My Downtown Year, Day One

June, 2000: Junior Prom

 

 

My god, the world is a different place at night.  Self-consciousness sets itself in motion.  It’s to the point where forecasting criticisms of future critics has become commonplace.  Every thought is filtered through its eventual perception by an audience of fans and critics, admirers and detractors.

 

And so does the machinery of the corporate world trickle down into personal applications.  We are the first wave of buyers who accelerate the market penetration of new products and ideas.  Our product is ourselves: the newer, better, cooler versions of ourselves.  (Note: As I lit my cigarette just now, I pulled the lighter from my cigarette and my cigarette from my face in an overly dramatic manner.)  (Note also: I smoke Camel Lights, as they offer the time-tested Camel brand name combined with the reduction in perceived-risk of a light cigarette.)

 

And so it is that our mirrors become proof-sheets for a photo shoot that hasn’t happened yet. (Note: I am currently wearing tight jeans with an interesting, but not overwhelming, wash.  To complement my jeans, I am wearing a Shins t-shirt.  I have donned a jaunty army cap for the occasion, complete with a small button advertising an up-and-coming local band that you have never heard of, yet are the best band in the history of music.)

 

That last paragraph was really only one sentence, with a three sentence parenthetical.  Strunk says perfunctorily (Does he ever say anything otherwise?), that parentheses are far too formal for conversational style (Strunk can be a real dick sometimes).How witty, how clever.  “He really is the voice of his generation.”  “Look at how he subverts grammar and structure to fit his ends.”  The point of knowing the rules is to be able to break them.

 

And so are we left with a grand design that has been implemented six billion times too often.  We have learned how to ride a bicycle so that we can invent a tricycle.  We “said no to drugs” so that we would do drugs in moderation.  “A wannabe H.S. Thomspon, and a second-rate one at that,” – Dapper Literary Critic, New York Times Book Review.  (Note: Dapper Literary Critic is a widely recognized dapper and literary sort of fellow who dislikes Susan Sonntag but who admires, if not the message, the style of On the Road.)

 

What a question: the drug question – the drug question that has itself become rhetorical and isn’t even asked anymore.  And so it has become a question punctuated with a period rather than a question mark.  It is a question in the same sense as the abortion question.  Abortion question period.  Rather than ask the question, we have decided just to ask the opposing parties to separate into distinct groups.  (Note: While I dislike the idea of aborting a potential life, I feel that it is the woman’s right to choose.  It is her body, after all.)

 

And so cohesion falls by the wayside.  Less than a page by my count, but judging by the general word-to-page ratio for books by “the author of his generation”, these words will probably fall on the second or third page of actual text.  What the true page numbers of those pages will be depends on whether this is the hardcover, pocket edition soft-cover, or the special edition featuring photographs from the new motion picture now being produced by Columbia Pictures.  We also would have to factor in any special “Anniversary” editions, which invariably include all sorts of forewords and “looks back” by various literary and social luminaries.

 

And so we come to the question of our generation; we do not come to that question directly mind you, but we come to it nonetheless.  To have an enemy, that would be something.  We erect figureheads of enemies, sure, but a figurehead is not the thing.  Our enemy is in fact faceless, or, more correctly, infinitely faced.  Masks of our enemy are not popular Halloween costumes.

 

And so we come to the question of how one goes about describing a faceless enemy.  Finally, a question with an answer!  The answer of course is no… or rather, do not.  Those that recognize the enemy do well not to reveal its identity.  I’ve probably said too much already.

 

“A work of pretentious, self-important, obtuse and inefficient metaphors for nothing.” – DLC.  (Note: Dapper Literary Critic has gone to using only his initials instead of his full name, so chic.)  god damn it, he is good, that Fucker.  You’ll all have to let me know if they capitalized that “god” there.  Those bastards, I bet they did.  By “those bastards”, I mean my editor.  She’s a very smart, imaginary, young girl.  She was brought on by the publishing company, also imaginary, and renowned for publishing very smart work, to help bring some focus and discipline to my writing.  (Note: My torrid affair with my imaginary editor will be the subject of a period film, illustrating how deeply a work of art can touch a person.)

 

(Note: the ashtray next to my keyboard is now full to the brim as I smoke incessantly while writing.)  (Note also: I write in the very late-night/early-morning hours as the friscillating light from the city streets leaks through a haze of cigarette smoke into my ironically-appointed downtown loft.)  I met a homeless man once, and he told me a funny story that made me laugh.  The story didn’t really have any meaning, but it’s a beautiful image isn’t it?  Me listening to this homeless man’s crazy story?  (Note: It’s far too late for me to still be awake, but it’s more important that I capture these ideas that are bouncing around like electrons in my head than to be well rested tomorrow.)

 

“Told in a series of disconnected vignettes…” – Dapper Literary Critic.  I see he dropped the initials thing.  Good for him, it came off as pretentious.  I heard he was doing too much blow during the “initials” phase of his critical career.  He’s been through rehab now though; I heard that going back to the full name was part of his leaving his past behind him.  You always have to return to the beginning to leave the past behind.  (Note: your shirt looks wrinkled, you should change it before you go out.  No, no, I don’t mean like artist/rugged wrinkled, it looks like it’s really been in the hamper for too long.)

 

Great pornography lets you jack-off without thinking about jacking-off.

 

 

2004

 

 

 

 

The Walk to Work

 

I'll take my Chevrolegs.

     I take my pack of cigarettes from my right pants-pocket, remove one from the pack and place it between my lips.  I close the paper flip-top lid and stuff the crumpling pack back in my right pants-pocket.  I take a red plastic lighter from my left pants-pocket and use it to light the cigarette between my lips.  I take my phone from my right sweater-pocket and check the time.  I have fifteen minutes to make it to work.  I usually give myself half-an-hour to make this walk.  I wonder if I can catch a cab closer to downtown.  Shit.  No money.  I walk faster.

     I drag on my cigarette and my stomach churns and gurgles echoes of a receding flu.  I reach the bridge into the financial district and flick my cigarette into the street.  It’s run over by a small gray Toyota, northbound.  The pressure of my backpack against my sweater against my t-shirt against my dermis heats the latter above its sweat threshold, and moisture gathers in the small of my back, in the hallows between my clavicles and deltoids under the straps of the backpack.  I stop on the bridge and take off my backpack.  I put it on the ground at the base of the suicide-fence and take off my sweater.  I open my backpack and put my sweater inside.  I zip the backpack closed.

     I touch the back of my right hand against my shirt, just above my hips.  I feel the sweat come through the once-worn white t-shirt.  I lift my left arm and see a small yellow oval against a field of white cotton, bound for growth.  I look through the green mesh of the suicide-fence at the freeway below, at the cars rushing across it.  Ceaseless.  I think about how I might survive the fall:

A panicked but alert motorist applies the brakes forcefully and leans hard on the wheel.  The car veers into the next lane and collides with another, and another, and another, piling up and flipping and crushing and tumbling and rear-ending into an automotive hurricane with me as the eye.  A nonplussed island in a sea of mangled metal.

     I shoulder my load and feel the cooled sweat set on my skin.   I start walking again.

     At First and Broadway, an old black man in a security guard’s uniform and cataract sunglasses is arguing with a crackhead in front of the Wendy’s.  They’re yelling, but I’m not close enough to hear what they’re saying.  The light changes and I cross Broadway towards them.

     “Fuck you!” the crackhead is yelling.  ”Fuckin’ sunabitch dirty mother fucker I should…”

     “I told you calm down nigger,” growls the old black man in the security guard’s uniform as I step onto the sidewalk and turn up Broadway.  He lifts his hand in a fist and puts it in the crackhead’s face.  It looks like he threw a punch that fell a foot short.  The crackhead stares at the fist, at the small metal can it holds.  The old man with the cataract sunglasses presses down on the top of the small metal can.  A spray like a squirt gun, or a sad seltzer bottle, streams silently into the crackhead’s face.  He stares defiantly at the old man, his eyes already blood shot.  I look at the old man’s cataract glasses and I look at the crackhead’s eyes, drifting, blind now.  He stumbles towards the corner, into a bank of newspaper machines.

     “Gawn now,” says the old man after him, retaking his post in front of the Wendy’s.

     My eyes start to itch and water so I move on up Broadway, towards Fourth, on my walk to work.

 

January 19, 2009

Change

what do you do when nothing comes out?

when the void gnaws and supernovas,

when your hunger is a black hole?

when you can’t see inside?

ulcerate, aggravate, stress, pressurize, strain, stretch, fire,  compress, lacerate, lance, drain.

stabilize.

repeat.

a transcontinental train made of ash driven by a steam engine,

routed o’er toothpick trestles: built on bond.

 

January 15, 2009

The Home Office, Pt. II

     I dream I am in Washington.  I’m in the Capitol, in the statuary hall.  I hear deep voices, but they echo so thickly I can’t make out the words.  The echoes multiply and the voices deepen to become a churning cacophony, gnawing at itself and spawning simultaneously.  The noise is insufferable: a tangible presence replacing the oxygen, a black adenoid swallowing elegant marble busts and intricate plaster moldings and, finally, my thoughts.  Endless dark.  And then bright white fluorescent light.  I am in the Capitol, in my office, in my black leather swivel chair, behind my oak desk.

     My wife appears in front of me.  Her hair radiates a crimson halo.  It is brighter than the day we swam in that azure cavern off Capri.  She is naked and her breasts are pert and firm and her pubic hair is that same candied red.  She comes towards me in silence, and I back the chair on its casters away from the desk.  She kneels between my feet, unzips my pants, pulls out my flaccid penis and puts her hands behind her back.  I take her by the hair and she opens her mouth.  Her lips are full and smooth and red and glossy.  I guide her mouth towards the tip of my penis, resting on the black wool of my suit pants.  As her tongue touches the glans, she looks up and smiles and her teeth are razor sharp and her face is old and spotted and warted.  Purple and crimson bruises ring her eyes, visible through her wax-paper skin.  She lunges forward, and I tug her hair against it.  She breaks free, swallowing my member.  Her hair comes out in my hands in dull matted clumps.  I wake up.

     I am cold.  My shirt is wet with cold sweat and sticks to my back.  I sit up and put my elbows on my desk and rest my face in them, by my chin, on the heels of my palms.  I rub my temples with my fore and middle fingers.  I look between my hands at the agenda on my desk.  The black ink swims on the white page, my head pulses.  I pick up the beige telephone receiver from my desk and dial “714″.  I hear a ring in the receiver speaker a second before I hear Laurie’s phone ring next door.

     “Lorena Garcia.”

     “Laurie, it’s me, I’m ready to go over today’s itinerary.”

      ”You sure?”

     “Yeah, come on over.”     I take off my coat and drape it behind me, over the back of my vinyl chair.  I fold the right cuff of my shirt over, then fold it over again.  I fold the thickened cuff one more length up my arm.  The creases start to slip, the fold becomes a tangled roll of cotton-polyester blend, I push the roll just above my elbow.  I repeat the process with the left sleeve.  The door opens and Laurie walks in.

     “Feeling better?”

     “A little, yeah.”

     “Ok.  I went ahead and cleared your morning anyways.  Armistise is gonna be your first appointment, so you’ve got a couple hours to relax.  You should take it if you’re not feeling well, because you have a ribbon cutting at three, and then a police awards ceremony at 5.”

    ”Do I need a tux or anything for the awards?”

     “No, you’re gonna be overdressed like that.  We’ll lose the tie on the way over there.”

     “Anything else?”

     “The Union called, they want a quote on HR-765, and the woman with the hangnail on Medicare, Mrs. Delano, she wants a personal response from you, or she says she’s filing a malpractice suit.”

     “Can she do that?”

     “I doubt she’ll win, but she can file the claim.”

     “Ok, send her a letter saying I’m sorry for her discomfort and that we uh, take very seriously all claims of malpractice by Medicare doctors and that we’re ‘looking into the matter’.”  Laurie scribbles it all down on a note pad.  When she goes back to her office, she’ll transcribe the note to her computer, and then send it to her BlackBerry and then e-mail it to the intern, who will write the letter to Mrs. Delano.   “Is that it for the day?”

     “Except for the private fundraiser tonight.”

     “Shit.  Do I need a tux for that?”

     “No, it’s a luau theme.”

     “What?”

     “It was your wife’s idea.  The caterers are doing a roast pig on a spit.  ’Bringing home the pork’.  Get it?”

     “Very funny.”

     “But that’s it.  And you have two hours until Armistise is expecting you at the barbeque place.  Anything else, or would you like me to leave you alone?

     “That’s it.”

    ”Alright,” she says, neatening her manilla folder, “you’re sure you’re alright?”

     “I’ll be ok.”

     “Ok, let me know if you change your mind, if you need someone to talk to.”

     “I will.  Thank you.  I’m alright.”

     She leaves and closes the door behind her.  My eyes fall on a photograph of myself and Sylvester Stallone.  I lay my forehead on the cool wood of my desk and close my eyes again.  My head pounds.  I stand up and walk out of my office, down the hall to the men’s bathroom.  I lock the door.  I stand over the sink and splash water in my face, rubbing my face with the palms of my hand, slapping my face back and forth between my two hands.  The faucet squeaks as I turn it off.  I set my hands on the edges of the sink and lean in to the mirror for a closer look at the bags under my eyes.  I feel the sink start to give as I put my weight on it, and I quickly stand up straight.  I jiggle the sink.  It feels like it’s attached by the pipe alone.  I look in the mirror and make sure my hair is neatly parted, and I leave the bathroom.  I walk through the maze of aides’ cubicles, to the elevator doors.  I press the “down” button.  It lights up.  I press it again, jamming it into its socket, again, again.

     “In a hurry, sir?” the intern asks.

     “You have no idea.”

    ”Where are you headed?”

     “The Grotta Azzurra.”

    ”Is that a new restaurant?”

     The elevator doors open, and I get on the elevator.  The elevator descends, stops, and the doors open again.  I exit the elevator into the lobby.  I see plastic ficus and shrubs, polyester flower petals and a fish tank.  I see waiting room chairs upholstered in mauve and taupe.  I walk through the lobby.  I push its glass double doors open.  I leave the home office.

The Home Office

     I wake up and I don’t know where I am.  I realize there’s someone next to me and a twinge of panic drops in my stomach.  I blink my eyes and rub them and look around.  I look at my wife, next to me in the bed.  Her red hair is matted against her face, her mouth agape, her eyes still closed.  I sigh in slight relief and pull the covers off myself.  I breathe in deeply and exhale slowly and then do it again.  I rub my left temple with the fore and middle fingers of my left hand.  I rub my right temple with the fore and middle fingers of my right hand.  I rub both temples.  I get out of bed.

     In the bathroom, I turn the shower on, to let the water heat up.  I take off my silk pajama bottoms and the matching collared top.  I sit on the toilet.  I push my penis down between my legs and piss.  I try to shit, but nothing happens.  Steam begins to fog the glass shower doors and I get off the toilet.  I reach my right arm into the shower, making sure it’s not too hot.  I get in the shower.  I let the water rinse over my body, until I’m wet all over.  I take the bar of soap from its built-in enclave in the shower wall.  I rub the soap between my two hands, to build up a lather.

     Holding the bar in my left hand, I rub the lather from my right hand along my left forearm, then my left bicep and tricep, then my left shoulder.  I scrub the lather vigorously into the hair of my armpit, scratching the skin underneath with the fingernails of my right hand.  I rub the lather on my chest and stomach.  I cup my testicles and rub them with the warm soapy water in my right hand.  I take the shaft of my limp wet penis and gently squeeze it.  I cup my hand over my penis and my testicles and rub them clean.  It feels good and I take hold of the shaft of my penis again.  I stroke it several times and it doesn’t get any harder and I give up.  I rub the bar of soap between my hands again.  Taking the soap in my right hand this time, I use the lather in my left to wash my right forearm and bicep and tricep.  I scrub my right armpit as vigorously as the left.

     With my right hand, I rub the bar of soap in circles on my right ass cheek.  I switch the bar to my left hand behind my back and rub circles with it on my left ass cheek.  I run the bar through the crack of my ass and rub the residue into a lather with my right hand.  I lather both my legs and feet.  Then I let the falling water of the shower rinse me clean.

     I turn in small circles under the water, feeling its warmth on every part of my body.  I feel its temperature start to fall.  I stand directly under the nozzle and let what little hot water remains pummel the nape of my neck.  I count backwards from ten.  ”Zero.”  I turn the water off and grab a crimson-red terry-cloth towel from the shower door.

     I scrub my hair dry, and then drape the towel over my back and pull it towards my ass, to dry my back.  I dry my chest and my arms.  I remember what my arms used to look like, how firm my chest used to feel.  I dry my penis and my testicles, and run the towel between my legs to dry the fleshy expanse between my genitals and my asshole.  I dry my ass and the back of my thighs and my thighs and my calves and my shins and my feet.  I hang the towel back on the shower door and I flush the toilet.

     I brush my teeth with the whitening toothpaste in the medicine cabinet.  I comb my still-damp hair, parting it down the right side.  My hair is still black, still full.  I walk naked from the bathroom.  The sunlight peeks around the heavy brown bedroom curtains, embossed with hundreds of tiny golden fleures-de-lis.  My wife lies in the same position, hair matted the same, mouth still agape, eyes still closed.  I dress myself in a navy blue suit with a white collared shirt with buttoned stays.  I choose a solid red tie.  I slide my feet into a pair of black patent leather shoes.  I thread a matching belt through the loops of my suit pants.  I take my wallet and my car keys from the nightstand on my side of the bed.  I look again at my wife and leave the bedroom.  I pick up my briefcase in the foyer as I walk out the front door.

     In the car, I listen to local talk radio, a show called, “Mikey in the Morning.”  Mikey is telling a caller that he’s naive about immigration.  Now Mikey is talking about me.  Mikey is saying that  I am naive like the caller.  He’s saying that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I should be fired.  He says that I’m a fat cat.  I turn the station to classic rock and The Beatles are singing, “a crowd of people stood and stared.”  I stop at the chain coffee store in the strip mall a block away from the home office.  I order a small coffee.  I look in my wallet and realize I don’t have the two dollars I need to pay for the coffee.  I hand the girl behind the counter my credit card.  She asks to see my ID and I show it to her.  She laughs.

     “What’s so funny?” I ask her.

     “Nothing,” she replies, still laughing, “it’s just that you have the same name as our congressman.”

      ”What a coincidence,” I say.

     She looks at me again and the smile disappears.

     “Wait,” she says, “Are you him?”

     “Guilty.” I raise my right hand like I’m swearing an oath.

     “Wow,” she says, “What are you doing here?”

     “Work.”  I take my coffee and leave.  In front of the home office I pull the gold Toyota into a parking spot with my name painted on the asphalt between its confines.  I get out of the car and walk into the office.  I get in the elevator and press a button marked “4″.  The elevator goes up and the doors open.  The intern at the reception desk sees me and stands up.

     “Hello, Congressman!” he smiles, “I’ll let Ms. Garcia know you’re here.”

     “Thank you.”  I walk into my office and close the door.  On the walls are pictures of myself.  There’s one of myself and the president and one of myself and the last president and one of myself and the Lion of the Senate and one of myself and the chief of the Chumash Indians and one of myself and the foreign minister of Azerbaijan.  On my beechwood desk is a picture of myself and my wife, swimming in the Grotta Azzura.  Her hair is a brighter red in the photograph than it is now, my teeth a brighter white.  There is a knock at the door.  It is my chief of staff.

     “Come in.” I say, and she enters carrying a manilla folder.

     “Hello, sir,” she says, “Welcome home.”

     “Thank you, Ms. Garcia.”

     “Shall we get right to business?”

     “We might as well.”

     “Ok,” she says, opening the folder on my desk.  She produces an agenda and spins it around on the desk, so it’s top-up to my perspective, and slides it across the desk.  Below it in the folder is an identical copy, which she picks up.   “For lunch, you’ve got Armistise, from Veteran’s Affairs.  He wants to talk about the new VA hospital, specifically the leasing agreements and future development clauses.”

     “Do we have to do it at the rib place again?”

     “I could try and change it, but he’s pretty particular.” 

     “No, the rib place is fine.”  I set my elbows on my desk and rub my temples with my fore and middle fingers.

     “Jet-lagged?”

     “Yeah.  Laurie, I’m sorry, can you give me five minutes.”

     “Sure,” she says scooping the manilla folder off the desk, “just buzz me when you’re ready.”

      She walks out and shuts the door behind her.  I lay my arms across the desk and my head on top of them.  I close my eyes.

Gaza City Rollers

     “This is what I wanted.  This is where I want to be.  I am not afraid.

This is what I wanted.  This is where I want to be.  I am not afraid.”

     I repeat it, again and again as I march.  The metal treads of the tank next to me clatter and clang so I can hardly hear my mantra.  My pack feels lighter than it did in training, my rifle heavier.  I wish it weren’t winter.  Why couldn’t we have done this last spring?  ”Then I wouldn’t be here,” I think.  The wind howls down the street, channeled by columns of empty buildings.

     I don’t know how far we have to walk, or where we’ll be when we stop.  I know I have to stay next to the tank.  I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.  The tank is American, built like a, well…   When shooting starts, I will be safest by the tank.

     I think there is a pebble in my right boot.  I shook my boots out and ran my hand all along the inside lining before we left.  They’re tied so tightly, almost halfway up my calves, how could it have fallen in since?  I must have missed it this morning.  I was so sleepy, and it was still so dark, I’m lucky I remembered my rifle.  My rifle.  I look down at it, away from the rooftops of the empty buildings, for just a moment.  It is beautiful, the precision of its machining, the ruggedness of the dusty aluminum receiver, the smooth modernity of its plastic stock, the straight, perfectly-round steel barrel…  I wish my washing-machine at home was this well-made.

     The washing machine leaks.  I haven’t done laundry since I got married, but Rachel says it leaks and that she hates that machine, so I have to fix it, so I hate that machine.  I don’t know how it leaks, where it comes from.  I’ve replaced every gasket, reclamped and checked every hose, it makes no sense.  After every load of laundry, there’s a puddle underneath the machine.  Rachel forgets and steps in the puddle, and then she yells at me to fix the washing machine.

     I exhale and see her in the wisp of steam escaping.  Then I hear the sound of the earth opening and the tank is gone and I am prone in a pile of dust and rock and it is raining pieces of the empty buildings and I am deaf.  I feel the earth shake again behind me and I turn and see the tank, rocking forward with the recoil of its soot blacked cannon.  Another building comes raining down.  Now people, running.  I see screaming, but I don’t hear anything.  Men with guns are taking positions in the rubble opposite, among the girls and kids running away.  Positions.  Shit.  Little bursts of orange fire  from the barrels of the men’s guns.

     I scramble to my feet, concrete and sand and blood shifting under me as I do, and run ducking to the tank, to shelter.  My commanding officer is waiting behind the tank already.  He’s yelling at me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.  I point at my right ear and shrug.  He understands and tells me in slashing hand-signals to take the alley on our right and flank the next street.  I nod.

     Leaning my back against the back of the tank, I slide to my left, keeping my head low.  I reach the tank’s right tread, squat and turn around.  I peak one eye around the tread.  They’re gone.  Where’d they all go?  Shit.  My CO looks at me and I shrug.  ”Nothing.” I say.  I can feel myself talking, feel the vibrations in the bones of my skull, but I don’t hear it.  He repeats his slashing hand gestures and shoves me from behind the tank.

     I run crouching to the alley.  Once there, I move slowly, but purposefully, the sight of my rifle at my right eye, that plastic stock buried in my right shoulder.  I sweep the perfectly-round barrel from side to side as my eyes trace the same pattern.  I aim at the sky as I look up to check the rooftops.  I lower the barrel, my eye still on the sight.  I near the end of the alley and press my back up against the far wall.  I creep left along the wall like this.  At the corner I stop.  I lean my head ever so slightly past the safety of the wall.  My left eye strains at its peripheral extreme.  Another empty street.

     I swing the barrel of my gun around the corner.  My head follows, attached at the rifle’s sight.  My chest and shoulders and right hip come around the corner, exposed.  I look up into a face, centered in the sight.  A boy’s: wet with tears, muddy in this dust, but not crying now.  In the reticule, I see the tiny muscles of his face tighten, his delicate jaw clench.  I see his lips move and I hear his voice and he says, “I am not afraid.”

The Restroom Is for Customers Only

     On the radio, Cat Stevens sings “I’m being followed by a moon shadow.”  I hear a clang and look up.  I know it’s her as I do.   With one of the double doors closed, the entrance to the shop is too narrow for her conveyance.  I’m supposed to keep the left door closed when it’s cold.  She and her motorized wheelchair would fit if not for the raft of over-full plastic trash bags lashed behind and around it.  She takes hold of the closed door in her right hand, reaches across her lap to the joystick that controls the wheels with her left hand, and, holding onto the door with her right hand, backs the chair up.  The door cracks opens and she uses her left hand and the joystick to maneuver the chair and its attending sacs of miscellany into the opening.  She flings the door fully open, switches her now free right hand to the joystick and scoots across the threshold.  The door rebounds at the extreme of its hinges’ range and swings shut as rapidly as it was flung open, thudding to a stop against her chair’s trash-bag rear fender, dragging shut as she enters the shop.

     Inside, she parks her rig, stands up and examines the display case.

“Oh, they all look so fluffy, like colored whip cream,” she says to me.

“Yeah, I like the way they look too.” I say.

“Can I try a couple?”

“Sure.”

“How’s that pineapple?  When I lived in Hawaii, they  always had pineapple ice cream.”

“Oh.  I bet it was good, Hawaii, and pineapples and everything…”

She stares intently at the case.

“Do you have a coconut one?”

“Yeah, right here, in the back.”  I put my finger against the freezer case’s sliding plastic doors, pointing at the frozen white waves on the surface of a pan of coconut sorbeto.

“You could make like a-uh pina colada.”

“Yep.”

“Do you like those?  I mean the drinks.”

“Not really, too sweet for me.”

“Me too.  I never really liked alcohol.  Beer I guess, but I never liked alcohol.”

She stares into the case.  I stare into the case.

“Which one do you want to try?” I ask.

“Just give me the four-seventy-five cup, with the pineapple and the tropical.”

“A medium with pineapple and tropical?”  I take a pink cup, made from biodegradable corn plastic, from the top of a two-foot tall stack of inverted pink cups that sits between a one-foot tall stack of smaller green cups and a three-foot tall stack of larger blue cups.  With my left hand, I grab the top pink cup and flip it top-side up.  With my right hand, I open the plastic sliding doors of the smaller of the shop’s two freezer cases, the one that holds the sorbeto, the one she stares into so intently.  I look at the metal pan, with a small plastic lean-to placard in front of it that reads “Pineapple” on both sides,  a quarter full of pineapple sorbet.  I look at the tropical, nearly full.

     With my right hand, I pull the red handled spade from the pineapple sorbeto, like sword from stone.  I scoop the pineapple first because it is older, and I know it will be harder, less malleable, than the fresh, airy tropical.  If I reverse the order, the serving will not find its form: a cupcake-like half-dome, an inch over the pink corn-plastic rim, forming a sticky equator between hemispheres of pastel orange and yellow.  Without the constraint of the week-old pineapple in place, the tropical will not hold its shape.  It will flow over the edges of the cup and stick to my hands.  I’ll have to give her the cup and the sugary soup will stick to her hands too.

      She’ll touch her money with her sticky hands, and it will become sticky, and I’ll have to touch the sticky money.  She’ll touch the chair she sits in, because she does not sit in her wheelchair while she is in the shop, and the chair will become sticky, and I’ll have to clean the chair.  She’ll put her hands on the bathroom door before she leaves, and I’ll have to clean the bathroom door, after she’s used the bathroom.

     I slice through the frozen mixture of pineapple, water, sugar, syrup, dextrose and air with the edge of the equally frozen spade.  A jaundiced iceberg breaks away from a pineapple glacier.  The atoms of the iceberg are cold and slow and so adhere to the cold slow atoms of the spade’s metal concave.  I scrape the chunk of pineapple sorbeto into the pink cup against its plastic rim.  It slips into the dish and lies on the bottom.  I pick it up with the spade the way one picks up a sleeping drunk, and lean it against the wall of the cup, mashing it in a bit with the back of the metal scoop, so it knows to stay up.  I replace the spade, convex down, handle resting on the clean back edge of pineapple’s metal pan.  I reach for the spade resting on the clean back edge of the metal pan with a small plastic lean-to placard in front of it that reads “Tropical” on both sides.  When she sees I’ve got the flavors right she begins pulling crumpled bills from the folds of her clothing, and half-heartedly straightening the bills.

     I pull the spade from the tropical with a slurping suck.  The softer stuff is the fresher stuff, the right stuff, possessing the texture it’s meant to have.  It  scoops less like an iceberg than beach mud, bits of blended seed and pulp for the grit of sand grains.  With the pineapple retaining wall in place, the tropical mudslide fills into the neat mound I mean for it.  I use the nose of the metal scoop to scrape the pink-plastic edge of the tropical hemisphere.

“Could you put one of those cones on there sweety?” she asks.

“Sure.”

     I press an inverted sugar cone into the surface of the mounded cupful of sorbeto.  I’m supposed to put it on the counter by the register.  She’s supposed to walk over and give me five dollars.  I’m supposed to put it on the counter by the register because it’s bigger, so the cup is less likely to be knocked over onto the floor, which would make a mess I would have to clean up.  Also, my tip cup is by the register.  I don’t get tipped as often if people don’t see the tip cup while I’m taking their money and giving them their change.  I take the cup of sorbeto to the bit of counter that she’s leaning on, in between the two freezer cases, and set it down.  She gives me five crumpled singles.  I take them to the register.  I press a button on the register with the number “2″ on it in bold black lettering.  Then I press a key marked “PLU”.  Then “6″, then “1″, then “PLU” again.  Then a button marked “CA”.  The drawer of the cash register springs opens with a thud.  I put the five crumpled bills on top of a crisper stack of the same denomination.

     She ambles to a table in the middle of the dining room, cup in hand.

“Do you drink alcohol?” she asks me.

“Sometimes,” I answer, “Not hardly at all lately.”   I take a spray bottle of kitchen cleaner and a rag from under the counter, beneath the register, and start cleaning the espresso machine.

“My daddy owned a bar, in New Jersey, that’s where I’m from.  So I grew up seeing people drinking and everything.  But I think sometimes the beer actually makes people go crazier than the other stuff even.”

“People drink so much of it.” I say, staring in to the already shiny chrome of the espresso machine, searching for water spots, for any dried flecks of steamed milk.

“There was one guy, he came in all the time.  I would come home from school, and he’d be there in my dad’s bar, and I’d have to go move his car from the middle of the street.”

     I turn my head to look at her and she shakes her head and laughs.  ”He got drunk and left it there?” I ask.

She stares into her cup, “I was seven I think…  when you’ve served drinks most of your life, which is what I did, you see the way that people are when they drink alcohol, you know?

“Yeah.”

     I put the spray bottle and the rag back under the counter.  I sit at the table, under the pass-through window to the production room, where the gelato and sorbeto are made, where I have my computer set-up.  I sit and start typing:  

     “On the radio, Cat Stevens sings “I’m being followed by a moon shadow.”  I hear a clang and look up.  I know it’s her as I do.   With one of the double doors closed, the entrance to the shop is too narrow for her conveyance.  I’m supposed to keep the left door closed when it’s cold.  My boss says it’s to keep some heat in, but still let people know we’re open. She and her motorized wheelchair would fit if not for the raft of over-full plastic trash bags lashed behind and around it.  She takes hold of the closed door in her right hand, reaches across her lap to the joystick that controls the wheels with her left hand, and, holding onto the door, backs the chair up.  The door opens and she uses her left hand and the joystick to maneuver the chair and its attending sacs of miscellany into the opening.  She flings the door fully open, switches the joystick to her now free right hand and scoots across the threshold.  The door rebounds at the extreme of its hinges’ range and swings shut as rapidly as it was flung open, thudding to a stop against her chair’s trash-bag rear fender, dragging shut as she enters the shop.”

     I hear her clear her throat and look up.  She’s standing by the small freezer case again.

“You want another one?” I ask.

“Mango and wildberries.” she says.  ”Here’s the money.”  She lays more crumpled bills on top of the freezer case.  ”And can you scoop it, but leave it in the case for me while I use the restroom?”

I close my computer and stand up.  I wipe my hands on my apron.  ”Sure.”

Mise en Fail

“Nobody reads anymore.”

- Steve Jobs

     I’ve been reading a lot lately about the death of reading.  Shuttered newspapers, slow ebook reader sales and falling literacy rates, it’s argued, all portend the demise of the written word.  To fill the void, those holding a still-fogged glass over literature’s ashen mouth offer us its replacement: image-based language.  The king is dead, long live the king.

     Flickr, YouTube and Google, they say, have the vocabulary for this new language languishing on their servers.  All the “words” need is a taxonomy, an index, and fixed definitions.  No problem.

     Image-based language cannot approximate written language because of its difficulty with precision.  Photographic or cinematic mise en scéne in all but the most controlled set-ups is imperfect: accidental signifiers appear, meaning is unfixable.  Fine for impressionistic art, but less valuable for philosophical wrangling.  We use abstract symbols to describe the world, because its reality is beyond our complete grasp.  We cannot create the whole of existence from scratch.  Images are terrific when used to depict the world as it exists.  They fall shorter when asked to depict the world as it is experienced.  Readers subconsciously fill in the blanks, the parts of the universe the artist couldn’t or didn’t summon, that viewers have unpurposefully completed for them.  This new language of images is doomed to such fundamental imprecision as to be practically useless.

     The problem of imprecision in language is important because it plagues us already.  Language has always altered over time, but our time is unusual in the amount of words whose incorrect pronunciations or definitions have become standardized.  Our fondness for colloquial misappropriations intertwines with our society’s utter disdain for propriety and formality in conversation, knots our collective tongue and we speak as the deaf.  Our stilted English already feels the lack inherent in any image-based language.  It is a language of greetings and concrete things – free from ideas, from action and abstraction alike.  It is direct as a river of Hemingway prose, but bereft of the emotional undercurrent.

     And so what will the visual vocabulary created by our tongue-tied culture look like?   We supposedly see its unorganized protolanguage on YouTube and MySpace.  Will we be crass Eskimos, with a hundred “words” for fart?  What is the visual equivalent of “sorrow”?  Will our new visual language need interpreters?  Genetic and environmental differences in ocular sensory perception among different people seem to make a high-res hieroglyphics so much less universally approachable than our current arbitrarily abstract system.  How do you translate images?  So many questions.

     If Steve Jobs is right about reading, as, sadly, he might be, we’re staring at a future of human interaction impossibly less nuanced and expressive than its already stunted present.

Between the Spirit and the Letter

   Andrea gave me A Moveable Feast for Christmas. It seeped into my brain to leak out in my first post, yesterday. I can’t help aping the style. Those short taut sentences are like Alexander’s blade through the Gordian knot that is modern life. They are simple in structure and lean heavily towards physical action.   In the book, Hemingway says that writing hungry gave his characters great focus: they were always hungry too, always knew what they needed.  Their actions and speech always represent this clarity of vision.  There are no Focault-esque baroque oddities, spirals of abstraction, clause draped upon clause, endlessly supplementing, clarifying, hedging. The conventional thinking has Hemingway’s style as a product of its times, a counterpoint to the disorienting horrors of the first war fought with the full technological bounty of the Industrial Revolution, to the relativism of appocalypse. I think what makes that style so appealing today is the new universality of its application.

     We live today in a continuous state of upheaval. New technologies supplant old faster than ever before. World changing innovations are on tips of tongues in labs and on campuses, not only across the country, but across the globe. Breakthroughs are shared at near the speed of light and critiqued, corrected and expounded upon nearly as fast. But the sword cuts both ways, and let us not forget, is a sword. War becomes smaller, faster and more deadly to the innocent, it seems everyday. Soldiers die less and less often, more and more return home wounded or changed or both. Industries emerge and collapse in fruit fly cycles. Today’s “conflicts” may not be “World Wars”, but the specter of their violence and confusion covers the globe.

     So it feels good for me, like I’m sure it felt good for him, to put something in black and white, to cut through a knot I could never untie, to present my version of events and say simply: this is how it happened for me. Excise lengthy digressions on subjectivity and Heisenberg: writing is presenting an answer to a problem whose solution is unknowable.  Every good piece of writing is a religion, presenting a universe within our own, with rules and norms askew or realigned to our own, varying assumptions about the nature of reality suggesting varying modes of life. Hemingway’s voice is authoritative as Moses’.  He hedges no bets, makes no disclaimers on his prognostications. That’s a welcome relief in a deconstructed world and it’s the reason he’s the embodiment of American literature.  Who could help ripping that off?