NOTE to SELF: Keep in mind this is just a first draft of a story emerging; do not erase what has been written. Just go with it. And then use some of it; throw the rest away.
Prologue
These days. It's hit or miss. The way I pull my pants off. I try every possible way until they're off. Pull from the knees first, whatever's within reach while laying down flat on my back on the floor. Even though it doesn't work. I envy the guys who pull my pants off from the feet right away, eliminating that unnecessary and awkward preliminary step searching for the right way. They just know. Jump right to it. Something so simple: pulling pants off. I've done it thousands of times to be 31. But I still can't remember how I do it. A new struggle every time. That's the way I like it. I guess.
I try to remember what else I can. Spontanaeity. Creation. Such are words. That pop. While I listen to scratchy ambient lines of anonymous music, an introspective male's voice speaking through minimalistic independent voices: a subtle bass line providing stucture to the contrapuntal violinage at random points on that constant timeline.
And it makes me contemplate what music should have been to the Maya, in a place located, as is mine, on a major natural vortex, where time was not linear, but a circle, where the calendar, the most advanced of any civilization, comprised circles within circles. And they moved. A pattern cut out from the fabric of space-time.
Chapter One
01 JANUARY 2013
The ball has dropped. It's gone through the hole. The Milky Way perfectly aligned. But all that 2012 hype--turned into maybes, heavy and slight, depending--depending on who you read or talk to, is at its peak. We're still waiting. It's the Y2K of the new decade. The 9eleven of the previous one. I wonder what it will be in the 2020s.
In the meantime, though, I just write. I live. Live and write.
"No worries," they say. They. I say it too. But, if it helps, I catch myself. I become self-aware. But usually when it's 2 LATE. I mis-spell on purpose. It is fashionable to be unthinking. It's cute. Like a baby.
That's supposing babies should also numb their minds, suppress their cries with rubbery nipples affixed to pacifiers. And think of goo-goos and being like the Communist cardboard cut-out cartoon Bob the Builder. Bob. The Builder. And be mesmerized with twirly mobiles of rainbows and pink elephants. In stead. Instead of diaper rash and diarrhea. Instead of useful language for hot and cold, day, night, they are offered useless words such as mom-ee. Dad-ee. No one tries to make them understand they are alone in the world.
I rethink: 'No one' is usually inaccurate, and I cannot make that assumption logical; someone always surprises me.
In stead. Instead of "Day" and "Night," what if babies were given charcoal and eggshell and taught to see the difference between an egg shell and snow, and how both are white? And see that an egg, like a snowflake, is unlike any other of its kind. And how the creators of the color eggshell apparently weren't thinking of brown eggs.
In stead. Instead of "White and "Black," what if babies were taught to see how the yellow labrador's nose turns, bespeckled, slowly to pink from brown, when the weather turns, bespeckled, slowly to cold from hot-ish. How summer has cool days, and winter has warmth. How cool is sought in summer, and hot is sought in winter. And how spring and fall are the in-between planetary phases, a circle. And circles within circles. And they move. That is what they should see when they look up at the twirly mobiles with rainbows and pink elephants, above their sequestered wooden pens.
Chapter Two
11 JANUARY 2013
The fan blows softly on breeze mode, which sounds like it's wearing out the motor to strain, holding back the breeze to replicate a gale or gust, a heave-ho. I wake up irritated. The blinds are closed over the glass door. I believe I had left them open. Yes, I did, I remember. In fact, the sliding door was open also to let in the cool night air. I always sleep with the door open to let in the cool night air. It's too hot in here. After a slight hung-over achiness in my head subsides a bit, I sit up, twist my neck to see the time: shadowed roman numerals. There's a glare. I can't read. I like numbers on a clock. Letters in books. Roman numerals in Latin.
I would check my clock radio, the one I bought with my own 20 bucks when I was 12, after saving up, my first bought possession, a clock radio. Something that made me feel grown up. Responsible. The clock for appointments and important events. The radio for ambient classical tones coming through a tinny scratchy speaker, soundwaves compressed and rarefacted. Circles. Circles that move. On a timeline.
I would glance, naturally, at the flashing red numbers on that digital antique, but it sits unplugged on the floor, its black cord writhing around itself, beside the cardboard box I'm currently using as a nightstand behind the shared couch.
I have to get out of here. I think. I scratch away the crust from around my eyes. I have to go pee. I kick the blankets. They fly up, still on. Too much work. Frustrating. I get violent with them, like I have to do sometimes with those psychos who at times enter in and hold onto my arms and won't let me go.
That literally happened one time. He said he cared about me. That's why he wouldn't let me go out the door of his apartment at 2 a.m. when I needed out. That's why he threatened karate. That's why I dragged him down the stairs outside the apartments. Drag. More like walked, pulling, resisting, to his tight bruise-imprint clutch on my right upper arm. His cries. The cops came. The latinas watching on their doorsteps at the bottom of the stairs, offering me agua in a crystal glass. Funny, the cops thought we were a gay couple breaking up. Drama. Queens and their drama.
"Doesn't he look like Pan?" I said. "You know, the Greek god? Those Roman features. Bacchus, I guess it would be."
The officer laughed from his boy skin barely hidden beneath a halcyone beard, trimmed neatly, classic GQ. "Yeah, oh my God, he does! You should definitely keep your distance. There's clearly something wrong with this guy. He's your friend?"
"Well, I thought he was," I say, twisting the skin back above my elbow to check out the damage.
Chapter 3
15 January 2013
All these pages. Torn edges, some. Canary yellow, extra-long looseleaf. Loose. Leaf.
I never see yellow birds anymore.
I don't even know what I'm saying. Or why you should care. I'm drunk. If I wasn't, I might not be typing. I might be telling a different story. Somewhat skewed. Somewhat. But, as it is, I'm drunk, and I'm still me. And I tell a story. And the story is what follows. And what follows is what has already happened. And what has already happened is a story waiting to happen. And the story waiting to happen is what follows. And what follows is the story that has not happened yet. And the story that has not happened yet, although having already happened in practice, has not happened yet as a story.
And, what to leave. And what to leave? What to leave in. What to leave out. That is a story. Historique. History. Story. History. His story. Fiction. Nonfiction. No such thing. History is the way we tell it, and so there is only fiction.
Who said that? Someone. Someone in college. Several people, probably, but someone notable becomes famous for saying it. And so the fiction continues. Absolutism. Does it exist? Maybe.
That's the best answer for everything. Maybe. May be. (It) may be.
Is there a may bee? There's a May flower. Not that's. Not that is. Not there's. Not there is. That may be. May be a may bee and may be a Mayflower.
Not everything. Something else. Something else. And so it begins, and so it ends, and so it continues. From. The start. Does it bore you? Does it bore? Nothing bores. You, my friend, are understimulated, and that is your fault. Or not. It is not a fault if you are okay with your understimulation, but it is your fault if you blame a thing, calling it 'boring.' You just don't care enough to interest yourself in it.
And, you are not my friend. One day, may bee. One day.
And, if you continue reading, gentle reader, you may find your interest. But don't take my word for it. This would be a good time for you to recite a particular short ditty, pre-cellphone fanfare, from your childhood that you have conveniently stored in your ephemeral repertoire. Reading rainbow's da-DUNH-DUNH! And you recite it in your head, and some ugly fat woman in pink sweatshop sweatpants from Wal-mart gives you a menacing look, or maybe that's just her normal look, you can't tell, and your eyes follow your dog's, directly down the line of the brown leather leash, its imperfections shining black in the sun, and land right on a tiny yellow stain on those pink pants, right on the leg as she passes you. Mass displacing air on a timeline equals draft.
Chapter 4
16 January 2013
And you find yourself thinking of the draft as you drink the Hefenweisen, dangling your legs from the barstool in the dim yellow light reflecting a sickly hue from ancient brick and hewn black oak, the kind from mediaeval winebarrels: that pink, that leg, that menacing face with the wilty warty complexion magnified at least ten times by thick, uncolored, translucently rimmed Wal-mart glasses atop a Miracle Gro'n mushroom of a nose.
You find yourself. Your self. You find. Something hums. A buzz, if you will, that you never noticed since the second day you started coming here. A generator that's kicked on. Maybe. May bee. MMMMMMay. Ayyyyyy. Bee. B. B. It shuts off. Click. And then, a hollow gunshot between two gongs.
The break makes you aware of time, the way it ends sometimes, abruptly. And, out of tired habit, you look at your new SLIT phone, so-called because it only weighs negative .0059 ounces, a hairline slit. It's the next best thing, so they say. They. But it sucks. It doesn't have BTS. So you have to raise your finger. One Fifty Eight.
You come here to stimulate your olfactory manufacturing plant of organic ideas. And to contemplate, lately, critical mass. A fat, pink, critical mass. That displaces everything. Every thing. Except.
Except the thought of maybees. Except the yellow draft. Except our ephemeral repertoire. Except the drone of the metal machine now matriculating into that repertoire as the Sound of the May Be(e). Except.
Except a small gnat gazing at your black boots dangling just above the mediaeval floor, from a metal light dangling from a rafter.
These days. These. I'm in a daze. I'm in the park blocks, a strange neon green glow in the city trees. It's five years after. Five? I'm how old? Thirty-one. Thirty and one. And a half. Half a year. And then some. Everyone rounds. Round up. Round down. Round. Age is round. Plaid-wearing hipsters congregate on the steps of the library. The last three years don't count. Count. I count them, and they do count, but where are they? These hipster boys, scruffy, dirt-matted dreds, mild laughter, sitting Indian-style, others dangling legs off the marble ledge. Hold on to it. I pass them, walk past the characters on the streets. I stare as I pass, and my eyes follow, naturally, behind me, at the beautiful young faces. I see up ahead a place where a couple park benches are waiting with no people around. I walk faster to get to this spot, walking through people, averting my tear-drenched eyes.
"Spare some change?" On the ground, a group of homeless kids, looking oddly out of a Dickens novel dressed in dirty overalls matching other shades of brown, and woolen caps. They look happy with their dog friend laying amongst them, and one of the boys has a guitar playing acoustic punk, a girl sings.
I smile reassuringly, thinking of how red my eyes must look. "Sorry," is all I say. I look back. I stop about ten feet away, at the intersection. I don't have any place to go. I want to ask to sit with them. To know how to be one of them. But I keep going, instead. Instead. To sit on one of those secluded benches across the street. My legs just move. I feel dizzy by the time I reach the bench, and I plop down my canvas bag, and, after watching a few people a street over, minding their own business, as they walk, I lay on my back and rest my head on my bag to see the sky, to see up rather than down, to see somewhere else rather than here, to see the sun and hope it blinds me. There are yellow and red roses blooming in the middle of the strip, shaded by elms. I see similar scenes every day here, and in the city where I'm from. This street today, in the park yesterday, in a bar. I don't know what I'm doing tonight. Where I'm going to sleep.
This is a place where people play chess. The city has provided metal chess boards, to encourage community recreation. Creation and recreation.
The raindrops slide off the warped checkered metal, as if they have a mind to keep dropping, as they have done for centuries in this forest town.
*****
I went into the local library in St. Louis that I had walked into a hundred thousand times. Right down the street from my high school, and the junior high, located all on the same block, a little school on the edge of the city that was so small its board of directors was debating, briefly while I was in the seventh grade, after I had just moved there, whether it would merge with the nearby larger district that had a swimming pool and football team.
I was there to spend another monotonous afternoon checking e-mail, to see if I had any responses from anyone on a support board who knew where I could stay. I made it there, barely feeling capable of pedaling the bike that wasn't even mine.
