北京麻雀 (Sparrows of Beijing)
西 New York 2012 - 2
5
A Pause
Of a paucity pace in peace.
This side is still blank.
6
New Haven, CT
2012
While spinning around in his car - a two-seater, with very little room in the back – looking for a place to park it, he wondered yet again how he was in this place at this particular time. It was not as if he wanted to start over again with her. But clearly there were other factors in play, and what he wished for was obviously not important to whatever God – or Goddess – was in charge here. It was a point that he would wonder upon in days gone by and wondered what the message was. What was clear, was that she had her pulse on the situation. He thought that some months ago his hanging up the phone would be the end of things. So, yes, he hung up the phone, but other forces were at work – largely driven by her obsessive need to be with him. He looked outside, to the mowing of the grass, with straw yellow-bing churned out of the blended axe of the machine it chunks. All the yellow flowers going to black, save a few bits of grass waning a hole, which held a secret. Dusty but clear road would hold it.
Finally, he found a place to park the car, slid it into place, and got out. It was not quite dark, but the sun no longer was shown. It too was that in-between time, where nightfall had not yet enclosed all, but the day had passed into memory. If one looked out it was a very small city. There was a train station, and a few tall - for a small city – skyscrapers. Nothing like New York mind you, not even like Boston or San Francisco, perhaps like Cincinnati, or other small cities. It then evaporated in two the bricks and mortar of a small city – three or four stories each. And one could tell this by a glance, unlike large cities which would go on for a number of blocks. This was the difference between New Haven and New York, one could fit a dozen or more New Havens in the space of just Manhattan, left alone by other boroughs of New York. New Haven was built around a single large employer – and various subsidiary companies which supplied the workers with things such as lunch, or clothing. It was also of a piece of time – in this case, the 1960s, where everything was angular and having a certain rhythm that curved in on itself. This too was different from a large city, where different eras collided with each other with gay abandon. Gleamed in supernatural ecstasy.1
But what he was here for, was her. She had sent him an email, saying that she would be in New Haven – largely implying that she was going to do business at her company’s site there. He did not know what it was about, and he rather suspected that it did not need to be done. To put a fine point on it, he was the real reason that she was there. It is shown in his eyes.2
Of course, it disturbed him, even as he ran through what limited traffic there was. He did not know what to expect, but he felt a certain appliance. He did not want to be with her, but he did not want to disappoint her either. It is one thing to hang up the phone long distance to China, it is another thing to stare her in the face and tell her that she is not wanted. It was crass.
He moved on to the side of the block where he was to meet her and did not exactly know what he would do once he stood there. And then she was in view, with a pantsuit which was of two shades of beige – it had a little bit of Chinese to it, because one was a tan beige, while the other one was thicker and luminous white. It looked a little bit like grasscloth – but only a little bit. She was standing on the corner looking concerned and worried. Her brows were clenched up, and her cheeks were gaunt. Not in real life, or imagine, had he seen her like this. Not in dreaming or illusion had she been as worried as she was. Midnight in China.
There was nothing that popped into his mind to start a conversation, normally he fended off her questions – which actually was quite useful in getting her to start talking about whatever it is she wanted to talk about. But on this particular occasion, he did not know what to say because her face was a complete mess and he wanted to know why, what had made her face look as it did. So, his mouth was slightly open, but no words had come out yet. And it did not seem like she was going to fill in the gaps, and thus he stared for a long time.
Finally, she uttered: “You do not know how long I have waited for you to say the magic word.”
“What word is that?”
“Do not you know?”
“I do not like a question in response to a question. Why do not you tell me?”
“It is love; I find it so strange that that word is in your vocabulary. It is like it was erased, and vanished without a clue. Why is that? It is such a hasty word to be blotted out so.3”
“In my head, I can speak the word, but it does not come out when I speak it.” He remembered a long time ago when he wanted to say this but could not enunciate the word. It stuck in his throat, like a frog, trying to be said, though he did not remember how much he had wanted it said, perhaps it was just a hallucination – that he did not really mean it the way she did, or the way he thought he remembered wanting to pronounce it. But in his memory, he wanted it to come out of his lips. Mein leibling.
“Do not you mean it? Or is it some concept which you know, but do not share with anyone that you have met, including me?” She was now angry, as opposed to concerned. He did not know what to do, but obviously, he needed to say something.
“I have tried but failed in the effort of turning it from thoughts to words.” And in this instance, he meant what he said, whereas often he did not really mean it. He had more than a few times where he wanted to trick whatever woman he was talking to, that he really loved her – when in fact he did not. But now, while he did not love her at this particular moment, he had loved her in the past – though he did not realize it at the time. C'est la guerre, l’accident.
“Why can you not say what is obvious, unless your hesitation means something.” her face changed to worry that she was speaking to someone who did not realize what he was saying. It seemed crazy to her, almost discombobulated. I see that dust cloud disappear without a trace.4
“I can talk about novels, and sports, and economics, and any number of things. But reaching down into my heart is another matter entirely. It is easy to talk about what the richest rich want - they think that they can no longer afford the poor.” He tried to look concerned, or at least worried but somehow it did not show on his face in the least - instead, his face showed no emotion at all. Then it struck him that her concern might be valid after all – he considered the fact that he was an automatic man, with only the illusion of feelings though there was no sense behind the feelings that he tried to convey. There was a tinge of Mark Twain, in this state where he died – rating such things as a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. And in this space, she replied to him:
“It does.” As if she were a character in a book that Twain had written by accident.
He wanted to ask Where do we go from here?5
7
A Prose Poem
There that comes I bang my drum, that drum there is a thrums my thumb. With slowly beating now begun, on skin and wood I bang my drum. The western rim swallows the sun, we walk in file rum tum tum. O swallow, swallow, flying, flying south.6
A pair of lines, robbed in gawdy white, and carrying before them a cross made of wood walked along the dusty path to the aged mossy stones that overlooked the rolling hills marked by craggy boulders. Not far beyond a churning arm of the sea sloshed against the chunks of granite shore, sploshing, and dull roaring, but unable to swallow the one person who was walking out of the file: namely the youngest child of the departed. He had lain here all night, and then all day. They had come here for the last rights. The two older boys were waiting, having shot with muskets, or slashed with sabers any birds who had thought to rip a chunk from the laird of this barren patch of the rocky northern coast of Scotland.
One of the two was still bone thin, and a stretched-out boy in his face: hollow cheeks, and not a drop of fat upon him beyond enough to lubricate his movements. His brother, though only two years senior, looked a man, with a broader jaw, and black black hair that framed features that had rounded with some settling into his limbs on a dream.7 The music dance and sing.8
1 Ginsberg, “Howl” L. 26
2 Asia, “"Heat Of The Moment”
3 Tolkien, The Two Towers, Treebeard.
4 U2, “Where the Streets Have No Name”
5 Missing Persons, “Destination Unknown”
6 Tennyson, “The Princess” IV. L> 93
7 In the fine script, Ardelle Li quoted:
I sit
Alone today,
Watching as the grey men of politics
Order u another round of borscht
From the elder sellers of the fordotten brews
This is not warfare as they knew it,
Where interests’ rates
And some flummery with expected jobs reports will do the trick,
And this the slow boat to hell.
Oil has collapsed,
And all the money lies in that,
Or gossamer stand-ins for it.
We even live in palaces owned by banks.
Because every day
We go to work
On what the Americans call “gas”
From our fortresses of gloom.
So, this is another word where the obscenely rich
Fight it out
With their brothers
Not realizing
What decay live with the rot
Of spires to the sun.
8 Yes, “Roundabout”