on my thoughts, which were of where my laminate might be. It was not so much that my picture could be lying in a puddle that bothered me, but what the person who found it would do when they picked it up, whomsoever they may have been. What would I do if I found someone else’s nametag? I wondered. Nothing. I would look to see where it came from, and make plans to return it; a laminate with a name and photo—personal as it is—is not an incredibly useful thing to the person it does not belong to. Then I imagined that each person I walked past was the one who had picked it up, and they saw me, but did not think to see if it was really me on the picture in their hand. If they walked by, I wanted to tell that person that it really was me, but I had no way of knowing who they were.
And then without preface or warning, the biggest change, the change that put the other changes into effect, happened. It was like what one might feel should all the bees in the world swarm within one or two inches of your ears, but only a hundred or so actually touch your skin. I think I went insane instantly. It was very loud, as you can envision. I began screaming and shaking my head, and trying to plug my ears up and then slapping at them, but it was all to no avail. As the few terrified faces ran up to my aid, I looked to them inquiringly; I suppose in hope that they heard it too.
“Can you hear them?” I screamed, “Can’t you hear them?” And I soon learned, from their shaking heads and wordless mouthings, that they couldn’t. The ambulance came quickly, and the emergency technicians drugged me heavily upon arrival. I can only guess this was due to my thrashing about without restraint of any sort, but I don’t remember that part so clearly.
I awoke in a hospital bed, and immediately began screaming again. When I say I screamed, I must make it clear that my only sensation of screaming was the harsh grating upon my throat, as I could not hear myself for the sound. Several nurses appeared and held down my arms and legs while one of them injected me until I stopped hyperventilating.
This next moment was an essential one, for it was the one wherein I began to accept what I call my unique pharmacon. A pharmacon, if you do not know, is anything that has the power to both poison and heal. As I lay there, supine and restrained, I tried to find the stillness of mind familiar to me throughout my entire life. The sound was there, and it was the most horrifying experience of noise I had ever heard. It was raspy, multitudinous, and I could make out language, but not specific words.
I tried for the first time to recall things outside of sound, memories separate from the thrall of incessant cacophony to which I found myself ineffably subjected. Really, it was beautiful, for I realized for the first time that memories keep their peace, and the memories I conjured at that particular moment were of paintings. One of Picasso’s Sleeping Women, to be exact, the one of Marie-Therese in lavender and light yellow, with green and red in the background and a milky black outline of her features. Granted, this first effort was not entirely successful upon the affect of calm, but it was the first inkling of what would eventually save my life.
They had me in the psychiatric ward before Joe even knew where I was. When he came I was still drugged up, as I would be for the next three months of my stay. But it was Joe who suggested that I write instead of trying to talk—every time I talked, I shouted, the same way someone with headphones on is unaware of how loud they’re speaking. This quickly led to the loss of my voice anyway. He handed me a napkin and a pen, and it took a long time, but I was able to focus myself enough after an hour to complete the sentence: Get me out of here 4 I am not crazy. I could see him laugh once he saw what I wanted to say—out of amusement if not utter fatigue, or both. Concentrating on the number 4 was difficult, but kind of a challenge I put to myself. No matter what changes, I seem to be stubborn.
The three first weeks were the worst, as they are with anything that appears to be frightfully endless. Nighttime scared the daylights out of me; whenever I was alone for that matter. At the beginning I wanted them to drug me to death, or just kill me by accident. Joe brought a notebook and kept emphasizing to me on paper that, despite his efforts, they were not assured that I could control myself. From knowing him, I could tell that he was not assured either in spite of his best wishes. Most of all, I was not sure.
How can you control yourself if you are incapable of understanding what is happening to you? The sound proved itself to be able to bring out everything that had been previously wrong with me emotionally, and most everyone the doctors interviewed, if they were honest, had to admit that a little time in the psych ward might have done me good anyway, sound or no sound. Nobody could extract me from there no matter what they attested to.
Neurologically speaking, I was in tip-top shape. There wasn’t a blood test, CAT scan or MRI they ran on me without acknowledging my sound physical condition. My “illness” was by no means fatal, if maddening. I was allowed supervised access to the hospital gymnasium so my muscles wouldn’t atrophy—nobody could tell how long I’d be in for. I am convinced that all those blotchy screens of my apparent brain are nothing but video games for scientists. No, I was fine, just fine, every screen said so.
In the position I was in—trying to understand what had changed when I could and drugged beyond cognizance when I couldn’t—I meditated a great deal. I had to do it when I wasn’t hooked up to some neurological apparatus, mind you, because I knew if they saw the smallest bleep on the tube, they’d find some interesting excuse to keep me. Certain doctors are always looking for guinea pigs to experiment on, and the general public is usually willing to turn a blind eye on creatures like me, letting us be locked away and ineffectual, lest we reveal the truth in whatever way we can.
In my meditations, I would do the painting visualizations and also call up silent memories that soothed me. I would think about anything still and serene, like the moon. I would think about the moon each night of the earth’s rotation, and I would study its waxing and waning in my mind. I considered the burning temporality of our star, the sun. I thought about how the earth was burning, too, and had my musings on humanity. I laughed inwardly, and gradually learned how to feel my own laughter within the sound.
Hearing my own voice within the sound provided me with, after strenuous effort, an axis of reference. Having spent much of my life as a rather distractible person who could be centered when she wanted to, I had to center myself more distinctly than ever to make any kind of progress. However, this centering was not about control; let me tell you, I could not control the sound, nor, after a time, did I even attempt to. Even when I say I heard my own voice, it was not like hearing talk—it was more like the metaphysical sensation of imaginative thought and other such abstracts. Once I could narrow in on that, I felt less afraid of all the other noises, even more empathetic to them. In the second month, I was far enough along with my meditations to hear the sound and almost want to listen to it. I began to distinguish a difference between white noise and voices. There were sounds I identified as water, which was relatively easy to denote, and, for example, a sound like my mother’s, though I was not yet able to detect words.
The drugs they were giving me would get in the way of the meditations, though. I was getting better at working mentally while I was awake, but then, come 8pm, the drugs were administered and I was vegetative. I had known that this would happen. Psych wards draw a hazy line between help and hurt, and the people in charge are not always in agreement in their aims.
It was Joe who gave the ultimate testimony, with the aid of his family who promised to sue on a human rights infringement. My family would’ve helped, but only my parents claimed me, and they took to arms as best they could, albeit with less political clout.
“Joe,” I wrote one day, “It is time for me to leave here. I know to what I am listening.”
As soon as I told him, he knew captivity could do no more for my state.

SLEEP

Yes she is still here in all her naked fullness. She must of thought of leaving during the night, fleeing like a bat from a dark cave to greet the moon light in search of fruits, although her fleeing from my domestic cavern under the bursting watery moon would not be for nourishments, but for sanctuary. She is still here! Why, look at her, peacefully asleep like a kitten dozing off while suckling- no something more pure; she reminds me of a cub tucked underneath her mother's warm belly. As I look upon her now, I wish I could penetrate her dreams and make love to her the way I should of a few hours before. How can she still be here, after experiencing my nightmare? I know I had one due to the blood on my pillow, the scratches I can feel on my face, the soreness of my throat, and the skin underneath my nails. My nightmares are more frightening for the listener than I the dreamer. How courageous she is, she is the exemplary example of womanhood and strength. Wait! How cruel she is! Why didn't she awaken me from my torment? How malicious be the smiling woman who hovers over thy man as he is having a ghastly dream.

Perhaps she is a deaf sleeper. No, this is not possible; my kicks and punches a paraplegic can feel, and her body is soft like tissue, not very romantic I know, surely you must conclude I am no poet indeed I am not. I am a technical man, a practical man with impractical horrid dreams. With help from the moonlight, I can see dark bruises on her calfs, indeed from my lead foot, I can also make out purple reddish bruises on her arms, indeed from my iron fists. I also notice scratches on her long swan neck. Damn, the skin under my nails belong to her neck. Why didn't she run? Why didn't she awaken me? Why? Why? Why?

She moves now, I shut my eyes and pretend I am asleep, peacefully. Forty pumps from my heart go by, and I hear her eyes open, I feel her staring at the ceiling, I hear her pick up the glass of wine on the nightstand, I hear her gurgling the liquid, it sounds like a mating call. I listen to her swallow, gently, the way only a woman can, I hear her hovering over me, her breath smells like Merlot and tears, I can feel her staring at me. Is she trying to penetrate my dream? {I am no longer dreaming my love; I am watching you with my eyes closed. Yes, my ears are observing you.} I hear her rise from my bed and enter the bathroom, I hear her peeing, I hear her footfall returning to my bed, I hear her pick up the glass of wine, gurgle and swallow, I hear her red hair spread over the green pillow case.

I scream! My voice cracks like a record underneath a rustic needle, my lead foots penetrates her calf tissue, however she refuses to yell out in pain! I start my convulsion, I kick my legs, I fist the air, and I grunt her name. She must awaken me now! SHE MUST! Under my screams and chest pounds, I start to hear a soft moan almost subsonic. I thrash my head from side to side as a diversion to peep at her. She has begun to masturbate, she is touching her breast. I scream louder in order to block out her low orgasm. How cruel be the woman who refuses to awaken thy man from his nightmare. I hear her turn towards me; I hear her eye lids shut over her pupils. I continue to scream and punch and scratch at her. She is snoring now, silently, the way only a woman can. I cry myself to sleep, the way only a man can.

Her perfume awakens me. I sit up, my back against the headboard. She says nothing, she is already dressed and looking splendid in the sunlight creeping into my room like a thief. She is capping her pink perfume bottle and is now applying foundation over her neck and face to cover up the dream beating. She blows me a kiss and walks out my apartment. I jump out of bed and run to the window. I watch her enter her car and drive off. Who was she? No, who is she?! I search my pants, not for my wallet, but for her number, name or something. No number, no name, only my leather wallet, I stumble into the bathroom look into the mirror, my face looks odd, my naked body belongs to somebody else. I lift up the toilet lid, and look down; there it was her name in red lipstick around the seat. Natalie, followed by seven numbers, and written in black mascara, I AM IN LOVE.

The Miniest Skirt


On the first day of school, Mitomu stands alone outside the main gate. Momotani High's opening ceremony is going to start in twenty minutes, but Mitomu's mother has insisted that he catch the early train so as not to be late on this, the first day of his new life. The campus is silent. A lukewarm wind whistles through the wide-eyed cherry blossoms, making a barely audible pitter-patter above the empty parking lot. In twenty mintues, all of Mitomu's future classmates will assemble in the gym and, in the same manner as his junior high school (elementary school before that), undergo the same laborious and meaningless ritual of commencement that has been led at schools for perhaps as long as the cherry blossoms have bloomed. Two boys turn the corner around the gate. The one talks to the other with a self-conscious smile on his face, as if it were any other day other than the first. Mitomu doesn't move and tries to blend in with the bushes he is standing next to.

"You are an idiot, Takeru! What the hell are you talking about!?"

"Well, I dunno. You saw them too!"

"I never said that! You're such a liar!"

The conversation goes on even as they pass Mitomu and enter the gym. What a strange conversation! Why do kids always elaborate a very small occurence, making it sound as if it is some hot topic of debate that others are intrigued about? Is it a precocious budding of an adult's worst 'sixth sense,' that is, a pubescent vanity that masks itself early on as sheer curiosity and engaged wonder about something that concerns everyone? No. At the end of the conversation, the Takerus will always assert their incredible fantasies and there will be someone there to believe him, or at least pretend to. This saddens Mitomu. Already he has begun to judge his world, has extracted the paradoxes from the pure truth. He sighs and walks toward the gym, a few small whitish pink petals falling soundlessly onto his uniform and the dry pavement of the parking lot.

"...This year all of you will enter a new part of your life. It is the budding stage, when, like the cherry blossoms you see today around the school grounds, life begins to bloom—a first and irreplacable experience of opening of your eyes to the world around you...Though these three years will most likely pass before you like the petals that shower the earth after a cursory week or two, it is necessary to make the best of things...Your time here at Momotani High is precious, so I wish you the best of luck in the next three years..."

Mitomu dozed off, catching small fragments of the principal's robust encouragement and exhaustively redundant platitudes. The three hundred or so kids in his freshman class sat motionlessly in their chairs, heads propped downwards in a respectful way so as to sleep without being noticed. Some of the teachers followed suit. A few finches chirped outside in the the dark branches of the cherry trees.

*

By the first of April, Mitomu had already befriended a few of the more outgoing boys in 1-F class. Kenta, a talented, but sensitive and jejune comedian of many moods, was the first friend Mitomu had. There is something about this first contact that one must remember—as if all the stories that one has read about the immemorial adventures of childhood cronies is an inevitable fact of life, in any place or time. Mitomu was surprised to befriend Kenta. He felt as if the most random occurence such as being assigned neighboring desks for the first month of school was evidence that they were connected by some relation of another world. In the first few weeks of Mitomu and Kenta's freshman year, there was that selfless bliss coursing through these endless hours—an uncalculated, unexamined, once in a lifetime shower of light and beauty that unmixed, youthful devotion sheds like petals from a mature bud.

"Kenta, did you get what Mr. Kimura was saying today about biishiki?"

"No, man. I can't follow his class at all. It's as if he wants us all to become bushi and live in a past that is dead."

Mitomu ignored Kenta's comments, "It has to do with being conscious of the beautiful—that it is satisfying, upon the moment one has attained happiness, to celebrate its passing away? He called it "emotional aestheticism" didn't he? To live a brief, intense life of beauty and then disappear—like the cherry blossoms."

"Well, shit Mito!—"

The chime rang signaling the end of lunch. The next class was calligraphy, upstairs on the third floor. It was an elective class that Mitomu had chosen out of his muted attraction to things that seemed old and elegant. He didn't read manga and or play video games like Kenta or his other friends. But during this period, Kenta went off to music class while Mitomu climbed the stairs to the ink-smelling classroom.

*

As Mayama sensei explained the day's assignment, Mitomu faded off as usual. There were times when he would listen with such clarity that he felt as if his teacher were speaking to him directly and no other student present in the room. However, often the teacher's voice would dissolve as well, leaving Mitomu to float on by himself, suspended on a cloud of weightless figures, dreams, and abstractions. Sometimes it was the dirty golden side of the hills across the river, which one could see from the classroom, to which Mitomu floated. He could imagine what was out there, past the city—maybe some wild animals, the cold wind, a few pieces of trash, silence. This didn't ever deter him from idealizing, though. From his seat in the classroom, anything distant resembled that which he wanted. The hills, the sky, the isolation from the school grounds, the city, the people. He would usually come back to class right when it was time to work on their calligraphy.

Today's characters were reasonably simple. As he drew them out, slowly, coaxing each line to move out of the brush and not from his unsteady fingers, Mitomu appeared to forget his prior thoughts. He even was pleased with something that he was making. An inexplicably honorable feeling. When finished, the words dried on the thin paper, the ink puddles hardening like a face ossified by Medussa's glare— ****, or A cloud moving through the sky, a river flowing over land.

"Wow! Mitomu, you're a natural! How do you make your characters look so beautiful and effortless?"

It wasn't the voice of Mayama sensei that spoke but a girl's voice. Aya was the cutest girl in the class, but also one of the shiest. She was friendly with everyone, but never outgoing. She paid attention in class, but never asked questions. Boys paid attention to her secretly, but never asked her out. She was also known among the boys in their surrepetitious lunchtime discussions as the girl with the miniest skirt.

"Huh...uh…it's not all that good, is it?? I just wrote it now. It's nothing compared to Mayama sensei's calligraphy. " Mitomu was always nervous, but in this rare moment of conversation with Aya, his anxiety gripped him stiffly and he too turned to stone.

*

On the first day of the rainy season, Mitomu heard the heavy sound of water rushing in torrents against the thin walls of his house. The alarm clock squinted at him through the glowing green numbers of his infallible wake up time—5:00. He walked lazily to the shower, dried his thin, virtually hairless body with the thought running through his mind that he would be drenched again on the way to school. There would be no chance of drying off in class either since the damp classroom was filled the entire day with a sour smell of teenage bodies, a veritable greenhouse dripping wet with the humidity of pubescence for five class periods. He checked his cell phone, which had no messages, and his thoughts weighing heavily on him, he went out to bike his way through the morning storm.

Kenta and Mitomu gradually grew further apart with the passing of each week. Kenta had tennis practice every day after school, while Mitomu either went to calligraphy club or straight home. Mitomu noticed a certain listless, awkwardly banal tincture coloring their daily interaction. They talked about television shows, teachers, homework, or what Ryosuke had done in gym class when they were out on the school grounds playing soccer and none of the gym teachers were looking. It was like every lunchtime discussion that all groups of boys took part in at every school—the same perfunctory reporting of what someone did, not out of interest, importance, or even phatic communion. They were two empty vessels letting the daily chain of recurrent events goad them along like a golden butterfly on a string. The boys were lions, chasing this butterfly throughout their youth, dancing in strange, erratic motions; blindly trying to bite off what they had thought was real, but always managed to bite into their lips with their constant missing of the point. Mitomu in fact had for some time started looking elsewhere for the golden butterfly, the jewel that shined somewhere, an unexposed apparition of an oncoming joy.

He first noticed Kenta’s diffidence and nervousness after starting to date Aya. He had asked her in mid-April to go see the sakura in the park around the castle. He was occupied with how to ask her out for about a week and a half, a period of equivocation over the course of which the petals had already begun to cascade away on breezy afternoons, like blurry-white snow drifts. He no longer wished to bother with Kenta’s grinning, tiring face. Why did I become his friend? he thought. Something in Kenta had changed so suddenly, and the effects of this change sank in and spread to produce a chain of myriad effects, like water into the dark soil. After Aya first talked to him in calligraphy class on that cool, thoughtless afternoon, Mitomu had flown away from his prior feelings, his prior sense of security. He stared out the window during class with increasing frequency, sometimes missing entire lessons. Yes, to sit and see lucid visions on the horizon, the clear blue sky and the warming of the season. Mitomu confessed to himself that he was all right with spacing out in class. It was an ineluctable indulgence, a sanctimonious answer to the invitation of new life.

*

There are a few days in spring when the sakura are in full bloom. The blossoms unfurl completely, their colors beautiful and taut like ink on a scroll. Thousands of branches waver and bend with the weight of so many flowers, silent in the warmth of the sun. Mitomu had too much to take in on those first couple of days. After they had been talking for a few days after school, at lunch, and even in the morning, Mitomu could not listen to the monotone lectures of his various teachers, who all seemed to teach the same subject ad infinitum. He formed the characters in calligraphy class as if he were touching that thing that seemed to call for him from across the river, somewhere beyond his present life.

On one of these immaculate days of early April, Aya turned slightly in her chair during calligraphy class and smiled at Mitomu, the smooth white of her thigh uncovered a hair’s breadth away from showing her panties beneath the clean, navy blue skirt. The delicate skin blushed rosily on both her face and leg. Mitomu watched the soft and steady reddening of her young, shapely leg towards where her skirt cut off his view, the color deepening from her white ankles to her pink thigh. The rays of sunlight cut through the window like curved prisms emanating from a diamond. Mitomu felt unbearably stiff inside his tight-fitting uniform pants. His fingers trembled as he held the brush, the ink spreading on the paper like blood through the skin.

When Mitomu first kissed Aya, they had already walked through the park for what seemed like a whole day. It’s funny how the duration of a singularly significant moment alters the texture of time, a quality distinct from and yet immanent among the uncountable procession of trivial moments that pass like sheep in a herd. The castle grounds were filled with families enjoying picnic lunches underneath the radiant canopy of sakura. The flowers looked like eyes looking back upon the viewers. Mitomu held Aya’s hand after a little bit, timidly pressing his soft fingers on the back of hers. Occasionally the back of his hand would graze her skirt, intimating the unruffled contour of Aya’s soft leg beneath it.

“The flowers are so pretty today,” observed Aya, obliviously stating the obvious. “Maybe we can walk up to the top of the castle.”

“Sure.” Mitomu was eloquent today.

At the top of the castle, they could see the city in which they lived. The sunlight broke out over the hills and the river and amorphous urban sprawl like the ocean cradling the shore on a calm, windless day.

“The city is certainly not beautiful,” said Mitomu, “but somehow today it is nice to see it all with you. It looks whole right now, like a picture in a frame. ”

“Maybe it’s just the season,” Aya answered.

“It could be, but I don’t like thinking like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know, stepping back from the moment and looking at time as a thing, a place. I don’t like thinking that this is just a moment.”

“Yeah. But how else would you like to think?”

“I don’t know, maybe just appreciating life—its beauty and suffering— without talking about it. I know I brought it up and all, but talking about the only constant in our lives, change, makes everything seem a bit pointless. I need a point, a star, to move under. Whether or not that star always changes, I think I am too young to know. Maybe when we sleep it is replaced by something else, each day we follow a new voice, and the frame changes its shape on the same picture.”

“Or maybe you should just stop spacing out in class all the time.”

“What are you talking about?” Mitomu blushed, his cheeks glowing like a candle in the daylight. Aya punched his arm lightly, the touch feeling more like an affectionate caress than a blow. They watched the sky turning brighter each minute, shading their eyes with their hands to scope out their homes, their school, the places they knew so well they could seem them even if it was utterly dark. Later that morning, they walked around through the groves and talked about all sorts of things which they were really interested in—calligraphy, books, songs they liked, places to eat good omelets, their dreams and fears, and this gave Mitomu a beatific feeling, as if walking on clouds.

At noon, the two kissed under the sakura.

*

When I began this story, it was that time in mid-May when the rain surges down on the rice paddies all night long. The frogs’ intoning croaks droned as ceaselessly as the beads of sweat ran down my neck, lying stark awake at night. For some reason I sat up and remembered the spring when I was young. I remember the foretelling of summer in these sounds. The high school baseball tournaments we used to watch in the local yakisoba shop near Momotani High, the fireworks shows on the marina, going to see the fireflies down in the gullies of the Kishi River. These memories flood my mind, a field inundated by the past at every moment, full and satiated by it, but receiving more of it every day.

There is a myth in this land that claims fireflies to be the souls of the dead coming back to the earth. That first year in high school, when Aya and I went to see them at the Kishi River, we would catch them in our hands, watch the space between our fingers glowing with an incandescent yellowish green, and sometimes I would think to myself against my will, Aya and I will too become little flecks of light hovering out in the darkness. Whose hands will hold us? As I looked at her smile that night, wide-eyed in innocent, enchanted wonder, I tried to frame our time together, make it into a thing that would be a joy forever.

I went to bed today realizing how many flocks of sheep I’ve indifferently watched go past me, as though that were the reason for being—to watch them go and count them if I wanted (though it was not necessary). When I think back on my principal’s speech, about a new part of life opening out, I cannot help but think that he was not only right, but that he was unbearably troubled at being the one responsible to give that address. It was the same feeling that one has when consoling a friend who has lost a loved one. He knew this sleepless moment all too well, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not translate it to us kids, us with our new language, new time, new life.

In the course of years, I have lost people—whether it is just falling out of contact with them, irrevocable differences of opinion, irretrievable chance encounters, or the undertow that pulls us all back to the other side of the river. Now, looking out the window at the silvery blue streams of rain hitting the ground with the force of a troupe of samba drummers, ripping through the air with ferociousness and limitless grace, thinking of those moments of light, peace, and everlasting joy—that is, the touch of Aya’s hand, her eyes reflecting the glow of fireflies, her tender, perfect way of kissing, even her delicate way of punching me or carefully crossing her legs in the short uniform skirt she wore— I wipe the sweat off my brow tonight a countless time and sink into a cool, deep sleep, dreaming of a brilliantly gold butterfly.