In Which Wind Stands in for Wind

01/30/2008 6:33 AM – 7:02 AM

The wind is passing through with gusto. Where must it needs go at such pace? Thick diction without cause. The house sways in its progress and shakes in its regress attempting to find its place of precarious balance, putting off collapse until it is inevitable. Many years from now, I would hope.

The cold flows round my room marking a circuit traced by cigarette smoke. It always does when the wind rises up from the south and flings its way across the city to the north. It is strange to imagine that the south brings the chill, but standing up, above the city, one watches it whirl and knows that it comes no more from the south than it does the dirt beneath. Too much Shakespeare, too much. Without being Shakespeare as small consolation to the readers. But the mystery of unknowing the bottomless is too tempting to forego. Pining for nothing and that should not be. One should always pine for something. It connects you to the work and lets the cold file by without remark save muttering, “it’s cold,” and wrapping the blanket tighter round. A man that doesn’t seek adventure is just a corpse that seeks its hole. Pine for something.

The thing is what it is, not symbol of another. The wind is the wind. The cold is the cold. The waning dark, the waxing light, just dark and light. Ahh, too much thought spent on mysteries of mysteries, not enough on base nature, which while subject to moths and rust and thieves, is there. You cannot know it, but neither can you poke your finger through it like so many tattered aphorisms. Perhaps that is the start of Wisdom, when you seek to turn your back on it, citing that “it prophets me nothing.” But then, what makes gold gold, if not the abstracting eyesight of Wisdom? But then, rebutting, gold is just gold. It’s the ridiculous valuing of scarcity that prizes gold above a cabin stocked with food and wood and books. Sour grapes, old man, sour grapes. The Boy from Denmark’s tragedy was not one of indecision, nor thinking too much, but thinking over well. So. Does one emulate the Prince or the Counselor of Aphorisms? Both die, you see, and Ophelia, poor Ophelia, loved them both. She dies too. Only Horatio and that fool with a sword that commanded men to death for an egg-shell survive. The straight-man or the asshole? Neither. The play’s not over yet. We still have several acts in which to whoosh about the stage, signifying nothing but ourselves as wind. “More life,” says Harold Bloom, “more life into a time without boundaries.”

Jack the Bastard, a Short Heterodoxy

After Jesus the Christ, Jack the Bastard was God’s favorite son. This, you can no doubt imagine, caused the angels a great deal of consternation, because everything that God had promised and lauded through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus was mocked and flouted by the immortal life of Jack.

“When the universe goes, so goes Jack,” said God, “the Deeper Magic will not be broken.” “But, “said the angels, “in the meantime he’s fucking everything up for the Little Lowers.” “The Little Lowers,” said God, “could stand some good fucking up. My only begotten son paid everyone’s fare. They’re all on the train whether they will it or no. My misbegotten son shouldn’t needs be shamed for picking their pockets while they ride.” Jesus, for his part, was mum on the issue. Eternity was large and the inheritance of the good son. The prodigal could spend his portion as he wished.

The debate raged on in the antechamber of eternity as they all sat waiting dressed in their finest for the trumpet to blow and the train to approach and the bride to arrive. God would often turn to his oldest and dearest friend for support. “Lou,” he’d say, “have you considered my bastard, Jack?” “You know,” said Lou, “it’s confusing when you call him that. It makes you appear the irrepressible philanderer instead of the prudish old hermit that you are.” “Yes,” said God with a distracted smile, “he rather does cast me in a whole new light.” Lou would sigh then. “You always do seem to miss the point,” he’d say. The other angels were always rather offended by God’s doting on Lou. It was as if he’d never been the horrible asshole that he had been. Jesus, always the mediator, would take them aside and remind them in his firm and quiet way, “all is forgiven; all is forgiven; all is forgiven.” They were quite chastened by this, because if Jesus could forgive Lou, anybody could. Jack, however, they felt free to argue about. He had no place in this cosmic scheme of freedom and redemption. He required neither permission nor forgiveness, and the exact nature of his will God refused to divulge. “It’s because even he doesn’t know,” Lou would say. This would set the angels all atwitter, but God would just laugh and clap Lou on the back. “Ha! You ol’ son of bitch,” God would say, “you ol’ son of a bitch!” “Which casts certain suspect assertions onto you,” Lou would retort. And this would just make God laugh harder.

It was a long time that they waited in the antechamber, and sometimes they would wander over to the gate to have a smoke and peek up over the top to watch the reception in the courtyard. Everyone found it unsettling except for God, Jesus and HG. They being the only ones that had any experience at three-in-one. It was especially unsettling if, as they turned to toss their butts into the street, they happened to see themselves approaching on the train. “Don’t worry about it,” said God, “you’ll get the hang of it at the wedding.” Though no one doubted him, they all agreed that it was pretty fucked up.

There was a rumor that circulated among the guests that since Jack and HG had never been seen to appear in the same place at the same time, they were actually the same person, like Clark Kent and Superman. No one really believed it, reasoning that coincidence was the better explanation, but it was something to talk about that passed the time. When asked about it, HG said, “All of eternity is but one day. We in the morning mourn for the night before that never was. In the afternoon, we will wait through the dry heat for the bride to arrive. In the evening, we celebrate the wedding, forgetting the night that will never come.” Everyone had a good laugh at that, and even somber old HG had to admit that it was a pronouncement that better suited the conditions of the cramped train than the airy antechamber. When he was asked, Jack the Bastard just laughed, but then Jack was always laughing anyway. It was why, after Jesus, God loved him best.

Which Is a Bad Poem Entitled: “For the Seduction of the Forgetting Girl on Earth-619”

It's been so long since I've tried to write a poem, that I was like, what the hell... why not? And now I dump it off on you:

“For the Seduction of the Forgetting Girl on Earth-619”

Come to me my lovely freak of angles, bones and sighs.

My unplanned room awaits your sounding breaths.

This here. This there. Tantamount to compromise.

Like hell I’d have any of that.

Come only as you are stripped free of politics.

We here truck only with the Lord sans choir.

When you enter, leave sound judgment at the door. Wear green.

I’ll tell thin lies to compliment.

Come down the street through rough whetted snow.

Follow the course of the 20 bus, outbound.

We are not prisoners here. It’s just that the letters still hold.

Evidently, I’m self-seduced.

Come take me up, away the night to the damn forgetting place.

The word that sits above the brow is thick with intransigence.

Arrive, dear spider on rooftop winds. Knit a Mobius of palm lines.

I swear to let your mutant power consume me in the morning.

On A Sunday

01/06/2008 9:24 AM – 9:53 AM

And here then, we are where we set out to be. Odd. I didn’t think that this is where I intended. But here I am and I was moving with intent. The gray skies and leafless trees remind me of Addison which becomes more symbol and clump in the gut than actual place. I have no doubt that if I were flying over it in a helicopter at the height of summer the place would look made in dreams or Photoshop.

Perhaps now I can write for its own sake, but, no, there is too much laziness in me for that. I can write to note that I was here at this place at this time, to prove that I was indeed alive and not a phantom conjured by my mind to give my life a sense of continuity. And so, dear Spike, on this date, at this time, you were indeed alive in Buffalo, NY under gray but not particularly morose skies. You woke up and read in your couch for an hour, considered going to church but didn’t, sat in your chair at your desk, decided that opera best suited your mood and then typed, distracted occasionally by the neon colors that the runners wore.

You thought a bit about death, but it didn’t really bother you, nor surprisingly, did it particularly weary you. It sat in your mind like a smooth pebble on a beach, one amongst many. Your thoughts are mostly of what you will do in the spring, when the lease is up and its time to move. There is a chance you’ll actually have enough saved up to go somewhere else. Mum’s vote is to move out of the city but stay in the area at your job. She has a point. Ben’s vote I’m not quite sure on, but he thinks you should at least hike the FLT. You probably should. But for how long, I’m not sure. And where, oh Spike, do you think you should go? Well, dear Spike, I’m sure I don’t know. I have had enough of city life to inform me for a long while yet, but country jobs are few and far between. It is a question with a slight tension but no real worry as yet. Perhaps there is enough tension for you to actually save money, but not enough to get worried and spend money on beautifully transient and unhealthy thing so as to forget that you’re worried. That would be nice. Somehow, one must find that place between fear and laziness where satisfaction resides. To be Falstaff but with whit to change course if the course needs changing. My. That was a pretty girl that ran by. I must get one of them someday. That then will be a thing to reside within for a summer or two. On with it then, thou dirty old man, there are books to be writ and houses to build and hours and hours of fine idleness to be thoroughly savored and forgot.